On the Record | Clinton’s Pledge on Debt Emerges as a Risible Claim

Please see my latest wire for The New York Sun, ‘Clinton’s Pledge on Debt Emerges as a Risible Claim’:

A risible headline comes courtesy of Hillary Clinton. “I am not going to add a penny to the national debt,” she promises. Raucous readers are permitted a moment to compose themselves.

Let’s be generous and take the former secretary of state at her word. Seriously. How does she plan to pay for the largesse of her presidential platform, be it infrastructure and research spending, enriching ObamaCare, subsidizing college — among other emoluments to its base?

Vote-buying is an art form among Democrats, who no longer camouflage the contours of their platform, summarized as any number of “soak the rich” vendettas, targeted through income, capital gains, corporate, or inheritance tax hikes. “We’re going to go where the money is,” Mrs. Clinton admits in a restatement of what is called “Sutton’s law,” after Willie “The Actor” Sutton. “We’re going to make the wealthy pay their fair share.”

Without doubt, a cheer erupts from Mrs. Clinton’s constituency, exulting over their supremacy over “the other,” ignorant that no one escapes the consequences of tax increases, the poor and middle class least of all. Revenge is a dish best served as cold comeuppance.

Read more . . .

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My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.

On the Record | Government Greed Axes the Golden Goose

Please see my latest post for the Quarterly Review, ‘Government Greed Axes the Golden Goose’:

President Barack Obama mounted the bully pulpit again last month, to decry the practice of ‘tax inversion’ and those corporations with the effrontery to believe in private property and the profit motive, thus escaping exorbitant tax bills by moving operations out of the United States for the welcoming low-tax jurisdictions of foreign lands.

According to an AP News report:

“Obama called it ‘one of the most insidious tax loopholes out there’ because it shortchanges the country. He said less tax revenue means the government can’t fully spend on schools, transportation networks and other things to keep the economy strong. He said the practice also hurts middle-class Americans because ‘that lost revenue has to be made up somewhere.’”

Oh, dear! Where does one begin to enumerate President Obama’s recurring penchant for economic (and constitutional) illiteracy?

Read more…

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My thanks to Dr Leslie Jones of the Quarterly Review.

Why Progressive Taxation Abuses Tory Policies for the Common Good

Arguable it is that the traditional Tory is more amenable to the exercise of government and the financial burdens therein assumed than is the Whig; modern conservatism, arising from Burke’s pen and Peel’s practice (under the previous tutelage of Pitt the Younger and the 2^nd Earl of Liverpool) were conscious steps away from the Toryism of paternalism and protection—Toryism which had its philosophical foundations in feudal society where the prince exercised charity through personal noblesse oblige but also through the State offices he assumed. Samuel Johnson, the idiosyncratic Tory par excellence, took the American colonists-in-rebellion to task for their Enlightenment views on taxation, arguing in ‘Taxation no Tyranny’ that

the supreme power of every community has the right of requiring from all its subjects, such contributions as are necessary to the publick safety or publick prosperity, which was considered by all mankind as comprising the primary and essential condition of all political society, till it became disputed by those zealots of anarchy, who have denied to the parliament of Britain the right of taxing the American Colonies.¹

Progressive taxation builds on this notion, on the basis that those who earn more can afford to pay more.² From Johnson a theoretical underpinning for graduated taxation can also be adduced, for he held that ‘A tax is a payment exacted by authority from part of the community for the benefit of the whole. From whom, and in what proportion such payment shall be required, and to what uses it shall be applied, those only are to judge to whom government is intrusted.’³ Johnson died in 1784, while the first income tax in the United Kingdom was introduced by Pitt thirteen years later, as a means of funding the nascent Napoleonic Wars.

Our understanding of political economy has evolved much since the time of Johnson; indeed, it was only in the year following Johnson’s essay that Adam Smith published his An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,⁴ incidentally the same year that the Declaration of Independence was announced in Philadelphia. We now have a better understanding of capitalist enterprise, the importance of investment and entrepreneurship, and the limitations of the State in promoting, much less engaging in, productive activities. Far better for the marketplace to create wealth and employment opportunities than to have the State redistribute wealth ineffectually.

Yet beliefs that entrepreneurial activity behaves neutrally to disincentivising taxing policy still exist, nowhere more so than in the reborn idea of ‘progressive’ taxation, which takes the charitable precept that ‘from whom much is given, much is expected’ and enacts it into law. Taken to extreme lengths, it violates Laffer Curve analysis that shows that beyond a certain revenue maximising point—roughly 20-30 per cent—high marginal rates of taxation curb business incentives and, instead of raising more revenue for the State, actually raise less.⁵

To add insult to injury, though progressive taxation was introduced originally as a tax upon the rich, it now encompasses the middle class, both because ‘soak the rich’ policies can no longer fund the burgeoning Welfare State and due to pay rises (largely due to inflationary pressures) which float the earnings of the higher middle class into corresponding tax brackets.

As John Chamberlain wrote of the economic effects,

Psychologically speaking, there is obviously some point where the progressive tax must recoil upon itself, destroying the base from which it might hope to achieve a maximum of “take.” Just where the point is we cannot tell: there is no way of measuring businesses that are unborn, or energies and creative enthusiasm that simply fail to well up. But when a progressive tax dampens the impulse to generate income, then the tax base itself must narrow and diminishing returns set in.⁶

Whatever can be said in favour of progressive taxation as an historical artefact (rooted in feudal duties of noblesse oblige), in practice it has grown out of all proportion as a means of helping at the bottom by skimming more from the top. The appetite of the leviathan State knows no bounds.

