I wonder if there is a medical procedure to drain out excess evil?
The other day, while sitting in my class on Tax Policy, a girl made the following points:
1) Rich people are rich because they work harder than other people, not because they are the lucky beneficiaries of a political system that favors them, genetic factors, or social and educational opportunities not available to others that are unrelated to any active characteristic of their own making.
2) The poor are poor because they are lazy or stupid, and it is largely their own fault.
3) Giving aid to the poor only contributes to their own laziness and actively disincentivizes them from seeking to better themselves.
4) The rich should be paying fewer taxes since they already bear the burden of supporting the nation’s economy and since redistribution of wealth is an impermissible goal for the above-stated reasons.
Here’s the real issue and current existential crisis: while she was saying these things, I wasn’t thinking to myself about the thousands of destitute mothers with children in Kansas who rely on government-funded aid to feed their newborns. I wasn’t thinking of the rich and extravagant wastrels who inherited billions of dollars and who will never have to want for even a tenth mansion. I was thinking to myself, “Wow… She’s hot.”
I’ll admit to the shallowness of my thought, but the really troubling thing was that I was sort of more fascinated by her level of pure 1980’s Republicanism than the rest of her.
(shudder)
I need to do some penance for my recognition of attraction to that level of creepifying horror. Now I feel like I need to go volunteer at a soup kitchen or something to feel clean again. If you don't catch these things right away, the next thing you know, you are advocating massive deregulation of the energy sector (to be more competitive, of course) and massive tax cuts to the rich so that the benefits of their spending trickle down to the poor, and I'm certainly not prepared to give into that level of inhuman darkness.
1) Rich people are rich because they work harder than other people, not because they are the lucky beneficiaries of a political system that favors them, genetic factors, or social and educational opportunities not available to others that are unrelated to any active characteristic of their own making.
2) The poor are poor because they are lazy or stupid, and it is largely their own fault.
3) Giving aid to the poor only contributes to their own laziness and actively disincentivizes them from seeking to better themselves.
4) The rich should be paying fewer taxes since they already bear the burden of supporting the nation’s economy and since redistribution of wealth is an impermissible goal for the above-stated reasons.
Here’s the real issue and current existential crisis: while she was saying these things, I wasn’t thinking to myself about the thousands of destitute mothers with children in Kansas who rely on government-funded aid to feed their newborns. I wasn’t thinking of the rich and extravagant wastrels who inherited billions of dollars and who will never have to want for even a tenth mansion. I was thinking to myself, “Wow… She’s hot.”
I’ll admit to the shallowness of my thought, but the really troubling thing was that I was sort of more fascinated by her level of pure 1980’s Republicanism than the rest of her.
(shudder)
I need to do some penance for my recognition of attraction to that level of creepifying horror. Now I feel like I need to go volunteer at a soup kitchen or something to feel clean again. If you don't catch these things right away, the next thing you know, you are advocating massive deregulation of the energy sector (to be more competitive, of course) and massive tax cuts to the rich so that the benefits of their spending trickle down to the poor, and I'm certainly not prepared to give into that level of inhuman darkness.
posted by The Academian | 8:26 PM
4 Comments:
you are entirely correct, the only way to truly be clean (ethically, morally, economically)is to tax the rich at 100% of their income and a 100% estate tax. this the only way to level the playing field, after all, the reason the rich are rich is because they know the right people, their social standing is in the right rank, they are white, they are men, descended from white men, etc.
I sense a hint of sarcasm in that response. Many people find that if they take every position I argue for at face value, they will think I am far more radical than I actually am. I'm frequently willing to take extreme positions in classes simply because other people are unwilling or unable to do so. People most always argue for incredibly passe and pedestrian positions that show an inner lack of vision. Real progress comes when we question the very boundaries that we have been brought up from birth not to question. We either find what the reason was for the boundary in the first place, or discover that the reason for it is no longer applicable, or that it never existed to begin with. It is only when we go beyond the boundaries of what we thought we knew that we are free to pursue our unique and special visions of the ideal future for all of us.
My actual tax policy preferences are, in all likelihood, far more moderate than people think... even people who might know me and have heard me espouse positions in a tax class.
There is an argument to be made, though, to justify the straw man argument you have set up to characterize my positions. First, there is a strong argument to suggest that the rich have done very little to deserve their vast wealth. Have they done work that deserves compensation? Of course. Have they done work that deserves as much compensation as they receive? I think most people would be hard pressed to defend the exhorbitant salaries of most CEO's or entertainment stars.
