TAXATION AND MORALITY

INTRODUCTION

I attended college in the era that coincided with the end of the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the fall of Richard Nixon – a time when Chevy Chase was mocking Gerald Ford by doing dramatic falls on Saturday Night Live. I remember many nights in the lounge on the 13^th floor of my dormitory at Boston University. We discussed politics late into the night – abortion, federal debt, and the military/industrial complex. The liberal students ranted against war and poverty, while the conservative ones complained about welfare and government spending. I had lots of opinions and no sense.

These types of eventually alcohol-induced, late night discussions continued in graduate school. Much was the same - the topics, the liberal and conservative sides - but now we were gathered in a professor's home. We argued mainly about how government should spend tax money because all these guys and gals were doing research funded by government grants.

At some point I had an insight. We always debated the ethics of government spending but never even considered the necessary first step, the generation of the wealth before it is collected and re-distributed. Before you can debate whether it is right or wrong to give funds to a single mother, abandoned by an irresponsible biological father, or to a farmer not to grow a crop, perhaps you might ask where the funds came from. Government funds are not a natural resource, someone has to create the value, the wealth, before it can be distributed. I had been reading a lot of Ayn Rand at the time, so I'm sure that's where the idea came from.

So I started thinking that perhaps the debate about how government spent money, while important, was not as important as asking how that wealth is acquired. “Well it's taxes,” you say – yes, I know, but what is the nature and ethics of that system? I began to wonder if the system used to fund government was, at it's core, immoral; but accepted by all and never questioned, and if that is so, what does it do to the moral foundation of our cultural.

I must admit a prejudice – when I was younger I believed the government spent money on a lot of stuff they shouldn't, but it was the giving of money to people who produced nothing that got me thinking. NASA got funds I didn't agree with, but they did some great things. Some poor people got funds for doing nothing, some got money because their bad decisions had put them in dire straights, and that just didn't seem right. That was back when healthy, single men, and drug addicts were on disability or welfare - it's more restrictive today.  Hey, I have nothing against poor people, in fact, I'm one of them now and it's in part due to my bad decisions. Anyway, this is what got me thinking about the income side, rather than the expense side of the government financial equation.

For the last 30 years I've been bringing up an odd point in these night-time discussions. “Well, wait a minute, doesn't the money for that government program come from taxes, and isn't that like stealing?” At this point I am usually dismissed as a wacko, anarchist.

If you have read any of my previous essays, you know you have to put up with a lot of ground work before I get to the point. That's because, as you may also have determined, I attempt to do what I call, “argue from the essentials.” Complex ideas are based on more basic ideas. In order to argue from essentials your readers must know how you define the words, phrases, and concepts you will use. To do otherwise is an insult to serious readers and a fall into the labyrinth of current political debate based on opinions and sound bights.

The hallmark of political discourse today is vague, undefined positions based on feelings. Validity seems to be measured not by or with reason, but solely on the basis of the speaker/author not receiving any benefit from the position. Today, as long as my opinion benefits people who have less than I do, I'm safe.

Not here. We will first set the stage – that is, I will define what I believe the underlying principles to be. As in previous essays, I don't want your agreement, I want you to use your reason. But notice how little space is given to the topic subject and then ask yourself why.

HUMAN LIFE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Evolution has created countless numbers and unimaginably intricate strategies for living organisms to exploit their environments, thrive, and reproduce similar offspring. Each living thing has an identity, a set of facts that is true and helps them survive. The definition of each living thing is usually composed of the characteristic that is common to their group and the specific adaptation that separates them from all the rest.

The definition of a human being is, “an animal with the capacity to reason.” Life is the most fundamental choice and reason is the mechanism we use when we make that choice. To live as a human you must use your reason, exist by the efforts of others, or die. I had a friend disagree in a discussion the other day. He said, “I don't think that reason is man's means of survival, because I don't know if reason is valid.” My position is that if you believe your mind is not valid, “How Do You Know That?” See the contradiction? Your own mind is all you have to work with - that's why I don't ask you to agree with me, but instead to use my ideas as a motivation to think on your own.

In order to sustain your life you must do two things. First, because we live in communities, you must grant others the right to their lives in order that you may claim the right to yours. Second, you must engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action. These actions produce the substances that will sustain your life – crops grown, meat hunted, or time, labor, and knowledge traded for wages. This wealth you create is used to continue your life, directly or by voluntary trade with others. If you accept this explanation of “right to life,” which I believe is an axiom, you must then accept that each human also has a right to the sole decision and control of the disposition of the wealth they create because it is used to sustain their life.

