Thursday, April 14, 2011

There's No Such Thing as "Economic Fairness"

If you are a parent, chances are that at some point you have heard your child whine, "But that's not fair," when told they have to do something they don't like. You'll hear that same childish whine if you read almost anything from the left regarding the economy. A good case in point is a column by Steven Perlstein at the Washington Post.
One of the more comical features of the budget debate is to watch the ways in which Republicans refuse to engage on the issue of economic fairness.
No, what's comical is someone who actually believes that "economic fairness" means anything.
Is it fair that the market economy has directed virtually all of the benefits of economic growth to the top 10 percent of households? No answer.
The answer is a combination of who cares, and that's a ridiculous question.
Given this increasingly unequal distribution of incomes, isn’t there room to make the tax code slightly more progressive? No answer.
This question illustrates the silliness and lack of logical reasoning capacity of the "fairness" crowd. It's just as easy to ask why it is fair that successful people have more of their money taken by force and redistributed to the less successful. Is it fair that nearly half the country pays no income taxes, and that the tax burden is already borne disproportionately by the wealthy? Is it fair that people who have worked hard all their lives have to support a significant number of people who won't work, do nothing to better their situations, and view the government as a never-ending source of money that they are entitled to?
In deciding what to spend and whom to tax, lawmakers’ fights over budgets are always fights about values and priorities in which fairness has as rightful a place as fiscal rectitude and economic efficiency.
No, it doesn't. Economic fairness is a purely arbitrary concept that depends entirely on your point of view. Obviously if you are the one being taxed to pay for other people, your viewpoint on economic fairness might differ greatly from someone who thinks they are entitled to more of your money. People who don't understand that fairness depends on perspective, and that many aspects of life are fundamentally unfair -- for good reason -- are fools. When those fools want to use the government to force others to conform to an arbitrary conception of fairness they become dangerous fools.

7 comments:

  1. Is it fair to ignore other taxes? The one progressive tax in this country hurts the rich. No kidding. The regressive taxes and fees hurt the poor. They really do.

    Any honest debate on the tax burden needs to include ALL the taxes (social security, gas tax, sales tax, phone tax, etc) not just the one that suits your purpose. Unfortunately, integrity is lacking on both sides of the argument.

    Curtis

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  2. "Is it fair to ignore other taxes? The one progressive tax in this country hurts the rich. No kidding. The regressive taxes and fees hurt the poor. They really do."

    This post is about the concept of so-called "economic fairness," not about how the tax burden is distributed overall.

    "Any honest debate on the tax burden needs to include ALL the taxes (social security, gas tax, sales tax, phone tax, etc) not just the one that suits your purpose."

    Again, this post isn't making an argument about the tax burden. I'm well aware that the taxes you mention hurt those with less money for obvious reasons.

    "Unfortunately, integrity is lacking on both sides of the argument."

    That may be, but it has nothing to do with this post.

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  3. @UNRR
    I realize that this was not the thrust of your argument. I agree with you on the fairness issue and if you had left out that one sentence I would have said this was a good post.

    However, I am sick of people implying that the income tax is the only tax. It is disingenuous and muddies true debate. Perhaps I should not make a big deal about a throwaway line in a good post but it one of my pet peeves about conservatives and libertarians. I hate it when "my" groups distort the truth.

    Curtis

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  4. "However, I am sick of people implying that the income tax is the only tax. It is disingenuous and muddies true debate. "

    Ok, fair enough. That wasn't my intention but I can see how it might come off that way. Maybe I should have used a counter example from the perspective of someone with a low income getting hammered by paying an 8% sales tax.

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  5. I don't understand this post. Do you believe in fairness in life? Do you think it is ok for the strong to steal from the weak? Do you think having police is a good thing (even if they are imperfect)?

    I think most people (including you) believe in fairness in life, and I don't understand why you think fairness shouldn't apply to economics.

    Having said that, I understand your point about fairness being relative.

    "why it is fair that successful people have more of their money taken by force and redistributed to the less successful"
    Naturally, successful people want to believe that their success is due to their inherent merit and hard work. Often this is (at least partially) true, but I think it is not that simple. I think that if we could somehow quantify someone's merit, and hard work, and against those factors plot their income, the variation would be wide indeed. I realise this is a left-of-centre viewpoint though, and that those on the right generally place a lot more emphasis on personal decisions and self-determination as affecting outcomes.

    You might be interested in this post:
    http://www.juliansanchez.com/2011/04/14/desert-vs-entitlement/

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  6. If you are a parent, chances are that at some point you have heard your child whine, "But that's not fair," when told they have to do something they don't like. You'll hear that same childish whine if you read almost anything from the left regarding the economy

    I think everyone knows that life isn't fair by default - nature never intended fairness. Yet I think that it has been a goal of mankind throughout history to slowly but surely try to correct what we consider to be unfair as much as possible.

    The problem being that what one man considers as unfair another might not. As you said, it is really down to perspective. You yourself are 'whining' about how unfair things are:

    Is it fair that people who have worked hard all their lives have to support a significant number of people who won't work, do nothing to better their situations, and view the government as a never-ending source of money that they are entitled to?

    My point being that both groups have a range of lazy and hardworking amongst them.

    There is a lot of emotional baggage in this post that would take a while to unpack - for instance your characterisation of poor people as lazy and rich people as hard workers.

    But in the end the question of economic distribution isn't down to which group is 'deserves' it more in an emotional sense, but what works best for everyone overall.

    The current situation in America, where the gap between the rich and poor is growing wider, doesn't seem desirable across the board.

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  7. Even if you were to ignore corporate welfare etc and assume that the rich support the poor...are you arguing social Darwinism?

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