The Hypocrisy of Tax Cuts

 

A top item on Donald Trump’s agenda is to extend his 2017 tax cuts, and the GOP House is playing along. They released a budget blueprint yesterday that included $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, including $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid, and a tax cut totaling $4.5 trillion, which would go primarily to the wealthy. That will be quite a sales job to their MAGA cohort. Cutting aid to the poorest Americans so that the richest can get even richer? Trump relied on low-information voters to win the election. But when the information is all about dropping your health insurance, those voters may get a little smarter.

Republicans claim to be concerned about the federal debt, rightly so. But they always promote tax cuts, which never pay for themselves. Instead, tax cuts result in two undesirable effects: increased debt and increased inequality (more on these below).

Trump initially wanted to just extend his 2017 tax cuts, but now he and his congressional enablers want more. But even his 2017 cuts do not really benefit the middle class or the poor. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, households with incomes in the top 1 percent would receive an average tax cut of more than $60,000 in 2025, while those in the bottom 60 percent would receive less than $500. But they do not always result in small savings for the poor and the middle class. For instance, I prepare my own tax returns because they are quite uncomplicated, and when Trump’s cuts became law in 2017, I calculated my taxes under the new law and the old one. Although I am firmly in the middle class, my taxes actually went up under Trump’s tax “cuts.” So much for helping the middle class.

Republicans want to slash government spending to help balance the budget. But there is no way to do this without negatively impacting the elderly, the disabled, the sick, and the poor. The total U.S. budget for 2023 was $6.1 trillion. Of that, $3.8 trillion was mandatory spending, and interest on the debt was $0.7 trillion. That means 74 percent of the budget cannot be touched without changing laws or breaking them or breaking campaign promises. Mandatory spending includes such items as Medicare, Social Security, and veterans’ programs, all of which Trump has promised not to touch but now seems unconcerned about empty campaign promises. Republicans also refuse to cut military spending, and I assume Trump will ask for increased military spending, as all presidents do. In 2023, defense spending was $805 billion. That leaves nondefense discretionary spending of $917 billion from which to extract the DOGE goal of $2 trillion (later reduced to $1 trillion). Someone is arithmetic impaired, and it isn’t me. Discretionary spending includes such items as transportation, health, income security, international affairs, the DOJ, science and space programs, education, employment, and social services. Whenever someone tries to cut any of these, someone else screams (including Republican voters). This is why Republicans have never been able to cut much spending. But they still insist on cutting revenues, which is why the debt is out of control.

Drastically cutting spending, though, which is what Musk is attempting, would shrink the economy, which he may not understand. Federal spending in 2023 was 22.4 percent of GDP. If we were to cut $1 trillion per year, we would see an economic retraction that would make the Great Recession look like a minor hairline retreat.

To the dismay of many conservatives, we are among the most undertaxed countries in the world. As a percentage of GDP, U.S. tax revenues (federal, state, and local) ring in at 27.66 percent, compared with the OECD (the 38-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average of 34.04 percent. If we take the average of 10 advanced European countries, their taxes are 42.24 percent of GDP. Given that our 2023 GDP was $27.36 trillion, if we had taxed at the level of the average OECD country, we would have had an additional $1.75 trillion just in 2023 to pay down the debt, support our poor and elderly, provide for our safety and security, and so much more. If we had taxed at the rate of those 10 European countries, we would have had an additional $3.99 trillion in 2023. That’s a lot of money, enough to make spending cuts from discretionary accounts look like pocket change.

By not taxing as we should and not sharing ownership and income of businesses with the workers who actually create the products and profits, we have unleashed economic inequality not seen in a hundred years. A 2018 RAND Corporation study calculated that between 1975 and 2018, $47 trillion was shifted from Americans whose taxable income was below the 90th percentile to Americans whose taxable income was in the top 1 percent. In 2018 alone, the amount was $2.5 trillion. Assuming this imbalance has persisted, by 2024, the shifted wealth would total $60 trillion. This is not the recipe for a sustainable economy, and the GOP’s proposal to make his tax cuts permanent would make things worse. Believe it or not, after World War II, when the top marginal tax rate was 94 percent (it is now 37 percent), the rich still got richer. Again, it’s simple arithmetic.

