An Honest Redistribution

Arthur C. Brooks, president of conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, has a big piece in today's Washington Post decrying what he feels is an assault on free enterprise and honest labor.

Free enterprise brings happiness; redistribution does not. The reason is that only free enterprise brings earned success.
Earned success involves the ability to create value honestly -- not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn't mean making money in and of itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others. Earned success is the stuff of entrepreneurs who seek value through innovation, hard work and passion. Earned success is what parents feel when their children do wonderful things, what social innovators feel when they change lives, what artists feel when they create something of beauty.
Money is not the same as earned success but is rather a symbol, important not for what it can buy but for what it says about how people are contributing and what kind of difference they are making. Money corresponds to happiness only through earned success.
Not surprisingly, unearned money -- while it may help alleviate suffering -- carries with it no personal satisfaction. Studies of lottery winners, for instance, show that after a brief period of increased happiness, their moods darken as they no longer derive the same enjoyment from the simple pleasures in life, and as the glow of buying things wears off.

There’s a lot that is wrong with this, so I’ll pick just one thing.

The core of his argument here appears to be that redistributionist liberals would have people increase their incomes via state largess - literally in the form of cash payments -  instead of earning it “honestly”.

What would conservatism do without the tired bugaboo of welfare? Apparently redistribution, contrary to fact and policy, means “handing out checks”. Yet the reality is that redistribution simply means a progressive tax system that pays for services largely designed to increase human agency. Whether it's educating poor kids, providing medication and counseling to the mentally ill, drug treatment and prevention programs, day care for working single mothers, or healthcare subsidies and food stamps to the desperately poor.  Or hundreds of other services designed to empower individuals where they need it most.

None of this promotes dependence – a substitute for honest work. One might argue this with some success at the margins, but the vast majority of programmatic aid is a direct stimulus to human agency, resulting in compounded social (and moral) gains.  Of course, if all we were doing was throwing good money after bad, promoting dependence and fostering decreased human agency, it would be wrong. 

But progressives, in seeking to create a more just and egalitarian society, have no interest in such solutions.  In claiming that all we care about is one's bank account, Brooks is offering an absurd straw man.  If one truly understands the progressive agenda, it is nothing if not entirely focused on making sure that all people have the ability to achieve their dreams.  If only handing out welfare checks was all it took! 

Alas, the problems are far more complex.  Many mistakes have been, and will continue to be made.  But the last thing anyone wants is someone choosing to sit around on the dole when they could be attending college, doing work they enjoy, or starting their own business.  The unfortunate fact is that no one but the government has the power to step in and guarantee all citizens a fighting chance when the world seems to be against them.  Charities can help fill in the gaps here and there, but they can't do it all.  And if we are serious about a constitutional right to "a pursuit of life, liberty and happiness", then there are certain things that we must guarantee to our neediest.

Social Justice the Easy Way

John McWhorter has a review of Freedom is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and America's Struggle over Black Family Life--from LBJ to Obama, by James T. Patterson.  While agreeing in principle with the original report, and the idea of racial equality in general, McWhorter spends much of the review lamenting what he views as the movement for minority social justice's devolution into corrosive federal welfare programs.  While (certainly in retrospect) many of the attempts by the government at social justice were failures, they weren't all bad - as I'm sure more than one struggling single mother could have told you -  and it seems a fool's errand to try and pretend we can imagine what the black community would have looked like without them altogether.  The odd thing is how little time McWhorter spends actually discussing what positive solutions have been tried and where we need to go from here.

He ends with the shallow and tired phrase, "we may have a long way to go—but we’ve come a long way too."  But as a summation of his thesis, it's actually perfect: obviously we have come a long way, and (obviously) we have a long way to go, but if all you're going to do is highlight the fact that the Black community is doing a little bit better in some ways, then your thesis is not only vapid, but actually quite corrosive in that it perpetuate a false sense of momentum that simply doesn't exist. 

He begins with a glaring glossing over of a completely false premise.

