John Podesta, founder of the Center for American Progress and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, calls the recent Democratic electoral victory "the end of the grand conservative experiment." But conservative talking heads beg to differ.
With their faces a-smirkin' and their eyes a-twinklin', they repeat the same line again and again: "All the Democrats who ran conservative campaigns have ceded ideological ground to the right. Ha ha, you lose." What cruel words. Can't we liberals have our cake and eat it too?
But according to a recent article in The New York Times, all the Democrats are unified on one important front. Some Democrats may have used anti-abortion and pro-gun speeches like cheap whores during their campaigns, but at the end of the night, they all came home to an agenda they truly loved: economic populism.
I wonder how many Americans actually realize that most Democrats have prioritized increasing the minimum wage, making college tuition tax-deductible, keeping manufacturing jobs and giving lower-income Americans better healthcare. But these policies will cost money, and the last thing Democrats want is to appear vulnerable to the "tax and spend" label.
The solution? It's time for the Democrats to adopt my miraculous tax plan, tentatively titled Project Robin Hood (PRH).
PRH is predicated on the following dilemma. Increased income taxes on the rich create a large "excess burden." High taxes create an incentive for rich people to work less and perhaps to invest outside the United States. The loss of welfare associated with these shifts outweighs any government revenue collected.
Only an economist would make that argument in such terms, but the Republicans concur when they advocate lowering high-income taxes and corporate taxes to encourage business growth. ("Trickle-down economics" is a separate theory - a phony attempt to spice up all this efficiency with a little equity - that has gone out of style. Utter the phrase on the Capitol playground and you're liable to get bitch-slapped).
But if Robin Hood were a real person, he would reduce the incidence of excess burden. He redistributes wealth to the poor, but the wealthy victims do not expect it and therefore do not alter their economic behavior in preparation. They maintain the same high levels of investment and work ethic post-robbery because they have no reason to expect a second robbery (and Robin Hood will meet that expectation by not robbing them again, at least for twenty years).
Ideally, Robin Hood will have a method to steal from wealthy Americans' offshore bank accounts. Whereas stealing domestically changes the allocation of resources, stealing internationally actually brings to government coffers brand new resources, resources that ought to be kept in the United States and taxed.
PRH, as the practical manifestation of the popular myth, would create a secret government agency that would build a covert, government-funded band of robbers. These robbers would steal large chunks of money (the specific amount depending on income) from perhaps 100 millionaires a month. Highly-trusted, well-tracked operatives might rob Swiss bank accounts and the like, while most would simply use government access to electronically steal from people's stock investments, online bank accounts and so on. If anyone gets caught, the agency comes to court and mysteriously bails him or her out.
My plan is the only one that will significantly increase revenue, avoid excess burden and enjoy bipartisan support. Republicans will appreciate a paternalistic strategy that redistributes without distorting the free market, while Democrats will hail any program that substantially increases government revenue.
Paternalism is needed here. Instead of investing in high-end niche technologies, wealthy Americans ought to be making long-term investments in family livelihoods and children's futures.
Naturally, the agency's actions would have to be entirely secret, but secrecy in the name of the greater good (as with wiretapping) is the American way. Yes, it contradicts everything we hold dear about our democracy, but democracy and economic optimization always have had their squabbles. Note that this secrecy also requires incinerating all records of this article and all of its readers. Sorry!
Uncomfortable with my proposal? Try pushing for dramatically higher taxes instead. The public will notice and demand a smooth answer. Ever since Walter Mondale honestly proclaimed, "We will raise taxes!" during a 1984 presidential race and lost every state but Minnesota and the District of Columbia, Democrats have avoided mention of significantly raising taxes for anyone with less income than it takes to buy a small island.
Democrats have two years to deliver the ideological smackdown necessary to replace the conservative experiment with one based on responsibility to help those who cannot help themselves. Perhaps my proposal is completely illegal, uninformed by political realities and bolstered only by a loose understanding of concepts I lifted from my public economics class, but it just may be our best hope for a bright future.
Kailin Clarke '07 welcomes nominations for political appointments.
