Who Pays?

Thinking about this post, I realized that I had glossed over a key element of Samuelson's dishonesty.

In arguing that shortfalls require benefit cuts, Samuelson simply assumes that the money should come from beneficiaries--not out of insurer profits, not out of pharmaceutical industry profits, and not out of the pockets of the wealthy. Samuelson's column is really about who should pay, but he disguises it as an argument for the necessity of paying--thus allowing him to slip in his conclusion without ever having to argue it.

Last week, Michael Medved took time outf from attacking left-wing propaganda films like Happy Feet¹ to recite the standard right-wing talking points against progressive taxation (hat tip: Amanda). Short version: taxing the rich is unfair, hurts the economy, invites evasion, and reduces tax revenues (all of which Amanda ably dispatches).

It relies on dishonesty akin to Samuelson's: Medved pretends that the question is whether to pay, rather than who pays. In arguing that the wealthy should pay less, Medved is really arguing that the poor and middle-class should pay more, but he knows that won't sell, so he tries to make it an argument against taxes in general.

This sort of dishonesty is essential to Republican arguments on domestic policy. The granddaddy of all these lies is the chimera known as a 'tax cut'. They dress it up as something for everyone (much more for some, of course) to make people think there really is a free lunch. In reality, they're shifting taxes--from Paris Hilton, now, to middle class families, in the future--and the kicker is that with additional interest figured in it's really a tax increase. It's a truth so necessary and obvious and yet so widely ignored that they should make kids recite it every day in school, make it part of the Pledge of Allegiance: there is no such thing as a tax cut.

Now, your standard-issue conservative will counter this with the assertion that it isn't tax-shifting if there are also spending cuts. The obvious point is that it doesn't happen that way (the last six years have proven that pretty decisively); the less obvious but more important point is that someone still pays: Medicare patients, people on government assistance, poor and middle-class college students, people harmed by pollution, people who visit national parks--all of the above, and more. It isn't about whether to pay; it's always about who pays.

Liberals are pretty clear about who we think should pay, and why. We think the biggest share should come from those at the top of the ladder--because they can pay without discomfort; because they get the greatest benefit from government; because whatever drive and hard work and talent may have gone into getting them where they are, they still wouldn't have gotten there without relying on infrastructure paid for by previous generations.

These are winning arguments, as long as it's understood that somebody has to pay. That's the problem, and that's the opportunity. That's the point we need to hammer over and over and over until it becomes as reflexive as Medved's talking points. If it's about whether to pay, they win; if it's about who pays, we win. We need to make damn sure it's always about who pays.


¹I kid you not.

[That's all, folks]