[Note:  This post is an update of an earlier one to take account of more recent developments, including President Obama’s news conference on May 6, 2016.]

In his news conference on Friday (May 6), President Obama reiterated his claim that, owing to tax loopholes, the wealthy do not pay their “fair share” of taxes, a claim he has made several times during his presidency.  Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has made this same claim in most, if not all, of his presidential campaign speeches.  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also stated that, if elected president, she intends to institute a four percent “Fair Share Surcharge” on Americans who make more than $5 million a year.

I have always been puzzled when I hear politicians, particularly Democrats and others of the left, talking about people needing to pay their “fair share” of taxes.  What President Obama, Senator Sanders, and Mrs. Clinton mean by this idea is that those earning higher incomes owe society more in taxes than they already pay, notwithstanding that income tax rates are already progressive, i.e., marginal rates increase with income.  Rarely, however, do proponents of raising rates on high income earners say exactly what a “fair share” of taxes is or, more precisely, what the upper limit, if any, of a “fair share” of taxes is.  Even more vague is their philosophical basis, either in ethics or some other grounding, for what constitutes “fairness” in this context.

It seems to me that Obama, Sanders, Clinton, and others of similar views have the tables turned upside down.  In fact, rather good philosophical arguments can be made from both an ethics and an economics perspective that, if anything, high income earners are already paying well more than their fair share of taxes and that their absolute tax payments or marginal rates should therefore be reduced.

Taxes are the cost of financing government.  In our democracy, every qualified voter is afforded one vote, no more and no less.  Just as this political shareholding is allocated equally among citizens, it would seem intuitively fair that the burden of the cost of government should similarly be allocated equally.  That is, everyone should pay the same amount in taxes in the form of a simple per capita tax.  This way, each person contributes the same amount toward the cost of government, much like dues assessments in a club.  At the least, it would be interesting to ask President Obama, Senator Sanders, and Mrs. Clinton to explain, from an ethics standpoint, why their proposals to make taxes even more progressive, i.e., even more unequal, are fairer than an equal per capita tax.

Of course, as a practical matter, given the current size of government, an equal per capita tax would necessarily mean that many, if not most, taxpayers would owe more than they earn or have in savings and, in some cases, likely much more.  Such a tax thus would be unworkable unless government were shrunk substantially.  The cost of government would have to shrink at least to the point where the per capita tax would be affordable by each taxpayer, a goal unlikely to be shared by the political class, left or right.  Even so, the size of government and the practical ability to have fairness in the tax code would seem to be inextricably linked.

Admittedly, I am uneasy to render judgments on purely ethical grounds about whether the amount of taxes a particular taxpayer pays is fair for that taxpayer.  I do, however, claim some expertise in economic reasoning.  On that basis, I think an argument can be made that, in the alternative to a per capita tax, a regressive income tax is actually fairer than a progressive one.

The argument rests on the idea that whenever there is voluntary exchange, every transaction creates wealth.  A voluntary transaction will not take place unless each party becomes better off as a result of the transaction.  It follows therefore that, so long as high income earners obtain their income through voluntary exchange of their labor, services, or other resources, each dollar of that income is the product of a wealth-creating transaction.

Significantly, however, the high income earner does not keep all of the created wealth, but only a fraction.  The rest of the new wealth necessarily accrues to everyone else with whom the high income earner engaged in voluntary exchange, either directly or indirectly.  Thus, the higher the income of the high income earner, the greater the earner contributes to other people’s wealth.  It follows then that high income earners benefit society more than lower income earners before any taxes are taken out of those earnings.

Based on this reasoning, one possible way to measure tax fairness would be on the basis of relative additions to aggregate social wealth.  Under such a definition, people who contribute less to social wealth would be required to make up for the deficit by paying more in taxes, while those who contribute most to social wealth would be rewarded by lower taxes.  Put another way, fairness would require that high income earners be taxed less than low income earners.  The former have already made a disproportionate positive contribution to social welfare.

