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Townhall...
A New Paradigm for
the Left?
By David Limbaugh
6/17/2011
If you compare the Carter malaise with the Obama debt doomsday machine,
any GOP 2012 presidential candidate should sail to victory with greater
facility than Ronald Reagan did in 1980. But will she or he?
I am optimistic but also believe that in making his economic case, the
Republican candidate will have different challenges because of the
ongoing growth of our welfare state and the attitudes it has ushered
in, along with heightened class warfare.
We could be seeing a paradigm shift in the way people view their social
compact with government. More and more people believe that government
exists not just to perform essential services as delimited in the
Constitution, but as a grand equalizer of economic outcomes.
It’s one thing to argue that those who earn more should pay a higher
percentage of their earnings in income tax. But it’s a completely
different idea to suggest that the government should use the tax code
and other legislative schemes not just to ensure sufficient revenues to
operate the government, but to more equitably distribute people’s
remaining income -- or, possibly, assets.
This is not just a matter of semantics. In this new paradigm, some
contend that irrespective of the government’s operating needs, it has a
moral right -- and a duty -- to proactively intervene to redistribute
income.
I observe this latter attitude with increasing frequency. It’s not just
President Obama indicting corporations and “obscene profits” by saying
that the wealthy should spread the wealth around and that at some
point, people have made enough money.
It’s liberals I encounter who are constantly complaining about the
“largest wealth gap in our history” and blaming it on George W. Bush
and the evils of capitalism.
In their disappointingly simplistic view (articulated in an email I
received), the Bush tax structure created this “gap” by “transferring
money from the middle class to the rich ... and transferring our debts
to our grandchildren.”
But wait. Under the Bush tax rates, higher-income earners paid a higher
percentage of their income in taxes. Any transfer of wealth was from
higher-income earners to lower-income earners. Plus, almost half the
people don’t pay income taxes at all, and some 60 percent take more
from the government than they pay in.
I told the emailer he was factually wrong and also misguided to believe
it is government’s function to proactively redistribute wealth. (We’re
talking more than safety nets here, by the way.)
He replied, “Yeah, the CEO of Disney ‘earned’ $50 million last year
without the help of government through the invisible hand of the
market.”
Note the palpable contempt. He and others convince themselves that
government is greasing the skids for high-income earners, but what
they’re really angry about are the inherent disparities of outcomes
under a free economic system. Whether or not they realize it, they
don’t much like capitalism, which is why they’re always pushing us
toward socialism.
These same people also seem to object to disparities of income between
Americans and the rest of the world. They apparently believe it is
morally wrong that we are more prosperous than other nations and
consume more of the world’s resources.
It only follows that we would detect a disturbing correlation between
their anti-capitalist mindset and their attitude toward economic
prosperity and even debt tolerance. Those who have a chip on their
shoulder about capitalism and America’s wealth don’t seem to be nearly
so anxious about the nation’s growing debt crisis. They either naively
assume it’s not that bad or figure that even if it is, there’s nothing
wrong with America’s getting its comeuppance. Maybe an economic
meltdown would put us in our place -- and in the meantime, it might
cause us to draw down our evil “military-industrial complex” and our
warmongering arsenal.
I am not suggesting that leftists of this particular stripe wish
economic harm on the nation, but I am saying they look admiringly at
European socialism, with its perennial unemployment of 15 percent. I am
saying that they believe the government should proactively redistribute
wealth -- to a much greater extent than it is doing now. I am saying
that they are wholly unbothered by the obvious unfairness that almost
50 percent of the people pay no income taxes. And I am saying that most
of them either don’t understand that their prescriptions to equalize
outcomes rather than opportunity inevitably result in less for everyone
or don’t care because they believe it’s preferable for everyone to have
much less than it is for some to have a great deal more than others
under a free system.
This kind of thinking is dangerous to a free and prosperous society,
and as 2012 approaches, conservatives have to address it and start
remaking their moral case for capitalism and liberty. Under this
ever-softer society, that’s quite a tall order.
Read it at Townhall
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