Bush Budget has a Long Reach

WASHINGTON -- Two months after the White House began rolling out its latest budget, the full dimensions of President Bush's new tax and spending plan are finally coming into view, and they are even more sweeping than originally thought.

By linking expenditures forced on the nation by the 2001 terrorist attacks with a blizzard of other measures, Bush has produced a proposal that, if enacted, would result in a governmental about-face as far-reaching as those of Ronald Reagan or Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Devil is in the details.

It may work as planned - government will become streamlined and efficient, and the public will realize that work is necessary and that everything has a price.

But another outcome is far more likely. The poor will become much poorer and the rich much richer - re-igniting the class wars and corruption of the late 19th century on a much larger scale.

The poor will become much poorer and the rich much richer - re-igniting the class wars and corruption of the late 19th century on a much larger scale.

People are not rich or poor based on what the government does.

Rich people pay a higher and higher percentage of taxes each year, and remain rich.

Poor people pay no taxes and remain poor.

Go figure.

People are not rich or poor based on what the government does

Not quite true. People succeed or fail in the marketplace largely because of their abilities and character. But government policies can be redistributive - moderating the extremes of marketplace distribution...and they can provide more people with opportunities.

Rich people pay a higher and higher percentage of taxes each year, and remain rich

This is largely a reflection of ever increasing inequality of income and wealth. In theory, there's nothing wrong with that - it's just a reflection of natural differences. In practice, it destabilizes society as fewer and fewer people have a stake in protecting the existing order.

But government policies can be redistributive - moderating the extremes of marketplace distribution...and they can provide more people with opportunities.

Redistribution of wealth never works. Never.

Marketplace distribution is not "extreme." It reflects the wishes and desires of free people, buying and selling, providing services that are needed and wanted.

In practice, it destabilizes society as fewer and fewer people have a stake in protecting the existing order.

On the contrary, taking more and more money from the rich destabilizes society because more and more people have a stake in protecting an order which robs the rich to pay the poor.

In his "Lectures on Physics" Feyman quotes Gibbon

"The power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superflous"

And what of those with unhappy dispositions?

Marketplace distribution is not "extreme." It reflects the wishes and desires of free people, buying and selling, providing services that are needed and wanted

Again, only partially true.

It also reflects the natural distribution of abilities (the Bell curve), luck, and the power of accumulated wealth, social position, and experience. And - something new for this age - it greatly magnifies the rewards of the very best at the expense of all the others.

Professional sports provide a fine example of what I mean by "extreme". Those who make the cut become wealthy. Those who don't - often possessing only slightly less ability - must seek another line of work.

I am not saying that your positions are wrong. Just too extreme. Redistribution doesn't always fail (The New Deal was a great improvement over laissez faire for most people. The Marshall plan worked. Our system of public education has provided many, many people with a chance at advancement would never have had otherwise). But it too can become too extreme - and degenerate into a welfare state, destroying the initiative of the most productive members of society.

Striking a balance is not an easy thing to do. It's a pragmatic endeavor with ideology as a poor guide. A poor guide.

Something else occurs to me.

Free people are not transformed into smart people, prudent people, moral people. Which is why we have a republic instead of a democracy.

These people have the same faults in the marketplace...which is why giants who can bounce a ball well and teen-age girls whose sole virtue is a nice ass which they're willing to giggle and flaunt in public make more money than engineers and scientists who truly create wealth for us all.

Unfortunately, Plato's problem is ours. It's not possible to consistently be governed by philosopher kings. So we settle for democratic capitalism.

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