The projected budget surpluses are useful in revealing the political philosophies of Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats hold that lowering taxes in light of the surpluses constitutes a form of government spending and should be judged against other ways government could spend the money. That approach implies that government has a claim to 100 percent of our incomes and that we should be grateful for any amount it lets us keep.
The Republicans object to the Democrats’ refusal to consider a surplus-based tax cut. In doing so, they have shown an appalling naivete about government that raises doubts about whether they can be trusted in any political office. If it isn’t naivete, it is a profound dishonesty.
Republicans have responded to the Democrats along these lines: A budget surplus is equivalent to citizens’ being overcharged for government services. Therefore, they should have their taxes cut.
The call to cut taxes is unobjectionable (repeal is preferable), although the GOP proposal is outrageously small. What’s philosophically wrong with the Republican response is the premise that taxes are charges for government services. This is untrue. It has never been true. And since taxes are not charges for services, there can’t be an overcharge.
The purpose of taxes is to raise money (by force) for the government. True, the government uses the money to provide some services-whether wanted by taxpayers or not. But there is no direct connection between taxation and services.
When the government plans a new fiscal year, the budget people do not estimate how much money they will need to render services and then adjust tax rates to raise that amount of money. Rather, they estimate how much money they expect the tax system to harvest in the following year and then make plans to spend it. If they see they will have more money than they are currently spending, they increase spending or start new programs. That is what the Clinton administration wishes to do. At times, politicians cut taxes to score points with voters or to stimulate the economy. They never cut taxes, however, because people have a right to their own money. Tax-cutters sometimes say that people have a right to keep more of their own money. But if they have a right to that, why don’t they have a right to keep all their money?
There are other reasons to reject the idea that taxes are charges for services. When the government taxes you and gives the money to someone else (as in Social Security, food stamps, corporate subsidies, you name it), what service is being rendered to you ? What about when your money is taken so the government can put peaceful drug users in prison? Or so it can bomb Serbs and Iraqis?
Another tip-off that taxes are not charges is the income tax itself. Under the income tax, the more you earn, the more you pay. Yet a wealthy person may get fewer government services than a poorer person. Where’s the connection between tax and service?
No sober person really believes taxes are payments for services rendered. When the income tax was being promoted by social engineers in the early 20th century, some of them said that people should pay on the basis of the benefits they get from government. The pro-tax economist Edwin Seligman, however, knew that was a poor argument and in its place advanced the ability-to-pay argument. A person, he said, “does not measure the benefits of state action to himself because such measurement implies a decidedly erroneous conception of the relationship of the individual to the modern state. [It] is now generally agreed that we pay taxes not because the state protects us, or because we get any benefits from the state, but simply because the state is part of us.”
That astounding presumption is at the heart of government. Any intelligent self-supporting citizen knows he is not part of the state and would just as soon keep his money in his own pocket.