What if I espoused the position that a human being has a right to all but 20% of their effort, and therefore, to only 80% of their life. Sounds like feudalism. How about a 30/70 split, or maybe only 30% on efforts that produce wealth above what I decide is a reasonable amount to sustain life, or maybe you take the position that a government only has a right to take 15% of your effort. If you want to argue about the specific percent, you don't get it. Once you said it was O. K. to steal the work of others, and then left the specifics of moral amounts to the judgment of a bunch of career politicians, you abdicated your right to moral judgment.

Do you see it? If you have a right to life, then you must have a right to the products of your efforts. It doesn't matter if you live alone on a desert island, with a small group, or in a geo-political space with large numbers of people like a city, state, or country. It is fundamentally wrong to take the value created by others because property rights are derived from the right to life that you expect for yourself. This is not opinion but a recognition of the identities of the entities involved. If you limit the right to property, you limit the right to life. The right to human life logically presupposes the right to personal property. You can't have one without the other. Do you want to live in a world where your right to life is based on my opinion? NO, so reason and look for the truth. Rights are not based on percentages, the nature of the concept is absolute.  Today, in America, like the time before The Emancipation Proclamation (and after for Blacks), we live in a social situation in which the "right to life" is conditional - it is not absolute.

MORALITY AND GROUP DECISIONS

People who do not accept or understand the nature of what it is to be human may not create wealth, but instead, will spend their efforts trying to confiscate the wealth created by others. This is a pre-human, pre-reason, evolutionary strategy for survival. This strategy continued through human history for a depressingly long period of time - most ancient human communities and through the middle-ages.  No individual or group can benefit long-term from this strategy, because you can't voluntarily trade your productive efforts with a thief. The thief benefits in the short-term, but not overall in his life as a human being. The thief will eventually fail, he is the aberration, scorned by all reasonable people, be he a Vandal, a bad English Earl, or Bernie Madoff.

 

Human groups can reason and pass on information to the next generation - this is the basis of culture.  This unique ability has given rise to a process that parallels natural selection and biological evolution.  It's called cultural evolution.  Human populations institute social systems based upon what has worked and these systems are passed to future generations and modified based on changes to their environment.  When a community chooses the right path, they pass on their genes and ideas to a larger next generation.  If they're wrong they reproduce less or die out.

The most successful human communities have been composed of people who decided to institute an organization called government. The primary purpose of this organization is to prevent or punish those individuals who seek to confiscate wealth rather than produce it, successfully supporting the unique human survival technique, reason instead of violence. We pool our resources and use them to pay for protection from people who institute force or fraud. 

"Hey John, if you and I and the rest of the guys give a few bushels of wheat and some deer meat to Brutus over there, he's agreed to bash in the head of that jerk, Magnus. You know, the big guy whose been bullying us to have his way with our wives and our food stores."

With this restriction on the use of force or fraud, communities flourished. Over time they blossom and many individuals accumulate more wealth than they can consume in their natural lives or the lives of their decendants. Then the Enlightenment comes along and reasonable people attempt to create equality of opportunity through liberty. 

Those that prosper far above their needs now wonder (under the influence of organized religion) what to do with this excess production, some migrate to the governing class, and the problems begin if the controlling republican document (a constitution) is not specific enough in its limitations on majority rule. Then the institution we create to protect us from the thief, itself becomes the thief, because a majority vote decides it is O. K. to take the value created by one person and use it to benefit another, just like feudalism.

Most of the voting politicians, by this time, are of the class that has more than they need and is motivated to do great philanthropy. The basis of morality becomes the assistance to people with less; in our town, our country, and eventually on the planet. Politicians are willing to give up a significant percent of their wealth, so how could the general population object to giving up a much smaller percent.  That is what happens when you give up ethics in favor of egalitarianism. That is taxation and that is theft. You agreed it was O.K. to steal and now your elected representatives will expand the permission to cover anything they want.  If it's O.K. to steal, then it's O.K. to steal more, or go into multi-generational debt, stealing from our grandbabies. Now it's O.K. to lose the lives of young Americans in a war whose winning will give little or no benefit to our citizens. You ask, "what war do you mean?"  I say pick one in the last 50+ years. See how a basic mistake in ethics can explode.  Now back to the topic, sorry.

Many religious tenets teach the wealthy to feel guilty for the prosperity they have achieved, when so many others have been left behind. This idea had validity in most ancient communities and in every historic expression of feudalism, because the wealth was created by the use of force or fraud. But at some time after the Enlightenment period the playing field changed. There were still lots of flaws and contradictions, but the American experiment at least aspired to achieve “equality of opportunity.” True liberty didn't happen and maybe movers and shakers became impatient, because somewhere along the way, and perhaps because some people start out with more capital or other resources, the desire changed to “equality of results;” as if life was a race with only so many winning prizes. This view of life sees wealth as a pie with only so many pieces. This view never thinks of baking another pie.

