Crooks and Liars has a take on this so good that I almost didn’t make this into a blog post, as it would be superfluous. However, I thought that the quote by Giuliani is more than worth commenting on. Here’s the source quote:

In a potential preview of next fall’s presidential contest, Mr. Giuliani, who is seen as the front-runner for the Republican nomination, directly attacked the leading Democratic candidate, Mrs. Clinton, over a speech she gave Tuesday in New Hampshire bemoaning the return of “robber barons” and promising to pursue “shared prosperity” by increasing taxes on Americans making more than $200,000 a year.

“This would be an astounding, staggering tax increase,” Mr. Giuliani told reporters yesterday after a visit to a restaurant on the edge of California’s Silicon Valley. “She wants to go back to the 1990s…. It would hurt our economy. It would hurt this area dramatically. That kind of tax increase would see a decline in your venture capital. It would see a decline in your ability to focus on new technology.”

As C&L rightly points out, this is the kind of tax increase that Bill Clinton executed near the start of his presidency… and we experienced a technology boom, even “irrational exuberance” from investors, which was so successful that we erased the federal budget deficit altogether, a task unthinkable before Clinton. Furthermore, the more level playing field saw to it that the rising tide raised all boats–unlike Reagan’s boom, or Bush’s anemic upswing–and most certainly it did nothing to discourage people from pouring money into research & development of new technologies. According to our experience, we have seen that the kind of tax hike that Hillary is touting is not only not destructive, it is perhaps even essential, as it boosts federal revenue in the least painful way, thus creating the most healthy form of market confidence.

The problem is, Giuliani might have the upper hand with the voters. Even the most constructive tax hike, even when only applied to the richest of the rich, is easily attacked in a way that makes it look like you’re going to raise everyone’s taxes. A corollary to this rule is that you can similarly make everyone believe that a tax cut aimed 99% or even 100% at the rich is something that everybody wants and needs, which is where Bush went and Giuliani will likely follow. It’s the same appeal to fear that the NRA uses when they turn even the most reasonable gun control into a “gun ban.” I hate to say it, but the American people are so easily duped by this kind of scare appeal that it is ludicrously sad.

What Hillary needs to do is follow her husband’s example: don’t say you’re going to raise taxes at all, even on the rich… then do it after you’re elected. I remember in 1992, my conservative landlord in San Francisco (I was an SFSU student then) said that he didn’t like Bill Clinton because he felt Clinton would raise his taxes after he got elected… but later voted for Clinton anyway because he felt that it was the right thing to do, and that a tax hike would help the economy. And he was right.