The Economist on the Surtax

From the Economist's Free Exchange blog today:

For me, the biggest concern is that Congress seems to have followed the path of least resistence here and it may do so again in the future. Recall that America has a fairly significant structural deficit, which will only grow as the population ages. American also has fairly significant need for large-scale investment in things like infrastructure and education. Revenues are going to have to rise to avoid a budget crisis somewhere down the road. And that means that taxes will have to rise.

Exactly. Some very good comments to this piece as well, including this:

if I were in the upper 1.2% (I'm not), with the fungibility of money, I'd be left with the feeling that my surtax might just as well be apportioned to subsidizing ethanol producers, or some other tremendous waste of resources.