The Moral Case against Direct Federal Taxation
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by Aaron J. Biterman. November 1, 2002 In their recent article on tax reform (“Incremental tax reform,” 10/10/02), think-tank analysts Stephen Moore and David Hartman propose “incremental steps to tax reform that will pave the road to full income tax elimination” (Moore-Hartman 2002). Being born and raised in the West, my vision is impaired to represent the worldview that I know. Also being familiar with the legal and political system in the United States, I shall use said system in my critique of the topic. The Western worldview is a system of designation that makes moral judgments and uses concrete standards of precision. Before engaging in the topic at hand, it is important to define key terms. Morality describes that which one holds to be unchangeable and absolute, while ethics refers to those values which have social and cultural origin. I shall embark on the topic at hand – the morality or lack thereof of taxation in the United States according to the morals I hold near and dear – with the Western worldview in mind utilizing the said definitions of morality and ethics. Because direct federal taxation is direct government theft, it has neither moral nor ethical equity. If theft is wrong or immoral – which it is, per the Western worldview – so, too, is taxation. Therefore I propose the abolition of all direct federal taxation once and for all, including the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. When assessing the question of incremental tax reform from a Western perspective, it’s of high importance to understand the Middle Eastern origins of the Western worldview, the defining principles of morality, the theft that is direct taxation, and the necessary environment for the repeal of immoral taxation. Through understanding of the tenets that make direct federal taxation immoral in the United States in particular, we can better understand the moral necessity to end direct federal taxation in general. To begin, it is vitally important to fully comprehend that the Western worldview is really a Middle-Eastern worldview. Understanding our origins leads to a better philosophical understanding of the reasoning behind assertions being made. What the West now believes is based upon Judeo-Christian traditions that originated in the East. The major religion in the West is Christianity, which originates in the Middle East. Around 1000 B.C.E., a man named Zoroaster established “The Religion of the Good Mind,” which is known today as Zoroastrianism. It is a religion that emphasizes the importance of absolute good, Ahura Mazda, and absolute evil, Ahriman (Hamilton 2000). As Hamilton notes, “In the subsequent centuries, Zoroastrianism, in turn, gave birth to Judaism in the Fifth Century [B.C.E.], to Christianity in the First Century [B.C.E.], and to Islam in the Seventh Century [C.E.].” The Middle Eastern worldview offered by Zoroaster was a moralistic worldview divergently opposed to the humanistic worldview offered by theologians like Lao-Tze and Confucius in the East. Simply put, the Middle Eastern worldview rests upon very specific concepts of good and evil. If you aren’t good, you must be evil. There is no in-between. It’s either hell or heaven if you operate from the Western (Middle Eastern) perspective. As you shall see in this thesis, taxation represents the hell while abolishing taxation represents the heaven. In order to establish what is and is not moral, a definition of morality must be set forth. What do I consider moral and what do I consider immoral? I am guided by both religious and secular philosophy. Religious, in that I am of the Jewish faith. I am familiar with Jewish law and traditional Jewish interpretations of the Holy Scriptures. My religious preference, therefore, is traditional Judaism – not Reform Judaism. I also gain guidance from a secular sense of a libertarian definition of justice. To other libertarians and myself, the sole purpose of government is to protect the life, liberty, and property of its citizens – not to destroy these important rights. Essentially, all that which government forces upon private, non-violent citizens is considered immoral to me. All other reasons for government to exist are illegitimate, purely and simply. I identify myself as a Jewish libertarian because twenty percent of the core legal code of Judaism is devoted to the sanctity of private property: "You shall not steal" and "You shall not covet." Additionally, the core fundamental Jewish belief – that is, belief in the sanctity of one G-d ("You shall have no other gods ...") – implies a direct prohibition against worship of the state or collectivist ideologies. Many Jews are too trusting of their government. To them I beg: Question authority more often, especially you’re own government! Finally, if I see injustice, I feel it is my moral obligation to speak out against that injustice. As it was written, “The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. Whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles” (Rand 1966). These beliefs are each very essential to my religious philosophy (Judaism) and my political philosophy (libertarianism) – and ultimately guide me to my conclusion about taxation, the issue at hand. In “Incremental tax reform,” authors Stephen Moore and David Hartman lay out their plan of eventually ending the personal income tax. Sorry guys, but speaking from both a moral and ethical perspective, that just isn’t good enough. The authors apparently believe that the income tax is either not necessary or not moral. If they believe it is not necessary, they don’t delve into why or if the estate tax, gift tax, capital gains tax, or corporate income tax is necessary. If they believe it is not moral, then they make pragmatic compromises that are unethical when addressing a moral problem. Per Ayn Rand and later Jacob Hornberger, if you know something is immoral, you propose to stop that something from a moral perspective. Moore and Hartman do just the opposite by failing to address the question from a moral perspective. Instead, they address it from an economic perspective. Therefore it’s simple to conclude that they don’t view the issue as moral at all, but, rather, economic. Therefore it is simple to disagree with Moore and Hartman. They simply don’t go far enough in their proposal. They don’t see the moral underpinnings of taxation, or if they do, they don’t address them. Moore and Hartman are arguing for a moderate downsizing of federal taxation when they should be arguing for a complete abolition of all taxation at the federal level. After all, as you shall see, that would be the moral proposal to make. There are several key reasons that taxation is immoral. Before delving into them, a necessary background must be firmly established. Seeing that earning an income is done through labor and exchange, it is the sweat, blood, and tears of the laborer that earns him his weekly, monthly, and yearly salary. Likewise, the laborer’s next door neighbor earns his salary through the same means. Inherent in the system of government formed by our founding fathers is the right to attain property and respect for that property. Under the ideal system, an individual would