During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration’s tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of “fairness.”
He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.
No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more “fair” for others?
Even if additional tax revenue all went to poor single mothers — which it will not — the multiple problems of children raised by poor single mothers would not be cured by throwing money at them. Indeed, the skyrocketing of unwed motherhood began when government welfare programs began throwing money at teenage girls who got pregnant.
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Children born and raised without fathers are a major problem to society and to themselves. There is nothing “fair” about increasing the number of such children.
A more fundamental problem with the “fairness” issue raised by Beckel and many others is the slippery vagueness of the word “fair.”
To ask whether life is fair — either here and now, or at any time or place around the world, over the past several thousand years — is to ask a question whose answer is obvious. Life has seldom been within shouting distance of fair, in the sense of even approximately equal prospects of success.
Countries whose politicians have been able to squander ever-larger amounts of a nation’s resources have not only failed to make the world more fair, the concentration of more resources and power in these politicians’ hands has led to results that were often counterproductive at best, and bloodily catastrophic at worst.
More fundamentally, the question whether life is fair is very different from the question whether a given society’s rules are fair. Society’s rules can be fair in the sense of using the same standards of rewards and punishments for everyone. But that barely scratches the surface of making prospects or outcomes the same.
People raised in different homes, neighborhoods, and cultures are going to behave differently — and those differences have consequences. The multiculturalist dogma may say that all cultures are equal, or equally deserving of respect, but treating cultures as sacrosanct freezes people into the circumstances into which they happened to be born, much like a caste system.
Obama talks about " a level playing field," when in fact what he wants is an equalized scoreboard. He makes the playing field about as level as the Andes mountains.
I always enjoy Dr. Sowell's columns. He, of course, is correct here. Whenever one hears the word "fair" or "fairness" come from a politician's mouth you can be assured there is a price tag attached to it. Certainly both parties have used the word and floated concepts of fairness, but the Left has developed, distorted and corrupted fairness into weapon to prey on the basest human reactions; and it works.
Politically speaking, the study of the Left is the study of the lie, conversely, the study of the lie is the study of the Left . . . the lie is the Way.
With approximately 50% of Americans believing they have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by subscribing to the Left's definition of fairness, we who reject the lie have quite a fight ahead.
Thanks Dr. Sowell. Your columns should be required reading for everyone in the current administration - and, for that matter, every elected official in DC.
It's interesting that smug, sanctimonious, self-righteous liberals such as the President, certain other Democratic leaders, and folks like Beckel have the temerity to appoint themselves as the final arbiters of "fairness". Fairness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and all too often the government's attempts to dictate fairness run afoul of that fact. Even the best-intentioned programs, such as Affirmative Action, have bumped into that truth. Less well-intentioned attempts, like the President's current transparent grab for money and power, are doomed to fail even more quickly and spectacularly.
"freezes people into the circumstances" - This is precisly the point. Recognising the realities of life leads to a dynamic approach where people can overcome the "inequalities" and rise to the heights of intellect or wealth (both of which will profit many other people); denying them, through either corruption and cynicism or self-important academic theorising, leads to statism and withering of life-force.
There is income redistribution in this country - via government-imposed taxes - from the middle and upper middle class (who pay 25-35% in federal income taxes + payroll tax) to the super rich (who pay only 15% taxes, even on salaries/carried-interest, and only on income that they are unable to hide in one of the numerous loopholes and tax shelters available to them).
The only way to fix this income redistribution and bring tax fairness is:
1. Tax all income at exactly the same marginal rates. The income of the super rich (capital gains, dividents, salaries for money managers/carried interest) should be taxed at the same marginal rates as regular income - just as when federal taxes were originally introduced in the USA.
2. Close ALL tax shelters and loopholes that the super rich use to hide a large part of their income (Cayman/Swiss accounts, hundred-million-$-tax-free IRAs, etc.)
3. Eliminate the AMT, which now overwhelmingly targets the working middle and upper-middle class!
4. Introduce new tax brackets for incomes over $1M and $10M. When federal taxes were originally introduced in the USA only incomes of over $1.2M (in 2011 adjusted $) were taxed, at progressive rates, but now there is not even a separate tax bracket for incomes larger that $1M.
In reply to Allan Borrows, but slightly off topic, is it just me or did others notice that Warren Buffett (The Buffett Tax), went to Washington to schil for Obama's Tax on Millionaires and nearly immediately the XL Pipeline was killed. Buffett owns the railroad that carries tanker cars full of oil across the country. The pipline would severely hurt his investment. Buffett does nothing that it not in the interest of his investments. Another example of crony capitalism?
Fairness can be nothing more than equal access to the starting line and equal treatment by the adjudicators along the way. Rich or poor, smart or not, we all have a natural right to life and to the freedom for which we were made. Work and objective feedback are the best way to develop a full understanding of what freedom means. Everything offered by the socialistic left is contrary to our natural rights and injurious to our healthy growth. None of the leftists actually practice what they preach, and never do they justify their self-appointment as arbiters of fairness. As free people interact, not always smoothly, the best possible distribution of resources is the felicitous outcome. Anything else is, as Hayek told us, the road to serfdom.
Any time a politician starts talking about fairness, it is usually a liberal talking. And the intent of the that talk is to steal money from producers to buy the votes of the non-producers. This cheats the producer of the fruit of his labor, while enslaving the non-producer in dependency on government support. This is the class-warefare politics of covetousness promoted by Obama. It is tyranny.
