No Taxpayer Is an Island
Before announcing her bid to unseat Massachusetts GOP Senator Scott Brown, Democrat Elizabeth Warren delivered impassioned remarks on the social obligations of successful entrepreneurs.
Speaking to a small gathering, she insisted that private prosperity rests upon pillars of public investment. "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody," said Warren, a Harvard law professor, formerly a presidential adviser on consumer finance, and one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2010.
You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate …. Now look, you built a factory and turned it into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
Warren's comments went viral on YouTube. Bloggers and pundits pronounced on her argument from every angle. Conservatives spied a worrying pretext for saddling wealth creators with burdensome new taxes, while liberals cheered a full-throated defense of government's role in promoting the common good.
We do not wish to referee this dispute. People who share our core theological convictions can have different opinions on the scope of government. Except by insinuation, Warren's reasoning does not entail expansion of federal taxation. Many commentators construed her remarks as endorsing tax hikes, but she articulated nothing beyond the general principle that public expenditure facilitates private enterprise. That corporate titans owe something to satisfy the "underlying social contract" does not determine how much they ought to owe, nor what channels they should use to "pay it forward."
No line of logic irrefutably links the ideal of social cooperation with the practice of "soaking the rich." Yet Warren's statement deserves both nods of sympathy and nudges of reproach. In what it affirms, it exposes a blind spot of the tea party conservatism that many evangelicals espouse. In what it omits, it confirms a blind spot in a strain of secular progressivism that evangelicals rightly reject.
Warren reminds us of our indebtedness to others. Too often, tea party rhetoric fuels a cult of the heroic individual. It sanctifies individual achievement and shortchanges the conditions on which such achievements depend. Human flourishing falters without the protections that a justly governed society provides. Evangelical tea partiers can appreciate this basic truth. There is no need to endorse high taxes or over-regulation.
Our applause for Warren's illustrations is tempered by their narrowness. She fails to include essential nongovernmental institutions. Where are the families, churches, independent schools, hospitals, service clubs, and trade and professional organizations, as well as the free press? Warren commits the besetting sin of secular progressivism: reducing the complex workings of society to the actions of government—in her formulation, "what the rest of us paid for."
But "the rest of us" are more than taxpayers. "The rest of us"—Christians, at least—belong to, and sometimes lead, churches, families, and other "mediating institutions." Have these things contributed nothing to the success of Warren's hypothetical factory owner? If the employees of a factory owner know right from wrong—if they behave honorably, if they do not habitually lie, cheat, and steal—then this may testify to the virtuous influence of pastors and parents.
Grieving with the Good Friday God
La complejidad hispana: Todo cambió en el 2012
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Roger D. McKinney
Scott, socialists have promoted the myth that the wealthy don’t pay taxes for a century. The facts are exactly the opposite: the wealthiest 20% pay 80% of all taxes. A simplistic correlation analysis will show no correlation between tax cuts and gdp growth in the same year. But no one has ever claimed that tax cuts impact gdp growth immediately. There is a long lag. You may fool a few gullible people who don’t know statistics, but anyone who does will see many faults with your analysis. Did you figure in the lags and include other variables that affect gdp? Did you correct for the fact that tax cuts of the top rate don’t change the effective rate? Did you include effects of recessions and inflation If you didn’t then your analysis is worthless. Save yourself some time and google for optiumum tax rate. You’ll find real statisticians have determined that the optimum for growth and job creation is 25% including state and local taxes. Currently we’re at about 45%.
Scott
Overall, data from the past 50 years strongly refutes any arguments that cutting taxes for the richest Americans will improve the economic standing of the lower and middle classes or the nation as a whole. To be sure, the economic indicators examined in this report are dependent on a variety of factors, not just tax policy. However, what this study does show is that any attempt to stimulate economic growth by cutting taxes for the rich will do nothing -- it hasn't worked over the past 50 years, so why would it work in the future? To put it simply and bluntly, Bush's top-bracket tax cut is an ineffective attempt at stimulus that will not cause any growth -- unless, of course, if you're talking about the size of the deficit. From, "Trickle-Down Economics: Four Reasons Why It Just Doesn't Work."
Scott
Cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation. Here, we see the change in the unemployment rate laid against the top tax rate from 1954 to 2002. Thus, negative values signify a decrease in unemployment -- in essence, job creation. Once again, while the top tax rate trends downward over the period, the annual change in unemployment doesn't seem to trend at all! Although the largest increase (2.9%) did occur in 1975, when the top marginal tax rate was 70%, three of the four largest decreases in unemployment occurred in years when the top rate was 91%. The mixed results do not bode well for those who see tax cuts for the richest as a sparkplug to incite job growth. The correlation coefficient between the variables here is 0.11 -- meaning that there have been slightly more jobs created in years with lower top tax rates, but this pattern is negligible -- nowhere near strong enough to signify a relationship.