"We all applaud that blacks attained liberté from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and in its wake, égalité—the means to opportunity—by means of affirmative action and changes in racial attitudes."

Strictly speaking, the Civil Rights Act took legal discrimination off the books.  But that is not the same thing as "the means to opportunity".  If you keep a man in a small box for 3 weeks, then set him free, he in no way has the same "means to opportunity" as you.  His damn legs are sore and his muscles are weak!  The human mind is a complicated thing.  Progressives have always known that before a man can be free his mind must be free as well.  This involves not just liberation, but active learning. 

To fully take advantage of the "freedom" modern society offers, one must first know how to access it.  And there are many levels of self-efficacy.  One must know how to navigate different social settings.  One must learn how to manage one's emotions and cultivate appropriate discipline.  Must know the pathways to success, whether through intimate knowledge of successful peer networks or the broader trajectories of college or business. 

To the extent that society does not recognize this, it fails to take the proper steps to see to it that the black community (or any, really), is rehabilitated.  And the excuse that "there is nothing we can do" is simply false.  The process of self-efficacy begins at birth (or even before so in terms of environmental toxicity and maternal health), as social capital begins to build.  Language and emotional development pathways begin to grow according to environmental stimulation, which in practice ends up being the caregivers.  In disadvantaged minority communities today we see many children coming in to kindergarten often years behind developmentally.  Evidence-based programs exist that can strongly mediate this problem, but they require levels of funding that so far the public seems either ignorant of or unwilling to embrace.

In light of this truth about human development, which we have known about for far too long to plead ignorance, McWhorter's lame social congratulation is maddening.  Much of his piece is devoted to blaming black poverty on welfare - programs designed with a minimum of social justice in mind.  Yet he gives no thought at all to how black consciousness and efficacy might actually evolve, and what programs - he mentions "education only once, in passing - might be an appropriate response to what is obviously a legacy of our nation's treatment of people of color.

In the end, the piece - itself an example - stands as an indictment of the kind of willful social denial and neglect that America has shown the Black community.  It's appreciation of Moynihan is backhanded, in that whilst praising him for outlining the moral argument for social justice, it bashes Patterson for failing to properly see how destructive welfare was.  Yet the picture McWhorter paints is of a black community profoundly worse off, despite giving any indication as to what he would have offered welfare recipients instead.  This is a betrayal of the moral argument for social justice which he claims to himself believe in.  He just has a funny way of showing it.

The Moral Justification for Progressive Taxation

The director of the Congressional Budget Office recently wrote a blog post about the fundamental disconnect between the American people's desire for government services - specifically entitlements - and their desire for low taxes.

I think the equations on this issue are pretty simple.

First, you have entitlement spending as a moral issue. Do people deserve these basic service guarantees?

Second, you have the efficacy of government spending. Is the government the most efficient delivery system for these services?

Third, is our economic system inherently fair? Did the winners and losers deserve their fate?

Fourth, what role does taxation play in growth? Do higher tax rates inhibit investment?

Fifth, do people really deserve their wealth? Is it justified to progressively tax higher earners?

For decades the right has railed against taxation with assumptions on all five counts: People don't deserve these guarantees; the government is wasteful and inefficient; our economic system is a meritocracy; Supply-side principles say high tax rates slow the economy; progressive taxation is immoral because it unfairly redistributes legitimately earned income.

Yet all of these assumptions hinge on a simple question: how fair is our economy - do all people have equal access to the means of success? If they do, then they should be responsible for their own fate. Neither the government nor the people have any responsibility to them. Therefore, guaranteed access to services is not necessary and they can be provided more efficiently and better by private markets. Whether or not supply-side theory is correct is really irrelevant - taxation is in principle unfair and inefficient anyway. One's income is one's own and should not be subject to redistribution.

Yet during these same decades more and more data has been collected that disproves the assumption that our economy is fair, and provides equal opportunity for all - something liberals have always known intuitively. Research in many fields has unraveled the complexities of human behavior and uncovered overwhelming evidence with only one conclusion: one's success in life is solely determined by the genes they were born with and the environment that activated them throughout their life.

