It’s a frequent criticism of President Bush that he’s stupid, and this latest quote below is certainly a stupid thing to say. But I don’t think it’s actual lack of intelligence that’s the problem. Rather, I think the problem is that he lives in a world completely cut off from the reality 99% of the rest of us live in.
[Bush said that] high taxes on the rich are a failed strategy because “the really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway.”
In BushWorld, any tax increase that Congress could come up with will have loopholes that their well-paid accountants will figure out how to exploit, so it’s a waste of time even trying to increase taxes. They’ll just offshore their corporation, or rewrite their compensation package, or shuffle the web of trusts, or something like that.
In short, in BushWorld, they can’t conceive of a tax package that cannot be dodged or evaded. The rules are for suckers.
It would be nice if people in BushWorld took their obligations as seriously as they do their privileges, but that, I suppose, would be asking too much.