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Sowell is a pretty good writer.

Here's one thing the looter demagogues just don't get. The REASON that Teresa Heinz Kerry only pays 12% tax is that she spends disproportinately more time and money engaged in aggressive tax avoidance than the average person.

Suppose John Heinz Kerry is elected, and upon assuming the office, determines that his first priority is to balance the budget by rolling back the tax cut. Do you know what people will do?

1) "Disintermediation" into tax-advantaged investments. This means, no more putting your money into small-cap growth stocks, it means you put it into things like Triple-tax-free municipal bonds.

2) Due to the "Supremacy Clause" of the US Constitution, muni bonds are generally exempt from federal taxes. And if you're in a state like Florida, which has no state or local income taxes, that means your overall tax burden goes WAY down.

3) Yes, Munis don't yield nearly the same as a taxable fixed income security, like a Corporate bond. But the math is simple, you can figure out the equivalent yield based on the tax bracket you're in. And guess what, if your marginal rate goes up, the tax-equivalent yield just got a whole lot better.

Does anyone see what the critical difference is? Money shifts into tax-advantaged investments to wait JHK out. And who loses?

The entrepreneur, who depends on the availability of capital to grow her business. The domestic manufacturer, who needs low tax rates to encourage investment here. The consumer, who, contrary to the Kerry rhetoric, actually ends up shouldering a portion of the tax burden, and who bears the economic consequences in lost income due to reduced productivity and higher cost of capital.

By the way, who do you think buys the Chinese-made ceiling fans? Who do you think shops at WMT, which as a single entity is responsible for 10% of our foreign trade with the PRC? Does Teresa Heinz Kerry buy her clothing at Wal-Mart, Ladies and Gentlemen?

The great irony is that much of the articulation of the idea "Capital takes the path of least resistance" was put forth by none other than Ol' Vladimir Ilyich Lenin himself, in Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism. One would think he would have been included in the ideological Canon favored by those who put words in Kerry's mouth.