Alívio do IRS é maior para 17% das famílias

[Ulisses Pereira]

Polémico como sempre, Cramer!

"It's Time to Raise Taxes"

By James J. Cramer
09/16/2003 12:30 PM EDT


"When will government spending, particularly defense spending, and the lack of government income hit this market? When people ask me what would turn me into a bear, I can tell you that I will become an ursa major if the government keeps spending but doesn't raise taxes. There will be a price to be paid eventually, and it is almost at hand.

Understand that I have been for tax cuts to stimulate the economy, including the dividend tax cut. I was against cutting the capital gains tax because I wanted the discipline of lower dividend taxes to redound to the boardroom. I wanted people in the boardroom to be pressured into returning money to the shareholders. But that failed when the tax cut-happy administration cut capital gains to the same rate, thus killing the corporate governance argument and making my co-optation on the issue seem, personally, pretty stupid.


Now, two things have changed. We are seeing a rapidly growing economy that will be creating jobs by next March and we are seeing a rapidly expanding budget deficit that won't be cured by the economic boom because the boom will be untaxed as it happens.

That's untenable to all but those who simply don't believe that we ever should raise taxes (and believe me, that is a significant cohort.) That's right, there are people, notably of the Stephen Moore-Grover Norquist world, who genuinely believe that under no circumstances should taxes ever be raised. That's because they simply hate the government, and, if they could have their druthers, would wish it away. That's libertarianism.

Many people confuse Reaganism with libertarianism. It's on my mind because when Reagan came to the California statehouse, he was antigovernment, as he always had been, but he faced a prospect very similar to California's current one. He sucked it up and ordered the biggest tax increase ever. (We will have Lou Cannon on "Kudlow & Cramer" tonight, who just wrote a Reagan biography, and we will discuss this if I have a chance to get a question in.)

Unlike Reagan or Norquist or Moore, I don't hate the government. I take the Preamble to the Constitution seriously and know that it must provide the common defense. I believe that trying to bring the Islamic extremists to heel or getting them to change their ways -- all part of the process of rebuilding Iraq -- is vital to the common defense given that an event like the tragedy of Sept. 11 or something worse must not be allowed to happen -- and you can't stop 9/11's by looking inward.

We have to pay for it, though. Borrowing does not make it free. That's why I think that the time to start talking about raising taxes for defense or scrapping the non-means-tested Medicare reform must be on the table now that the economy has improved. Raising taxes, particularly for the very rich -- call it north of $300,000 in income -- makes a ton of sense to me, even though i would be hit by this.


Otherwise, I think that we are in for a classic Lyndon B. Johnson-guns-and-butter mess-up that would make me want to sell American stocks, because they most certainly will underperform next year if nothing changes.

Too soon to leave, but as I stare at my DJIA price target of 10,000 and read all the guns-and-butter stories and recognize how hopeless it is even to talk about raising taxes, I am in no mood to up my stock price target. "

(in www.realmoney.com)