In the debate over avoiding the "fiscal cliff"—especially over whose
taxes should and shouldn't be raised—I detect an annoying attempt to
romanticize taxation
protests
Sheldon Richman at the Project to Restore America (via
Instapundit).
I read this as an act of desperation on the part of those who want
higher taxes on the wealthy, for there is nothing romantic about
taxation.
… To say that "in 1776 the fight was for democracy in taxation" is
misleading. Yes, the revolutioners objected to taxation without
representation. But it hardly follows from this objection that they
looked on taxation with representation benignly.
There is every
reason to think they would be appalled by the national, state, and
local tax regime we labor under today, particularly income taxation,
complete with IRS inquisitors. One need only look at the causes of
Shays's and the Whiskey rebellions to gauge early Americans' attitude
toward the taxman.
Roosevelt's claim that we can judge the social conscience of the
government by how it collects taxes is true in a way he could not have
imagined. Contrary to FDR and Justice Holmes, taxes are neither a price
(in the voluntary-transaction sense) nor club dues. On the contrary,
they are exactions by threat of violence. Some social
conscience! How ironic that organized society and civilization itself
are said to depend on the government's threatening peaceful people if
they fail to surrender their property as demanded by politicians who
presumptuously and self-servingly claim to "represent" all the people.
Far from some enlightened institution, taxation began when
conquerors realized that formal and continuing appropriation of a
subject population's wealth was preferable to hit-and-run pillaging. For
this to work, however, the rulers needed to convince the peasants that
the regime would protect them from predators in return for their regular
remittances. That's right: It was a protection racket, from which the
racketeers and their cronies profited handsomely. For the taxpayers,
there was little choice in the matter. They weren't buying protection as
people buy insurance in the market, and they weren't paying dues as
they would later pay dues to mutual-aid societies. They paid or they
were punished. The ideology of benevolent state protection reduced
enforcement costs because the ruled outnumbered the rulers and
widespread tax resistance would have doomed the regime. Things have
changed little in our time.
Roosevelt's shameless self-serving posture is clear in this line:
"And one sure way to determine the social conscience of an individual is
to get his tax-reaction." We are expected to believe that someone who
objects to surrendering his money to politicians and bureaucrats lacks a
social conscience—as though we need them to exercise generosity. The
long bloody history of government militarism, brutality, destruction,
duplicity, exploitation, and economic havoc provides ample reason for
reluctance accommodate the voracious politicians.
"As society becomes more civilized," Roosevelt said,
"Government—national, State and local government—is called on to assume
more obligations to its citizens."
Note the passive voice "is called on." Who called? Again, in light
of the nature of government, there's supreme irony in asserting that we
need more of it as society becomes more civilized. One should expect the
use of aggressive force to diminish as society evolves.
At times people have favored bigger government, but this hardly
proves FDR's point. Typically the demand for government action followed
crises—real or imagined—created by the government in the first place.
Take the Great Depression. With the economy in shambles, the public
supported government relief, and the Hoover and Roosevelt administration
were happy to oblige. But the economic catastrophe was the government's
doing. The central-bank-engineered boom of the Roaring Twenties ended,
as sound economics teaches, with a bust, and a mere recession became a
Great Depression through official mismanagement and corporatist
intervention—complete with a variety of tax increases.
The systematic exploitation of crises (again, real and imagined) to
increase the intrusive power of government is best documented in Robert
Higgs's classic,
Crisis and Leviathan.
Recommend this book to anyone who sees politicians as knights on white
steeds riding to our rescue. As someone else put it,
government is good
at breaking our legs then making a big show out of distributing
crutches.
Even if one believes there is no alternative to taxation for the
provision of security for life, liberty, and property, one still should
want to keep taxes low and transparent, since government itself is
always the biggest potential threat to those values. As Adam Smith
put it,
"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of
opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a
tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by
the natural course of things."
None of these considerations are nullified by our current fiscal
debacle. On the contrary, one may see in it the very template Higgs
describes in his book. Politicians spend and borrow because it is in
their political interest to so, and when the inevitable crisis comes,
they propose to seize more resources from the industrious rather than
shrink government back to a less threatening size.
Contrary to what they say, the fiscal mess did not result from a
failure to tax. Our problem is the politicians' irresistible temptation
to spend--other people's money.
… There's nothing romantic about taxation, and the patriot appeal is
chicanery. Those who say otherwise are, wittingly or unwittingly, mere
stalking horses for politicians looking to do more mischief.
