Oh geez, here we go again. New York Times columnist and Democrat mouthpiece masquerading-as-an-economist Paul Krugman has penned a new plan on how the federal government can snatch up some more revenue. Per usual, Krugman is shaking his Princeton pom poms for an increase in tax rates.  And guess which class of people he wants to raise taxes on? No, it isn't the 46% who don't pay a dime of income taxes. It's those monocle wearing, worker enslaving capitalists of course!

So why is Krugman in favor of raising taxes in a severe recession despite the objections from not only every major school of economic thought but also his idol John M. Keynes?　

Nonetheless, at some point we'll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here's a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?

At some point? Excuse me if I'm just the least bit skeptical of Mr. "alien hoax's" sincerity of genuinely wanting to make substantial cuts to the deficit; let alone the federal debt. Even so, no group is more ripe for tax plundering than the super rich as Krugman points the wallet snatchers known as the IRS in their direction.

Once upon a time America was a middle-class nation, in which the super-elite's income was no big deal. But that was another country.

The I.R.S. reports that in 2007, that is, before the economic crisis, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers - roughly speaking, people with annual incomes over $2 million - had a combined income of more than a trillion dollars. That's a lot of money, and it wouldn't be hard to devise taxes that would raise a significant amount of revenue from those super-high-income individuals.

You can almost picture the saliva dripping from Krugman's mouth when he types "a combined income of more than a trillion dollars." Even if Uncle Sam did the unthinkable and siphoned off another $1 trillion from the private, productive economy, that wouldn't even cover three fourths of the annual deficit in 2011. With the deficit set to continue its upward streak for decades to come, another $1 trillion injection into government coffers starts to lose its ripple effect within just a few years.

At least Krugman, being a Nobel Laureate, recognizes that completely soaking the super rich would literally destroy economic progress reliant on capital accumulation. That's why he calls for a return to the 70% tax rate despite evidence that high income earners hardly ever paid such a grotesque rate:

For example, a recent report by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out that before 1980 very-high-income individuals fell into tax brackets well above the 35 percent top rate that applies today. According to the center's analysis, restoring those high-income brackets would have raised $78 billion in 2007, or more than half a percent of G.D.P. I've extrapolated that number using Congressional Budget Office projections, and what I get for the next decade is that high-income taxation could shave more than $1 trillion off the deficit.

The key phrase here is off the deficit. No mention of the federal debt. No mention of projected deficit increases. Just a fairy tale assumption that extra tax revenue won't be used by politicians to buy more votes.　

Next Krugman endorses what the puppet masters behind Occupy Wall Street, bankrolled by George Soros, have been dreaming of: a tax on all financial transactions known as the Tobin Tax:

And then there's the idea of taxing financial transactions, which have exploded in recent decades. The economic value of all this trading is dubious at best.

Considering that humans act to fulfill ends, its quite a stretch for a Nobel Prize winning economist to claim that financial transactions have "dubious" economic value.　 Broken down, all these transactions are is the conveyance of information. The quicker market information is dispersed, the sooner productive assets and services are put into more efficient use. The impact from such a phenomena can't be calculated in lieu of it disappearing all together. If such transactions held no value, then why would traders utilize them in the first place? Krugman takes it a step further:

In fact, there's considerable evidence suggesting that too much trading is going on. Still, nobody is proposing a punitive tax.

In typical Krugman style, he mentions evidence of a suspicious claim without actually citing it.　 What really constitutes "too much trading" and how can such a suggestion even be measured? And sorry Paul, all taxes are punitive no matter how much divinity you think blesses the halls of Congress.

But wouldn't such a tax hurt economic growth? As I said, the evidence suggests not - if anything, it suggests that to the extent that taxing financial transactions reduces the volume of wheeling and dealing, that would be a good thing.

Talk about misinterpreting cause and effect. Krugman sees financial trading and the invention of instruments such as mortgage backed securities as another sector not yet completely wrapped in the patronizing leash of government regulators. He often regards these transactions as destructive while citing their contribution to the financial crisis. What Krugman deliberately avoids mentioning is that these instruments were a response to over regulation of an industry that is the lifeblood of capitalism. When regulators, drunk on their own authority, make profit seeking more difficult, alternative avenues of profitability are sought. Derivatives, mortgage backed securities, et al. were only the outcome of an overreaching government. In an effort to justify the taxes, Krugman mentions countries like Hong Kong and Singapore, which rank as more economically free than the U.S., already impose financial transaction taxes. What he really means is that despite these barriers on the free flow of information, Hong Kong and Singapore still have dynamic economies due to adopted free market measures. Don't expect such an admission however as it flies in the face of the progressive narrative.

Another week, another Paul Krugman article trumpeting tax increases and demagoguing the rich. The man won't rest till taxpayers are milked dry and the economy devolves back into serfdom. Heaven save us if Krugman's policies are actually put into action.