Human reason, abstraction and conceptualization, can make new connections among seemingly unrelated facts - creating steam and steel, computer and tortilla chips, discovering big bangs and black holes, and the human genome. If only our American ancestors had continued to fight for liberty and been patient - it must have been hard to be patient while some robber barons were using access to government to amass fortunes. Enlightenment ideas didn't prevent people from attempting to change outcomes by influencing government (Oh, there's another essay.)

Over time, an increasing majority begins to accept the idea of wealth redistribution. But what about the basic morality, what about the underlying ethical principles, what about the nature and truth of humanity? Majority rule is not a substitute for reason, liberty, or justice. An idea does not become true or ethical because a large enough number of people say it is so.

There is a flaw in human nature that is inconsistent with the miracle of capitalism - it is a flaw that was exposed in times after the Industrial Revolution and is still seen today in a limited way based on the extent that free markets still attempt to function. 

Free markets require time for the billions of decisions from buyers and sellers to establish recognizable patterns that motivate the participants to act in one way or another, combining the desires of all into a reasonable policy. This time lapse is good for the flow of decision making, but it has aggravated policymakers on many occasions. 

You see, it is much quicker to pass a law to achieve a result that may be desired and could have been achieved over time through markets. But, decisions imposed by career politicians are motivated by considerations the markets would not use - and so political solutions are usually inferior in THE LONG-TERM. You get what you desire in the short-term, but then the long-term consequences raise their ugly heads. The most common long-term "ugly head" is the breakdown in the moral fiber of the community that resulted from the moral standards that were surrendered to achieve the short-term result.

This or that social problem or economic crisis is so important, that we should take more from those who we decide can afford it, or take more from the next generation's, yet-to-be produced, efforts, through debt. You know what, we don't have the right - and because we all know it and allow it anyway, the moral fiber streches.  When will it break?  Now will you take the time to think about it?

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

A desire to live is not enough to sustain life. It requires self-generated and self-sustained action. If I believe in my life and in morality, then the fact that my neighbor started out with more than me, for whatever reason, is irrelevant to my desires and plans for the support of my own life. It's wrong for me to sneak over and take part of what he created for his own support. It's also wrong to do the same thing with a group of like minded people in a gang or in a democracy. Immoral behavior doesn't become moral because of the number of thieves involved.

POSTSCRPIT

In my final read-through of this article, there were two obvious comments that occurred to me. I am so convinced readers will draw the same conclusions, I thought I would address them in this postscript.

The first question is, “but Jack, what about the children, the disabled, etc” (or some variation of this idea). My answer is that this is not an article about the support of sub-classes in society, it's an article about the morality of expropriating the value created by one person for any other use a majority thinks is more important. I think you must have thought so little of this idea that you changed the subject. However, if you, and I, and other caring, like-minded people want to get together to figure out a solution for the problems of people who may not be able to support themselves, I'm all for it, let's talk. I and many others will contribute, just don't ask me to steal from other people to fund it.

The other question is, “O.K. Jack, if I accept your argument for government only being involved in those functions that derive from the nature of humans, still, how will we pay for it?” Another good question that is not the subject of this article. There are lots of ideas out there for funding the proper roles of government, ideas that don't include stealing from the citizens. However, none of these ideas include the biggest theft of all – that is, going into so much debt that you are, in fact, now stealing from future generations. No reasonable funding idea will include consuming more than a nation can possibly produce in a generation or two. The present system and sentiment reminds me of the story about the emperor's new cloths. As long as we don't recognize the truth, we are protected from it. Perhaps, but not your grandchildren.

So, perhaps, there is no easy political solution. GEE WHIZ, YA THINK SO? Politics is not a basis or a primary for anything. Politics and political decisions are based on the ethical ideas that the governed community accepts, or more often, will tolerate without ever having considered them.

You want to change things for the better – you must think and encourage others to do the same.  But, Jack "you didn't tell us how to solve the problem?" 

Yes I did.  Obama and Romney want to tell you what to do, what to think, but that won't solve the problem. The solution is for you to think in terms of essentials - about the underlying principles that are too esoteric or philosophical for the practically minded decision makers. Did you notice how little time I spent discussing taxation in this article about the morality of taxation?  "Philosophy, Who Needs It?"  You want to live as a human being, then you do?

Liberty does not require you to agree with all or any ideas except the prohibition on the use of force and fraud. Humanity only requires that you think.

Now go make your loved-one a sandwich.