Taxes v. Spending

American liberals believe that all capital generated in the United States is the property of the United States government. They believe that the sixty-four percent of personal income that the average worke r does not pay in taxes is in fact a gift from the government to the taxpayer. Call it an entitlement. Liberals believe that increasing the percentage of income that is not confiscated through taxes (what normal people call a tax cut) is an increase in federal spending. Truly, modern American liberals have the same view of capital as Karl Marx and nineteenth century socialists.

Nowhere is this frightening belief more obvious than in President Clinton�s rhetoric. �On Capitol Hill, the Republican majority has passed a series of expensive tax breaks to drain nearly a trillion dollars from the projected surplus,� Clinton in his August 5 radio address. On July 31, Mr. Clinton called George W. Bush�s proposed tax cuts for families a reckless increase in spending.

If Americans are not concerned with ideology at this level, they should be. This shift in liberalism�s view of who owns the fruits of one�s labors is potentially the most dangerous blow to individual liberty America has ever seen. Without opposition, this view would mean that a man or a woman with a job is the same as a welfare recipient�how much money they make is determined not by their hard work and frugality, but by a government bureaucrat. One easily imagines a union style pay scale so that CEOs of Fortune 100 companies get one pay, Fortune 101-300 another, and so forth. Potentially, the most talented and hardest working could make more than others, but that would the prerogative of the government, not the laws of economics.

As Charles Murray pointed out in book �In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government,� socialism is incompatible with political freedom. Once the government controls the means of production and the distribution of wealth, it can, without tinkering with the first amendment, abolish political opposition to socialist economics. Here�s how.

Suppose you own a small business with about 60 employees in this semi-socialist new republic. Your income, the number of contracts you get, and how much you pay your employees, is all determined by master economists in Washington.

One of your employees is a right-winger. He reads old copies of National Review on his breaks. He quotes Russell Kirk and Bill Buckley and Ronald Reagan. He served in the military. He was once a Republican. Fine. Then one day, he announces that he is running for Congress on the Economic Freedom party ticket. His reason: he believes that market forces should determine a person�s income. The more demand there is for the fruits of his labor and the more fruit his labor produces, the more money he should make. Moreover, he believes that the government cannot confiscate his earnings without his consent through his Representative in Congress. Real Thomas Paine stuff.

You believe that he has every right to express this opinion. You also realize, as �owner,� that the government, which issues all contracts, does not contract with companies who hold �radical, economically reckless� views that could hurt the national economy. Your friend�s firm went under after he tried to pay bonuses to people who made fewer mistakes. Having a manager who is calling for a completely new tax code would destroy the company.

For the good of everyone involved, you have no choice. You have to fire him. Either he drops this silly, dangerous notion, or this radical is gone. So is freedom.

By controlling wealth, the government can prevent opposition. The first amendment, courts tell us, does not require government to ignore political orientation of the companies it does business with. Every company that ever went after a government contract knows that its internal policies must be politically correct in order to do business with Uncle Sam. It will need diversity training, a diversity officer, and draconian punishments for sexual harassers. Its toilets will be modified with Al Gore flushers. Its letterhead will be printed on recycled paper. Its marketing will target diverse audiences of consumers. Its workforce will meet racial, sex, and age quotas.

Evidence exists that, like Clinton, Al Gore views our untaxed income as welfare. We know from George Stephanopoulos that �Clinton would vent privately that Gore was pushing him to raise taxes too much.� Gore has proposed over $1 trillion in new federal spending, mostly for rather wacky liberal redistribution and environmentalist schemes. Gore�s rhetoric is not couched in the clearly socialist terms of Clinton�s, but that may be the result of his youthful indoctrination in subtle socialism by Soviet agent Armand Hammer�his father�s best friend and benefactor. Between Harvard and Hammer, young Al had the most pro-Soviet, pro-Communist indoctrination available outside Moscow in the 1960s and 1970s.

This fall, despite Clinton�s claims that Bush is trying blur distinctions, we have a real choice. Al Gore will continue America�s march toward socialism. George Bush will reverse it. Voters who believe that the government exists at the will of and to serve the people have no choice but to vote Republican. A vote for Gore is vote against the freedom people. In Gore�s view, if the government loses confidence in the people, it is time to form a new people.