“The Government” vs. “Us”
me:
I think it’s disingenuous to ignore the effects center-right’s employment of the tax code, the regulatory apparati, and the federal budget process has had on the distribution of wealth in this country.
The Government has been redistributing wealth for 100 years through taxation. During the last thirty years, it has been taking a little less wealth from the wealthy for redistribution to others. It seems like you want to argue that taking away a little less from the wealthy was some kind of undistribution to the wealthy. Since the Government didn’t distribute this money to the rich in the first place, this seems completely Orwellian to me. I think this only makes sense if you believe that people have no entitlement to their money but for the good grace of the Government to let them have it. I don’t believe this.
The crux of the debate is that I think the government = us, and Jeff thinks the government = them. I enjoy debating Jeff Miller, but I don’t know if either of us ever convinces one another about a lot of things because of this fundamental difference. How do we find common ground on that?
me:
Obama approach (about which he was transparent during the election) is to return to a different scenario of taxation/redistribution that a lot of us believe worked better.
jeffmiller:
Worked better for whom? And moreover, is this what Government should do?—decide who gets to be made better, and necessarily, who gets to be made worse?
Government is the vehicle whereby we try to achieve what is better for us as a people, by adjusting our policies to do better, by the best yardsticks we can come up with as a democratically-oriented people, for the most people we can. If we don’t think that our goals or the methods for achieving them are being sought by our leaders then we should elect new ones.
If you see “the government” as “taking away” from you, then your disposition towards the fairness of any taxation scheme, no matter how flat or how progressive, is going to be quite different than if you see such an arrangement as the way we have collectively negotiated our shared burden of making this whole thing better.
So yes, we try to make things better, and the government is our way of doing it. It will never be perfect, but we can try to make it more perfect. Where did I get a crazy notion like that?
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Why did we form a union? What is the nature of our social compact? At the very least it is that we decide what best promotes the general welfare and secures the most prosperity, and this is why we have a government. It is not “the government.” It is us. We govern ourselves. We ratified the sixteenth amendment. We elected George W. Bush, who promised prosperity if we cut taxes. We didn’t find prosperity. We elected Barack Obama, who promised to cut taxes for 95% of America, and use increased revenues from the wealthiest to help pay for things we all need and to move towards fiscal responsibility.
jeffmiller:
Or, perhaps more crudely, is it simply that the majority can do whatever it wants to do to the minority? Since most people are not rich, then the rights of the rich don’t matter?
I refuse to believe that you think the interests of the rich are not adequately represented in the corridors of government. So I’ll stick to the topic of “the majority will vs. rights of the minority.”
I pay plenty of taxes. Yet as much as I groan about it at times, I know that this is an essential embodiment of our civic relationship, and that contributing private resources to the shared public goods we as a community feel are most appropriate is just like any other civic duty. By virtue of my using roads and trains and airplanes, by taking advantage of this government-innovated Internet, by taking for granted the legal system that protects my intellectual property and allows me to enforce contracts, by hiring people whom the government helped to educate and train, by taking advantage of interstate and international trade that our systems of commerce and security make possible, etc., etc… by using those things that we have together been able to achieve, I am able to make a great life for myself. To believe that I alone have the right to the fruits of that life would make me a parasite. If I don’t give back to the common good, the whole thing will end up falling apart.
So I pay my taxes. I vote for the people who I think will be their best steward. I advocate for and work to enact the platform that offers the best available policies for achieving my priorities. I should be paying more than those who can less afford to. I’m more able to and in the end I will benefit more from our shared prosperity than those who make less. I don’t see a tyranny of the majority, I see democracy.
