Love ‘Tax And Spend?’

Greg Hughes wastes no time trying to appease his counterparts across the political aisle. Last month, Mr. Hughes, a Republican and a Utah state representative, followed the lead of several other state legislators and proposed creating a little box on next year’s state tax return where residents could opt to pay extra taxes. The proposal, entitled the “Tax Me More Fund,” is no doubt inflammatory in intent. But if you’re a goodhearted, affluent liberal, how should you respond?

Since Bush lowered top marginal tax rates from 39.6 percent to 35 percent in 2002 , the wealthy have been flush with cash. Most liberals believe it’s criminal that the rich pay so little in taxes, while social expenditures for the poor have been slashed. The percentage of income going to top earners has skyrocketed, and the middle-classes are entering a period of unprecedented precariousness. What is needed, they maintain, is a more “fair” tax system.

“Fairness” has long been a coveted prize from the political grab bag of vacuous words. Conservatives invoke “fairness” when claiming that the top quintile of income earners already pays 66.6 percent of federal taxes. Liberals fire back that the Bush tax cuts—which gave the richest one percent of Americans an average rebate of $75,800, and middle-income families a mere $1,100—are grossly “unfair.” Each claim is no doubt true, but they appeal to two distinct, and incommensurable, conceptions of justice. It’s a sordid number game: percentages versus absolute figures.

From a practical point of view, then, voluntary taxes might be a good idea. It fosters a sort of value pluralism. Mr. Hughes put forth his proposal because 37 percent of Utah voters, in a recent poll, claimed they didn’t want a state tax cut that year, preferring instead increased spending on public goods like education and roads. A similar attitude towards public expenditure led 1,488 Massachusetts taxpayers to vote for a higher tax rate for Medicaid in 2003, after tax cuts were passed the previous year. If voluntary taxes increase states coffers, there should be no reason to complain.

But if you believe that you are being under-taxed, or that income inequality is a problem, are you under any moral obligation to correct it? Should the George Soroses of the world just give more money to the government?

Even the most left-leaning of wealthy liberals will balk at the idea of paying extra taxes, pointing to the sheer size of government expenditure. With a proposed federal budget of $2.9 trillion next year, an extra five percent of one’s income (the approximate size of the Bush tax cut for high earners) will neither provide more funds for schools nor reduce income inequality.

Warren Buffett, before pledging his fortune to the Gates Foundation, could not have even financed the U.S. food stamp program for one year, which alone cost $32.9 billion in 2006. Because voluntary taxes would have a negligible impact, it makes little sense to give.

Yet such “drop in the ocean” objections often fall on deaf ears.

Take, for example, environmentalists who advocate mandatory caps on carbon emissions. In order to halt global warming, reductions would need to be universal and compulsory, not sporadic and voluntary. Yet environmentalists still make individual efforts to reduce their carbon emissions—by buying a Prius, recycling, or paying a premium for wind energy.

For people whose ultimate arbiter is utility, such actions seem naïve or irrational, a sentimental indulgence for guilt-ridden liberals. Yet the mighty logic of utility would also condemn voting as foolish. The probability that your vote would influence the outcome of an election is impossibly small. It would not even compensate for your having to schlep down to the voting booth.

However, if you believe in the inherent value of democracy (or of protecting the environment), then voting (or conservation) is a moral obligation. Its ultimately negligible impact is irrelevant. Naturally then, outrage from affluent liberals about tax cuts rings all too hollow, unless they are making regular contributions to charity.

The question of voluntary taxes gets to the heart of the problem of democracy: Majoritarian voting guarantees that minority views are often marginalized—in this case, producing a less progressive tax code. Someone’s conception of justice is left unrealized.

By voting for representatives who then make decisions for us, we cede them our moral agency. If our Congressmen permit the military to employ torture, there is nothing we can do to stop it, save vote them out of office in a few years.

Fortunately, personal wealth is one of the few places that as citizens we still have agency. If the government does not embody your view of justice, it is not an invitation to complacency. Engaged citizenship requires more than the perfunctory vote every other year. If you think everyone in your income bracket should be paying 50 percent tax rates, then take the first step. Moral consistency is as easy as writing a check.



Will Johnston ’08 is a social studies concentrator in Adams House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.