Finally, the poverty rate in America is 11.5 percent (37.9 million citizens), and 20 percent of Americans over age 50 have no retirement savings.

So, how much money do the billionaires really need? Trump and Musk should answer that question, because at some point, more money is just an ego trip, and both of these billionaires have been on vacation from reality far too long.

Why I Trust Science More Than Religion

There, did I get your attention? I hope so, because I’m serious. I do trust science more than I trust religion, even a religion I consider to be of God. Let me explain why.

First, let’s talk about science. Is science ever wrong? Of course. Quite often. In fact, being wrong is part of the whole purpose and project of science. But science, when performed properly and according to long-established rules, is also self-correcting. Several years ago, we at BYU Studies published an article by BYU geology professor Barry Bickmore and BYU philosophy professor David Grandy titled “Science as Storytelling.”¹ They begin by pointing out that it is difficult to define science, but they take a stab at it anyway: “Science is the modern art of creating stories that explain observations of the natural world and that could be useful for predicting, and possibly even controlling, nature.”²

Bickmore and Grandy then describe several rules that endeavors must follow to be considered true science. “However, it is important to realize that rules are chosen not because no others are possible or because they are infallible guides to ‘truth’ but for convenience in attempting to accomplish certain goals.”³

Their first rule is: “Scientific stories are crafted to explain observations, but the observations that are used as a basis for these stories must be reproducible.”⁴ Of course, some types of phenomena occur very infrequently (perhaps a supernova or a very rare disease), and some areas of science are simply theoretical and not observable (string theory, for example), but most scientific experiments are constructed to be reproducible. Repetition ensures that the results are consistent over time and in numerous attempts.

Their second rules is: “Scientists prefer stories that can predict things that were not included in the observations used to create those explanations in the first place.”⁵ The stories scientists create attempt to explain as many observations as possible. Based on their observations, scientists then come up with educated guesses, called hypotheses, to explain what they think is true. “Once a story has successfully predicted many new observations, scientists start suspecting that it might be on the right track, and start calling it a ‘theory’ instead of a hypothesis. . . . And even if we cannot really say that scientific stories are the truth, some theories have successfully predicted so many things that we think it is reasonable to believe they are at least on the right track.”⁶ This is true of the theory of evolution, for example.

Rule 3 is: “Scientific stories should be subject to an infinitely repeating process of evaluation meant to generate more and more useful stories.”⁷ This means that when science gets things wrong, or not quite right, new stories can be created that more accurately describe the world around us. There is no set process, but Bickmore and Grandy give an outline of how science often happens:

1. Scientists make observations about the natural world.

2. Scientists come up with explanations that can explain these observations, or at least the ones that we are most sure about, or seem most important.

3. Other consequences of these explanations are evaluated, and scientists come up with ways to observe whether some of those predictions are true.

4. Scientists then make these other observations to test their predictions.

5. If the predictions work out, then the original explanation may be kept. If the predictions do not work out, then scientists do one of three things.

a. They throw out their initial explanation and try to come up with another one that explains all (or at least most) of their relevant observations.

b. They slightly modify their original explanation to account for the new observations.

c. They ignore the new observations that do not fit with their explanation, assuming there must be something wrong with the observations. Then they either go on as if nothing had happened or try to improve the observations.⁸

Rule 4 is: “Scientific explanations do not appeal to the supernatural. Only naturalistic explanations are allowed.”⁹ They give three reasons for this limitation. First, supernatural explanations don’t generate precise new predictions. Second, it’s difficult to place limits on which supernatural explanations are acceptable. Third, “just because they can come up with a naturalistic explanation for something, it doesn’t follow that the explanation is true.”¹⁰

Their fifth rule is: “Any scientific explanation involving events in the past must square with the principle of ‘uniformitarianism’—the assumption that past events can be explained in terms of the ‘natural laws’ that apply today.”¹¹ In other words, natural laws don’t change willy-nilly over time.

