Principled Perspectives: Egalitarianism

Showing posts with label Egalitarianism. Show all posts

Saturday, November 11, 2023

Warren/Sanders Wealth Tax is Rooted in the Ultimate Collectivist Evil, Egalitarianism

Regarding Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders propose 3% wealth tax on billionaires, CNBC reports:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democrats on Monday proposed a 2% annual tax on wealth over $50 million, rising to 3% for wealth over $1 billion.

The Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act would aim to close the U.S. wealth gap, which has grown wider during the Covid pandemic.

This is the ultra-evil of Egalitarianism laid bare. Note that the rationale for the proposed wealth tax doesn’t even pretend to offer a positive benefit to anyone. It’s purpose is strictly to tear down the successful. It used to be that Leftist sought to take from the “haves” to give to the “have-nots.” It’s morally wrong, but at least their ostensible purpose was to economically lift the “less fortunate.” But who gains by “closing the wealth gap?” No one. The only purpose behind the Warren/Sanders wealth tax, by their own brazen admission, is to loot the successful because they are successful. That’s pure nihilism. That’s Egalitarianism.

On a more practical level, you can't "close the wealth gap" or ever significantly "reign in" the gap without subjecting all or most Americans to the wealth tax and at much higher rates. As Reason’s Peter Suderman observes in Elizabeth Warren Still Wants a Wealth Tax. It Still Won't Work:

Warren's advocacy for the wealth tax is also born out of a desire for easy political targets who can shoulder the blame for whatever problems or pseudo-problems Warren wants to bring up. What Warren needs are villains.

The plan would, however, result in a huge uptick in tax-related hassle for ordinary, not-super-rich people: Beyond the annual tax on wealth, her plan would also pump an additional $100 billion into the Internal Revenue Service to beef up enforcement, and mandate 30 percent annual audit rate for the agency—meaning that nearly a third of American households would be audited every year.

This expansion in "enforcement" of a wealth tax bill can mean only one thing; to set the stage for a huge expansion of the wealth tax down the road. Given the logic of the basic Egalitarian premise behind the wealth tax--"fighting" [i.e. outlawing] wealth inequality--it is inevitable that every dime of Americans' wealth up and down the wealth scale must eventually be considered a target of the wealth tax, and at much greater percentages. After all, if a person with $50 million is targeted because his wealth is greater than those with less than $50 million, then the same logic can be used against people with net worth of $5 million, $500,000, $50,000, $5000, or $500.

A wealth tax is much more insidious than the Income tax. At least you know that once your income is taxed, the rest is yours, and the only additional tax you would owe is the earnings on your after-tax wealth, not your after-tax wealth itself. But under the Warren/Sanders wealth tax, none of your wealth can ever be safe from the Egalitarian looters—and for no other reason than that the next guy doesn’t have what you’ve earned, and that “wealth gap” must be closed.

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Economic Egalitarianism Leads Directly to Racist Policies in NJ

The dangerous myth that wealth inequality, as such, is a injustice is the rationale for proposed racist law in New Jersey.

In N.J. must ‘repair the harm’ of huge wealth gap between white and Black families, advocates say, Susan K. Livio reports:

The state Assembly Community Development and Affairs Committee met at the Statehouse in Trenton to hear testimony based on the report: “Making the Two New Jerseys One: Closing the $300,000 racial wealth gap in the Garden State.”

The committee focussed on three pieces of legislation:

One bill, A1519, would make it easier for real estate appraisers to lose their license if they caught [sic] scaling down property evaluation based on race, creed or national origin.

Obviously, discrimination based on race, creed or national origin is evil. But how does one distinguish between appraisals based on legitimate economic criteria and one infused with personal bigotry. In today’s culture, with its extreme intolerance for bigotry, real estate appraisers are highly unlikely to openly admit that they are slanting their appraisals based on race, creed, or national origin. So how do licensing boards go about determining if bigotry is involved?

This looks like a license to frivolously sue, and coerce higher appraisal values based on fear of lawsuits, enriching existing homeowners/sellers on paper, at the expense of buyers overpaying. How is it good to scale up property evaluation based on race, creed or national origin, for fear of getting accused of scaling down property evaluation based on race, creed or national origin? How is that fair to buyers, who will pay above-market prices for homes? How is that fair to sellers, if they believe their net worth to be higher than actuality?

Another bill, A1579, would allocate $70 million to launch a Baby Bond Account Program, which would invest $2,000 in a state-managed fund for every child born to a family that earns no more than 200% of the poverty level. A family of four earning no more than $27,740 a year would qualify, based on federal poverty rules.

