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Opinion
The Editors

The US Needs to Get Real About Taxes and Inflation

Getting inflation under control calls for fiscal discipline — which involves spending as well as taxes.

The question is how.

The question is how.

Photographer: Taylor Glascock/Bloomberg

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The Twitter spat about taxes and inflation involving President Joe Biden, Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has served mainly to prove that Twitter is a bad place to attempt intelligent debate. Still, the point at issue matters. It deserves a slightly less abbreviated treatment.

Last week, the president tweeted, “You want to bring down inflation? Let’s make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share.” Bezos replied: “Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.” Summers declared Bezos “mostly wrong” — an oddly harsh assessment coming from a trenchant critic of the administration’s earlier fiscal planning.