On Income Inequality and the Question of Justice

The Acton Institute remembered that I wrote about Alabama and Susan Pace Hamill’s tax crusade in The End of Secularism.  In the book, I didn’t express agreement or disagreement with her argument.  Instead, I used the politics of the episode to show something about the flexible barriers between church and state.  Now, thanks to a prompt from the Acton Commentary series, I have written an article on contentions made about income inequality in a PBS program in which Hamill and others appeared.  Here it is:

A recent episode of the PBS program Religion & Ethics Newsweekly addressed the issue of income inequality. Predictably, the conversation centered on the question of whether redistribution of wealth is a suitable way to remedy the purported problem.

Harvard professor Michael Sandel (who teaches a famous course on justice) suggested that redistribution is warranted because lots of different kinds of people work hard, but achieve vastly different results in terms of income. Why should a school bus driver work hard and make a low income, while a high level business manager works hard and makes a much higher income? Now, perhaps Dr. Sandel was limited by the constraints of television, but this framework for evaluating income inequality seems unsatisfying.

If effort is the key indicator, then why not give a superior claim to a man who sets a most arduous task for himself in the form of tearing down and rebuilding his house? Of course, it seems silly to reward him because his work doesn’t achieve anything. So, effort is not the key point. How about useful effort? A line operator in a factory might contribute something to thousands of pieces of work each day, but the engineer who designed the process made a far larger contribution because he enabled the entire production run. Even though it is true that we can distinguish levels of work as hard or easy, there are other things that matter, too. Effectiveness and impact come into play.

The Federalist Papers recognized that even if we could arrest the economic progress of all citizens and pull them back to the starting line, it would only be a matter of time before differences in motivation, virtue, practice, creativity, preparation, delayed gratification, and any number of other factors would lead to some substantially outpacing others. In Common Sense, Tom Paine identified the difference between rich and poor as one that could be accounted for with justice while royal status could not.   Does this mean that the rich always deserve to be rich and the poor always deserve their relative lack of wealth? No, but very often it is possible to explain why some people’s efforts warrant their large incomes in a way that others’ efforts do not.

Sandel went on to single out the estate tax as a way to remedy the unfair head start given to some citizens that allows them to enjoy more wealth than others. This view of what is fair and unfair echoes the one we just examined. It pays little attention to the question of what is a just cause and/or effect. If, for example, a woman rises from no great circumstance to become a medical doctor with a surgical practice, the income she earns is well-justified. She has to cultivate her mind through education, train extensively, experience substantial delayed gratification financially, endure long hours, give up family time, tolerate a very high level of technical risk and difficulty in her work, and be prepared to drop anything at inconvenient hours to meet a crisis. At the same time, the results (or the effects) or her work can be truly life-changing for patients. How can it be unjust for this woman to want her hard-earned capital to benefit her child? Should a very wise person be prevented from passing on life lessons to his child? Should a very healthy or beautiful person be forbidden to pass on outstanding genes? Why should money be different? Does Sandel’s notion of leveling out advantages through the estate tax actually result in more justice than allowing the natural effect of a lifetime of highly skilled and technically difficult work to take place?

Also in the episode, University of Alabama law professor and progressive tax crusader Susan Pace Hamill argued that Alabama’s low property taxes, high sales taxes (applying even to food), and income tax that applies even to low levels of income constitute a sub-Biblical ethic of revenue collection. Her reasoning is that the highest taxes apply to consumption, while the taxes that target wealth, like the property tax, are relatively low. Her proposal is that the tax system be made more progressive and the greater revenues (if realized) would go to finance public efforts like the educational system to improve equality of opportunity.

Hamill’s method of applying a Biblical ethic to taxation is highly laudable in that it avoids the pietistic impulse that individualizes Bible teaching to the point of social irrelevance. In addition, one can see how Hamill was able to move Alabama’s Reaganite governor, Bob Riley, to support her efforts to change the system. Conservatives have long focused on achieving equality of opportunity rather than equality of results. To the extent Hamill’s proposal does that, it is morally and rationally superior to Sandel’s case for redistribution. But the question remains whether progressivity of taxation (especially in the form of rising marginal tax rates) achieves justice.

