Preserving a vision: Part III

The New York Times of May 21 featured estimates of how much revenue the federal government is losing as a result of tax cuts, more than $50 billion over a five-year period. Meanwhile, a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal reported the government as receiving "a surge in unanticipated revenue coming from the rich."

There is no contradiction between these two stories. The Times reported estimates, while the Wall Street Journal reported what actually happened. Moreover, there is no real difference in outlook between the writers who wrote these two stories.

To the Wall Street Journal writer, the increased tax revenue from "the rich" was "a windfall for the U.S. Treasury."

There has long been a difference in outlook between the reporters who write up the news for the Wall Street Journal and those who write the same newspaper's editorial page. If the reporter thinks that the increased revenue to the Treasury was "unanticipated," that suggests that she has not been reading the editorial pages of her own newspaper.

Thomas Sowell