Overheard On CNN

Around 10:15, CNN's Chief Business Correspondent Ali Velshi on AC360 explaining the details of Obama's planned stimulus plan:

...Here's the surprise, up to 40% of it ($300 Billion) is going to go toward tax cuts... They divide up between individual and business tax cuts... [the business tax cuts are] maybe not a bad idea. But tax cuts for individuals tho, Anderson, it didnt work last time around, if it did, last spring, we wouldn't be in a recession...

That analysis is almost too silly to comment on. Its fascinating to me that CNN has learned to love tax cuts for businesses while warning their viewers of the futility of individual tax cuts.

Which, puts me in the odd position of sort of agreeing with CNN. As a political matter, I don't love business taxes since they decrease transparency. Corporate taxes are borne, in differing measures, by customers, employees and shareholders. Who precisely bears how much of a corporate tax is near impossible to measure. Its a way, therefore, of taxing people on the sly. To believe that government ought to be open and transparent is to be biased against corporate taxation.