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The Nation's Pulse
Leveling Justice: Tax Code as Moral Code
New insights into income inequality and the redistribution of wealth as a purported remedy.
A recent episode of the PBS program Religion & Ethics Newsweekly addressed the issue of income inequality. Predictably, the conversation centered on the question of whether redistribution of wealth is a suitable way to remedy the purported problem.
Harvard professor Michael Sandel (who teaches a famous course on justice) suggested that redistribution is warranted because lots of different kinds of people work hard, but achieve vastly different results in terms of income. Why should a school bus driver work hard and make a low income, while a high level business manager works hard and makes a much higher income? Now, perhaps Dr. Sandel was limited by the constraints of television, but this framework for evaluating income inequality seems unsatisfying.
If effort is the key indicator, then why not give a superior claim to a man who sets a most arduous task for himself in the form of tearing down and rebuilding his house? Of course, it seems silly to reward him because his work doesn’t achieve anything. So, effort is not the key point. How about useful effort? A line operator in a factory might contribute something to thousands of pieces of work each day, but the engineer who designed the process made a far larger contribution because he enabled the entire production run. Even though it is true that we can distinguish levels of work as hard or easy, there are other things that matter, too. Effectiveness and impact come into play.
The Federalist Papers recognized that even if we could arrest the economic progress of all citizens and pull them back to the starting line, it would only be a matter of time before differences in motivation, virtue, practice, creativity, preparation, delayed gratification, and any number of other factors would lead to some substantially outpacing others. In Common Sense, Tom Paine identified the difference between rich and poor as one that could be accounted for with justice while royal status could not. Does this mean that the rich always deserve to be rich and the poor always deserve their relative lack of wealth? No, but very often it is possible to explain why some people’s efforts warrant their large incomes in a way that others’ efforts do not.
Sandel went on to single out the estate tax as a way to remedy the unfair head start given to some citizens that allows them to enjoy more wealth than others. This view of what is fair and unfair echoes the one we just examined. It pays little attention to the question of what is a just cause and/or effect. If, for example, a woman rises from no great circumstance to become a medical doctor with a surgical practice, the income she earns is well-justified. She has to cultivate her mind through education, train extensively, experience substantial delayed gratification financially, endure long hours, give up family time, tolerate a very high level of technical risk and difficulty in her work, and be prepared to drop anything at inconvenient hours to meet a crisis. At the same time, the results (or the effects) or her work can be truly life-changing for patients. How can it be unjust for this woman to want her hard-earned capital to benefit her child? Should a very wise person be prevented from passing on life lessons to his child? Should a very healthy or beautiful person be forbidden to pass on outstanding genes? Why should money be different? Does Sandel’s notion of leveling out advantages through the estate tax actually result in more justice than allowing the natural effect of a lifetime of highly skilled and technically difficult work to take place?
Also in the episode, University of Alabama law professor and progressive tax crusader Susan Pace Hamill argued that Alabama’s low property taxes, high sales taxes (applying even to food), and income tax that applies even to low levels of income constitute a sub-Biblical ethic of revenue collection. Her reasoning is that the highest taxes apply to consumption, while the taxes that target wealth, like the property tax, are relatively low. Her proposal is that the tax system be made more progressive and the greater revenues (if realized) would go to finance public efforts like the educational system to improve equality of opportunity.
Hamill’s method of applying a Biblical ethic to taxation is highly laudable in that it avoids the pietistic impulse that individualizes Bible teaching to the point of social irrelevance. In addition, one can see how Hamill was able to move Alabama’s Reaganite governor, Bob Riley, to support her efforts to change the system. Conservatives have long focused on achieving equality of opportunity rather than equality of results. To the extent Hamill’s proposal does that, it is morally and rationally superior to Sandel’s case for redistribution. But the question remains whether progressivity of taxation (especially in the form of rising marginal tax rates) achieves justice.
Hadley Arkes, author of First Things (the book, not the magazine), approached the issue in the following way. We are all free agents responsible for our own actions. If one man injures another man, the responsibility is clear and the one who did wrong must pay. If a man is injured because of his own mistake in judgment or because of recklessness, he should bear the cost of his own error. But if a man is injured in an accident that is no one’s fault, then the community should seek to help him. And how might we help this man? Should we simply find a rich man, grab him by the collar and demand he pay for medical care and income supplements? Not according to Arkes, because there is no rich man who bears the blame for the injury. No, if we wish to come to the aid of the injured man, then we should take on the burden in a proportionate way, as a community. If one percent from each person is needed to help make him whole, then we will all pay one percent each. On that basis, the rich man will still pay far more than a poor one, but the same rule will have applied to each man. And is that not the very definition of justice?
