One of the more interesting exercises in introductory American politics courses is to ask students what they think is a "fair" tax burden, defined as the point beyond which government shouldn't go in taking our income to fund its necessary services.
The answers are remarkably similar from class to class: some suggest 5 percent, others 10 percent. A more generous few are willing to go all the way up to 15 or 20 percent.
Virtually all, regardless of hazy ideological orientation or party lean, are therefore stunned to hear that the top marginal income-tax rate is just a tad under 40 percent (39.6) and that, figuring in federal, state, and local taxes, a fair number of well-to-do Americans can in theory lose a majority of their income to the taxman; that even the school teacher or CPA living next door (or their own parents) can get nicked for 30-40 percent.
Equally mystifying for such young people is the idea of tax progressivity (which probably also confuses a lot of older adults plagued by it as well)--that people are taxed at a higher rate for every dollar earned after passing certain income levels.
They find such a concept vaguely unsettling because it implies a violation of the cherished principle of equality before the law and its corollary of equal treatment. When given an array of tax principle options to consider, they almost always see the flat tax as the "fairest"--the rich pay more, often much more, but everyone still pays at the same rate.
Such thoughts float to mind in response to Hillary Clinton's recent proposal to increase the estate ("death") tax--to 50 percent on estates worth more than $10 million, 55 percent on those worth more than $50 million, and a whopping 65 percent on those over $500 million.
Hillary's gambit almost certainly has a tactical purpose--to attract Bernie Sanders' otherwise skeptical supporters by stealing his estate-tax proposals and broader "soak the rich" message. One also senses lurking beneath the surface the usual leftist appeals to envy, resentment, and economic illiteracy.
Certainly, in a purely fiscal sense, there can be little to recommend such an increase--the revenue raised wouldn't be sufficient to fund many new welfare-state initiatives, particularly since those dunned by it would likely find creative ways to shelter their income. It wouldn't make much of a dent in our huge national debt, either (which Democrats never seem overly concerned about anyway).
Hence, the conclusion that such a proposal, with, thankfully, no chance of passing a Republican Congress, is merely tactical and symbolic in effect.
But that is also where the moral element comes into play that those first-year politics students seem to grasp but lefties like Bernie and Hillary can't--that government taking so much of anything that was legally acquired, especially something as important to sustenance as private property, is unjust and therefore tyrannical.
It is, after all, a bit scary to believe that the wealth we have labored over the course of our lives to acquire can be abruptly jeopardized by the vagaries of the election cycle; that it can be so easily confiscated by demagogic politicians trolling for votes among the most ignorant ranks of our fellow citizens.
A malodorous Bolshevik whiff is given off by the idea that property rights, upon which economic progress throughout history has depended, are left so insecure.
Yes, high levels of inequality are potentially destabilizing and yes, confiscating half of a $20 million estate still leaves the beneficiary with more money than most of us will earn in a lifetime, but then that's not the point, is it?
Because "moral hazard," as the economists call it, inevitably enters the picture, do we really want to send the message to the most successful among us--who, more often than not, have worked the hardest and taken the greatest risks to get where they are, and who create most of our jobs--that what they've accomplished won't go to their kids upon their passing but instead to the likes of Hillary and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to dispose of as they see fit?
Who, after all, spends a life of labor in order to leave money to politicians who produce nothing at all so that they can buy the votes of those who often don't work at all?
And since you can't take the family company you built with you, or pass it on to your progeny, why not just spend it on the way out on baubles and toys, on Lamborghinis, yachts, vacation homes in the Hamptons, and private jets?
In Hillary's proposal is found once again the pernicious idea that our money really isn't ours, but simply on loan from the state and those who control it (like Hillary). Although we were the ones who earned it, in the (literal) end it belongs to them, not us.
Demonizing those who are wealthier and more successful than we are is the oldest play in the demagogues' playbook. It always brings raucous applause from the masses.
Until they learn that "rich," like "kulak," can be a remarkably elastic word.
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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.
Editorial on 10/03/2016