The third bill, A938, sponsored by Sumter, would create a New Jersey Reparations Task Force. The 11-person body would hold hearings and write a report that would “examine the extent to which the State of New Jersey and the federal government prevented, opposed, or restricted efforts of former enslaved persons and their descendants who are considered United States’ citizens to economically thrive upon the ending of slavery.”

After documenting wealth disparities between “races”, the article says:

These inequities stem from slavery and generations-old systemic policies and practices, such as “redlining” or steering Black people away from buying in white communities, and restrictive housing covenants that barred Black people from ownership, she said.

There is no question that past racist government policies were horrible. It may even be plausible that some lingering effects of those policies, which had hindered the economic advancement of blacks, are responsible for part of today’s wealth gap. But those laws, Jim Crow, ended almost 60 years ago. It’s hard to imagine that, after so much time much of the statistical gap stems from generations-old system policies and practices, let alone centuries-old slavery. My wife and I married in 1972. Neither of us got one iota of a financial head start from our parents. We are not wealthy. But we are comfortable in our retirement. We built our wealth through work and thrift. If there is a gap compared to some hypothetical black couple, how is that an inequity stemming from long-ago injustices?

As to the racist-inspired Baby Bond Account Program, how is it equitable to reward or not reward 18 year-olds with a Baby Bond windfall based on what their parents earned in the year they were born? And as to slave reparations, how is it fair to hand a windfall to people who were not victims of past injustices, paid for by people who were not culpable for those long-ago injustices?

Another bill not directly related to wealth inequality is also on the legislative agenda. In White men dominate most N.J. government boards. This bill aims to change that.by Susan K. Livio and Kelly Heyboer (NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) report:

State boards and commissions that collectively control billions of dollars and make decisions affecting everyday life in New Jersey must include more women and minorities, under a bill approved by state Senate committee Monday.

Judging people by skin color or gender, rather than merit, experience, and character, is both racist and sexist. How is that just?

All of these bills are not about compensating actual victims of unjust government policies. In fact, not one individual victim, backed by evidence, was even identified. These initiatives are collectivist, racist, in some measure sexist, and motivated by economic egalitarianism—an axis of philosophical evil.

History is settled. What happened, happened. It can’t be changed. The practice of using unchangeable history as a weapon to impose new injustices on innocent people who were not part of that history, through revenge discrimination based on color or sex, to favor non-victims who were not part of that history, is not the sort of actions that civilized societies that supposedly value individual sovereignty and rights and justice for all should tolerate.

These initiatives highlight the danger of elevating a non-issue into a big problem. Apparently, the statists are losing confidence in their “historical injustice” rationalizations for socialist agendas. So they are turning to wealth inequalities. But egalitarianism is the greatest collectivist evil, and is no more a justification for racist policies than history.

Monday, July 5, 2021

‘Harrison Bergeron’ vs the Right Way to Address the ‘Achievement Gap’ in Education

When I came across ‘Harrison Bergeron’* and how to close the achievement gap, John Kellmayer’s guest column in the New Jersey star-Ledger, I thought, “Here they go again—another call to lower educational standards for some egalitarian utopian goal to equalize outcomes by penalizing academic achievement.”

And then I read the first paragraph, and it hit me like a welcome blast of Arctic air. I knew I’d found a really special column in this age of tribalism, racism, bastardized “equity” crusading, and mealy-mouthed opposition. Reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984 and Ayn Rand’s Anthem, Kellmayer opens with:

Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, “Harrison Bergeron,” was published in 1961* and tells the tale of Harrison, a handsome and gifted intellectually and athletic 14-year-old. Set in the year 2081, the United States government has finally succeeded in achieving full equality for all Americans with the passage of the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments. No one is allowed to be more intelligent, attractive, or physically gifted than anyone else. Those who are smarter must wear a device that disrupts their thinking; those who are too attractive must wear masks and those with athletic prowess must wear weights. Harrison rebels and is eventually executed by the United States Handicapper General.

