Antidote to the "Tax Fairness" Lie

Need a powerful argument to counter the Left's "tax fairness" gimmick? Stephen Moore and Peter Ferrara provide it:

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

So began Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 short story "Harrison Bergeron." In that brave new world, the government forced each individual to wear "handicaps" to offset any advantage he had, so everyone could be truly and fully equal. Beautiful people had to wear ugly masks to hide their good looks. The strong had to wear compensating weights to slow them down. Graceful dancers were burdened with bags of bird shot. Those with above-average intelligence had to wear government transmitters in their ears that would emit sharp noises every 20 seconds, shattering their thoughts "to keep them…from taking unfair advantage of their brains."

Drawing upon Vonnegut's story, Moore and Ferrara show how the Left's use of progressive tax systems to 'equalize' financial outcomes produces only totalitarian governments, poverty and equality of misery—in fiction and real life. The authors then turn to other inequalities in life and the impossibility of the 'social justice' logic:

Moreover, as Vonnegut's story illustrates, inequalities of wealth and income are not the only important differences in society. If equality is truly a moral obligation, then inequalities of beauty, intelligence, strength, grace, talent, etc. logically all should be leveled as well. That would require some rather heavy-handed government intervention. It is not fair that LeBron James has a 40-inch vertical leap, and we have a 4-inch vertical leap (combined). It is not fair that some have high IQs, and others are below average. It is not fair that Christie Brinkley is beautiful, that some people are born with photographic memories, that one person gets cancer and the next one doesn't. We Americans were born in a land of opportunity and wealth, while billions around the world are born into poverty and squalor. We won the ultimate lottery of life just by being born in this great and rich country. Where is the justice in that?

The goal of a society should not and cannot be to make people equal in outcomes, an impossibility given the individual attributes with which we were each endowed by our creator. It is the opposite of justice and fairness to try to equalize outcomes based on those attributes. It is not fair to the beautiful to force them to wear ugly masks. It is not fair to the strong to punish them by holding them down with excess weights. It is not fair to the graceful and athletic to deprive them of their talents. In the same way, it is not fair to the productive, the risk taking, or the hard working, to deprive them of what they have produced, merely to make them equal to others who have worked less, taken less risk, and produced less.

The Left's notion of fairness bears no resemblance, of course, to our constitutional protection of 'equality under the law':

But doesn't the Declaration of Independence itself say "All men are created equal," and isn't equality a fundamental American ideal? Yes, but these expressions invoke a concept of equality different from the social justice concept of equal incomes and wealth for all.

The original and traditionally American concept of equality is "equality under the law." That means the same rules apply to all, not the same results. Baseball is a fair game because the same rules apply to all players.

Equality of rules protects the property of all, which encourages saving, investment, and work, because all are assured protection for the fruits of their labor. Equality of rules ensures that all enjoy the same freedom of contract, which empowers them to maximize value and production, and plan investment knowing they can rely on their agreed contractual rights. Equality of rules provides a framework in which all are free to pursue their individual visions of happiness to the maximum extent.

The pursuit of equal outcomes is a fool's quest with as devastating an ending for Americans as the characters in Vonnegut's story. Read the full article.