Of course, as with the per capita tax, a regressive income tax would require considerable downsizing of government.  Such a tax simply could not finance the current government.  Once again, the size of government and the practical ability to have tax fairness are inextricably linked.  But that practical consideration aside, a fairness argument for a regressive income tax that rests on economic reasoning, unlike the Obama, Sanders, and Clinton fairness arguments, at least has an analytical grounding.  It would be interesting to learn how they would respond to the argument.

In that regard, I will myself volunteer one necessary exception to the general conclusion.  The exception owes to the fact that many high income earners today derive their high incomes not from contributing to aggregate wealth but rather by using the machinery of government to expropriate the wealth created by others.  Rent seeking can be very lucrative.  Thus, if “paying one’s fair share” in taxes is inversely related to one’s contribution to social wealth, these high income rent seekers should be taxed at a 100% marginal rate.  Given that the Democratic left has its own set of favored rent seekers, however, I am not sure that Obama, Sanders, and Clinton could even agree to this exception.

To be sure, I write all of the above with a considerable amount of tongue in cheek.  I stand by the larger point, however, that tax “fairness” is hardly a known parameter, and that one can construct ethical and/or syllogistic arguments leading to completely opposite conclusions as to what is fair.  In view of this conundrum, it seems to me that we all would be better served if politicians and policy makers purged “fairness” from their thinking (and speeches) and simply focused on a tax system that finances essential government functions in the most efficient manner possible and impedes economic vitality and long-term growth as little as possible.  I suspect that, in a prosperous and growing economy, questions of “fairness” will lose much of their political cachet and recede to the academic lounges where they belong.

During last Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, and Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vigorously competed to display which one is most earnest in his or her support of raising the federal minimum wage.  In so many words, each claimed that it is necessary, as well as compassionate, to raise the minimum wage so that people can more easily rise to the middle class.  The argument is that if incomes are too low for some people, a law mandating higher incomes is justified.  Mrs. Clinton was a bit more nuanced, noting that the cost of living differs locally and thus, according to her reckoning, states and cities should implement minimum wages even above her proposed higher federal minimum wage of $12 an hour, if appropriate for a given locality.

Notwithstanding the substantial intrusion into economic affairs that governments at all levels undertake in contemporary times, I have long ago foregone any hope that political figures will take it upon themselves to obtain even a modicum of economic literacy before formulating their economic policy proposals.  Many, if not nearly all politicians, claim that reason and science should inform government policy, but few, if any, manifest any understanding that there are irrefutable laws of economics that cannot be repealed or altered by political action.  As a consequence, few areas of public policy are subject to more demagoguery than economic policy.  Minimum wage laws are a poster-boy-like example of such demagoguery.  Such was on great display in the presidential debate.

One of the most fundamental laws of economics is the law of demand, which states that as the price of something rises, the quantity purchased will decrease in a given time period, and vice versa.  The law rests on the fact that, in the real world, resources are scarce, and thus the process of satisfying human wants and desires requires making choices among alternative uses of those scarce resources.  Relative prices determined in free markets facilitate this process by permitting persons to make spending decisions out of a limited income according to the value they obtain per dollar spent on a good or service.  The lower the price, the higher is the value per dollar spent.  The higher the price, the less is the value per dollar spent.  Hence, if the price of something goes up – thus reducing the value per dollar spent – less will be purchased as other goods and services become a better bargain.

Artificially controlling specific prices in the economy distorts this process and creates inefficiency in resource allocation, as relative prices no longer fully reflect market forces driven by consumer preferences.  Wages are prices.  Hence, if wages for unskilled labor are artificially set above the market determined wage by means of minimum wage legislation, less unskilled labor will necessarily be purchased per period of time.  Moreover, the structure of wages throughout labor markets – skilled as well as unskilled – will be distorted, and economic efficiency will be compromised.  These outcomes are givens, and economists have known about them for a long time.

Why then do minimum wage laws persist?  Are not the harmful effects sufficient for voters to reject politicians who push these laws?  The answer, I believe, is that, although the harmful effects are real, they are generally not immediately visible, while the superficial, demagogic appeal of minimum wages is easy to articulate.  This appeal has several components, each of which was stated during the Democratic debate.  First, it is argued that raising the minimum wage will have a (politically) desired redistributive effect (Bernie Sanders).  Second, it is argued that raising the minimum wage will help to elevate people – particularly unskilled workers — into the middle class (Martin O’Malley and Hillary Clinton).  Third, it is contended that the empirical data show no significant adverse impact on employment because of raising the minimum wage, and therefore there is no downside to doing so (Hillary Clinton).

