George Will on Sunday marvelously told liberal economist Robert Reich something that many conservatives have been dying to say for years.
During a fascinating Right vs. Left debate on ABC's This Week, after Reich predictably pined for higher income tax rates to solve all that ails us, Will struck back with the line of the weekend, "You are a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Can government, should government do what the congressman is doing and allow upward mobility, which stalled?
GEORGE WILL: Big government inevitably exacerbates the problem of inequality. Big government inevitably is a servant of the strong. I'll give you two examples. The tax code has been changed 4,500 times in the last decade. Every one of those times at the service of a group strong enough and attentive enough and wealthy enough to hire a Washington lawyer to represent them to game the tax code.
The welfare state exists to transfer wealth basically from the working young and retired elderly -- working young and middle aged to the retired elderly. The elderly are, according to the CBO study, the net worth of a family of a household on average, household headed by someone 65 years old or older is 47 times larger than that of the net worth of a household of someone 35 or younger. That's a record, and has doubled in the last five years. Big government is responsive to big, muscular interest groups.
That bears repeating: "The net worth of a family of a household on average, household headed by someone 65 years old or older is 47 times larger than that of the net worth of a household of someone 35 or younger."
While unwashed ne'erdowells in tents around the country carp and whine about income inequality, maybe they should pay far more attention to the various entitlement programs and tax codes created in the past 75 years that have consistently taken money from the young to give to the old.
This is a far more serious systemic problem in our society than the income inequality between the rich and the poor.
Not surprisingly, Reich didn't see it that way and instead brought out the same old tired strawmen the Left have been boring us with for decades:
ROBERT REICH: Well, I -- let's just be clear about the facts. I mean, right now, the top 1 percent is claiming in terms of their pay, a larger share of total income than has been at any time since before the Great Depression. And their tax rates -- and their tax rates are lower than they have been in 30 years.
You look at that period. I mean, George, you say that, you know, big -- rich people and big corporations have undue influence. Yes, I agree with you. But the answer is not to shrink government and not even to have government attempt to invest in education, in job training and all of the ways in which we traditionally have generated upward mobility. The answer is to get money out of politics, to make sure that those who are at the top reaches, that is both individuals and corporations, don't have the untoward influence they now have.
One final point. In the first three decades after the second world war, we had in this country much more of an equal distribution of the fruits of economic growth. And yet what happened? It turned out that in those days, the economy grew faster than it has grown since. There was, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom nobody accused of being a socialist, a marginal tax rate on the top of 91 percent. I'm not advocating we go back to 91 percent. I'm just saying that for conservatives to say that we cannot tax the wealthy, when all of the nation's wealth and income, virtually speaking, is at the top, to invest in people and education and training and everything else we need to invest, it's absurd on its face.
Of course, what folks like Reich ignore is that when the top rate was 91 percent under Eisenhower, there were far more loopholes in the tax code thereby allowing the folks in the top bracket to pay less as a percentage of their income than they do today.
Additionally, the percentage upper earners paid of total taxes collected was far less in those days than it is now. Liberal economists and the media members that revere them always ignore this.
Not George Will:
CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK (D-MASSACHUSETTS): Wrong. You guys are.
CONGRESSMAN PAUL RYAN (R-WISCONSIN): No, we're not.
WILL: No, we're not.
FRANK: I'll make the point.
WILL: Look, I'm not attacking the elderly. I am elderly.
(LAUGHTER)
WILL: I have -- five years ago when I turned 65, I got my Medicare card. I showed it to my doctor, he said, that's wonderful, George, now we'll send your bills to your children. I find that a regressive transfer of wealth, and the welfare state is full of them.
Indeed. And if the Left has its way, such transfer will only get more and more onerous.
In reality, the young people demonstrating all over the country should be protesting against this instead of financial institutions that actually have very little to do with their incomes or their futures.
It would be nice if the media would help them realize this, or isn't that the press's function anymore?
Those interested can watch the entire debate here or read it here.
