Are We Just Animals on a Government Farm?
Laughing at Laffer and looking for answers on #MemeMonday
At a dinner in 1974, economist Arthur Laffer drew a simple chart on a napkin to explain to those present why he opposed President Ford’s proposed tax increase. Though it has since become known as the Laffer Curve, the idea was much older—perhaps going as far back at fourteenth-century Tunisia.
The concept is simple:
If taxes are zero percent, government raises no revenue. (Obviously)
If taxes are 100 percent, government also raises no revenue. People will simply stop doing any taxable activity if all of their money is taken when they do.
There is some theoretical sweet-spot tax rate at which revenue is maximized: not so high as to stop people from working, but high enough to bring in the most possible revenue.
Economically, the concept is sound.1 Morally, however, engaging in such analysis is misguided, for a simple reason:
Who cares what the point is at which government revenue is maximized? Government is a mafia.
Growth-maximizing point? What are we farm animals—our lives carefully curated to extract the most productivity out of us?
Our lives are our own. Our money is our own.
We should expect this garbage from leftists. The primary objective of leftism is to take from some and give to others—to (attempt to) equalize outcomes. And they need a large, powerful state with irresistible taxing power to do it.
But conservatives—you should know better. Somewhere in the recesses of your mind, you know this is wrong. You should not be engaging in this kind of thinking.
You believe that government should be “limited.” Now ask yourself why.
Because the individual has natural rights, and a large government violates those rights.
Correct! But then how is it that a large government violates those rights, but a “limited” government does not? What makes the difference?
Chanting threadbare phrases like “constitutional republic” and “checks and balances” is insufficient. Why is one amount of government rights-violative and another amount rights-protective? What exactly makes the difference? Where is the line drawn?
Are high taxes bad just because there is a point beyond which government revenue is reduced? Is that the purpose of our lives—to maximize government revenue? Is that why we exist?
If you force someone to labor for you against his will, that person is a slave.
If you make it so that the person can vote for the percent of money that will be extracted from him by force, against his will, that person is a slave with a vote.
Until a leftist moves away from leftism, he is beyond hope. But conservatives—you believe in individual natural rights! Now carry the concept of natural rights to its logical conclusion…
If the individual human person is forcibly subjected to any transaction, arrangement, or imposition of authority to which he did not explicitly consent, then either
A) his natural rights have been violated, or
B) natural rights do not exist.
If the individual human person is subjected to the initiation of violence against his person or property, then either
A) his natural rights have been violated, or
B) natural rights do not exist.
If the individual human person is treated as though he is owned by another, then either
A) his natural rights have been violated, or
B) natural rights do not exist.
Government does all of these things. It…
Forcibly subjects the individual human person to transactions, arrangements, and impositions of authority to which he did not explicitly consent.
Subjects the individual human person to initiations of violence against his person and property.
Claims some amount of control of the individual human person’s life, body, and property, and forcibly imposes that claim.
So, my conservative friends—do you believe that government is violating natural rights, or do you believe that natural rights do not exist?
If you believe the latter, then you are no longer a conservative, libertarian, or any other kind of normative classical liberal. So I will assume that you accept the former: government is violating natural rights.
So here again, you must explain how and where the line gets drawn.
One (tragically vague) answer I sometimes get:
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
What does that even mean? Vigilance against what? What government actions should be responded to and why? What makes one policy or system okay where another has crossed a line?
I understand that Burkean conservatives like to claim a measure of comfort with a contradictions—holding that an organic lack of surety is preferable to a fixed ideological position. But these are our natural rights we are talking about, people. How can you be satisfied with some vague statement like “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”? In the absence of specifics, that isn’t a prescription, it’s a platitude. It tells us nothing useful.
Why is Tax Rate X permissible and Tax Rate Y impermissible. Where are you drawing the line? Why are you drawing it there?
Why is Amount of Government X permissible and Amount of Government Y impermissible. Where are you drawing the line? Why are you drawing it there?
Do you have something more than, “Without government, we’d all be clubbing each other for rat meat?”
If so, I really want to hear it!
I also know that Laffer was doing it for the right reasons—to encourage tax cuts. I am simply moving beyond that, to the notion that taxes should be cut to zero.