Ryan Streeter
On Tuesday I made the case that instead of acting like we’re defending the rich against Obama and the Democrats’ continual class warfare rhetoric, we should rebut the falsity of their claims about what raising taxes on the wealthy would do, and we should have our own plan to end welfare for the wealthy.
Welfare for the wealthy consists in three forms.
- The government pays entitlement benefits such as Medicare and Social Security to wealthy people who have enough means to take care of themselves.
- The tax code provides numerous deductions and exemptions that especially benefit the upper middle class.
- The government providers real or implied subsidies to industries that primarily benefit the affluent.
On Wednesday, I addressed number 1. Yesterday, I addressed number 2. As I was working on number 3, I realized that Thomas Sowell did my work for me the day of my first post, highlighted yesterday by Veronique de Rugy. There’s no need for me to craft my own argument. Let me restate his. I’m just glad a number of us are talking about this.
Sowell writes:
Many, if not most, people are probably unaware that the government is handing out the taxpayers’ money to billionaires. But agricultural subsidies go to a number of billionaires. Very little goes to the ordinary farmer. Big corporations also get big bucks from the government, not only in agricultural subsidies but also in the name of “green” policies, in the name of “alternative energy” policies, and in the name of whatever else will rationalize shoveling the taxpayers’ money out the door to whomever the administration designates — for its own political reasons.
His basic plan, as I would summarize it, goes something like this (Sowell’s points in bold, followed by my comments):
End agricultural subsidies, at least in large part, that benefit large companies. This, of course, is hard to do. As a Republican friend of mine in Congress who serves a largely rural district once joked with me, “When I – someone who votes conservative 99.5 of the time – was accused of supporting the liberal farm bill, I told them that I never vote liberal. Instead, I reserve 0.5% of my votes for socialism.” Taking on agricultural subsidies is difficult, but the times have never been better for it.
Get rid of “green” subsidies that have, so far, only created confusion in markets. But we’ll need an alternative. We can find that in Devin Nunes’s energy roadmap.
Do a review of all programs, such as flood insurance, that implicitly guarantee property of the wealthy. This is a good point. Most people don’t even know that, as Sowell writes, we have “government-subsidized insurance for posh and pricey coastal resorts that are located too dangerously close to the ocean for a private insurance company to risk insuring them.”
Implement the “MacArthur rule.” Sowell doesn’t quite say it like that, but I like the approach, and it’s been similar to the line of thought we’ve advanced here at ConservativeHome. Sowell writes, “General MacArthur realized that he didn’t have to attack every Pacific island held by the Japanese. He captured the islands that he had to capture, in order to get within striking distance of Japan. In peace as in war, there is no point wasting time and resources attacking heavily defended enemy positions that you don’t have to take.”
Apply the MacArthur rule by forcing choice into what is now compulsory. Allowing the option of opting out of all or portions of Medicare and Social Security would presumably create a path that a greater share of the affluent would choose, thus lowering the costs we spend on them.
I would also add, as I’ve argued previously, that we make means-testing central to the programs, so that the affluent who choose to stay in the programs get less than those who have fewer means.
Liberals think that taxing the rich proves they are the protectors of social justice in America. They win the battle of public opinion on this issue because Republicans simply run away from the fight – which is crazy, since tax hikes on the rich really means screwing the middle class. Eliminating the myriad ways that taxpayer revenues benefit the rich is no lest just. In fact, it’s even more just. It should become a conservative cause.
Comments