Hadley Arkes, author of First Things (the book, not the magazine) approached the issue in the following way. We are all free agents responsible for our own actions.  If one man injures another man, the responsibility is clear and the one who did wrong must pay. If a man is injured because of his own mistake in judgment or because of recklessness, he should bear the cost of his own error. But if a man is injured in an accident that is no one’s fault, then the community should seek to help him. And how might we help this man? Should we simply find a rich man, grab him by the collar and demand he pay for medical care and income supplements? Not according to Arkes, because there is no rich man who bears the blame for the injury. No, if we wish to come to the aid of the injured man, then we should take on the burden in a proportionate way, as a community. If one percent from each person is needed to help make him whole, then we will all pay one percent each. On that basis, the rich man will still pay far more than a poor one, but the same rule will have applied to each man. And is that not the very definition of justice?

Hunter Baker is the author of The End of Secularism and the winner of the 2011 Michael Novak Award.

 

The Ars Moriendi and Moral Thinking

I have been reading Rob Moll’s excellent Intervarsity Press book The Art of Dying.  One of Moll’s key points is that we know we will die and in order to do so well, we need to have thought about it ahead of time.  He doesn’t mean that we should obsess about death, sleep in caskets, or wear black all the time like a disturbed woman I saw on a television program.  Instead, he encourages us to think about what it means to have a good death.  While we are removed from the immediate danger, take advantage of the calm to consider how we should die and how we should make decisions about dying.

As I thought more about it, I realized that Moll’s insight about death has a lot to do with both moral and political thinking generally.  One of the great reasons to draw up a constitution, for example, is to try to set up rules ahead of time.  We need to have considered the possible situations for which law will be needed and to propose them now before they happen and we are caught up with either interestedness or our passions.

Bringing the example closer to home, I think about something I wrote several years go in response to a mass shooting incident at Virginia Tech:

I remember going for an evening walk with my young wife some years ago. As we strolled past a heavily wooded yard with a house barely visible, I suddenly heard the menacing growl of a very obviously big and mean dog. My immediate reaction was to run. The big muscles in my legs flexed and fired. The only thing that stopped me was my wife’s anguished cry, “Hunter, don’t leave me!” I forced down the fear impulse, backed up and put myself between her and the threatening sound. We walked on and nothing happened.

When Professor Librescu, an old man, a septuagenarian whose body had been through the terrors of the Holocaust, spotted a terrible threat he pushed his weight against a door and tried to keep a killer from murdering his students. All but two of the students and Librescu got away. In an email exchange yesterday, a friend wondered why able-bodied young men would have chosen to run instead of coming to the assistance of their heroic professor.

Thinking of my own experience and looking at what happened in that besieged classroom in Virginia, I think I know the answer. Liviu Librescu had seen death up close much earlier in life. He very probably saw his friends and neighbors killed and had many opportunities to measure his own reactions in light of right and wrong, valor and heroism. It is no surprise to me that such a man would resist rather than run. I suggest to you that he knew exactly who he was and who he was determined to be. The young men in that classroom were probably a lot like me in the situation with the dog. They were untested and had probably never been in serious physical danger. More important, they had probably never stopped to consider what they would expect of themselves in a life and death situation.

There are a couple of lessons that come to mind. The one that many conservatives will point to is that we have a culture that does not successfully impute manliness. We already knew the ethic of dedication to wife and children had slipped badly. We knew less well that we weren’t raising boys with expectations of self-sacrifice and protectiveness toward others. But this is the smaller of the two lessons.

The greater lesson is that we should all take pains to reflect on who we want to be and what we really believe. It was once common to speak of the examined life. That phrase fell under the massive heap of self-help materials and endless reflection on why we don’t have a better sex life, more money, and a better job. But the examined life goes deeper than that. It comes down to knowing who you are. Without it, you will almost inevitably run in the face of danger, quail before the bully, and excel in self-justification after the fact rather than action in the relevant frame.

Unprepared and without prior thought, none of us know how we will react in these situations. But we can prepare ourselves for the event and drastically increase the chance that we WILL do what we merely hope we would.

Take Rob Moll’s advice with regard to death and many other important moments in life.  Prepare yourselves, friends.

