$33 Trillion in National Debt Means More Taxes

Commentary
Over the past few weeks, various new tax schemes have been proposed in other newspapers. I have read ideas from Keynesian economists about how to broaden the tax base in places as liberal as The New York Times and as mainstream conservative as The Wall Street Journal.
The ideas that have been presented in each publication will do nothing to broaden the tax base or do anything to pay down the deficit.
First, understand what the deficit means. The $33 trillion is a tax on all future income of every single American citizen. Importantly, it’s not a tax on American corporations, because corporations do not pay taxes. Corporations aggregate taxes and their customers pay through higher prices, which falls down to American citizens in the form of higher prices. But, as you will see in this article, $33 trillion isn’t the correct number to cite when calculating American debt….