None of these claims, however, lives up to its full billing.  For example, even accepting a goal of income redistribution, minimum wage laws are a highly inefficient means to accomplish this end.  This is not controversial among economists.  Whatever income redistribution raising the minimum wage achieves, that redistribution is likely temporary at best, as employers adjust to the higher wage rate over time by substituting to other inputs such as new technology.  In addition, it only raises the income of those who continue to keep their jobs.  To the extent that the higher wage rate causes, at the margin, others to lose their jobs, their income falls to zero.  And, finally, the distribution comes at the expense of distorting relative prices, which can be considerable depending on the size of the wage hike.  In point of fact, there are far superior mechanisms to achieve income redistribution such as simple cash payouts or a negative income tax.  Either of these measures ensures that the incomes of the entire targeted group increase, and both avoid compromising efficiency because of price distortion.

As for elevating lower income people into the middle class, raising the minimum wage again is highly inefficient.  Vast amounts of evidence indicate that rising incomes are best achieved by education, stable families, and cultural factors such as personal discipline and a strong work ethic.  Entry level jobs – even at low wages – help to foster the personal characteristics, especially among young people brand new to the workforce, necessary to succeed in a work environment and eventually advance into higher paying positions with greater responsibility.   In addition, in few households is the primary income earner a minimum wage worker.  In fact, most minimum wage workers are younger than 24 years old.  (See here.)  Hence, although raising the minimum wage may have some impact on household income, the impact will be small.  A far better emphasis for public policy directed toward building the middle class would be on augmenting incentives for skills acquisition and maintaining stable families.

Mrs. Clinton’s assertion that the empirical evidence “shows” that there is little or no impact on employment following a hike in the minimum wage is similarly flawed.  It is indeed possible to construct studies that yield this result.  In so doing, the studies seemingly refute the basic law of demand.  In fact, however, they do not.  Rather, such studies rest on highly selective data (undisclosed by Mrs. Clinton) that severely cabins the contours of the analysis to exclude either one of two critical factors, or both, that otherwise explain the anomaly.  The first is that when the market wage for unskilled labor has risen above the existing minimum wage because of inflation the latter has no effect on employment rates.  The minimum wage is no longer a floor.  It serves no purpose.  Under these conditions, if the minimum wage is raised anywhere up to but not exceeding the market wage, it is perfectly consistent with the law of demand that there will be no significant employment effects.  Only when the minimum wage is hiked above the market wage, will employment effects take place.  Hence, data that selectively exclude wage hikes that actually exceed the market wage necessarily mislead on the question of employment impact.*

A second explanation for selective data showing little or no employment effects concerns the time frame considered.  In the immediate aftermath of an increase in the minimum wage, many, if not most, employers have capital equipment fixed in place.   In the short run, it will not be possible in many instances to substitute away from labor to a more capital-intensive production environment.  Thus, there may be little immediate job loss.  Over time, however, this will change as equipment wears out and is replaced, and as entry of new capital takes place.  For example, when I was growing up, most elevators required full-time human operators, engaging personally with bank tellers was the only way to withdraw funds from an account, and there were no self-checkout lines at grocery stores.  Today, none of these conditions is true.  Of course, one cannot claim that each of these changed conditions was solely caused by successive hikes in the minimum wage over the years, but undoubtedly those hikes contributed to the long run substitution away from low and unskilled labor in these occupations.  Moreover, this transition certainly took place in innumerable other sectors of the larger economy.

