Do You Want Equality or Freedom?

Conservatives prefer the latter. So did the nation’s founding fathers.

Say I take you out for dinner and pick up the tab. Whether I can afford it is irrelevant; you still get the free lunch. So why are liberals so obsessed with the incomes of others?

Indeed, for Occupy Wall Street and the Democratic politicians supporting them, raising taxes on the rich remains an article of faith. And it’s a convenient theory, if for no other reason than that the well-to-do will always have the “ability” to pay more, at least until you get the last dime.

To be sure, this is one way of looking at tax policy — as a means of redistributing income. A more neutral method, however, raises revenue in a uniform manner so that individuals pay for the government they use.

Few modern societies have opted completely for one or another, but there is a clear bias in every one that tilts toward either protecting property or taking it.

The conservative approach will naturally result in unequal incomes, since no two human beings possess equal attributes, while the other demands an equalization of incomes based on the collectivist premise that no two human beings should possess unequal attributes.

One embraces freedom before equality, the other equality before freedom. Simple as that.

The framers clearly opted for liberty and inequality of outcome.

Alexander Hamilton, for example, was a strong proponent of “regressive” taxes, arguing in Federalist 21, “It is a signal advantage of taxes on articles of consumption, that they contain in their own nature a security against excess … if the duties are too high, they lesson the consumption; the collection is eluded, and the product to the treasury is not so great as when they are confined within proper and moderate bounds. This forms a complete barrier against any material oppression of the citizens by taxes of this class, and is itself a natural limitation of the power of imposing them.”

Today, the federal government relies on direct taxes where no such barrier exists. According to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, 51 percent of households pay no federal income tax, yet here we are busily trying to figure out how much more the rest of us should pay.

Warren Buffet may say his secretary has a higher federal tax rate than he does, but not unless she’s in the top 20 percent of earners in the country.

Data from the Congressional Budget Office show that our tax burden is already highly “progressive,” with the top income quintile paying 25.8 percent of its income in federal taxes, compared with 4.3 percent for the poorest fifth.

The wealthiest 1 percent pay 31.2 percent of their income to the federal government.

One reason, according to the CBO, is that, unlike Buffet, most of the fortunate few derive their wealth from labor and business income, not from capital gains. Far from lucky, they are what Harvard economist Gregory Mankiw calls the “working rich.”

Occupy Wall Street talks of unity for the masses, as though the nation were a family or commune with the concomitant legal and ethical obligations.

No -we are the descendants of forefathers who fought and bled to establish a system of government specifically designed to protect the individual against unwanted force or fraud. Not to commit it.

The glorified mob, from Athens to New York, is threatening social instability if it doesn’t get what it wants (as Chris Christie once pointed out, this trait is also quite prevalent among 9-year-olds), but it will bring about only the economic chaos it pretends to oppose.

If Europe teaches us anything, it is that we can no longer finance the socialist welfare state.

Most responsible Americans — especially the top 1 percent — are true achievers. And true achievers have little guilt about what they’ve accomplished. They don’t like thieves.

Try to implement the legal plunder so eloquently advocated by Michael Moore’s minions, and the economic history of every failed socialist state intervenes.

Occupy that.

Published in the StarTribune, October 29, 2011