Whoa! There’s more. Kellmayer doesn’t shy away from the obvious implications of that story. After this blockbuster dystopian warning of where today's fanatical new "equality" warriors want to take us, he spells out the antipode to that horrific future. He makes a crucial, greatly underappreciated point in this age of twisted "equity." Kellmayer builds on Vonnegut’s devastating condemnation of Egalitarianism, directly attacking the evil "equality of outcome" premise that dominates the Left and Democrats. And he does it with an ingredient usually missing from today’s mealy-mouthed, compromising opponents of egalitarianism: moral certitude:

Although Vonnegut’s science fiction story is certainly extreme, it illustrates something important about the achievement gap. An achievement gap is a phenomenon of a free and healthy democratic society and reflects a polarity between conflicting core values shared by most Americans. Most of us accept the sometimes conflicting principles of equality of educational opportunity and the exercise of individual liberty.

Virtually all Americans agree that all children deserve an equal opportunity for a quality education and a chance to obtain the good things in life. At the same time, however, most Americans believe that if they have the resources to ensure that their children have a head start in life — better teachers and schools, technology in the home, summer camps, private tutoring — then they have not only the right but the moral responsibility to provide their children with these advantages.

Hence, unless the nightmare future Vonnegut presented in “Harrison Bergeron” becomes real, there will always be an achievement gap. This gap will grow larger or smaller primarily as a result of societal circumstances that have nothing to do with the schools. [My emphasis]

Even as Kellmeyer accepts that governmental force be used to equalize opportunity, he recognizes that it requires the sacrifice of some individual liberty. He understands that these are conflicting principles. Equal opportunity doesn’t exist in nature outside of the freedom we all possess to take advantage of whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. But we can forgive this slip-up because Kellmayer recognizes that the equalization of opportunity is, in effect, a necessary evil, and because of the much more important points he makes.

By asserting the right and moral responsibility of parents/guardians to help their children get “a head start in life,” Kellmayer stands up firmly for individual rights. A “head start” means inequality, and Kellmayer unabashedly defends it, rather than grudgingly accept inequality as a necessary evil. He also recognizes the responsibility of culture—”societal circumstances”—in instilling respect for educational achievement.

I don’t fully agree that the schools “have nothing to do with” the achievement gap. Good educational philosophy is vital. For example, are children encouraged to think independently, or conform to the group? The Montessori Method, which instills integrated critical thinking, and Progressive Education, which eschews principles and encourages groupthink, will certainly lead to opposing educational outcomes -- i.e., “gaps.”

Because there will always be an achievement gap (and this is necessary and good in a free society), it is for the government and not the schools to address the systemic inequalities that minority and economically marginalized groups face by creating more opportunities for members of these groups.

Instead, we should redefine the problem in terms of an opportunity gap. If this opportunity gap is successfully addressed, then the achievement gap will diminish and Kurt Vonnegut’s prophecy of a dystopian future will represent only a minor footnote to this discussion. [My emphasis]

In a fully free society, in which the separation of education and state is a fundamental principle, government would have no role. But since the government does dominate education, however, Kellmayer is certainly correct that the government has a role in creating opportunities. It can expand opportunity by instituting universal school choice through tax credits or education savings accounts—in which education tax dollars follow the child, not the child’s address. The success of New Jersey’s charter school program, the project of the Administration of NJ Governor Chris Christie, points to another option for expanding opportunity. Christie’s charter program, which is wildly popular among parents in the worst performing school districts like Newark, demonstrates the vital importance and power of parental educational choice as well as showing the role the government must play.

But Kellmayer doesn’t let parents and the home environment, and the values instilled thereof, or not instilled, off the hook.

Since the 1960s, a great deal has been written about the achievement gap. Twelve years after schools were desegregated in 1954, Congress wanted to know how minority children were progressing and commissioned James Coleman and a team of researchers from John Hopkins University to find out. Coleman’s findings were enormously important then and still are today. He concluded that schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his or her background and general social context; and that this very lack of an independent effect means that the inequalities imposed on children by their home, neighborhood, and peer environment are carried along to become the inequalities with which they confront adult life at the end of school.

Andy Porter, one of the nation’s leading experts on standardized testing and the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education writes, “The gap between whites and blacks is present before children experience any schooling. By the time children are three or four, it is already a standard deviation.” [My emphasis]

Leftist egalitarians and race-baiters shriek in horror at the idea that responsibility for outcomes rests primarily with the individual, especially darker skinned individuals, whom they believe are incapable of self-responsibility. But many scholars have fingered cultural and familial failures as the source of low achievement among certain groups. De Paul University (Chicago) Philosophy Professor Jason C. Hill, for example, in his book We Have Overcome, condemns the practice of parents and community leaders, reinforced by the media and the politicians of the Left, telling children that the “system” is rigged against them and that they shouldn’t “act white” by striving to excel in school through their own self-respect, self-discipline, and hard work. This false narrative, not racism or discrimination, is the cause of underachievement that we call the achievement gap.

