The New Abolitionist: Dragging the Left to a Moral Argument

David Horowitz's NewsReal Blog ^ | April 20, 2011 | Walter Hudson

[Walter Scott Hudson]

Imagine an argument for the abolition of slavery based not upon natural law and fundamental human rights, but whether slavery is an effective means of production. Such an abolitionist might say, Slaves cannot be relied upon to produce all that the country requires. The subsequent debate would then center around the efficiency of slavery, rather than its morality.

That's the character of our modern debate regarding taxation. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial on Monday demonstrating "the fiscal futility of raising rates on the top 2%, or even the top 5% or 10%, of taxpayers to close the deficit." Confiscating all the taxable income of the top 10% of taxpayers will not close the deficit, they say. Taxes will therefore have to be raised on the middle class to maintain the entitlement state.

Jeffery Sachs counters from The Huffington Post. He claims that the "IRS data in fact prove exactly the opposite of what the Journal claims."

I'll leave it to the Journal to defend their math, not because their case lacks importance, but because it is entirely beside the point. While it may be prudent to highlight "the fiscal futility" of the Left's tax-hiking impulse, the foremost argument against perpetuating the entitlement state is a moral one. Consider Sachs' rhetoric.

[The Journal has] done us a huge service by drawing attention to the astonishing incomes received by America's richest taxpayers, coupled with the declining rates of average personal income taxation paid by this group(...)

... the American people are coming to understand the outsized incomes and wealth of the richest Americans and the need for them to pay more in taxes to help close the budget deficit...