Finally, I want to close with a comment about union support for the minimum wage.  Although historically unions have been a strong Democratic Party constituent, it would seem odd, at least on the surface, that unions would much care about minimum wages.  Union jobs, after all, are typically at hourly wages much higher than the minimum wage.  There are at least two reasons, however, why unions can be counted on to advocate for higher minimum wages.  First, many union contracts contain clauses that structure union wages relative to the minimum wage.  That is, the union pay scale should always, in relative terms, be some percentage above the lowest pay scale.  Hence, when minimum wages are hiked, the union pay scale is similarly adjusted upwards.  Second, it is in the interest of skilled union workers to have the wage rates of unskilled workers continually increase.  Suppose for example that a particular task could be performed by two unskilled workers in an hour or one skilled union worker in an hour.  If the wage rate for unskilled work were $5 /hour and the wage rate for skilled work were $11/hour, the employer can be expected to employ two unskilled workers to do the task at a total of $10/hour.  Now suppose the minimum wage is hiked to $6/hour.  Under this circumstance, the employer will hire the skilled union worker at $11/hour, as the two unskilled workers would now cost $12/hour.  The higher minimum wage not only priced the unskilled workers out of the market, it also created a demand for union work.

In sum, the Democratic presidential debate on Saturday night revealed a great deal of departure from economic science among the three candidates.  This departure was especially apparent in the Q&As concerning the minimum wage.  Even more troubling is the possibility – and perhaps even probability as it concerns Mrs. Clinton – that the economic hokey pokey did not entirely owe to economic illiteracy, but rather owed simply to deliberate political demagoguery to gain votes at the expense of serious thought.

Addendum:   In watching the debate, I could not help but be reminded of the incessant cant from the political left about the alleged consensus among scientists concerning climate change and global warming.  On the basis of this alleged consensus, the science is supposedly settled, and outlying views are to be shunned and ridiculed.  Yet, as the basis for her assertions about the minimum wage, Mrs. Clinton solely cited former Obama White House adviser Alan Krueger, who co-authored a study of the impact on fast food employment in New Jersey and Pennsylvania following an increase in the minimum wage in those states.  The study, published in 1994 and using early 1990s data, claimed to find insignificant employment effects.  This study, however, is the poster boy of outlying studies concerning minimum wages, has often been criticized on methodological grounds, and runs contrary to the “consensus” among economists about the actual employment effects of minimum wage laws.  Mrs. Clinton’s hypocrisy on this score is stunning.

Notes:

* A simple example demonstrates the law of demand in this context.  Suppose the tasks performed by a worker earning $5/hour contribute $5.25/hour in incremental revenue to the employer.  Each hour thus generates $0.25 in accounting profit for the employer.  In fact, under this circumstance, it would pay the employer to pay the worker any wage up to $5.25/hour.  Now suppose the minimum wage is hiked to $5.50/hour.  Absent any concurrent increase in productivity on the part of the worker, it no longer pays the employer to keep the worker and the job is lost.  At the margin, all such workers will be let go.

Mrs. Clinton seems to understand this concept.  At Saturday night’s debate, she stated that she favored an increase in the federal minimum wage to $12/hour, but not to $15/hour.  But why?  From a worker’s standpoint, $15/hour is better than $12/hour, and will produce a higher annual income.  Indeed, why not increase the minimum wage to $100/hour and elevate everyone to the higher end of the middle class?  Implicit in Mrs. Clinton’s reluctance to go higher than $12/hour, at least at the present time, is surely a recognition of the adverse employment effects that the minimum wage produces.

Imagine that you have all the ingredients to bake a twelve inch apple pie, including crust and filling.  Imagine further that the baked pie is initially cut into ten slices.  Under a new government program intended to ensure that everyone has access to quality pie, all citizens are required to buy pie insurance which, among other things, entitles each person to obtain one slice of pie each year at no out-of-pocket cost.  The pie provider bills the insurance company for each slice of pie it supplies to an insured. Assuming a population of eight citizens, after each person obtains one slice of pie, two slices remain.  These two slices might be provided, for example, at full cost or at least with a co-payment to two persons with special needs for additional pie.  Of course, once these last two pie slices are consumed, no pie remains until (1) additional ingredients are found or diverted from other uses, and (2) another pie production cycle ensues.

But wait.  There is a better solution to providing additional pie to everyone.  Specifically, the government could simply pass a law mandating that all citizens are entitled not to just one, but two slices of pie each year at no out-of-pocket cost.  Now each of the eight citizens can have two slices of pie each year.  Everyone is better off!

