Cliff Notes

What are we to make of the Democrats' position on the so-called Fiscal Cliff? It boils down to: Raising taxes is a bad idea --  except on The Rich.  There are only two possibilities here:

A. Raising taxes retards growth when applied to the 98% of the population. For the other 2% it has a positive growth effect (Logically, they cannot be arguing that tax rates don't matter, else they would be seeking to raise them on 100% of the population).

B. We should be willing to sacrifice some economic growth in order to punish those who earn more the $250,000 annually.

Despite the fact that I would pay to see Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid argue Position A in front of an Economics 101 class, I haven't noticed anyone actually advocating that theory. So, we're down to Position B. That at a time when growth has been falling every year since the "recovery" of 2009, we should pursue policies which dampen growth further -- all for the satisfaction of seeing tax rates increase for high earners. I guess we'll have to call this the "cut off your nose to spite your face" position because it surely doesn't make any sense for the US economy as a whole.