On today’s Op/Ed Page, University of Richmond professor and sometime blogger Thad Williamson has a challenging and thoughtful guest column arguing that people have no moral claim to their pre-tax earnings.

You should read it for yourself, but the gist of it is that the view of the market as a wealth-creator and government as a wealth-consumer is erroneous. Without the government’s protection of property and without government services such as roads, the market couldn’t operate as well as it does. In fact, government makes our participation in the economy possible. Therefore, while it’s reasonable to debate the appropriate level of taxation, we have no right to claim the government is “taking our money.“

There are two substantial problems with this argument.

The first, somewhat lesser, problem is empirical. While it’s certainly true that some government activities are necessary for society to function—cops and courts, first and foremost—those make up a minute fraction of most government spending. It’s not clear whether the economy would grow or shrink if government abandoned most of the other activities it engages in, and it’s pretty hard to test. (Were it not for the trillions spent on creating a culture of dependency through welfare, for instance, we might be even richer than we are now. Who’s to say for certain?) Williamson’s argument relies, to a considerable extent, on an untestable factual thesis.

The second big problem—and the more serious one—is that his argument applies to non-economic rights, too. For instance, if it were not for government, people could not enjoy the right to free speech to the extent they do. But from this fact, it does not follow that people have no right to free speech other than what the government allots them. Williamson seems to be making the case that rights do not exist ab initio and that government is instituted to protect them. Rather, he makes it seem as if government exists ab initio, and society determines collectively what privileges should be granted to individuals. Yikes!

P.S.—Thad has added some ripostes to this rebuttal in the comment section. Read those, too!

Thad W: “Part IV [......] Now [.....] Second [.....] Finally [.....]“

So what’s your Take-home message, Dr. Williamson? (Or is there one?) Remember your Undergraduate writing courses: 1. Take-home Message first. 2. Some banter in the middle backing up your claim 3. Take-home message stated again.

Thanks.

“Private property . . . is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exingencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt.”

OK, Mr. Williamson - Let’s say I have a debt to this thing called “society”.  How do I pay him, this thing called “society”?  I’ve been paying taxes, and I’ve noticed that the money I pay always ends up in the hands of another individual, with no property rights superior to mine.  “Society” is not an individual, so my “debt” is not getting to the right place.  How do I keep my tax money from going to another individual(s), and make sure that it’s “Society” that gets paid instead?  I’m worried about individuals stealing my debt to society.

I wouldn’t have it any other way, R.Smith. Here’s to all those who value freedom above all else. But would that dog have left a litter, dependent on her, behind or would she have stayed, enduring whatever she must to assure their survival?

Margie,

He will, instinct will see to that and when he does, it’ll be all his.

But the point isn’t about what he does once he’s out, the point is that there is always gonna be a dog who trys to jump the fence, no matter how judiciously the goodies are distributed.

Lol! Very good, R. Smith. Your dog was, without a doubt, an American, representing all that is best in us. I think that spirit is ingrained and indomitable. You are mistaken if you think that I don’t believe in a hand up, rather than a handout. The chains that go with dependency are mortifying, soul-killing and difficult to accept indeed. Your parable was more illuminating than any learned treatise, made incomprehensible with ten-dollar words. In short, I sure hope that dog knows how to catch rabbits.

Margie,

Here’s a little fable I made up just for you. It isn’t saturated with pompous ego speak but, I think it will work just the same.

Once there was a man who had several dogs. He loved his dogs and only wanted the best for them so, he built a fence to keep them seperated from all the bad things that could happen. He built them comfortable houses and served them the best food a dog could eat. The dogs seemed happy and complacent in their secure and comfortable home…all of them except one. This dog was never around at feeding time. He was never around at water time. He was never around at distributive justice time. He was never around because he was always over in the corner digging…digging and digging to get under the fence and out into the world beyond. The man, seeing this, tried to impart upon the dog that he was stupid for not accepting the organized world that had been created for him by arrogant elitists with useless degrees in fairy tale disiplines. The dog would not repent so, the man was forced to resort to violence, just as his elitist predecessors had done so many, many, many times before. You see, the dog would not submit to the intellectual supremecy of the man. Then one day, the man came out and saw that the dog was not there again, so he grabbed his stick and went to beat the dog but, this time, the dog rolled back his lips, bared his fangs and lept, sinking his fangs deep into the mans throat. Then he crawled thru his hole and ran away.

