Making the Case for the Awesome Stuff We're Going to Get?

I'm almost dumbfounded by the way Ezra Klein, who's supposed to be some über blogger of the progressive left, discusses taxes in his new post up on the Democrats and taxation.

The way he pumps the story, it's almost like levying taxes creates some grab bag of goodies that the redistributionist left can just dig into to fuel its assorted spending largesse:

Howard Gleckman points out that while Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton aren't as egregiously out-of-touch as Charlie Gibson, they're pandering to the Gibsonian line on taxes, refusing to consider increases for families making less than $200,000 a year, and hamstringing themselves on needed revenue. This gets to a generalized problem in Democratic tax talk, which is that they're very unwilling to talk about taxes in terms of value. There are lots of government services which are actually a good deal for middle income families and should be sold as something that Americans would be wise to invest in. But rather than making a positive case around awesome stuff we're going to get, Democrats talk about taxes in complete isolation from the things that taxes buy, and begin with the premise that they're so odious and painful that they should only be levied on folks too rich to notice. It's not exactly the strongest argumentative ground.

"Awesome stuff"?

We're going to make a case for raising taxes because people are going to get "awesome stuff"?

I wonder what "awesome stuff" Klein's taking about, since from what I've learned of him, I doubt he was raised on welfare checks and food stamps.

This is a kid who grew up in affluent Orange County, California, attending University High School, one of the most prestigious public high schools in the state. But perhaps this is to be expected: Klein's young, at the tender age of 23, and he's still getting his analytical feet wet, after having been ideologically groomed while attending such colleges as the University of California, Santa Cruz, a campus notorious for its far left-wing fanaticism.

Maybe this is a case of the good, old liberal elitism we've been reminded of this last week?

What better way to demonstrate your left-wing bona fides than arguing that families making over $200,000 annually aren't having enough of their earnings confiscated to provide more "awesome" goodies to snotty but well-off kids who've graduated from premiere public educational institutions?

Oh, note too that Gibson's being praised for his pro-growth queries, which of course are anathema to those hostile to conservative tax policy restraint.

See more at Memeorandum; and also, Heidi's blog, "Don't Bemoan the LowTaxes, Pay More!!!"