 

 

Unbroken

When my mother called me on the phone to tell me about a book she’d recently read, I listened with some interest, but begged her not to send it along.  She is the type of person who will immediately run to the post office or to UPS to ship a book or anything else that is not nailed down which she thinks someone might enjoy.

Hold off, I said.  I’ll see you, soon, I said.  I only live three hours away, I said.

Didn’t matter.  She sent it.

And I have to say, I am glad she did.  The book was Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand.  I recognized her as the author ofSeabiscuit.  I hadn’t read that book, but had seen the movie and wasn’t all that excited about reading some new story about a plucky and determined hero.

I could not have been more wrong, more stupidly snobbish, or closer to missing out on a good thing.

Unbroken is the life story of Louis Zamperini, a man whose life experiences included driving his community crazy as a juvenile delinquent, blossoming into an Olympic distance runner, flying bomber runs in WWII, surviving (after a crash) what was at the time the longest recorded sea float in history, and being beaten and humiliated as a prisoner of war by the Japanese.  I have scarcely been so riveted by a work of non-fiction in several years.

As I read the book, I thought with excitement that it has the potential to be a spiritual milestone for many people.  The father God is an important part of Unbroken.  So, too, is Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  These things won’t jump up as strongly as they do in the genre of Christian books and testimonials, but they are there and unmistakably so.  I have little doubt that large numbers of people will look at what God did in the life of Louis Zamperini and will tentatively venture out in faith, looking for God to rescue them and preserve them.

Does Mitt Romney Have a Mormon Problem?

John Mark Reynolds has a piece up at the Washington Post On Faith blog about Mormonism and the challenges its practitioners face in the political arena.  In the post, he notes that the LDS church upholds many virtues that are beneficial to the republic, while its “theological vices” are not threatening to the community.  I don’t take issue, really, with any of this.  Certainly, it is true that the LDS church cherishes America and wishes it well.  It is also true that the LDS church has nurtured a number of outstanding citizens.  Tangentially (very tangentially), one of the best lines in the piece is where Reynolds notes that the media is highly aware of Glenn Beck’s Mormon faith and amnesic with regard to Harry Reid’s.

However, I think much of the concern with the public perception of the Mormon church is misplaced with regard to politics.  Being Mormon is probably not as heavily disabling a factor as many think it is.  I know many will point to Mitt Romney’s run for president in 2008 as proof of anti-LDS bias, but too much may have been made of it.  Mitt Romney had several pretty serious problems facing him in the presidential primary.

First, he ran for president as the one term governor of Massachusetts.  It does not inspire confidence when a governor holds office for one term, declares victory, and abdicates for a presidential run.  This is especially true when one suspects he would not have been able to win a second term.  That, of course, is not Mitt Romney’s fault.  It is Massachusetts’ fault, but it still reflects badly on him as a political champion.

Second, Romney conducted his campaigns for office (senator and governor, unsuccessful and successful) in Massachusetts and thus had to run away from the kind of conservative image that attracts voters in many other parts of the country.  Opponents could point to archival evidence of Romney distancing himself from Reagan’s legacy, for example, and making statements in sympathy with the pro-choice position.

Third, Romney’s crowning achievement as governor of Massachusetts was presiding over a comprehensive health care reform effort which required individuals to purchase health insurance.  Setting arguments about federalism and the appropriateness of states doing such a thing versus the federal government doing it aside, that kind of gubernatorial activity did not create the strongest foundation for a Romney primary run in ’08.

All of this is to say that being a member of the LDS church was probably not Mitt Romney’s biggest problem as a politician running in conservative primaries.

“Here Am I. Send Someone Else.”

I have to give credit to my pastor, Ben Mandrell of Englewood Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee, for this title and idea.  He plans to preach the sermon next week, but he couldn’t help but give a preview in the form of a few examples.  Here are some approximations of what he said:

Lord, that family down the street seems really lonely.  Send someone to give them company and fellowship.

Father, that boy seems not to have a father.  Put someone in his life to fill that need.

Lord, that single mother in my Sunday school class appears to be in real financial distress.  A few hundred dollars would make a real difference for her.  Father, please provide for her need.

