Thursday, July 16, 2020

The Truth About the Rich Calling For Higher Taxes to Fight COVID-19



By Randall G. Holcombe

More than 80 wealthy individuals are petitioning for higher taxes on the rich to help pay for the billions in new government programs made necessary by the Covid-19 pandemic. This is petition is disingenuous at best.

If the wealthy want to pay more to help fight COVID-19, they can choose to do so themselves. They don’t need government to force them.

Many wealthy individuals already have pledged to devote more than half their wealth to charitable activities, without government force. What this petition actually asks is that government tax other people, who don’t share the values of the petitioners.

It’s their money to allocate as they want. If they want to allocate it to others, that’s their choice, although as I document in my book Writing Off Ideas: Taxation, Foundations, and Philanthropy in America, sometimes the results are not as desirable as the intentions.

In my book, I note that Henry Ford was notoriously uncharitable during his lifetime, saying that the best thing he could do with his money was to reinvest it in the Ford Motor Company to give people good jobs and affordable automobiles. Was he wrong? Regardless, it was his money and his choice to make.

There are two other troubling aspects to this petition. One is the presumption that the best way to fight the virus pandemic is to give the government more money. On the contrary, governments may not be the best organizations to fight diseases. Moreover, COVID-19, while raging right now, is a temporary problem and there are already aggressive initiatives underway to quickly develop a vaccine. It is unlikely at this point that sending more money to government will hasten the end to the pandemic.

A second issue—the most disingenuous part—is that the petition calls for a permanent increase in taxes to address a temporary problem. The petitioners are using the current pandemic as a cover to further their pro-government agenda.

Their real motive has nothing to do with addressing the pandemic, and everything to do with raising taxes to make government a bigger part of your life. If they succeed, the costs will fall not only on rich taxpayers but on everyone, because our liberty will be a bit more compromised.

Randall G. Holcombe is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, and the DeVoe Moore Professor of Economics at Florida State University. 

The above originally appeared at the Independent Institute.

Further comment from RW:

What Holcombe says above is correct but there are two more issues that must be kept in mind.

1. That the virus is not so out of the ordinary that extraordinary measures must be taken.

2. It is not clear that more money needs to be thrown at COVID-19. The pharmaceutical companies are throwing billions at attempting to find therapies and vaccines to fight the virus. Basic medical insurance can handle the few who fall seriously ill because of the virus. And private charity could take care of the rest.

In other words, Holcombe's warning is spot on that this a call by the rich to expand the state---a state that is controlled by the very rich.

It also should be noted that Millionaires For Humanity is a project of a bunch of big government lefty "social change" groups:  Bridging Ventures, Club of Rome, Human Act, Oxfam International, Patriotic Millionaires, and Tax Justice UK.



1 comment:

  1. One more thing. They ask that we all get taxed more while their attorneys and lobbyists work to create loop holes fir them to pay less. Nice.

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