Uncle Sam wants your cash—but how much?

A Naderite and a libertarian weigh in on the tension between glaring needs and inalienable rights.

If you are anything like me, you're sick of hearing Al Gore talk about his "locked box" and George Bush, DC '68, ramble incoherently about "fuzzy math." Depressingly enough, it seems that one of them will be the next president and the next president will be dealing with a large sum of our money after a huge projected budget surplus. So this is what it breaks down to: either the government can spend the money on more programs that many Americans need, or some of the money can be sent back to the taxpayers. The former option, Gore's pick, allows some reallocation of money that would benefit the majority of Americans, those who are not in the upper class. The latter option, Bush's plan, would give all Americans, upper, middle, and lower classes, a tax break. Sounds okay, right?

Bush says that the budget surplus should go to the "hard working people of America." However, his tax plan would benefit the rich far more than the people who gain the most from programs like Medicare and Social Security. Under Bush's plan, 61.6 percent of the total tax cut would go to the richest 10 percent of Americans. Billionaires like Bill Gates and Donald Trump would get more money in tax breaks than entire sectors of the nation. Bush asserts that "everybody who pays taxes ought to get some relief." My question is: Relief from what? Honestly, Bill Gates is not suffering at the bank. Bush has decided that the rich need so much relief that he is proposing to spend more on the tax cut for the richest one percent of the nation than on education, health care, defense, and prescription drugs combined—$179 billion more.

Bush defends his plan by saying that all Americans, including people in the lower class, will receive a tax break. However, this "relief" adds up to pennies, and families could benefit a lot more from the programs that the surplus would have been spent on.

Dubya's grossly high tax break for the U.S.'s elite few leads me to question whether he has any interest in the rest of us. He said that the money should go back to the "hard working people of America." Surely he does not propose that Americans in the bottom 90 percent of the income bracket are not "hard working." One does not need to be very socially aware to know that the hardest working people in this country are most often among the poorest.

In the first presidential debate, Bush said that the surplus belonged to "the people that pay the bills." I wonder what "bills" he is talking about. If "bills" mean the funding of his campaign, then his tax cut will go to exactly the right group. After all, people struggling to pay their own bills will not be donating to a political campaign. Bush has made it clear whom he is an advocate for in office, and for whom he is not.

Of course, I do not mean to say that Gore is perfect. The Bush team is quick to point out that Gore's administration would be the largest in over three decades. However, Bush's plans aren't exactly frugal, either. He vows to reopen the failed "war on drugs" that Ronald Reagan started in the '80s. He also wants to fund charter schools and vouchers. Any reports of success of these programs in the past has been a fallacy. Gore would opt for programs that actually help people, such as increased public school funding and, I hate to say it, putting Medicare and Social Security in a "locked box."

The truth is, we cannot expect too much from Bush. We all know how intelligent he is. He is just not willing to make the positive changes needed for the middle and lower classes. If you are rich, then Bush does hold some of your interests at heart; he too is a member of the American Camelot. I am not encouraging you to vote for Gore, but rather to let you know that there are alternatives. I'm voting for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. His plan would radically reallocate money to people who need it the most by reforming and increasing Social Security and putting money in American communities, rather than in our already oversized military. I think that Bush himself said it best in his self-assessment in a speech he gave at Westminster, Cal. on Wed., Sept. 13, "They have miscalculated me as a leader."

Christopher A. Jordan is a freshman in Pierson.

When the presidential candidates discussed fiscal policy at their recent debates, I was pleasantly surprised by George W. Bush, DC '68. While he was probably right in criticizing Gore's predictions as "fuzzy math," he did even better when sticking to the philosophy behind his platform. In a system where taxes are a percentage of incomes, and the rich pay a greater percentage than the poor, the fairest tax cut will return more money to the people who paid more in the first place. Such a statement was a bold move in today's political culture of touchy-feely pandering, and it was the correct one.

Bush is right when he says that taxpayer dollars belong not to the government but to the individuals who earn them. The right to property is derived by taking a long-term view of the right to liberty. Property is the result of a person's exchange of liberty for goods, or the investment of that liberty in the goods an individual already has. To deprive a person of property is to deprive him of the liberty by which he achieved it. The power to tax is thus not only the power to destroy, but also the power to enslave.

Robert Nozick puts forth the most eloquent defense of this position I have seen to date. Very few people would have us return to the days when slavery was legal. They would consider it unconscionable for me to coerce another individual into some line of work, let alone take the fruits of his labor when he was done. Well, Nozick asks, what if I forced a man to work for six months and took his money when he was done? Three months? What if I take that 25 percent and give him something in return, whether or not he consents? Believe it or not, this last scenario is actually less restrictive than the prospects most Americans face when sales and property taxes are added in. Where does one draw the line between slavery and taxation? I can think of one answer, and a rather weak one at that, but having made my own case, let me address the claims of my opponents.

So where does the Left go wrong in its taxing and spending? At the root of the problem lies its fundamentally inaccurate theory of rights. The Left asserts that every person has the right to certain goods or services, among them the "basic needs" of food, clothing, and shelter, along with others such as health care and a so-called secure retirement. This view is not only simplistic but incorrect. First, these goods exist only in their particular form, created and possessed by individuals. The government can only provide these services by taking them or the resources to provide them from the people who have them. When it does this, it does not merely distribute food or health care to some, it deprives those who produced them the fruits of their labor. Second, there is no necessary connection between need and right, nor does need take precedence over right. Rights are moral constraints one does wrong in violating. In infringing on a right, one violates that moral constraint regardless of whether or not another "needs" the object in question. Injustice is committed not by a society that allows needs to go unfulfilled, but rather by one that initiates force against an individual.

The American Right correctly espouses a theory of "negative rights," rights against the use of force. As mentioned before, the sum of these negative rights is described as liberty or autonomy. Furthermore, the right to autonomy does not demand any positive action; it requires only that all persons refrain from interfering with the voluntary conduct of others. Thus, the general form of liberty can actually exist, unlike the various phantoms to which the Left alleges one has rights—and liberty is the only universal right. The only forms of taxation even remotely defensible are those aimed at upholding more liberty than they deprive. At the most, the government should defend its borders from foreign invaders, protect its inhabitants from force and fraud by other citizens, and hold itself and its citizens publicly accountable to these principles in the form of a court system.

The 14th Amendment dictates that all citizens must receive "equal protection under law." This equal protection is from the government as well as by it, and given taxation's oppressive nature, individuals must be protected from it to the same degree. Thus the only just form of taxation is a flat percentage tax used for the purposes described above. Bush's statements during the debate showed that he, unlike his opponent, understands the principle of individual autonomy, and while his plan is by no means perfect, it is a step in the right direction.

Ned Andrews is a Herald columnist.

Graphic by Sarah England.

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