George's Will's saucy pen turned shrill last week when he erroneously accused Elizabeth Warren of attacking a straw man, and then hypocritically pivoted to critiquing a viewpoint Warren didn't advocate.
The now famous Warren quote:
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there -- good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. ... You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea -- God bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
Quoting William F. Buckley, Will wrote, in the Washington Post, that Warren is a "pyromaniac in a field of straw men." He continued, "Everyone knows that all striving occurs in a social context, so all attainments are conditioned by their context." Do they?
Here he errs, unless by everyone, he means conservative elites like himself or Friedrich Hayek, who acknowledged that wealth and merit are unrelated. Many rank-and-file conservatives operate under the illusion that people's economic fates are overwhelmingly self-made, rather than partially. Hence the uproar that followed Warren's comments. The notion that pre-tax money is mine betrays this belief. Pre-tax income is an accounting method, not a measurement of something I produced in a vacuum devoid of the positive externalities provided by society and government. These externalities -- created by a healthy, stable, educated, infrastructurally connected, employed society -- significantly fuel that income in the real world.
Will goes on to accuse Warren of "collectivism... [s]ociety is entitled to socialize -- i.e., conscript -- whatever portions it considers its share. It may, as an optional act of political grace, allow the individual the remainder of what is misleadingly called the individual's possession." Never mind Warren's "You turned [it] into something great...God bless, keep a big hunk of it." Never mind Will's not-so-subtle but patently false hint that progressivity entertains no limit to its leveling. Never mind his equivocal use of "socialize."
He continues, "The collectivist agenda is antithetical to America's premise, which is: Government -- including such public goods as roads, schools and police -- is instituted to facilitate individual striving." Even allowing for the dubious claim that this is "America's premise," progressive taxation as such does not necessarily undermine individual striving. See, for example, all modern capitalist economies. So much for antithetical.
Will follows his false straw man accusation with his own straw lineup. Consequently, his accusations ooze hypocrisy; Warren never made these arguments and they are not deducible from her claims. Will also overstates and mischaracterizes most liberals' actual aspirations: overcoming collective action problems, addressing market failures and striving for a society that is both efficient and just.
Warren was arguing that progressive taxation is not class warfare. Her position derives from basic contract theory (she is, after all, a contracts professor) -- which (with some nuance) connects obligations to benefits conferred. In other words, those who disproportionately leverage an educated, healthy, protected populace and markets protected from failure by regulation should pay disproportionately in return. They still get to be disproportionally rich.
This is not collective theft, does not eviscerate the individual nor does it commit one to "social engineering." It's just good sense.