Probably most of you reading these examples are already smiling.  You see the problem, don’t you?  The very fact that we have observed a real need in another person or group of persons likely means that WE ARE THE ONES GOD INTENDS TO MEET THE NEED.

Can you be the one who invites the lonely family over to your house?  Can you offer to spend time with the boy who has no father?  Can you be the one who has the resources on hand to immediately and dramatically help the single mother in financial need?  Gut check time.  Can you do it even if you won’t realize a tax deduction in the process?

This is a spiritual challenge that we are generally not eager to accept.  If we decide to live our lives in such a way that we are very sensitive to God’s promptings, we may end up giving more than we really want to give.  We may end up with lots of little incursions on our time or our money.   Maybe some big ones.

But do we seriously believe God can be pleased with us if we do not commit to exactly this way of life?

Nero Wolfe: Too Many Cooks (A Social Comment)

Last time I wrote about a Wolfe novel, I panned The Black Mountain, which disrupted the Wolfe formula by taking him away from his famed New York brownstone. I thought the break in the formula was the problem. Too Many Cooks proves me wrong. This time Wolfe and Archie go to a spa in West Virginia where the world’s 15 greatest chefs are gathering for fellowship. One of them is much hated and ends up assuming room temperature. Wolfe doesn’t want to figure it out, but circumstances force him into it. Wonderful story. Pick it up.

But the point of this post is not so much to review the book as it is to note the interesting perspective on race. The book was published in 1938. At various points I was horrified by the references to the black men working at the spa. They are called boys, niggers, shines, etc. One black man’s wife is said to have left him to raise three “pickaninnies.” Local law enforcement is clearly racist (which plays a part in the way the facts develop) and Archie is not much better.

Because author Stout chooses to speak primarily through Archie, I began to wonder about Stout. Not to worry. Once Wolfe goes into action we finally see a man who has his head on straight about race. He dispenses with racist language and attitude and is rewarded with a frank relationship with the black men who are very relevant to the story.

The longer one thinks about the book, the more one reflects on race and the times. I continue to be haunted by the way Wolfe tells the black waiters and cooks that he is told blacks and whites have a certain way of dealing with one another in a place like West Virginia, but then demolishes the notion by proving that individuals matter much more than race.

When did that strain of civil rights cease to be a mainstay of the discourse?  Laws that deal with ethnic or racial groups rather than individuals are, generally speaking,  a mistake.

The Unteachable Michael Kinsley

Michael Kinsley has a column up at The Politico in which he claims to debunk a series of Reagan myths.  The one that annoys me the most is the one that is obviously and clearly incorrect and at the same time gets the least explanation from Kinsley.  Here it is:

6. The Reagan tax cuts paid for themselves because of the Laffer Curve. Please.

With every other “myth” Kinsley takes on, he at least feels the need to explain himself.  Not so with the Laffer Curve.  I suspect the reason Kinsley doesn’t narrate here is because the slightest bit of examination would reveal that the Laffer Curve is AXIOMATICALLY TRUE.

Too much?  No.  The Laffer Curve is undeniable.  It looks like this:

It is very simple.  If you tax at either 0% or 100% you will get nothing because either there is no tax OR the effort of making money is not worth it.  You can increase taxes to some optimum point where you will continue to get more revenue up to the point where increased taxation becomes counterproductive because it causes people to reduce their effort.  We observed this phenomenon actually occurring in the United States when we had ultra-high marginal tax rates.  Various types of earners curtailed their effort once they hit the magic level at which they would begin to pay the highest rates.  They preferred to put off additional activity until the next year.  Famously, the detective novels about Nero Wolfe mentioned his tendency to take a few months off at the end of the year because of the top rates of taxation.

Because people react rationally to high rates of taxation, you will realize less revenue because of a reduction in taxable activity.  What exactly is Kinsley saying “Please.” about?  Does he deny that moving from a 70% tax on the highest earners to a rate in the 30′s or high 20′s could lead to increased revenue as top producers expand  their efforts and investments AND stop working so hard to conceal money they have made and otherwise evade taxation? At a lower rate, it is obvious that non-compliance becomes a risk much less worth taking.

