Another Things Sullivan Doesn't Understand

Or he feels no compunctions about spouting wild-eyed libertarian propaganda:

A simple question. I'm a flat taxer, because I don't believe the government has any business punishing people for getting richer. But I don't think that people who support the kind of punitive taxation that Obama does or Cameron does in Britain or Reagan did in 1986 is a "socialist." Is it now the McCain campaign's assertion that anyone who isn't for a flat tax is socialist? I should add that if Obama is a socialist, Richard Nixon must have been a commie.

It's not the "socialist" mantra, which he rightly questions -- that's pure fear-mongering. It's the characterization of a progressive tax as "punitive." I could make a few guesses as to where this kind of idea comes from, but I'm not going to go there. But the assumptions on which it is built -- if you pay more in taxes, someone must be punishing you because you're successful, Has it occurred to Sullivan, McArdle, and the other members of the Grover Norquist fan club that one purpose of a society is to take care of the relatively helpless: the stronger protect the weaker kind of thing, right? In the case of government intervention, it's called "economies of scale": some problems are too big for individuals or even charitable organizations to handle, and while government may not be the best answer -- especially over the past eight years -- it can be the most effective (unless it makes a policy of hiring incompetents).

As for a flat tax, puh-leeze! Thought experiment: the basic cost of living in your city is $50,000 per year for those in your circumstances -- say, married with children. If you make $60,000 and the government takes 10%, you just make it, with a tiny bit left over for emergencies or extraordinary circumstances, like if you get sick. If you make $260,000 and the government takes 10%. . . . Get my drift? After all, you're paying the same prices for everything no matter how much you make. Do the math.

You may have figured out that I think libertarianism in economic matters misses the whole point of human sociality. I'll go a step farther: it's a callous, selfish philosophy that encourages greed and exploitation, which we have enough of in the world already. (Nor, when it comes down to it, does it have much to do with the realities of who we are as human beings.)

I really hadn't thought Sullivan was like that.