Kellmayer seems to understand the real source of the achievement gap and how to address it, while recognizing that achievement gaps, as such, are not a drawback but a healthy feature of a free society. He offers a breath of fresh air -- and sanity -- that one rarely finds in our current Woke-mad, “racial reckoning” state of affairs. This new "equity," redefined from "fair and impartial treatment" to "equality of outcome," is destructive of achievement, and excellence across the board. This is egalitarianism, laid bare. A war on individualism. This—nihilism—is the new equity warriors' “solution" to the achievement gap. Of course, Ayn Rand anticipated Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron character with the character Equality 7-2521 in her 1938 novella Anthem. If we want to avoid the 2081 nightmare, or the world of Anthem, we must recognize the undiluted evil of egalitarianism. Kellmayer does just that. Well said, Mr. Kellmayer.

*[full TEXT of HARRISON BERGERON by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a chapter in the book Welcome to the Monkey House: A Collection of Short Works]

Monday, May 17, 2021

Biden’s Racist Education Trial Balloon

In Biden Administration Prioritizes "Wokeism," Critical Race Theory In Schools, Kerry Mcdonald reports for The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE):

The Biden administration is taking new steps to promote Critical Race Theory and The New York Times’s controversial 1619 Project in US education programs. In a proposed federal rule issued on Monday, the US Department of Education indicated that it will be using taxpayer funds to award millions of dollars in American history and civics education grants that prioritize the belief that America is systemically racist.

The grant program seeks “projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning,” and refers to President Biden’s Inauguration Day executive order that explains how our country is plagued by “systemic racism” and “deserves an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda” to address this issue.

The new federal proposed rule refers to the 1619 Project and related curriculum resources as a “landmark” model for US history and civics education, despite its agenda-driven hostility against capitalism, its flawed historical analysis that many scholars have deemed false, and the Times’s own correction of the project.

The grant prioritization also pushes for greater emphasis on “anti-racism” training in schools, and quotes the work of Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist.

The 1619 Project reinterprets the American Founding so as to cancel liberty equality and prioritize slavery, in contradiction to the plain words of the Declaration of Independence and the history of the period between 1619 and 1776, when the influences that shaped the minds of the Founding generation congealed and which is to be cancelled out. Critical Race Theory is the centralizing of “race” (skin color) as the primary consideration in every cultural and political issue. If that sounds like racism, you’d be correct. If you think that’s an exaggeration, read on.

In White House Tiptoes Into 'Anti-Racism' Culture War, The Dispatch objectively analyzes Biden’s initiative. Here are some excerpts from the article, with my annotates, which are highlighted. All italics are my emphasis.

[Biden’s] proposed Department of Education rule prioritizing civics projects concerning 'systemic marginalization' may be small, but critics are alarmed by what it symbolizes.

The American History and Civics Education programs, through which the Department of Education distributes a handful of grants per year for teachers and high school students to learn more about their country and its history, are a tiny backwater of the sprawling $74 billion department. But thanks to a new proposed rule, the longstanding program stands to become a culture-war flashpoint as the Biden administration’s first foray into the world of “anti-racist” education.

Never mind that this is "small" and "a tiny backwater." This is a dangerous trial balloon. It must be called out and stopped. Evil often starts as a trial balloon.

The rule, a draft of which was entered into the Federal Register last week, would prioritize “projects that incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives into teaching and learning.”

This is not meant as it sounds, tolerance of different viewpoints. It is the postmodern premise that there is no objective reality or facts, but only equally valid "perspectives." This is not an educational principle. It is anti-mind and anti-reason.

Anti-racism is the principle—newly in vogue among progressives in recent years—that it is insufficient for white people to simply be “not racist,” in the sense of not harboring personal prejudice against minorities. Rather, anti-racism theory states, there exists a society-wide moral imperative to actively work to fight systemic racism wherever it exists—which is, by definition, anywhere one racial group is doing better on aggregate than another.

Which means, a collectivist backdoor into Egalitarianism, plain and simple. No need to investigate the causes of the disparities. Just assume racism is the cause. “Systemic racism” is the catch phrase that announces, “I have no evidence for racism, nor do I need any.”

Scholar Ibram X. Kendi, whom the proposed rule also cites, argued in his book How to Be an Antiracist that “racial discrimination is not inherently racist.” In fact, racial discrimination can be anti-racist so long as it “is creating equity.”