be sovereign over his income, salary, and savings. Unfortunately, that ideal disappeared in 1913, with the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That amendment nationalized income: Instead of individuals owning their own income, the government owned their income (Hornberger 1999). Simply with this information, several moral obligations to abolish taxation result. First and foremost, it is your money. You earned it. The burden of proof is not on me to prove that it is your money. The burden of proof is on those who believe that a system of taxation is a moral system. The second moral and ethical obligation to abolish taxation that is lucid lies in the reality that you are – or should be – a self-determining individual. Government should not own you. The Western worldview believes that creativity stems from freedom – not obedience. When you are free to live, learn, and love is when you are free to be. “But government cannot exist without taxation” is a common claim by the tax redistribution advocate. Government can exist with the user fees and tariffs already collected by government. Despite the claim that government cannot exist without solid direct taxation at the federal level, I maintain that I am not laying out an anarchical scheme, but, rather, a libertarian dream. It’s very easy for people to propose redistribution of wealth. It's, likewise, easy to see how someone has been helped by money taken from someone else. But those who are proposing wealth redistribution cannot see the people whose lives have been hurt by taking that money away. They can't see the family who now can't afford braces for their child's teeth, or who must move into a smaller home, or who can't afford a college education for their children. They can’t even see the businessman who has been driven bankrupt by government regulations and taxes. As long as wealth redistribution advocates ignore the people who have been hurt, any government program will likely seem worthy. To quote Sheldon Richman, “Parents, like everyone else, suffer from onerous government. If the burden of federal, state, and local taxation were removed, they could more easily afford good child care or, better yet, the mothers who want to stay at home would be able to do so. The American people don't need subsidies and tax credits, or Head Start and federally regulated childcare. They need the freedom to keep what they earn. They need tax repeal” (1998). “Without taxation, some people might starve to death.” Here the wealth redistribution advocate is claiming that there is a "social good" which has higher priority than individual rights. Therefore he justifies the willful continuation of theft by posing a dilemma of some kind. Being that this is a Western (Middle Eastern) system of thought, either theft is acceptable or theft is unacceptable. I choose the latter. Government existed for 125 years without an income tax. I submit that more people suffer because of government social programs than if government would cease taxation here and now. As Alan Keyes notes in a 1999 interview, “Most of the money collected in the income tax comes from brackets $50,000 and below, from working people” (Lehrer 1999). The moral precept to keep in mind here is that principles are principles regardless of social problems. In a Western worldview sticking to principle (i.e., truth) is always more moral than compromising – even if the consequences bear less than ideal fruit. A necessary environment for the repeal of taxation can exist. That environment must be one that fosters and encourages individual liberty and personal responsibility. Clarence Manion, writing in the late 1940s United States, concludes: existing in human society is always produced by the conscientious practice of man-to-man justice and person-to-person charity. When any part of this important domain of personal virtue is transferred to government, that part is automatically released from the restraints of morality and put into the area of conscienceless coercion. The field of personal responsibility is thus reduced at the same time and to the same extent that the boundaries of irresponsibility are enlarged” (Manion 1950). Manion’s United States was one of caring, compassion, and responsibility. One in which the government hadn’t taken control of health care or welfare: Thus, there were low-cost charity hospitals on many street corners and the sick were cared for by family members. Manion’s United States is what we need to get back to. It is our ideal. But, unfortunately, the welfare state has taken over and those who cherished the America they once had – an America of freedom, liberty, and prosperity – are long since gone. Instead of taking the responsibility to deal with their own family members’ health problems, American’s of the 21st Century would much prefer to send their family member to a nursing home and allow other people to care for their family member. Instead of relying upon private charitable organizations to treat their sick family members, modern Americans would much prefer that the federal government take care of their family members for them. Isn’t this a tragedy? We are told that American’s are incapable of handling too much responsibility. However, as Jacob Hornberger concludes, [W]hen people surrender the power to make peaceful choices to the state, isn't the result the exact opposite of what is intended? Don't we instead end up with a society of irresponsible, uncaring, uneducated, childlike adults who are scared to death of making choices in their lives and who want to be shielded from the responsibility and consequences that come with making choices? The tragedy of all this is not simply a moral one — that is, one in which people have relinquished to the collective much of the individual free will with which they have been endowed. It is also a psychological problem, for oftentimes it is through the process of making choices — even erroneous, irresponsible, sinful ones — that a person discovers what is important in life. Thus, by surrendering the power to make choices over a large portion of their peaceful activities, 20th-century Americans have deprived themselves not only of opportunities individually to do the right thing but also of opportunities that would have helped them to find greater meaning in their lives. The key to living a society which values the income people earn by not stealing it is to speak up and fight on. The Moore-Hartman solution is simplistic, immoral, and unethical. It addresses the problem only in economic terms, ignoring the after-effects of the IRS on American citizens each year. A moral system can be established. Prior to 1913, there was no personal income tax in the United States. There doesn’t have to be one. Only through returning to our common principles – and understanding the Middle Eastern origins of the Western worldview, the defining principles of morality, the theft that is direct taxation, and the necessary environment for the repeal of immoral taxation – can we return to a moral system in which people can keep the fruits of their labor. When that happens, Moore and Hartman won’t need to propose anymore unprincipled, moderate taxation schemes for the American public. |
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