Starting in the womb, human development progresses according to its environmental stimulus. This includes everything from what social scientists call "human capital" (an individual's cognitive development according to levels of lead exposure, parental linguistic feedback, peer group interaction), to what social scientists call "social capital" (an individual's exposure to the cultural information and procedures necessary for success). Any theory is only as good as its predictions. And this theory of human development and social interaction has been confirmed repeatedly.

A simple thought experiment gives you an idea of what to expect: take two embryos and place one in the belly of a happy white mother from a wealthy, educated, functional family in Connecticut. Place the other in a 17 year old black girl in Detroit who is 4 grade levels behind with anger issues, her father incarcerated, her mother addicted to methamphetamines , her home with high levels of lead and pests, etc. - you get the idea.

The obvious predicted outcomes for each child are intuitively quite different. One child would seem to have quite an advantage over the other. But what researchers have done is isolated specific factors that can be applied to each situation with powerfully predictive results. Zooming out to the macro level - looking at populations in the tens of thousands, this application of data analysis gives us a clear understanding of what it takes to be successful.

The most common reaction to all of this from the right is to dismiss it, with an appeal to free will. They will point to one or another example of a man who has "risen to the top" despite all all odds. Coming from truly wretched circumstances, he has faced down adversity and by sheer pluck and determination achieved success. If he could do it, goes the argument, then anyone could. They just have to "choose" it.

This narrative is appealing. America is full of stories such as these. Its very founding was in a sense an expression of this sensibility - the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity - writ large. And it seems reasonable: we have set up a society that encourages the freedom to achieve greatness through individual effort. It would seem that all one has to do is work hard, make the right choices and success is easily within reach.

But this story is deceptively simple. It overlooks some basic realities of human development. For starters, "the exception does not prove the rule". These individual examples indeed seem heroic. But this is precisely because we all understand intuitively that these men were outliers. The fact that we see them as exceptional is based on the reality that most in their circumstance do not fare the same. Statistical demographic data bears this out. The children of poor Detroit do not succeed at the same rate as the children of wealthy Connecticut. What must it be then about the poor children of Detroit that makes them "choose" to be unsuccessful? And what then allows the children of wealthy Connecticut NOT to choose to be unsuccessful.

Well, we know why. In fact, we know exactly why. And it has nothing to do with "choice". If a child born to poor Detroit had access to sufficient human and social capital, the likelihood of his success would be virtually guaranteed. He would make the right "choice" every time. And if the child of wealthy Connecticut only had access to low levels of human and social capital, his likelihood for success would be rather dismal.

This can all be backed up by data. Countless devoted people all over the country are working tirelessly on finding ways to close this gap. How it will be done is a difficult proposition. There are no easy answers. But one thing is clear: all people do not have equal access to the means of success; all people do not have access to the means of freedom to self-actualize. Accordingly, it is then our job as compassionate and rational, civilized citizens to do whatever it takes to achieve this. It is our constitutional obligation.

The only way to guarantee equal access to human and social capital is through government services. Charity or private industry might fill in the gaps here and there. But if we are to truly offer equal access to every citizen, government is the only entity with the means to do so. This of course requires funding, and thus taxation. As we have already established, success is dependent on genetic and social circumstance. Earned income is dependent on success. Therefore, earned income is dependent on genetic and social circumstance. It is perfectly moral then to enact a system of progressive taxation. In fact, it would be immoral not to do so.

Flogging Will, p.2.3: lobster to preschool

Assumption #1: There is no free will - all of our decisions are all determined by the causal web of biology and environment.*

(*note: determinism will heretofore be defined in the context of human consciousness outcomes, such that human thought be considered determined by events beyond one's control, even if other, non-strictly-deterministic forces may be at work at the atomic or super-atomic level.)

