Taxes as Punishment

Or, Spoiled Brat Libertarianism takes another hit.

A two-parter, by Thomas Levenson. Here's part 1.

Over at Balloon Juice, a number of posts culminating here, and a gazillion (technical term alert) comments, have fully roasted Andrew Sullivan (and James Joyner) for their whimpering over the hurt feelings of the deserving rich.

That last link from John Cole decisively rends from limb to limb the pathetic straw men trotted out by Sullivan and Joyner.  It is not the rich that require deference for their contribution to the nation’s well being; rather, it is the working stiff who has forked over what John accurately calls “a direct transfer payment to the most well off in the country.”

I have to confess, I simply don’t understand the possible chain of reasoning that would lead someone to write as Joyner does of taxes on the rich (and remember — we are talking about a very minor increase from historically low levels of taxation), that “to confiscate it from the successful without acknowledgment of the sacrifice… is to court resentment.”

I've been sniping at Sullivan about this for awhile, but Levenson's critique is both elegant and pithy.

Part 2 is even better:

But even more than the argument that some of the super rich in the financial sector basically ripped off the economy and the average American, the key point here is that our financial system, just as much as our technological economy, depends deeply on a strong governmental infrastructure. Bank insurance schemes, (FDIC etc.); loan facilities (the Fed); extensive research into every corner of the economy (half of the executive departments); market regulation (SEC, many others — known to be highly imperfect, but essential to the system nonetheless) and so on — modern capitalism requires an enormous infrastructure to create markets in which the participants can participate. I know that this is a little subtle — but the collapse of the banking system in Sept. 2008 and its rescue over the next weeks and months provide an at-the-extreme example of the central role government, supported by taxation, plays in the system through which one quarter of the 400 richest Americans gained their fortunes. And that role keeps on going even in more placid times.

Self made, perhaps, many of them, but only within a system made workable by, in essence, the willingness of 300 million Americans to pay their taxes and empower their government to guarantee the system.

And that's the whole point -- the Randians are full of it, simply because we don't live in a world in which a single "entrepreneur" can buck everyone and come out on top -- said hero depends on the work of too many other people, and as Levenson points out, the infrastructure (and tax breaks) provided by the government.

I don't know Joyner's writings at all, but I've never thought of Sullivan as a particularly deep thinker. In fact, I may even have called him "shallow." I probably have. He is. But now that he's been sounding off more regularly on how the super rich are victimized by the rest of us, I realize he's just not very smart.

And to be honest, those who have it all don't really come across as very sympathetic victims.