Just like so many. many dogs have done before….and will continue to do as long as the human…erps! dog spirit exists.

And no intellectuals with worthless degrees in fairy tale disiplines have yet figured out just what it is that dog was after by digging those holes…because they are stupid, and always will be.

Isn’t it a tad cynical to think that everyone has some nefarious agenda, that no one is genuine, even if you feel they are mistaken?

Wow! That’s a mouth full!

I agree with one point. These ideas aren’t new. “Distributive justice”, social justice, income redistribution…it’s all the same thing.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Pile on a load of sugar icing and repackage it as an idea that, this time, will actually work, even though it’s failed every single time it’s ever been tried.

I have a quote too.

“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it”.

I would drop the “almost”.

Very informative and interesting,Thad. Beautifully defines the relationship between the government and the taxpayer. The biggest bone of contention these days is social services when many feel do not serve ‘a compelling public good’, therefor are not justified to be funded by the government. Maybe you could expand on that another time.

Part IV

This leads us to B), which has to do with questions of distributive justice. This topic was only hinted at in the RTD op-ed, so it’s fair to request a fuller explanation as a couple of posters have. The view here again is that 1) there is no “free market” apart from government activities in establishing a property regime and 2) the specific shape of such activities affects market returns, often in profound ways (as the human capital example hopefully shows). Consequently, we should not conceive of pre-tax income as the moral baseline for evaluating the fairness of tax policy, as if you had pretax income generated by “the market” on one side and government intervention only after the fact.  Rather we should focus our evaluations on the overall system of property rights and taxes (remember, no property rights without taxes!)—that is, on post-tax income.

Now, the practical upshot of the argument that we don’t have a moral right to pre-tax income is not that government should confiscate all market earnings. That would never be agreed to by a democratic government. And the notion that people should be rewarded for hard work, innovation, and cleverness, as well as for the contributions the use of their skills makes to society, is a compelling one. But it’s not the only relevant moral consideration to keep in mind here. If it were, old people and those who are disabled or otherwise can’t earn sufficient market returns to sustain themselves would be allowed to starve. So the notion of rewarding effort and endeavor must be traded off against competing moral considerations in judging our overall system of property rights and taxation (and subsequently, in the setting of actual tax rates).

Here we enter into fundamental moral debates about distributive justice which are beyond the scope of this little debate to enter into, although as the op-ed said I think we should be having more such debates. Here’s just one example of a relevant moral question: if I went to public high schools, and a public four-year university, all at taxpayer expense, and now am making great money in the six figures, can I protest if society (through democratic means) decides that it requires more of “my” pre-tax income in order to give more of the same opportunities I had to the next generation of citizens?

Two final notes: throughout all this it’s important to recognize that government isn’t an alien entity. It is us, our agent. That’s why we fought the British! Taxation without representation is illegitimate; taxation with representation is legitimate, necessary, and an essential part of a prosperous society. Thus Benjamin Franklin:

“Private property . . . is a Creature of Society, and is subject to the Calls of that Society, whenever its Necessities shall require it, even to its last Farthing, its contributors therefore to the public Exingencies are not to be considered a Benefit on the Public, entitling the Contributors to the Distinctions of Honor and Power, but as the Return of an Obligation previously received, or as payment for a just Debt.”

Second, no one can deny (and I do not) that there are some government expenditures which are not worthwhile and do not serve a compelling public good. To the extent this is the case, we should reform our political institutions and/or expand citizen oversight over our decisionmakers. It’s equally likely, however, that there are some public goods which are now underprovided, and where we would be better off with greater public investment. Judgments about both sorts of problems ultimately rely in the hands of democratic publics—that is, all of us.

Finally, it should be noted here that the ideas I’m advancing are neither original nor by any stretch of the imagination radical. At most, they are simply an explication of the principles behind our current system of taxation, and a defense of that system against the idea that government has us in chains via its current level of taxation. I’m not going to have time to make any further responses in this venue, but if you’re interested in reading authors who have developed the set of ideas I’m drawing on here in more detail, here are some recommended books:

“The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes” by Cass Sunstein and Stephen Holmes (University of Chicago)
“Entitlement” by Joseph Singer (Harvard Law School)
“The Myth of Ownership” by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel (New York University Law School)

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