Economics

Capitalist economics is based on a simple proposition: that through free trade an economy develops that rewards hard work and allows those who wish to prosper the opportunity to do so. In reality, it's a bit more complicated, but for our purposes we'll assume that this is true enough. As we've ceded from the beginning, since one is not ultimately responsible for making his own decisions, he cannot be regarded as being responsible for his success or failure in this sort of economy; if hard work determines success, then if one is not responsible for choosing to work hard, one cannot be responsible for success.

Some will indeed work hard and achieve great things. Others will be lazy and accomplish nothing. (Many of course will work hard and achieve nothing, while a few will be lazy and find rich compensation, but that is an economic analysis that has no direct bearing on our discussion here.) So how to determine economic justice when accounting for this causal discrepancy?

Determinism does not deny human behavior, it defines it. Much of what we do is determined by failure and reward. It is obviously in society's best interest to have a productive, competitive, innovative workforce. There are many things we could do to intervene in the name of economic justice that would have the ultimately unjust effect of hindering those qualities. The difficulty lies then in devising a system that rewards those qualities we favor while punishing those we do not, yet finds a balance between allowing some to reap the benefits of prosperity and some to suffer the consequences of failure.

Fortunately we already do this in the form of progressive taxation and a social safety net. On one end, while individuals are allowed virtually unlimited prosperity, their privilege is tethered directly back to the society from which it was granted. On the other, individuals are not only given a basic level of health and safety, they are also given basic services intended to encourage in them the qualities and access that are key to success. At a minimum, individuals are guaranteed emergency health care treatment, basic education, and a variety of services targeted towards the minimization of disadvantage.

But the striking disparity between the poorest ghettos and the most lavish mansions is ample evidence that do not indeed embrace a determinist view of human consciousness. We allow some individuals to live in abject filth and others in splendor precisely because we believe they have earned their place, and we have devised a system that not only tolerates it, but arguably encourages it. But if we are we to truly take determinism as causal fact, then we must radically shift our tolerance for such inequity.

Now, this is easier said then done. As previously mentioned, it is difficult to strike a balance between encouraging good economic behavior and equitable distribution of prosperity. But at a minimum, we can ask just how much suffering we would be willing to allow, and how much pleasure. For it is an objective fact that by scaling one man's luxury back to a reasonable level, you could alleviate the suffering of another. When we remove the concept that neither the former nor the latter can be justified on account of some special personal merit, this becomes easy.

There is no clear evidence of what is always the best way of going about doing this, but that it is worthy, and moral, is a start.

Economic Fairness

Conservatives believe two things:

A) Taxes are bad for the economy.
B) Progressive taxation is unjust.

Liberals take the two opposite views:

A) Taxes are good for the economy.
B) Progressive taxation is just.


What’s interesting about these different stances are that they each make one subjective and one objective (at least more so) claim. Whether progressive taxation is just or not, is based in large part on relatively intangible philosophical principles. Whether taxation is good or bad for the economy is more measurable, although hardly reliably so and fraught with complexities likely too advances for the layperson to appreciate.

Yet in both political perspectives, each view is claimed to bolster the other.

For the conservative, if taxes are bad for the economy because they put a burden on investment, then progressive taxation must be doubly bad for the economy because it is especially burdensome – specifically to those in the best position to be investing, namely business owners. And if progressive taxation is unjust because money is private property and each is entitled to a fair share of his earnings, then taxation’s negative effect on the economy must be doubly unjust because it forces individuals to disproportionately contribute to a newly weakened economy.

For the liberal, if taxes are good for the economy because they act as social investments, then progressive taxation contributes to this investment. And if progressive taxation is just because it rewards citizens more fairly, then taxation’s benefit to the economy will of course improve everyone’s life.

So basically, each set of views are ideologically sympathetic. It is no wonder why they would be comfortably embraced as such. But just because they are sympathetic does not mean that either is contingent on the other, or that because one is true so must be the other.

Maybe taxes are bad for the overall economy, yet it is still just to make them progressive because that is indeed fairer. Or maybe the reverse is true: taxes are good for the economy, yet progressive taxation is unfair by principle.