Tax Lawyer's Blog

Paul Caron alerts us to an article written by one Frank Pasquale, visiting professor at Yale Law School, in which it is argued that the House’s recently proposed 5.4% surcharge on the rich is  insufficient:

[T] surcharge is not progressive enough, and this should be the main message of liberals commenting on the House bill. . . .  The House’s top bracket for the surcharge is one million dollars.

But it is very hard for me to see why those who make that amount should be treated the same as those in the “Fortunate 400″–the 400 highest earning households which made, on average, more than $263 million apiece in 2006.

Collectivism

I have stated before my opposition to government schemes that involve the confiscation of the property of one class of Americans (the so called “privileged”) for the ostensible benefit of another class of Americans  (the so called “unfortunate”).

For those of you who have been comatose or stranded on an island with a bloody volleyball for the last 60 years, collectivism has been tried many, many times before.

And it has never worked.

Anywhere!

Ever!

(See Stalin, Mao, Castro, Chavez, Jonestown and Hale Bopp.)

Pretty Thoughts

So why do people like Professor Pasquale cling to communalism’s promise of Utopia like my dog clings to my ankle during a summer thunderstorm?

I guess you’d have to be a Viennese shrink to know the answer to that one.

Perhaps it makes them feel better about themselves by allowing them to nurse the comforting illusion that they, the chosen elite, are coming to the aid of their lessers.

Let’s pray it’s not nostalgia.

Confiscation of Wealth as Legitimate Government Policy

What’s most interesting about Pasquale’s article is that he appears to be only nominally concerned about where the additional revenue generated by surtaxing the rich will actually go.

(He says it will go to healthcare reform but doesn’t make a convincing argument that it will or that healthcare reform will actually benefit those whom it is intended to benefit)

He reserves his most passionate rhetoric for the taxing the mega-wealthy part of the equation.

For him, seizing money from those who have a lot of it is in and of itself a laudable reason for . . . um . . . seizing money from those who have a lot of it.

Let’s face it, you can eliminate the wealth gap tomorrow by taking the right amount of money from the “haves” and flushing it straight down the toilet.

The clamor by Mr. Pasquale for the federal government to confiscate money from one class of Americans simply because he thinks it has too much of it is not about lifting any class of Americans up.

It’s about tearing a class of Americans down.

How Totalitarianism Starts

I am not suggesting that Professor Pasquale is a totalitarian.

I believe that he believes that once the government surtaxes the mega-rich it will not lower the bar to begin surtaxing the run-of-the-mill rich, then the upper middle class, then the middle class, then the lower middle class, then the . . . . well,you get the idea.

But I think it’s a naive belief. And coming from an educated and presumably erudite Yale law professor it shows a surprising ignorance (or is it denial?) of history.

No totalitarian worthy of the name has ever came out of the box and said “let’s take everyone’s property and give it to the State.”

That would never work because people have this little quirk about wanting to keep their own property.

Instead, what the budding totalitarian does is convince people that the other guy’s property needs taking.

Totalitarianism always starts by convincing the mob that you’re only going to take the property of those guys over there – the “not-yous” like the Jew, the merchant, the banker, the doctor, the lawyer, the businessman - who really stole it from you in the first place, anyway.

The Slippery Slope

I dislike slippery slope arguments because they make for bad law.

The gun enthusiast opposes a ban on assault rifles not because he believes those weapons are a good idea, but because he thinks once his opponents achieve the ban they will attempt to ban hunting rifles.

Similarly, the pro-choicer opposes a ban on partial-birth abortion not because he favors the procedure, but because he believes that once his opponents achieve the ban they will redirect their efforts at banning second trimester abortions.

But an avalanche does begin with the fall of a pebble.

If the totalitarian can sell the public on that first confiscation, he sets in motion future confiscations which nothing short of the reincarnation of Eisenhower can stop.

We who are mindful of history must do everything we can to prevent that first confiscation, because we know once it’s achieved more and bigger ones will follow.

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