PROGRESSIVE TAXATION: Caring For Our Children, Sustaining Our Growth

Progressive taxation serves as the policy engine for social programs that are essential to providing the least fortunate in our society with a decent standard of living. Millions of children in the U.S. live below the poverty line, often without basic health insurance, and millions more suffer from dangerous obesity. It is not only a moral imperative to help children lead happy childhoods and develop into productive young adults, but it is also an economic imperative. Progressive taxation makes it possible for the government to meet these imperatives.

John Rawls’ concept of the “veil of ignorance” gives us a powerful moral lens through which we can assess the treatment of society’s most disadvantaged people. His framework asks us to understand that anyone could have been born into an unhappy and unhealthy childhood, and that as a result, all members of society must do what they can to promote government programs—paid for by progressive taxation—to ensure that every American child has a chance in life.

Although some social conservatives believe that policy makers should ignore poor people over 18—based on the belief that adults are to blame for their own misery—we can all agree that the 12 million children living in poverty bear no responsibility for their plight. But these children, like their parents, lack the means to obtain the most basic of food, clothing and housing. The official poverty level for a family of four, only $18,392, amounts to far less than it costs in most parts of the country to maintain a basic standard of living. Even though this number has been adjusted for inflation since it was first invented in 1963, the costs of transportation, housing and health care have outpaced inflation. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that the poverty threshold should be set 45 percent higher to compensate.

Many of these poor children, and 8.5 million American children in all, are routinely denied annual checkups and basic treatment for their illnesses because they are uninsured. Another 13 million children are clinically overweight, according to the Centers for Disease Control, in part because many of them are also poor and uninsured and can afford only cheap, unhealthy food. Childhood obesity increases the likelihood of being overweight as an adult and significantly shortens life expectancy. It also creates health problems that deprive children of the active, carefree youths that they all deserve.

It is morally repugnant that, in a country of such plenty, tens of millions of children go to bed hungry, miserable, sick and obese. We must set goals to give every child in this country a good education, strong health care, early learning programs such as Head Start, and quality daycare. We must also enable their families to provide them with a safe, warm home and healthy food. Plenty of economic research shows that these programs combined would increase America’s human capital, create a more productive work force, spur faster economic growth, and reduce crime and poverty. Conservatives and liberals alike agree that these are good goals to have.

Taxpayers end up footing the bill for these preventable problems both directly—because uninsured children nonetheless need to be treated—but also indirectly, in the lost productivity and increased social costs that these children are more likely to impose on society as adults. Early learning programs, free child care, universal health insurance and subsidies for healthy foods improve human capital, as do increases in federal spending on inner city schools and college financial aid. These programs also provide the material and educational basis for the employees of tomorrow to improve their skill set and promote higher productivity and faster economic growth.

Progressive taxation is the lynchpin of social progress because it funds these social programs and helps to redistribute wealth and income to those who need it most. Some conservatives argue that asking the ultra-rich to pay a higher percentage of their assets in taxes impedes their freedom and makes them less rich and thus less happy. But a growing body of research, including a study led by Harvard Professor of Psychology Daniel Gilbert, confirms what our elders always told us: that money cannot buy happiness.

For the poor, however, money can buy relief from chronic hunger, cold, sickness and the resulting unhappiness. Gilbert’s research in an area called affective, or emotional, forecasting shows that we always overestimate the added happiness a new purchase will bring. The true key to enduring happiness, according to studies, is what one would expect: social interactions and good friends.

We as a nation can give these children what their parents cannot, and some of us can afford to help more than others. Those in the top tax brackets who believe that paying more in taxes would be a punishing misery will find that they are happier than they were before—and that crime will fall and the economy will grow. Cities will be safer, entrepreneurship will thrive and we will be able to go to bed knowing that we have satisfied our duty to unfortunate children.

Nicholas F.B. Smyth ’05, a Crimson editor, is a government concentrator in Dunster House.