COMFORT &(TOO MUCH) JOY
This new tax plan may do some good
ON the tax bill we begin grouchy and wind up, as befits the season, hopeful. Grouchy: Wednesday afternoon’s big White House rally celebrating its passage was embarrassing. All these grown men and women slathering personal, obsequious, overthe-top praise — “exquisite presidential leadership,” “a man of action,” “the president of the United States, whom I love and appreciate so much” — as Donald Trump emceed and called new praisers to the stage. They do this to keep the president happy, feed his needy ego and insist on his competency. It looked less like praise than self-abasement.
Actually, and I’m sorry to say this, the mood reminded me of the tale of Stalin telling some lame joke in a dinner speech. His ministers all laughed as if it were the wittiest thing they ever heard. Then they kept laughing, louder, and wouldn’t stop, because they knew the first one to stop would be noticed by Stalin and would soon be gone. So boy did they laugh.
The president thinks this kind of thing makes him look good. It doesn’t, it diminishes him: Keep the buffoon happy. Here is what would make him look good and elevate him: normal human modesty. If he modestly waved off the praise, shut it down, said, “Please, let’s talk about the bill and how it will help our country . . .”
He would look bigger, as modest people always do, and his praisers would not look smaller.
On to hope: The fair way to judge the tax bill was never through the mindless, whacked-out rhetoric on both sides — the worst bill in the history of the world, the best thing since Coolidge was a pup — but through the answer to one question: Will this bill make things a little better or a little worse? There is much reason to believe it will make things better. It is imperfect, to say the least. But it is good to cut the corporate rate from an absurd and uncompetitive 35 percent to a more constructive 21 percent; it is compassionate to double the child tax credit; it is fair to cut taxes for small businesses, many of which are struggling. America is waiting and hoping for a boom. By all means encourage the circumstances in which it can take place.
And the bill is going to prove popular. The Democrats bet wrong on this. Almost immediately on passage, Wells Fargo and Fifth Third Bancorp announced a raise in their lowest wage to $15 an hour. AT&T said it would give about 200,000 unionized workers a $1,000 bonus and increase capital spending by $1 billion. Comcast said it would give 100,000 employees bonuses and spend more than $50 billion in infrastructure improvement.
You can sit back in your sophisticated way and say, “Hmm, that looks like a curiously orchestrated public relations push.” You can say, “How nice, the malefactors of great wealth are giving their workers a little tip.” You can wonder if they’re spreading cheap good cheer to grease their mergers. But if you are working the line in Smalltown, USA, and just got bumped up to $15, or you’ve been surprised by an unexpected thousand dollars at Christmastime, you will see this not as a tip but as a real and concrete break, thanks to that most unexpected of benefactors, the US government.
Who cares about CEOs’ motives if they’re doing something good?
It is true the tax bill is not popular in the polls. A recent Wall Street Journal/ NBC survey put support at 24 percent