Column: What George F. Will gets wrong about the progressive income tax

The surest clue that a presidential election is nigh is that “flat tax” schemes have once again emerged as conservative shibboleths, the way crocuses herald the coming of spring. His Dec. 4 column went further than stating that the U.S. income tax is too progressive, which is the usual default argument: Instead, he wrote that the case for any progressive income tax is not merely weak, but “nonexistent.” Whatever is the existing degree of progression, people who pay the top rate will think it is too much. In “The Wealth of Nations,” the father of laissez-faire economics observed that “the necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor” while “the luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich.” Therefore, he concluded, “it is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.” The most persistent argument in favor of a progressive tax is that it suppresses income inequality. The motivation of pundits like Will to defend inequality and deplore a tax code that aims to reduce it, however inadequately, typically is shrouded in rhetoric about “economic growth” and “freedom from tyranny.” Will quotes a 1952 essay by two of Simons’ successors at Chicago, Walter J. Blum and Harry Kalven Jr., stating that the progressive tax code is the project of a system in which “the majority can vote distinctive burdens for the minority.” Does that bear any relation to today’s economic reality? It may be more likely that the distaste harbored by Will and the flat-taxers for higher marginal tax rates imposed on the wealthy reflect a rule posited by Stein in his 1996 Wall Street Journal essay, which he derived from “60 years of observation.” It was this: “Whatever is the existing degree of progression, people who pay the top rate will think it is too much.” Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik.