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April 23, 2002 8:30 a.m. In Their Own Words The Myth of Ownership reveals the Left’s true colors.

he New York Times reported favorably Sunday on a bizarre new book that suggests that Americans should stop whining so much about taxes and instead be happy with the money that the government, in its benevolence, allows us to keep. According to this new book, entitled very appropriately, The Myth of Ownership, by two New York University professors, Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, there really is no such thing as private ownership, because nothing would be earned and no wealth would be created without government.

This book is a great contribution to the debate about taxes, because it reveals how many on the Left really feel about private ownership . . . but won't come out and say so in public. Murphy and Nagel, thankfully, are not as constrained by this etiquette. They actually make the argument that it is a "compelling fantasy that we earn our income and the government takes some of it away from us." They are the first academics to my knowledge who actually come out and say: The government owns the fruits of your labor, and your real income is what Uncle Sam permits you to keep.

The basis for the Murphy and Nagel argument is that there is no such thing as "pre-tax income." There would be no income at all without government because without laws that protect property rights and so on, there would be only chaos. We are purchasing social justice with our taxes, they continue, and we should be pleased with the results and the small price we pay. Taxes can only be judged on the basis of what they pay for. Murphy and Nagel apparently believe that they are getting a good deal from all the good government we get with our taxes.

I tend to agree with Milton Friedman, who once said, "Thank God we don't get all the government we pay for." But let's go ahead and take on the communitarian argument imbedded in the Murphy-Nagel thesis on taxes.

Very few people — even radical libertarians — would argue that we should have no government, or that our taxes don't provide some value. Yes, we need police, and courts, and protection of property rights, and a military, and roads, and schools. But most of the taxes we now pay are not for the basic services that government's traditionally render. Nowadays, government is simply an income transfer machine: robbing Peter, who is generally productive, to pay Paul, who is generally unproductive.

Today, about two-thirds of the federal budget is for income transfers from one group to another. Most Americans have come to the conclusion that these programs don't even do a good job of promoting "social justice," whatever that means. For example, most Americans came to view the great welfare state as an abysmal failure that was creating multiple generations of unproductive citizens. And the evidence confirms that they were right.

This is where Nagel and Murphy are so fundamentally wrong-headed. They argue essentially that Americans should stop fretting about taxes, because we get our money's worth in all the services government provides. Millions of Americans have just the opposite attitude. "Hell no," we say, "we're not getting anything near our money's worth out of government."

Government at all levels is now spending about $28,000 a year per household. That's twice what government was spending per household after adjusting for inflation in the mid 1960s. Are government services better? Are the schools, for example, better? Few people other than Nagel and Murphy say yes.

This is where the Left simply fails to connect with everyday voters. People like Nagel and Murphy assert that middle-class workers have been virtually hypnotized into believing that government is a bad deal due to the infected culture of "everyday libertarianism." Actually, government is a lousy deal.

Here's just one little example: In Washington, D.C., the private schools provide a superior education at less than half the cost of the public schools. And so it goes with almost every "service" government provides. I always wonder whether those who argue that government is as productive as the private sector have lately been to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

But at what point, one wonders, does the government's share get too large? One hundred years ago the government took less than $0.10 on the dollar. Now it takes around $0.40. In many European nations politicians take $0.60 on the dollar. In socialist countries, it was $0.80 to $0.90, and those economies eventually collapsed. In the 1960s Britain had a 95% top tax rate. This prompted the Beatles to write the song "Taxman," in which George Harrison says: "If 5% appears too small, be thankful I don't take it all." Harrison was kidding. Murphy and Nagel aren't.

It says a lot about the politics of the New York Times, the paper of record, that this silly and flawed book received a fairly flattering review. Reporter David Cay Johnston writes that the book "offers ideas that would improve the national debate about how we should tax ourselves, even if their views never gain popular acceptance." Why would that be, one wonders? Johnston ends his review by writing: "What is more likely, unhappily, is that reasoned suggestions — from many sources — will be drowned out in the din of mindless antitax soundbites."

Hey, wait a minute. Will someone please tell these writers that our nation was founded by patriots armed with mindless anti-tax soundbites.

— Mr. Moore is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.