Here endeth the first lesson; all which serves as preamble for my essay ‘Taxing the middle class to extinction’, published by courtesy of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

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#DMI_Reads Update — Here is a list of current reading for the month of July:

• William Graham Sumner, The Challenge of Facts and Other Essays, Albert Galloway Keller, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914) [insightful essays on politics and economics from the father of American sociology; I quote extensively from ‘What Makes the Rich Richer and the Poor Poorer?’ in the IEA essay above]; and
• Albert Taylor Bledsoe, Was Davis a Traitor; or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861? (Richmond, VA: Hermitage Press, 1907 [1866]) [an examination of the ‘compact’ theory of American Union (as opposed to the ‘nationalist’ theory) and the legitimacy of state secession, with a view to the Civil War actions of Confederate president, Jefferson Davis].

ENDNOTES

^1. Samuel Johnson, ‘Taxation no Tyranny; an Answer to the Resolutions and Address of the American Congress [1775]’, in The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., vol. 8 (London: Nichols and Son, 1816), 155-204; see 156.

^2. For an excellent overview of progressive taxation, see John Chamberlain, ‘The Progressive Income Tax’, The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, 11:11 (November 1961): 30-42.

^3. ‘Taxation no Tyranny’, 162. Emphasis added.

^4. Curiously, Smith too laid the theoretical groundwork for progressive taxation: ‘The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.’ See An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner, eds., Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. 2b (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1981), V.ii.b.3.

^5. Daniel J. Mitchell, ‘Taxation and government spending’, in A Beginner’s Guide to Liberty, Richard Wellings, ed. (London: Adam Smith Institute, 2009), 36-46; see esp. 42-43.

^6. John Chamberlain, ‘The Progressive Income Tax’, 32.

DMI 2013 Round-Up

While there have been no official DMI updates in a very long time, research has continued apace — although very slowly due to various computer malfunctions and interruptions. Nevertheless, here is a round-up of essays published this year:

• ‘If elections have consequences, then so does economics’ — A look at the Laffer Curve, when high marginal tax rates result in lower revenues, not more.


• ‘Depardieu bids French statists “Adieu!”’ — More on the Laffer Curve, when high marginal tax rates entice wealth creators to flee to more amenable tax jurisdictions.


• ‘March out the vote!’ — Does the State have the right to force individuals to vote, or does such action confuse which demands deference and precedence, citizens or their government?


• ‘The inexorable lessons of currency debasement’ — On the evils of inflating the money supply.


• ‘Median voter theorem: why mainstream parties adopt similar policies’ — Why do opposing political parties so often cling to the centre and present similar policies to the electorate? What does this mean for principled ‘ginger’ groups embedded within such larger organisations?

Several projects-in-hand will continue in the new year: One example is the paradox interwoven in F.A. Hayek’s economics and politics; another involves the phenomenon of ‘liberal Toryism’ — the dynamism between classical liberal laisser-faire economics and the traditional Tory belief in ‘limited paternalism through the State’, ideas which have overtones in the work of Adam Smith and Edmund Burke, and find continuing expression in the 21-st century through various British and American theorists — more to come!

Another experiment in the coming months will be #DMI_Reads, where I will ‘tweet’ my current reading lists and ask for feedback and complementary book recommendations.

As always, remember to follow DMI on Twitter, on Facebook, and (here) on its dedicated page.

All best wishes for 2014!

DMI Omnibus Update on Disraeli’s Birthday

Earl of Beaconsfield

While research and writing at DMI continue unabated, I have been remiss at sending out update notices for several published columns over the last several months. And so without further delay — and in honour of Benjamin Disraeli’s 208th birthday! — here are links to recent postings at the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute to get you caught up:

• ‘The organic roots of oaks and free markets’ takes a tongue-in-cheek Telegraph column and illustrates why the Conservative party’s modern icon of an oak tree is an excellent exemplar of the organic dynamism of free markets, and why a return to the ‘Thatcher torch’ — representing the light of liberty — is a bad omen if taken to mean more robust government intervention in the economy.


• ‘Tax Freedom for the Poor!’ is an appeal to raise the threshold at which the low-paid begin to pay income tax — allowing them to keep more of what they earn will build their self-respect and act as a work incentive, while at the same time curbing the extent of government redistribution. (A second theme of this posting is that while the poor who earn less than the threshold will necessarily be removed from the income tax register, they nevertheless still do pay any number of ancillary taxes, which may itself be considered a good thing: An esprit de corps is fostered with their fellow citizens while making them conscious of the true costs of government.)


• ‘Without capitalism, can there be culture?’ argues that we owe much of our cultural attainment because of the free market and the division of labour which it encourages — not despite of them. (I will admit that other factors contribute to culture, too.) This avenue of defence will be familiar to students of Adam Smith and to admirers of Josef Pieper’s small classic Leisure: The Basis of Culture.


• ‘America’s Chief Magistrate and the Spirit of ’76’ looks at American politics from the perspective of the Founders’ vision of individual liberty and limited government. Intended to be a rather minor position, the Presidency has assumed powers never intended either for the Chief Executive or the Washington establishment. Intrusions into the actions of individuals and the marketplace are hallmarks of ‘government failure’ that only a spirited return to constitutionalism can avert.


• ‘Can Americans afford compromise on the fiscal cliff?’ demonstrates that, à la Laffer Curve analysis, if higher tax revenues are the object, then raising the marginal tax rate on the wealthy is not the answer; though Aristotle taught that compromise as a mean between deficiency and excess is oftentimes the route to realising the common good, when the options are between right and wrong there is only one option. (Cross-posted at Public Finance International.)

Well, that’s a wrap. A reminder, too, to join the discussion on DMI’s Facebook page (please sign-up if you are not already a member) and tell your friends and neighbours about us.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, Season’s Greetings, and all best wishes for 2013!