By Selwyn Duke
Tax cuts provide people with more capital, which spurs investment thereby buttressing the economy. Tax cuts rob the government of money for public works, which hurts the economy. Tax cuts cause the economy to expand and people's behavior to change, which increases the tax base causing more money to flow into government coffers. Tax cuts rob the government of revenue, which causes deficits. Tax cuts can cure cancer. Tax cuts cause bad breath. Do you believe any of the above? President Bush's 350 billion dollar tax cut has once again placed this issue front and center and as usual, the policy-wonks and pundits, statesmen and political stuntmen have all been making their cases in the court of public opinion. And as usual, we have been hearing all of the usual pros and cons -- many of the above tunes have been sung, often to the accompaniment of dubious budget projections or dire or delicious economic forecasts. All this dry policy analysis, aside from being as exciting as Al Gore before his morning coffee, also obscures the truth and serves to confuse people into apathy. So I think it's time for a little moral clarity.
I firmly believe that tax cuts have economically therapeutic effects but I'll make no attempt to convince you of that, for to embark upon such an endeavor would be to descend into the kind of vapid analysis that only sheds light on the consequences of doing right or wrong, without actually revealing what IS right or wrong. You see, I care not at all whether tax cuts increase or decrease government revenue; I don't care about whether they spur or stifle investment; I don't care about whether they make the deficit expand like Bill Clinton's head after he's been fawned over by his sycophants in the media or shrink like the fortunes of democrats who attempted to ride his coattails. I care only about one thing: the fact that it is patently wrong to take as much of people's money as our government does. It is our money -- not the government's. Confiscatory taxation is nothing less than legalized theft. In a word, it is immoral -- and this is why I call taxation the forgotten moral issue.
I find it frustrating that the valid moral element of this issue is almost universally ignored, even by those who advocate tax cuts. And it's not as if it's a difficult position to articulate and defend; on the contrary, our tax system is so profoundly immoral that its acceptance is a testimonial to how people can be conditioned to mistake tyranny for a just social order. Let's think about it: when the mafia forces a business owner to pay money to it in exchange for its protection services, we call it extortion. But when the government forces the same person to fork over a much larger proportion of his income in exchange for its services, it's considered part of the "social contract." And, how about if I told you that you must give me oodles of greenbacks so that I could use them for a good cause, and when you didn't comply I put a gun to your head to extract the money from you. Sure, I could be a modern-day Robin Hood who wants to use the money to feed or educate people or effect some other change that he deems to be social good, but would having these noble ends cause you to characterize what I did as something other than theft? Now, some might say that the difference is that such an action would be an individual pursuit whereas our taxation is the result of majority rule, hence, it's part of the legitimate social contract. But this thinking is flawed because majority vote cannot transform evil into good. After all, the expropriation of the property of the Jews in Germany in the 1930's might have had popular support, but that sanitized the odious action not one iota. Theft is theft, and just because a majority agrees to do it collectively doesn't make it right.
However, the immorality of our tax system is not confined to the "what" but also extends to the "how." What am I talking about? Well, if I approached you on the street and asked you how much you made, what would your answer most likely be? If you're like most people you would politely but firmly tell me that it is personal information -- most everyone instinctively believes that such things are private. Yet, people collectively, within the context of government, ask us that and much, much more every year and we volunteer the information like good little serfs. The fact is that our tax collection mechanism is so intrusive that it gives the government a window into our lives that good old-fashioned despots didn't even dream of having. Why, even the poster-boy regime for tyranny, Nazi Germany, didn't, when collecting taxes, extend the kind of prying eye into people's lives that our government does. That should give each and every one of us pause for thought.
It really is a shame when we get bogged down in the minutiae of fiscal policy when debating the tax and spend crowd, because to do so is to fall into a trap. It serves their ends because since their position has no basis in truth, they can't stand on the truth when arguing their case -- so they have to obscure it. And that is exactly the result when we take the bait and let these political sirens lure us onto the rocks of political defeat in the lukewarm waters of mundane fiscal policy discussion off the coast of Nerdville. Lastly, when we don't seize the moral high ground we relinquish it to these pickpockets with a license to steal, for they will tout the virtues of their plans by proclaiming themselves to be paragons of charity and will portray those who oppose them as Scrooges who are numb to the plight of the poor. But the good news is that they can be dislodged from this high ground with just a few well-placed salvos of truth, because charity means giving the needy the shirt off your back -- not someone else's.