Rule 6 is: “Scientists assume that nature is simple enough for human minds to understand.”¹² If it is too complicated for us to understand, then it makes little sense to pursue scientific knowledge.

Their seventh and final rule is: “Scientific explanations should not contradict other established scientific explanations, unless absolutely necessary.”¹³ If the stories contradict each other, we end up with a mass of confusion. “When we look closely,” Bickmore and Grandy admit, “we find that scientific stories do not always fit perfectly together. However, it is by trying to resolve contradictions between different stories, and between scientific stories and observations, that scientists make progress.”¹⁴ And this may be the most important point.

Our modern world is nothing if not a testament to the fact that the scientific method works. The fact that I can type this blog post on my computer, post it to the internet, and you can read it and make anonymous comments about it is proof that science works. Without science, I would have to write this out longhand, but, on the other hand, without science I wouldn’t have anything to write about on this topic. The fact that I can drink clean water, not have lead paint on my walls, take antibiotics to cure a nasty knee infection instead of losing a leg, and watch my favorite sports team from the comfort of my family room is evidence that science works. Ironically, the fact that so many conservatives have become science doubters is also proof that science works, because most of them became doubters through the wonders of social media. Irony, I suppose is not their strong suit.

So, is science infallible? Of course not. It is the very nature of science to be fallible. But by finding faults in our hypotheses and theories, we improve our lives, and that is the whole point. And that is why I trust science. At its very core, science is a humble endeavor, even if not all scientists are.

Now let’s talk about religion. This won’t take long, because I’ve already written a long post about how devilishly difficult it is to decipher spiritual feelings. And that is the core of religion. It is based on feelings, and feelings are not reproducible or falsifiable. Even if there are divine appearances, such as Joseph Smith’s First Vision, or angelic visitors, which Joseph also reported, most people either have to take his word for what he claimed he saw, or they pray about it and get, yes, a feeling. But even when the feeling is overwhelming, as I’ve related in my earlier post, it is still subject to interpretation. As I stated before, in my own life I’ve been wrong in my interpretation of spiritual feelings as often as I’ve been right. And I don’t think I’m unique.

All we have to do is look at the history of Christianity or, more narrowly, Mormonism, to find numerous examples of when people following their feelings of certainty about religious matters got it all wrong. There have been wars fought over feelings of certainty and plenty of persecution over differences of religious opinion. In the LDS Church, we have seen how spiritual certainty about Blacks and the priesthood turned out to be completely wrong for over a hundred and twenty years. There was very little self-correction in the processes of our religion.

Also, I am the descendant of two plural wives, one on each side of my genealogy, but today in the Church we certainly don’t believe, as our forebears did, that you can’t get into the celestial kingdom without practicing polygamy. In fact, a few years ago, a Pew Research Center survey of Mormons revealed, surprisingly, that more of us believe polygamy is wrong than feel that way about extramarital sex.¹⁵

My whole ongoing series of posts about questions regarding the Book of Mormon is just more evidence that religion is often a can of worms. So, do I trust religion? Somewhat, and sometimes.¹⁶ Do I trust science? For the most part, yes, because its methods are sound and the results have been overwhelmingly positive.

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1. Barry R. Bickmore and David A. Grandy, “Science as Storytelling,” BYU Studies Quarterly 53, no. 4 (2014): 37–60.

2. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 40.

3. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 41.

4. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 43.

5. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 44.

6. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 45.

7. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 46.

8. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 47.

9. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 49.

10. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 52.

11. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 53.

12. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 55.

13. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 57.

14. Bickmore and Grandy, “Storytelling,” 57.

15. “Politics, Society and Morality,” Pew Research Center, January 12, 2012, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/01/12/mormons-in-america-politics-society-and-morality/. According to this survey, 86 percent of Mormons believe polygamy is morally wrong. The percentages for sex between unmarried adults, abortion, and drinking alcohol were 79, 74, and 54.

16. For more detail about my views on the imperfections in the Church, see Roger Terry, “Why the True Church Cannot Be Perfect, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 46, no. 1 (2013): 94–107, chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V46N01_427c.pdf.