Class warfare is the last bastion of the intellectual invalid

Until we all starve together

Today Frank Rich wrote a column in the New York Times that focused primarily on the horrors of wealth disparity, in which he lamented the same old class warfare bs, that the top 1% of wage earners took in 28.5% of all of the pre-tax income, that there are billionaires paying less in taxes than their secretaries, yadda yadda yadda.  His “broader” (I use the term loosely) argument is that wealth disparity is damaging not just in terms of socioeconomic mobility but also damaging to the American culture of self-determination itself.

That burden is inflicted not just on the debt but on the very idea of America — our Horatio Alger faith in social mobility over plutocracy, our belief that our brand of can-do capitalism brings about innovation and growth, and our fundamental sense of fairness. Incredibly, the top 1 percent of Americans now have tax rates a third lower than the same top percentile had in 1970.

There are several things in this that are misled, and more that are downright silly.  The issue with the billionaire hedge fund manager paying less in taxes than his secretary, for example, has absolutely 0% nothing to do with whether the income tax rate on the rich needs to be raised.  We have a progressive tax system, we’ve had one for a very long time.  The reason the billionaire can avoid paying taxes is because federal and state governments have repeatedly attempted to use tax policy to manipulate behavior, leaving ample ground for high-priced accountants (that his secretary presumably can’t afford) to get people out of owing what we’d consider their fair share.  Conservatives have been screaming at the top of their lungs for generations that we need to drastically simplify the tax code, and the left-wing has been the sole road block to achieving those goals.  It’s hard to not suspect that at a certain level the left blocks reform so they can retain their favorite talking point.

Ultimately the much more pervasive and dangerous argument Rich makes is that it’s not only OK, but necessary, for the government to use tax policy to play Robin Hood.