Tax the revolving door
In short, I propose putting a 50% surtax — or maybe it should be 75%, I’m open to discussion — on the post-government earnings of government officials. So if you work at a cabinet level job and make $196,700 a year, and you leave for a job that pays a million a year, you’ll pay 50% of the difference — just over $400,000 — to the Treasury right off the top. So as not to be greedy, we’ll limit it to your first five years of post-government earnings; after that, you’ll just pay whatever standard income tax applies.
This seems fair. After all, when it comes to your value as an ex-government official, it really is a case of “you didn’t build that.” Your value to a future employer comes from having held a taxpayer-funded position and from having wielded taxpayer-conferred power. Why shouldn’t the taxpayers get a cut?
More significantly, it is a principle of economics that when you tax something, you get less of it. So if we’re worried about revolving-door government, we should tax it, so as to get less of it.
Blowback
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It shouldn’t wait till the door revolves. It should start in office. How many of these people write books and get 6 figure advances that would never have occurred had they not took office?
Rocks on January 29, 2013 at 2:54 PM
I’m in favor of a 100% tax on all salaries of everyone living in the DC bubble.
nobar on January 29, 2013 at 3:00 PM
You know, military officers, on retirement, can’t go to work for any military/industrial complex company and call on their former unit, for two years after their retirement.
Now, the dhimocrapts are somewhat right on some taxes. The repubs are blind chauvinistic idiots. We should limit home mortgage deductions to say about $10K – $20K. This will make the libruls living in the expensive states pay their FAIR share (to paraphrase obama). The big kicker is those who do not earn wages, but derive millions of dollars a year from capital gains. We need something like a graduated capital gains tax, starting at 15% and going to 50%.
That will catch the kennedys, bloombergs, obamas, romneys, schumers, soros, koch, pelosis, reids, etc. Of course, that will never happen because of republican intransigent stupidity.
Old Country Boy on January 29, 2013 at 3:10 PM
Glenn is right on this and this provision ought to be enacted. It’s disappointing other conservative sites don’t work at all to develop support for it.
Dusty on January 29, 2013 at 3:14 PM