This commentary was written for the Acton Institute and first appeared on its website.
About the Author
Hunter Baker is associate dean of arts and sciences and associate professor of political science at Union University. He is the author of The End of Secularism and winner of the 2011 Michael Novak Award. His personal website is www.hunterbaker.wordpress.com.
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Darin| 3.2.11 @ 6:53AM
I love it when liberals try to use the Bible to defend their desire to take from one and give to another. The same Bible condemns sexual immorality (adultury, fornication, homosexuality, etc). So if liberals demand redistribution of wealth based on the Bible, conservatives must demand condeming sexual immorality based on the Bible.
SpiralArchitect | 3.2.11 @ 3:48PM
Wealth is not a crime.
Alan Brooks| 3.3.11 @ 1:38AM
I don't understand any of this economic stuff, I just know wealth re-distribution is good because our ruler, Pres. Obama says it is. He know more than the rest of us can posssibly know, that's why he is our leader.
Alan Brooks| 3.2.11 @ 8:30PM
There ought to a hefty defense tax so those who own more are paying a large amount to defend their property.
Now we can see how expensive war is going to be, more so than in the 20th century!
oldfart| 3.2.11 @ 7:04AM
What a slippery slope. Who is to define what is or is not moral? Does morality change over time? Who 'publishes' the current morality? The people? The self-appointed elites that sprout up like weeds in any society? Some examples you have given as justification to collect taxes from the people to give to organized religion in all parts of the world – not just Europe. We need to get back to the concept of 'equal opportunity' NOT equal results. There can never be equal results because all are given unequal talents (for instance you would not want to hear me sing or my efforts at playing a musical instrument).Can the tax code be used to promote equal opportunity? Yes. And, as mentioned, what people do with their talents is up to them.As a side note on our current eduction system – which is supposed to challenge students to discover and develop their talents – instead focuses on equal results. My three grown sons all said that the public education their received was a joke. They learned more on the internet and their own research than the baby food they were given in school (primary, secondary and college).
Alan Brooks| 3.2.11 @ 8:31PM
There ought to be a hefty defense tax so those who own more are paying a large amount to defend their property.
Now we can see how expensive war is going to be, more so than in the 20th century.
Bill Hussein O'Stalin| 3.2.11 @ 8:00AM
When the government decides the winners and losers, there is no game and we are all losers.
Mike D.| 3.2.11 @ 8:15AM
Thats right. When Government becomes the sole arbitrator of rights, fairness, and how wealth created by free citizens is distributed, then the results will always be the same. Tyranny, disaster, enslavement, and civil war or revolution to free ourselves of it. Ignorance of history and its lessons is mankinds greatest collective failure. Generations of humankind make monumental mistakes that should teach future generations what to avoid and yet these follow on generations blunder into the same disasters with the same results.
Harry the Horrible| 3.2.11 @ 10:48AM
"Why should a school bus driver work hard and make a low income, while a high level business manager works hard and makes a much higher income?"
Because of the vast differences between the values produced by their labors? Are these talking heads really that stupid?
Ned| 3.2.11 @ 11:40AM
Yes
Appleby| 3.2.11 @ 11:50AM
Well, why should a Toronto Maple Leafs player make $600,000 per month for essentially doing nothing (i.e. for the entire month of January he scored no goals and no assists, had the lowest plus-minus on the team, and at the All-Star Game, which he mysteriously was chosen for, he was the last player chosen by either team.)?
And why should ANY baseball player make $77,000,000, or ANY basketball player make $100,000,000? What value are they adding to the world?
I agree that people are worth what other people will pay them; nevertheless, I have never figured out WHY people pay these people the way they do.
Leo W| 3.2.11 @ 3:09PM
I suggest that morality is suspended when it's time to pay entertainers, be it in sports or Hollywood.
God knows those sports figures are paid to be Captain America in public, yet always manage to air their camp shorts on the front porch when it comes to gambling, drugs and beating up SO's without being held accountable.
The Hollywood types... well, there is at least one making public noise, is it positive?
Harry the Horrible| 3.2.11 @ 3:22PM
I think they're grossly over-payed, too.
But they are part of a team whose games generates HUGE sums in advertising revenue. That's their cut.
And, like it or not, somebody values the advertising time that much.
Tom Osterman| 3.2.11 @ 11:04AM
The tax code should be written so as to collect revenue in the least burdensome way and with no other aim in mind. Our current code has gone past complicated into incoherent. It's not just the level of taxation, but the costs of compliance made worse by politically driven revisions.
