It’s election season, so politicians are naturally going to spout off some pretty weird proposals. Given what voters believe, it’s not possible for every proposal to be useful and still appeal to us for our votes. However, Joe Biden’s tax proposals manage to be wrong in both theory and practice, which is pretty good going even by the low standards of politics.

The specific points that catch my eye (among the deep well of giveaways for favored constituencies, including carbon capture, child tax credits, and all the rest) are about corporate and capital income taxation. The theoretically wrong proposal is that the corporate income tax should rise. This is on the grounds that corporations should be paying in to support the country that supports them.