The government does not own it, society does not own it, and most importantly, the people who see a number next to “gross income” on their pay stub do not own it. Their core idea-which they are the first to say is not “new” in any sense, because these debates have been running along similar lines literally for centuries-is that no one “owns” their before-tax income. Even though Murphy and Nagel are legal philosophers and not tax scholars, their book became an instant phenomenon among those of us who study taxes. One of the most important books written in the area of tax policy in recent years is The Myth of Ownership, published in 2002 by Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel. The Baseline Problem: Is This the Best of All Possible Worlds? In the end, the Republicans’ argument boils down to the tautology that rich people deserve what they have because they have it.

And that, it turns out, cannot be proved as an objective matter. Do you want to keep “your money”? So do rich people!īut that moral stance can only be justified if one believes that rich people’s wealth was deserved in the first place. It is, again, about the government taking things from people. These regressive tax cuts are often justified by sprinkling on some trickle-down fairy dust, but in the end, the conservative argument is not about efficiency but morality. Republicans are eager to take from the poor and give to the rich. When I write about conservatives’ tax proposals, I frequently invoke the image of Republicans as “reverse Robin Hoods.” Their policy druthers, captured perfectly in the most recent tax bill, always involve cutting taxes on rich people and the businesses that they control and manage. Conservatives try to fend off efforts to change those fundamental realities. Liberals decry the persistence of poverty and extreme divergences in wealth. The key liberal/conservative split in the area of economics-not only taxes, but spending and regulation as well-boils down to concerns about economic distribution. Why is that such a key rhetorical move, and why is it so fundamentally misguided? It seems that every Republican politician tries to get people on his side by saying that “the government should let you keep your money,” or any of a number of variations on that theme. Here, however, I want to focus on the core disagreement between conservatives and everyone else about the ethics of taxation.

There are plenty of reasons Republicans are so fixated on tax cuts, most of which are deeply cynical and are driven by the way that Republicans have so completely turned themselves into the handmaidens of the superrich. Why would they do that when it turns out that their most recent tax cut is widely unpopular (except among their small core of voters, who would never abandon them in any case)? Why do conservatives, both on Capitol Hill and across the country, never tire of pushing their regressive tax-cutting agenda? The Big Debate Is About “Your Money”

(Maybe they should have fixed the health care system rather than constantly trying to undermine it? But I digress.)ĭespite this failure, as I discussed in a recent column, some Republicans are already gearing up for another round of tax cutting. Republicans were wrong to predict that people would gratefully notice the tax reductions on their pay stubs-because, among other things, health care cost increases are larger than the small tax cuts that most Americans are receiving-making a political mockery of all of the Republicans’ efforts to impress people with a few extra dollars of pocket change while massively distributing money upward. Congressional Republicans pushed through a hugely regressive tax bill in December-after holding no hearings and without even allowing members to understand what they were voting on-and Donald Trump happily signed the bill as the only notable legislative win of his presidency. For now, the debate over taxes has subsided in this country.

Sheriff of nottingham