Oh Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Remind me to rescind my invitation to Barack Obama.

The tax code is not meant to inspire civic duty or neighborliness. After all, how can a compulsory system that automatically deducts money from your pay check possibly do that? If anything, it allows people to forgo their responsibilities to their fellow citizens-- to volunteer, to serve those in need, to be generous with time and resources-- by giving them the excuse to shift that burden onto the government. I am not, repeat not, arguing that taking care of the needy or providing services such as education and even a social safety net should be entirely in the hands of the private sector. I think there is an appropriate role for government-- a role that is very different than the one the government is taking on now, but a role nonetheless. What Obama is calling for, however, is pure redistribution of income. Your neighbor earned more than you? Congratulations! Here is part of her check. Someone down the street changed jobs into a more dynamic and competitive industry, invested in more training and education, and now is earning much more than you? Congratulations! You deserve a bit of the bounty. To me, it is morally objectionable for any person to pay more than 1/3 of any dollar earned to any broad-based tax (income tax, broad-based sales tax, etc. This does not include taxes that correct for externalities, such as taxes on carbon emissions.), at any level. There are also plenty of economic arguments against excessive taxation, especially of the supposedly "progressive" variety, but I'll save those for another time.