[This diary was written in response to a diary about “God’s Will.”]
Conservatives are completely wrong in their foundational viewpoint that taxation is somehow taking from rich Peter to help support poor Paul. Taxation is not a method of socialist redistribution—taxation is not any kind of theft or taking, not any kind of restriction of liberty, not any kind of charity.
Rather, taxation is the only mechanism society has to bill people for their use of the commons.
If you don’t bill for the use of the commons, then the commons is depleted with no way to replenish it.
The people who gain most from the use of the commons are precisely those who drain it the most, and therefore must be billed the most. Taxation is not an exact form of accounting, but it is a roughly equitable way to adjust gross income for repayment to and replenishment of the commons.
What is the commons? It is the cumulative assets of society. It is exactly everything in excess of what one person can create with her own hands—that is, everything above a cave, animal skins, foraged berries and stone tools.
All the rest of an individual’s wealth depends on the collective work of society.
The commons includes the obvious, like roads and bridges, armies and police forces, a system of currency, dams, waterworks, electrical grids, the internet.
And the commons includes the less obvious, like the accumulation and preservation of knowledge, the commercial networks that allow one to buy a plow or a car or a computer, the glue of language, the freedoms of religion and speech, the ability to draw on the work force, the use of communication avenues for advertising, the maintenance of a health system to keep the work force going and keep the population sane, the systems established to provide for the aged-out portion of the population until death. It also includes all the raw resources that exist below and above a nation: the minerals, the earth, the air, the water, and the animals that dwell therein.
When someone draws upon the assets of a society, she owes the society compensation for that draw. We call that “taxation.” The more one draws upon social assets—the more “money” that one “makes”—the more one owes society in compensation. This is obviously and fundamentally fair, not a burden the weak impose on the strong. Society allows those who produce “more” to be richer, but society has no obligation to permit anyone to use the commons without paying for it commensurately, and even progressively.
The simplified example of how a rich man exhausts the commons faster than the poor man:
Warbucks owns the only factory in Whoville sited just outside town on Main Street. Everyday all 100 residents of Whoville drive to the factory to work. Thus, each resident uses the road twice, to and fro. Warbucks uses the road more than 200 times daily, twice for each worker’s passage, twice for himself, and uncounted times for all the trucks taking raw materials to the factory and finished goods away.
Warbucks’s production of wealth for himself draws upon the commons in vastly greater ways than any other citizen. Taxing him in a graduated manner is not “stealing,” but rather the only way to replenish the commons and re-pave the road.
Conservatives have too simplistic a view of society. They view Warbucks as a “Randist” heroic producer who creates wealth and jobs; they view the workers as less worthy than Warbucks. Worse, they view an injured worker as someone who has become a mere parasite. None of this true because it is too idiotically reductive.
We work cooperatively to make a society that generates as much wealth, comfort and security as possible for all its members. Our cooperation is a necessary predicate to society, even though it is an almost invisible predicate. We call it “the social contract.” And the social contract should provide a certain minimal level of wealth, comfort and security to every individual member of that society.
The last point to be made: Society gets to define the social contract. Society gets to say how much wealth, comfort and security is assured every individual. Society gets to acknowledge that it benefits society to provide some level of equality of opportunity, some level of education for its workers, some level of health, and some minimal standard of living.
This assures that society operates to benefit everyone, not just the Warbucks, not just the most powerful amongst us. This is not theft. That concept is just empty propaganda spread by the Warbucks.
Rather, making sure that society benefits every member, even those who have fallen, is just and equitable and humane.