“The only remedy to racist discrimination,” Kendi wrote, “is antiracist discrimination.”

Kendi’s book has become a kind of “bible” or reference for the Anti-Racist movement. Kendi reinterprets racism from a concept with an objective definition to a means to an egalitarian/socialist end. But what Kendi actually makes clear is that Critical Race Theory is openly and by design a racist theory. Biden’s “education” initiative is not only Egalitarian, but explicitly racist.

It isn’t unprecedented for the White House to weigh in on the cultural debate over how slavery and racism should be taught in schools. In an attempt to counterprogram the 1619 Project with “patriotic history,” the Trump administration empaneled a “1776 Commission” in September 2020.

Trump set the precedent. In another Fee article, Kerry Mcdonald presses this important point:

“Emboldening the federal government to execute education policy may seem appealing when your preferred politician or party is in power, but that power remains when leadership inevitably sways to another politician or party. If you wouldn’t support a Biden ‘1619 Commission,’ then you shouldn’t support Trump’s ‘1776 Commission.’ If you wouldn’t support mandatory ‘critical race theory’ taught in your local schools, then you shouldn’t support mandatory ‘patriotic education’ either.”

This is what you get when you have a thorough-going pragmatist as a stand-in for Americanism. While Trump's banning of CRT in federal training was appropriate, his foray into federal control of public education curriculum is a disaster. More harm than good. The Dispatch elaborates on this point.

But former Trump Department of Education officials point out one critical qualitative difference: The 1776 Commission entered the trenches of the history-of-racism debate, but the department under Trump never used federal funding to incentivize the teaching of either side of that debate in school curricula. “Despite clear preferences and views on what is proper or appropriate, for four years Secretary DeVos and the Trump administration steadfastly avoided putting a thumb on the scale in terms of any curriculum decisions,” said Nate Bailey, who served as chief of staff to Betsy DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education. “I can’t tell you how many times Betsy said, to friends and foes alike, ‘There is no role for the federal government when it comes to curriculum.’ That’s a local decision.”

But is that enough? Just opening the door implies the next step.

Since its inception, the Department of Education has been prohibited by law from mandating or prescribing curriculum content or standards.

It’s a prohibition that has long been accompanied by general public hostility toward top-down curricular directives. Even efforts to standardize curricula via the voluntary adoption of national standards typically fail to evade suspicion that Washington is butting in where it doesn’t belong—think of the controversies surrounding Common Core during the Obama years.

A ban on mandating content doesn’t necessarily prevent the department from incentivizing specific types of programs by including funding for them in discretionary grants. Still, it’s unusual for grant priorities to focus on curriculum content.

See what I mean? The law prohibiting the federal Education Department from “mandating or prescribing curriculum content or standards” falls apart when that same department funds education. Government funding implies control, because funding grants can’t be without conditions. If you want an effective ban on federal control of local education, you need to eliminate the grants or, better yet, eliminate the federal Department of Education altogether.

Need more evidence? Continue.

But what is unquestionably significant is what the rule signifies about what the Biden administration sees as the sort of civics education worth investing federal money in. That doesn’t mean much now—but it’s likely to become more important in the months ahead. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have been tossing around the idea of dramatically beefing up federal investment in civics education. The Educating for Democracy Act, which would appropriate $1 billion of federal money per year for new discretionary grants for teaching civics, was introduced last year with bipartisan cosponsors in both the House and the Senate.

According to Finn, the question is what will happen “if the federal money gets authorized and appropriated in large quantities and is then administered through the same political sensibility as this little program we’ve been talking about.”

“There is a larger-scale mischief on the horizon,” he said, “if we get a big bucks program on the heels of this little one.”

Exactly!

I have often stated that Critical Race Theory, aka “Anti-Racism”, is the re-mainstreaming of racism in America. But that understates the corruption of CRT. Even in the times when American culture was the most racist, there were many Americans who were not racist, and who fought against it. These genuine anti-racists were individualists. CRT, which is thoroughly collectivist, means to make everyone racist, viewing every aspect of American culture through the lens of skin color, divided between oppressor and oppressed groups. Reprising the barbarians that sacked the Roman Empire, CRT is primitive tribalism invading civilization.

We should not take comfort in the belief that this is a relatively inconsequential part of the Department of Education. It is part of Biden’s core mission to forge an “ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda.” “Equity” here does not mean fairness or justice. It means tyrannical form of socialism imbued with totalitarian Egalitarianism. No one will be safe from this evil agenda.