SpiralArchitect | 3.2.11 @ 4:01PM
V A T
David W| 3.2.11 @ 11:16AM
While a child I could not understand why my parents did not get a new car as often as other people/relatives. I could not understand why it took so long to get a color TV (yes, I'm old). No boat, no RV or camping trailer.
Today my parents are doing very well. Unless something major happens they will die well before they spend the money they have saved. Thus, unless there is a surprise, my siblings and I will be able to share in what they have built and left behind. According to the democrats, leftists, socialists, etc., I and my siblings have no right to what they saved by being smart and frugal. By saving and not wasting their money they were actually chumps and suckers. These same people (or should I call them social leeches) believe that since my parents will eventually die, that the money is not really theirs and should be taken by the government to spend as the government sees fit.
Wouldn't the definition of justice include being able to do with your money what you wish to do with the money (as long as it does not involve anything illegal)? Or do the democrats only follow the tennants of social justice, not justice?
Pete| 3.2.11 @ 1:24PM
Not to mention that your parents were almost certainly ALREADY TAXED on all of the income they accumulated.
SpiralArchitect | 3.2.11 @ 4:05PM
The Lib's were not entitled to what they had. In retaliation they shall doo all possible to eliminte what they previously missed, be it through gross taxation or simple confiscation.
How's that 401 treating you - best make sure your local Lib's get their share before they decide to compensate themselves.
- barf -
Oldefarte| 3.2.11 @ 2:18PM
Wages/income earned is simply a matter of market supply and demand, and the intersection of same determines the wage price/unit of labor. Education plays a role in increasing the demand/supply wage price/unit of labor, but can become an adverse determinant in some cases [ie uneducated athletes receive more income for their services than do highly educated teachers]. Income equality or re-distribution is a political attempt to interfere with said market determination of wage-prices. Liberals/Democrats seek to use governmental power to force this re-distribution for its quid-pro-quo political benefits to them [receiving votes as payback for political welfare benefits previously dispensed]. Since income producers are the financial suppliers of governmental income/receipts, they are adversely and detrimentally effected by such re-distribution. Governmental growth/increase is detrimental economically because every dollar of governmental benefits paid out represents also a equal dollar of income earners' extracted from the private sector. Correspondingly, a governmental dollar extracted equally represents a dollar of income available to the private sector income earners, and this is why governmental budget reduction efforts currently underway is so vitally important to our economy's well being [and Republicans' efforts at governmental budget/debt reduction should be supported and applauded]!!!!!!!!!
Sydney Escort | 3.2.11 @ 2:18PM
Any tax policy to establish social justice or economic policy rests in the shadow of the code's complexity. Reagan attempted to simplify the code but those type of admirable efforts now seem to have no audience in Congress. They now seem to mask policy in a "Code of Confusion".
IMKessel| 3.2.11 @ 2:43PM
Flat tax = Social Justice.
SpiralArchitect | 3.2.11 @ 4:08PM
Never will it happen as long as any Lib has a say in the matter. This would not only take a high degree of control from their grubby mitts...
Why would anyone want to have drug dealers & illegal aliens pay into the kitty.
Flee| 3.3.11 @ 8:02PM
Can you explain the reasoning behind your statement? Do you support a flat tax? I suspect most current politicians that support a flat tax do not support what liberal politicians consider social justice. I agree we all should pay the same rate whatever it might be. Take away all the deductions and credits and lower all the rates. Spend on defense and border control and leave the rest to states. If that is your point, then I support you wholeheartedly.
Nite| 3.2.11 @ 9:26PM
I came from a poor family where education was heavily stressed. I and my siblings were all high achievers and have worked hard all of our lives. Why, should our savings be given to people who dropped out of school, fail to hold a job, or are simply lazy? Redistribution of wealth is a ploy of liberal Democrats as a means to control people and keep themselves in power.
Bill UK| 3.3.11 @ 4:17AM
The beauty of a free-market economy is that people are rewarded in proportion to their meeting the needs of others which, I would argue, exemplifies justice i.e. one getting what one is due. The surgeon is freely rewarded highly by his patients because he has met one of their most important needs (their health), but the hospital janitor, who may physically work just as hard, is not. The only alternative to this system, wage (and of necessity price)-fixing by government, make everyone poorer as the distortions it causes inhibit productivity, and the rent-seekers descend on the center of power to increase their 'slice of the pie'.
London Escort | 3.4.11 @ 1:15AM
A flat, simple tax seems the most fair. However, the politicians love to reward their favourite special interests with loopholes. Isn't that the way Washington works--pork barrel and loop holes keep it ticking.
العاب بنات | 4.11.12 @ 6:09PM
thank you
is good