No, Reagan’s embrace of the Laffer Curve was the most rock-solid common sense.  And by the way, look at federal revenues after the tax reduction.  Real federal revenues increased quite nicely.

The only way the Laffer Curve would be wrong is if one misinterpreted it, as some do.  For example, anyone suggesting you would gain more revenue by reducing a 20% tax rate to 10% is probably wrong.  But moving out of the prohibitive zone, which is likely anything over 50%, is a shrewd policy decision.

Trouble with “The Government”

Ruth and I were talking to our children about money.  We explained how you give some it away to people who need it.  You buy some things. You save some of it for when you need it.

It then occurred to me that I should explain taxes.  I told the kids that I would first have to give some of the money to the government.  It isn’t even a choice.  When I get money the government gets to take some of it.

Grace (age 5) was astonished.  She said, “If I have to go to the government, then I’m just going to sit really still and not say anything.”  I asked her what she meant.  She said, “When I go see Mr. Government, I’ll just be very quiet and not make any noise.  I won’t tell him anything.  Because I don’t want him to steal all my money.”

Out of the mouths of babes, as they say . . .

A Prediction about Reading and E-Books

I am a serious reader.  Books have been my constant companion for as long as I could read.  It is now becoming clear to me that books and publishing are about to change very soon.  Here’s what I predict:

1. The notion of a book as a distinct entity from an article or an essay is going to diminish dramatically.  It really is all going to be content.  You will pay for a book what an author thinks he can get for it, not what the length of it might dictate.  The folks at 37 Signals did a nice job demonstrating that with their short, but pithy book ReWork.
2. Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt disputes the notion that half of all book sales will be e-books by 2014.  If we include free/cheap public domain content, I suspect the amount will actually be quite a bit higher than half.  Certainly, that is likely to be the case in the United States.  Hyatt is a publisher and by all rights knows more than I do as a new-ish author, but I still think he’s off on this one.
3. That leads me to my next point.  Publishers are toast.  I don’t know how long it will take, but it won’t be as long as you might expect.  Publishers have several advantages right now.  They have distribution, marketing, access to printing presses, design services, etc.  All of those are headed off a cliff as their special possessions.  Publishers are middlemen and this is an age of death to the middle man.  Authors won’t need the publishers for printing and distribution.  They are frequently dissatisfied with the marketing done on their behalf.  To the extent they need the services listed above, they can either pay third parties or offer them a stake in book revenue.  The short way to say all this is that the publisher’s ability to add value to a project is going down rapidly.
4. Point 3 does not suggest a further big democratization of access to the reading public.  There will still be a limited number of people capable of commanding much of an audience, but their brand will come from things other than their publisher.  Universities will have brand power.  Think tanks will have brand power.  Innovative companies will have brand power.  Celebrities have brand power.  Certain types of content have brand power because of a specialized audience.  You get the idea.  If anything is lost from working with a publisher, it will be more than compensated for by the much larger share of revenue authors will get from selling their work.
5. Authors will become significantly more vigorous in the promotion of their own work and more ingenious.  Every author (certainly those without guaranteed huge success) has been dissatisfied with his publisher’s marketing and has thought about buying ads on his own or hiring a p.r. company to help with media.  But the dilemma is always the same.  Why should the author pay the full expense of something that will benefit the publisher three or four times more than it will benefit him?
6. Hardback books will become a luxury item.  Most printing of books will be on-demand.  Buying a book will be a little like renting a movie once was.  You bring the case and someone goes and finds the movie.  You’ll bring a card with the book title and they’ll print a book for you.  The great majority of books will be read electronically.  The ability to read whatever you want from your collection at any time is just too great to ignore.  And in an increasingly mobile society with job changes very frequent, a large library is expensive to move around.  Better to just carry about 10,000 volumes in a roof shingle sized device!
7. If bookstores survive, it will be more as coffee shops and internet/reading rooms than as places where physical books are kept.  Membership fees might make sense.
8. E-readers and tablets will conquer the problems of difficulty navigating through a book electronically and identifying page numbers.  Reference points are needed and pages are just always going to be superior to “location 57891 of 78456.”  Screens will become larger and foldable for a more book-like experience.  In addition, the problems of note-taking will also be easily and quickly fixed.