Of course, this solution is absurd, as there is no actual additional real pie to distribute.  There is still only one twelve inch pie cut into ten slices.  If each of eight citizens is entitled to two slices, all but two citizens would have to be denied a second slice.  In other words, there would be no pie left over to provide a second slice to six of the eight citizens.  Even this outcome assumes that a citizen is not entitled to a second slice until everyone has obtained at least one slice.  Without this rule, five citizens might consume all ten slices before three citizens consume any pie.

Alternatively, the pie might be cut into smaller slices so that there are sixteen.  In this case, there are now enough slices for each citizen to consume two slices.  No more total pie is being consumed, however, and the smaller slices may not adequately meet the needs of the insureds.

The point of this example is to illustrate that consumption must necessarily come out of real resources.  The using up of real resources is the true cost of consumption, and it is impossible to increase consumption in the absence of obtaining additional resources, which are scarce or otherwise deployed in other production activities.  It seems to me that this is not a complicated point, but it nonetheless appears to escape Hillary Clinton.

According to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal at A-4 (“Clinton Lays Out Plan to Cut Health Cost”), Mrs. Clinton, in her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, has announced that, if elected, she will “improve” Obamacare by placing further limits on what insureds pay for healthcare.  Her goal, she says, is to reduce costs.  Her solution is to require insurance plans to permit three doctors’ visits a year before any deductible charges are made.  As quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Mrs. Clinton declared, “With deductibles rising so much faster than income, we must act to reduce the out-of-pocket costs families face.”

It is a shame that no one is asking Mrs. Clinton how this plan reduces the true costs of healthcare, namely the required resources to produce it.  She might also be asked where the additional resources are to be found or from what other productive activity they are to be diverted. If she favors more but shorter and less substantive doctors’ visits, she should explain how she has determined that such smaller but numerically more “slices” of the pie provide for superior quality healthcare.  Unless Mrs. Clinton magically discovers a means to eliminate scarcity – in which case there would be no need for any healthcare insurance – one should be highly skeptical of her pronouncements.

When I first began reading Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) member Narayana Kocherlakota’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning, I thought that it had to be a deliberate parody on the Keynesian groupthink that characterizes the world’s central bankers.  (“Raising Rates Now Would Be a Mistake,” Aug. 19, 2015)  Then I realized that Mr. Kocherlakota is dead serious about wanting to continue the Fed’s zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) of the last six years, notwithstanding its failure to bring about anything close to a robust recovery from the 2008 financial collapse.

Mr. Locherlakota says that raising rates now would impede the Fed’s ability to achieve two goals: (1) raise inflation to its 2% target rate, and (2) stimulate spending via credit expansion and bank lending.  He fails to explain, however, how either of these goals arises from sound economic thinking.  In point of fact, both goals are highly questionable attributes of a growing and productive economy.

As for the first goal, Mr. Kocherlakota merely asserts that 2% inflation is how the Fed defines price stability.  No reason is given as to why 2% is superior to any other number, let alone superior to what most people outside of the FOMC would define as a stable price level — zero inflation.  In fact, a 2% inflation rate means that the purchasing power of a dollar will decline by almost a third over 20 years.  Not only is financial prudence on the part of households severely punished, saving is discouraged and debt-taking encouraged.  Diminished saving and increased debt, however, have never been shown to lead to sustained prosperity.

Mr. Kocherlakota’s second goal, increased spending, is similarly misguided.  A focus on spending neglects capital accumulation, which is essential to productivity gains and economic growth. Capital accumulation, moreover, requires saving to finance the new capital.  Hence, incentivized spending and debt-taking, buttressed by lower saving owing to an inflation tax, must result in a lower rate of capital accumulation and ultimately diminished growth prospects over the long haul.

In the end, price controls never work, and interest rate manipulation will be no exception.  Eventually, the massive distortions in asset pricing created by the six-year ZIRP must be corrected.  At that time, the tools that the Fed has in its bag will have been seriously depleted, and the correction will likely be long and deep.

Given six years of tepid recovery, it is well past time to jettison the ZIRP and return to free market principles in which interest rates are freely determined in the marketplace by peoples’ time preferences and an honest monetary policy.

