Transcript
A (0:07)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the City Journal podcast. I am your host, Raphael Mangual, and I am delighted to be joined by my favorite colleagues, Judge Glock and John Ketchum. Welcome back to the show, gentlemen.
B (0:18)
Very glad to be back.
C (0:19)
Wonderful being here.
A (0:20)
It's been a while since we've had a sort of panel style show, which I've always enjoyed because I feel like the conversation is just more dynamic, and we have a lot to talk about. Particularly today, I want to focus on the affordability discourse. So City Journal just put out this package of essays. I had one. Both of you had excellent ones on an affordability agenda. And of course, that term has kind of become more ubiquitous than almost anything in American political discourse today. Right. Everything's an affordability discourse. Right? You've got the. The abundance Bros. You've got, you know, the. The budget hawks. And then of course, you have the DSA types who see no limits on how much of our money they can spend. So I want to talk today just about some of the things that you both wrote about in your pieces. Judge, I want to start with you. You had an awesome piece about sales tax, and it just brought to mind this old meme that I've always found hysterical. It was kind of like a comic strip, and it's. But, you know, you have a bunch of people sitting around a boardroom table and they're talking about discussing how they can make life more affordable, and one guy just, you know, kind of opens his mouth and goes, well, how about we let them keep more of their money? And in the next frame, he's flying out the window that they just threw him out. So, you know, it's, It's. It's interesting because I think sales tax is one of these things that, as you point out, has never really generated the same kind of fervor and pushback as other taxes. And yet it can actually be an important way to reduce our cost of living by somewhere in the range of 9, 10%.
C (1:53)
Yeah, exactly. Throughout this whole affordability discourse, I have been mildly shocked that we have this one government policy whose explicit goal is raising the price of goods when you buy them. And almost nobody brings it up. That seemed like, if you're concerned about affordability, we actually have this very clear, uncomplicated lever to pull, which is stop charging people so much when they buy things. But as you point out, not only during this affordability period, but kind of throughout the sales tax history, it solicited remarkably little blowback. Income taxes, property taxes, have faced periodic Revolts. We've seen huge cuts in the rates at different times in American history in both income and property taxes. We've never seen anything similar on sales tax that ever since they started in the Great Depression, effectively state sales tax, they've kind of continuously marched upwards. Where originally they were offered 1 or 2% of sales. And now in places like New York, you get the 8.875. You can see it on the little receipt. And that's to convince you, of course, it's not a 9% sales tax. Don't worry. Ever.
