Tax Policy in Action.

According to Reason:

The Alternative Minimum Tax was created in 1969 to prevent 155 extremely wealthy taxpayers from using deductions and credits to avoid paying any federal income taxes. Yet as Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy explains in her latest appearance on Bloomberg TV, today the tax overwhelmingly impacts non-millionaires living in just a handful of states. By separating economic myths from economic realities, de Rugy explains the facts about the Alternative Minimum Tax.

All you need is one good year and a single years income approaching $300k to have an extra $10k gouged out of your hide over what you would pay under the normal tax schedules.

"We are witnessing the logical conclusion of the Democratic Party's philosophy, and it is this:Your tax dollars exist to make public sector unions happy."

Matt Welch at Reason Magazine writes:

Just think–there once was a time (for more than a century, actually), when the president of the United States thought it too imperious to deliver the State of the Union via a speech to a joint session of Congress, since that would smack of telling a co-equal branch of government what to do. Now we have a president not just taking rhetorical sides in a state issue, but actively mobilizing his political organization to affect the outcome(s), even though (to my knowledge) nothing that Gov. Walker or any other belated statehouse cost-cutter is doing has a damned thing to do with federal law.

I have written in the past about how libertarians are pretty lonely in the political scheme of things in terms of constantly being challenged to defend themselves against the "logical conclusion" of their philosophy. But I think it's time to amend that. We are witnessing the logical conclusion of the Democratic Party's philosophy, and it is this: Your tax dollars exist to make public sector unions happy. When we run out of other people's money to pay for those contracts and promises (most of which are negotiated outside of public view, often between union officials and the politicians that union officials helped elect), then we just need to raise taxes to cover a shortfall that is obviously Wall Street's fault. Anyone who doesn't agree is a bully, and might just bear an uncanny resemblance to Hitler.