In the 1980s Reagan Republicans were fond of wearing Adam Smith neckties. (I personally still have two hanging in my closet that hail from that era.)   Adam Smith, of course, was the 18^th Century Scotsman who wrote An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a book considered by many to be the founding work of modern economics. Wearing the Adam Smith neckties was intended to display fidelity to Smith’s ideas and, in particular, fidelity to free markets.

One does not see many Republicans wearing these neckties anymore. Perhaps this loss of ubiquity is to the good, however. After observing the large crop of Republican presidential candidates over the past several months, I can only conclude that none of them is particularly well informed by Smith’s ideas. Indeed, I suspect that few, if any, have ever read The Wealth of Nations. Some of the candidates indeed display an extraordinary degree of economic illiteracy.

The central thesis of The Wealth of Nations is that a nation’s economic well-being is measured not by its store of gold (or other financial assets), the amount of goods it exports, or the number of jobs that exist within its borders, but rather a nation’s economic well-being is determined by the quantity of goods and services available for consumption by its populace. In the book, Smith makes the point that the ultimate purpose of all economic activity is to satisfy human wants and needs. That is, the reason that economic activity takes place is so that people can consume. Work and production are means to that end, but not ends in themselves. They are properly considered costs, not benefits. Put another way, in a world in which resources are scarce, employment of human labor and other necessary factors of production are what a nation must give up in order to consume.

Thought of in this way it becomes clear that if a nation can reduce the number of labor hours (or the employment of any other resource) required to maintain a particular rate of output of consumer goods and services, those freed up resources can then be used to increase the output rate even further, thus allowing the nation to become wealthier. One way by which such an expansion of wealth might occur is through the adoption of new technology that increases productive efficiency. The efficiency is manifested in higher labor productivity and potentially an increase in the productivity of other resources as well. Technological innovation may also yield higher quality products, or the introduction of entirely new goods and services.

Another way by which a nation’s wealth can increase is by trade with another nation that has a comparative advantage in the production of certain goods. In this case, both nations gain by taking advantage of each other’s relative productive efficiencies. The trade consists of one nation giving up some of its wealth by exporting goods produced out of its scarce resources in exchange for imports of higher-valued goods from the other nation produced out of that nation’s scarce resources. Each nation sacrifices some of its wealth in order to obtain something in return that it values higher. The result is that each nation becomes wealthier.*

As Smith taught, exports then are a cost to a nation; imports a benefit. When a nation exports, it is using up its scarce resources for the benefit of another nation’s consumers. When a nation imports, it is enjoying the consumption of goods produced from the scarce resources of some other nation. Properly considered, exports are the goods that a nation must sacrifice to pay for its imports.

The principal lesson here is that a nation that can become more efficient in supplying consumer goods to its people becomes wealthier. Whether that efficiency comes about because of new technology or because of international trade, the savings in resource use, including labor, permits an expansion in the nation’s wealth through redeployment of those resources to the production of still other goods and services. **

Regrettably, none of the Republican candidates for president evinces much awareness of this basic lesson from The Wealth of Nations. What they say instead are repeated promises to “create” jobs and artificially promote exports, presumably beyond that rate required to pay for imports. In other words, they promise that, if elected, they would make America poorer.

To be sure, individuals want jobs because they know that they have to work in order to have income to obtain the consumer goods and services that they need and want. They must exchange their labor for those goods and services.  This necessity is a fact of life in a world of scarcity.

But political leaders who respond with promises to focus directly on creating jobs, including jobs derived from exports, will largely fail to keep those promises. Bearing out Smith’s ideas, economic history and experience show that job opportunities expand most when a society focuses first on increasing efficiency over time. The proven mixture is technological advancement, free trade, and minimal government-imposed burdens on entrepreneurship and other economic activity. These factors along with other necessary conditions such as the rule of law are the recipe for a growing and ever wealthier economy. More jobs are, in turn, the byproduct of this process of economic growth.***

It would be refreshing if at least one of the Republican candidates for president evinced an understanding of these tested principles and could articulate them in a compelling manner. Instead, we get empty promises to create jobs and pursue programs that hinder trade with other nations. It is indeed appropriate that none of them wears an Adam Smith tie.