The rich frequently did little to arrive at their current state of wealth. They perhaps inherited vast sums of money (which is entirely wealth that they did nothing to earn). Their parents sent them to the best private schools and tutors that money could buy and sent them off to expensive and exclusive private universities and graduate programs (another benefit that the individuals did nothing to earn). Their intelligence is the result of their environment (almost exclusively out of their control) and their genes (wholly not of their own merit). Their parents gave them enrichment opportunities that the severely impoverished rarely get. Their parents always fed them and they never had to go hungry for a few nights until the wage check could be cashed (malnutrition can decrease intelligence and future capability). Their parents likely read to them from a young age and, coming from higher social standing, exposed their children to millions more words and a wider vocabulary than the situation experience by the severely impoverished... In short, their parents (which they did nothing to deserve or earn) gave them fantastical advantages that make huge differences in the person's future capacity to earn. People from rich backgrounds have a much easier time making professional connections that end up getting them better jobs, since family friends are doctors, lawyers, or politicians. Even the social situation that allows them the ability to prosper is a governmental system that favors them and their social class more than that of the severely impoverished (the rich can make many more campaign contributions, which earn them greater benefits from their government). In the scheme of the world of wealth, their own merit and effort play relatively minor roles in the accumulation of their wealth.
If the above is true, and there is at least an argument that it is so, then the wealth held in the hands of a selectively small number of people is largely the result of them winning some kind destiny-lottery. They hold vast sums of value that they did nothing to earn (they may have earned some of it, but not the whole vast amount of it).
If the rich have wealth that they did not actually earn, then taxing them at 100% of their income (for the portion they have not earned) does not implicate any right of the person from whom the tax is taken, since they still have all of the wealth that they have deserved.
Even if you don't buy that argument, there is a second-layer of argument that is independent of the first that is another sufficient reason for very high levels of taxation: poverty.
It is surely a decent moral principle that people have a duty to ease other people's suffering. There are three usual views on the subject of easing other people's suffering. Some people claim you have no duty to help others and that you ought not to do it (pure egoists). Some people claim that you have no duty to help others, but that it is simply good to do so (a charitable act, but not morally a duty). Some others say that the act is not superogatory (a non-duty bound, but good, act), but is in fact a duty. The first group isn't going to get a response from me here since it isn't a widely held position and doesn't usually influence politics that much. The second position is the more common one: that people have no positive duty to aid others, but that it is a good thing for them to do.
The folly of this position comes when you actually test it with a real scenario. Let us suppose that you are driving down a country road when you see a bloody figure laying beside the road. You get out and find that it is a young child who has obviously been struck by a vehicle. He is injured badly, but still alive. You know that you can get him to a hospital very quickly in your car, and that if you leave him on the side of the road, he will die.
Do you have a moral duty to drive the child to the hospital or is it just a 'good' thing for you to do. Put another way, if you drove away and left him on the side of the road, would you have done something wrong? If you say yes, then you fall into the duty group, and if you say that you would not have done something wrong, then you believe it would have been just a superogatory act. In practice, I think most all of us would claim that you have a moral duty to help the child and that leaving him on the roadside is a terrible thing to do and you would have committed a grave moral wrong.
If we agree that we have a moral duty to aid the suffering of others, then it is not terribly a strange proposition to suppose that we should legislate this principle into our society through laws. Tax law is a fantastic way to get at this principle, since we can force people to help others through a redistributionist tax scheme.
If we buy the arguments made by Peter Singer along these lines, we would be accepting the principle that we have a duty to aid others up to the point that we sacrifice something of equal moral importance. Since the rich can sacrifice of themselves far more without depriving themselves of necessary medical care, food, clothing, or shelter, than can those in the middle classes or lower classes, they should bear the brunt of the redistributionist policy-goal.
Since this could be argued to be the case, there is a strong contention that taxing the rich highly is a proper way of achieving our moral ordering.
Each of these two reasons are independent reasons to tax the rich highly, and when put together, they bolster each other's strength.
Whether I buy these arguments entirely or not, they are valid arguments and should be taken seriously. The point behind most of my extreme sounding positions is the same. Until we can come up with principled arguments to refute these options, taking them off of the table, a priori, is an exercise in unreasonable adherence to those very boundaries we have always been unable or unwilling to cross.
It isn't really necessary to be anonymous, or to agree with me all the time, you know. It's not like I'm contagious or going to spew forth vile imprecations or something.
Post a Comment
<< Home