Some dude woman named J.E. Dyer over at Hot Air has typed a column entitled My Money: I Deserve to Keep it All. It’s incredibly stupid. Let’s take a look.
Of course we all deserve to keep our own money. If it is ill-gotten – stolen, swindled – then it’s the crime that deprives us of it, not any inherent function of the armed authorities to prowl the land in search of “undeserved” bank balances.
The question of what we “deserve” boils down to which came first, the individual human with rights, or the state. America was founded on the principle that the individual human with rights comes first. Any idea that violates that principle is counter to our founding idea. It is not possible to reconcile with our founding principle the idea of collective schemes in which we make some modification to “what we deserve.” We either deserve to keep all our own earnings – money – wealth – goods – or we do not have unalienable rights.
Now, what we decide to do with our own money will inevitably involve government functions of some kind. People have to have a government in some form. A certain minimum set of public services is essential to corporate human life. The American founding idea is that we the people decide what government will do, and we decide how much money government will have to do it with. Then we contribute out of what is inalienably ours.
This is an attempt to apply what this person learned in her PHIL 101: Introduction to Modern Western Philosophy course during her freshman year in college to politics and economics. Here is the philosophical principle that Dyer uses to do the all the work in her argument.
America was founded on the principle that the individual human with rights comes first.
But it’s a dubious principle that is incapable of carrying such a heavy load. Let’s start by looking at the first founding document. The Declaration of Independence begins with an acknowledgment that the breaking of political bonds between two peoples (the Brits and the Americans) requires an explanation. Only after talking about Americans collectively does Thomas Jefferson get to talking about individuals. He asserts that we all, individually, have inherent God-given rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But then Jefferson moves on to a careful recounting of King George the Third’s many acts of despotism. And, here, his first complaint is that the King has “forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance,” and “refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” Indeed, most of Jefferson’s complaints relate to government. The King ignores the governors, dissolves the legislatures, and interferes in the Courts.
Near the end of this list of sins Jefferson does criticize the King “For imposing taxes on us without our consent:” Yet, if a fair-minded person were to read the Declaration of Independence and come away with the idea that it is hostile to government, they would have to be deemed a simpleton. The entire thing is little more than a demand for a government that is responsive to the people and that has a respect for the rule of law. Jefferson wanted governors who were free to govern, legislatures who were free to legislate, and courts that weren’t corrupt. Individual rights were certainly an important rationale for why we needed to be free from the tyranny of the British Crown, but collective rights made up the bulk of Jefferson’s argument. Two peoples were going their separate ways.
The preamble of the U.S. Constitution is even more clear on this point.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This is a collective experiment carried out by the People, that establishes a new Union, and that is just as concerned with the general Welfare and common defense as with the Blessings of (individual) Liberty. And right there in Article I, Section II we see the issue of taxes addressed.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers…
You might call this a flat tax, but it certainly establishes the principle that there is no individual right to keep all your money. This form of taxation was superseded by the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments to the Constitution. The Sixteenth is explicit:
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
So, the flat tax went away. Let’s look at J.E. Dyer’s conclusion.
The percentage-based income tax and the practice of payroll withholding have combined for a century now to obscure in our minds the simplicity of our founding principles. But the founding principles were very clear. Modern interlocutors can seek to change the argument, toss red herrings around, and get us in full 6-year-old mode talking about “deserving” and “not deserving” according to whether we are Leona Helmsley or Mother Teresa, but the bottom line is that a man whose title to his money is considered – as a first principle – subject to the whim of his neighbor, is a slave.
America was founded on the principle that individual rights precede and constrain the state. As far as government is properly concerned, we all deserve to keep 100% of our money. The question of what we decide to do with it, and how the functions of government figure into that, is a separate and subordinate topic.
It is impossible to live as free men and women otherwise.
I don’t want to parse this argument too closely because I am less concerned with the particulars spelled out here than with the general attitude it conveys, which seems to be ascendant on the right at the moment. I will pause to note an irony in Dyer’s argument though. It is she who is making an argument about what she deserves (all her money). The president isn’t talking about what people deserve. Rather, he is looking for a fair way of paying our bills. If Dyer wanted to argue that the Founding Father’s preferred a flat tax to progressive taxation, she’d be correct. I don’t know that you can say it was a matter of high principle for them, however. And, in any case, the power to tax was certainly a higher principle than the exact form of the taxation. Alexander Hamilton dealt with this issue in Federalist No. 33.
What is a power but the ability or faculty of doing a thing? What is the ability to do a thing but the power of employing the means necessary to its execution? What is a LEGISLATIVE power but a power of making LAWS? What are the means to execute a LEGISLATIVE power but LAWS? What is the power of laying and collecting taxes but a legislative power, or a power of making laws to lay and collect taxes? What are the proper means of executing such a power but necessary and proper laws?
This simple train of inquiry furnishes us at once with a test of the true nature of the clause complained of. It conducts us to this palpable truth that a power to lay and collect taxes must be a power to pass all laws necessary and proper for the execution of that power; and what does the unfortunate and calumniated provision in question do more than declare the same truth, to wit, that the national legislature to whom the power of laying and collecting taxes had been previously given might, in the execution of that power, pass all laws necessary and proper to carry it into effect?
Hamilton won this argument and the Constitution was ratified. It seems completely conclusive. A.E. Dyer is not entitled to all her money. There is no first principle that places individual liberty over and above the right of Congress to tax her of some portion of her wealth. She’s delusional.
And she ought to know better. Should she ride free on our highways and cross our bridges at our expense? Should she not pay for the Courts? Has she no responsibility to contribute to either the general welfare or the common defense of the nation?
The truth is that her attitude, which is reflective of a more general attitude on the right, is actually contrary to the principles of the Founding Fathers.