____________________________

* In the modern global economy, trade of course takes place multinationally and is not goods for goods but rather is financed by means of international currencies and other monetary instruments. This permits nations to trade indirectly with each other. It also means that settlements need not occur instantly but can take place over time. So, for example, one nation may export in one period, but rather than import in the same period simply hold claims on another nation’s goods to be redeemed in a later period.   Nonetheless, the basic wealth-creating principles of trade as discussed above continue to hold.

** For a notable illustration of this principle, simply consider how technology has improved agriculture and thus permitted the expansion of non-agricultural production.   Were we still to employ the agriculture technology of 1900, many more people would still have to be working on farms instead of producing the variety of consumer goods that we enjoy today. In other words, advances in agricultural technology throughout the 20^th Century freed up the resources, including labor, that permitted the development and supply of that century’s wide-ranging new industries, products, and services. Indeed, a politician who his dead set on “creating” jobs could ensure full employment simply by outlawing the use of tractors. It would not be a situation that most of us would want to endure, but it certainly would create full employment.

*** For example, over time new labor saving technology most often actually expands total labor employment. It does this in two ways. First, in that area where the new technology is applied, the increase in labor productivity reduces per unit costs, and thus consumer prices. With lower prices, quantity demanded increases and more output is sold. Although labor hours per unit of output are fewer as a consequence of the new technology, the higher output rate often means that total labor hour employment grows. Second, the increase in labor productivity in one area frees up resources for expanding output rates, and hence labor employment, in other areas, including new and developing industries where job opportunities may increase dramatically.

I have always been puzzled when I hear politicians, particularly Democrats and others of the left, talking about people needing to pay their “fair share” of taxes.  Most recently, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent Socialist and candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, has made this claim in most, if not all, of his campaign speeches.  What he and others mean by this idea is that those earning higher incomes should pay more in taxes than they already are, notwithstanding that income tax rates are already progressive, i.e., marginal rates increase with income.  Rarely, however, do proponents of raising marginal rates on high income earners say exactly what a “fair share” of taxes is or, more precisely, what exactly those marginal rates should be.  Even more vague is their philosophical basis, either in ethics or economics, for what constitutes “fairness” in this context.

It seems to me that Senator Sanders and others of similar views have the tables turned upside down.  In fact, rather good philosophical arguments can be made from both an ethics and an economics perspective that, if anything, high income earners are already paying well more than their fair share of taxes and that their absolute tax payments or marginal rates should therefore be reduced.

Taxes are the cost of financing government.  In our democracy, every qualified voter is afforded one vote, no more and no less.  Just as this political shareholding is allocated equally among citizens, it would seem intuitively fair that the burden of the cost of government should similarly be allocated equally.  That is, everyone should pay the same amount in taxes in the form of a simple per capita tax.  This way, each person contributes the same amount toward the cost of government, much like dues assessments in a club.  At the least, it would be interesting to ask Senator Sanders to explain, from an ethics standpoint, why his income tax proposals are more fair than a per capita tax.

Of course, as a practical matter, given the current size of government, an equal per capita tax would necessarily mean that many, if not most, taxpayers would owe more than they earn or have in savings and, in some cases, likely much more.  Such a tax thus would be unworkable unless government were shrunk substantially.  The cost of government would have to shrink at least to the point where the per capita tax would be affordable by each taxpayer, a goal unlikely to be shared by Senator Sanders.  Even so, the size of government and the practical ability to have fairness in the tax code would seem to be inextricably linked.

Admittedly, I am uneasy to render judgments on purely ethical grounds about whether the amount of taxes a particular taxpayer pays is fair for that taxpayer.  I do, however, claim some expertise in economics.  Drawing on that expertise, I think that there is a reasonable argument on economic grounds that, in the alternative to a per capita tax, a regressive income tax is fairer than a progressive one.

The argument rests on the idea that whenever there is voluntary exchange, every transaction creates wealth.  A voluntary transaction will not take place unless each party becomes better off as a result of the transaction.  It follows therefore that, so long as high income earners obtain their income through voluntary exchange of their labor, services, or other resources, each dollar of that income is the product of a wealth-creating transaction.

Significantly, however, the high income earner does not keep all of the created wealth, but only a fraction.  The rest of the new wealth necessarily accrues to everyone else with whom the high income earner engaged in voluntary exchange, either directly or indirectly.  Thus, the higher the income of the high income earner, the greater the earner contributes to other people’s wealth.  It follows then that high income earners benefit society more than lower income earners before any taxes are taken out of those earnings.

Based on this reasoning, one possible way to measure tax fairness would be on the basis of relative additions to aggregate social wealth.  Under such a definition, people who contribute less to social wealth would be required to make up for the deficit by paying more in taxes, while those who contribute most to social wealth would be rewarded by lower taxes.  Put another way, fairness would require that high income earners be taxed less than low income earners.  The former have already made a disproportionate positive contribution to social welfare.

Of course, as with the per capita tax, a regressive income tax would require considerable downsizing of government.  Such a tax simply could not finance the current government.  Once again, the size of government and the practical ability to have tax fairness are inextricably linked.  But that practical consideration aside, a fairness argument for a regressive income tax that rests on economic reasoning, unlike Senator Sanders’ fairness arguments, at least has an analytical grounding.  It would be interesting to learn how Senator Sanders would respond to the argument.

In that regard, I will volunteer one glitch in the reasoning. Regrettably, many high income earners today derive their high incomes not from contributing to aggregate wealth but rather by using the machinery of government to expropriate the wealth created by others.  Rent seeking can be very lucrative.  Thus, if “paying one’s fair share” in taxes is inversely related to one’s contribution to social wealth, these high income rent seekers should be taxed at a 100% marginal rate.

Few utterances in public life over the last 30 years annoy me more than the term, “trickle down economics.”  I know of no economics textbook, treatise, or journal article that even mentions TDE, let alone discusses it as a recognized economic theory or school of thought.  Yet, in her recent speech outlining her economic plan for the future (see here), Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, invoked the term several times, asserting that she is not only opposed to TDE but, moreover, would most assuredly not return to that policy as president.  Mrs. Clinton’s opposition to TDE is not new.  It has been a theme in her public utterances for some time.  See here.

I wonder, however, just whom Mrs. Clinton has in mind when she implies that TDE is a policy that her political opponents, specifically the current crop of Republicans running for president, would implement if elected.  I know of none of these Republicans who has said “elect me and I will pursue a policy of trickle down economics.”  Nor, for that matter am I aware of a period in which TDE was the reigning policy of a Republican administration, a period of time to which Mrs. Clinton does not want to return.  Indeed, to my knowledge, only Democrats use the term.

Certainly some of the current Republican candidates have advocated for reductions in marginal tax rates and the elimination of unnecessary regulations on businesses in order to incentivize work, productivity, and saving.  Perhaps policies of this sort are what Mrs. Clinton has in mind.  Yet, the economic theory underlying such supply-side policies is quite different from the description that Mrs. Clinton and other Democrats give to TDE.  According to that description, TDE is about giving more money to the rich in the hope that the rich will immediately spend that additional money on yachts and the like, which eventually will stimulate economic activity that trickles down to the lower income classes.

Supply-side economics, however, is not based on spending.  Quite to the contrary, it is based on the idea – long observed in economic life — that encouraging more work, productivity, and savings results in both immediate increases in aggregate wealth and increases in future wealth.  Future wealth comes about because additional saving provides the means to expand the capital stock.  Economic growth is the end result.  All income classes share in that growth.  Whether or not there is more spending by the rich on yachts is wholly irrelevant.

Milton Friedman was fond of saying, “there are only two kinds of economics — good economics and bad economics.”  Good economics teaches that, if you want growth and rising incomes, the capital stock must increase over time in order to make resources, including labor, more productive.  Increasing the capital stock, in turn, requires saving by those in the best position to save and also that the government exact as little of that saving as possible.  It is not a particularly difficult concept to grasp.  Perhaps even Mrs. Clinton will grasp it someday.