The Price of Civilization_ Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity - Jeffrey D. Sachs [14]
The Libertarian Extreme
A small number of Americans reject the very idea that government should promote fairness, or even efficiency for that matter, through the power of taxation. They hold that the only ethical value that matters is liberty, meaning the right of each individual to be left alone by others and by the government. In that philosophy, known as libertarianism, individuals have absolutely no responsibility to society other than to respect the liberty and property of others. This extreme philosophy has been embraced by some of America’s richest individuals, such as Charles and David Koch (combined net worth: $44 billion), who have used their great fortunes, based on an inheritance, to try to instill their libertarian views throughout the society.8
According to libertarians, America should be governed not by social responsibilities but by free-market forces and voluntary private contracts, with the government devoted solely to maintaining law and order, including the protection of private property. Taxes should be slashed to the minimum, as there is little or no legitimate role of government beyond the bare bones of the military, police, prisons, and courts.9 Libertarians don’t believe in levying taxes even to build roads and other infrastructure, believing instead that such investments should be left to the free market.
Libertarians argue that taxation is little more than government extortion. Most Americans disagree. Though we don’t love paying taxes, we accept the legitimacy of taxes as long as they are properly voted into law and the revenue is used honestly and sensibly. In a 2009 Gallup survey, 61 percent of Americans declared the amount of income tax that they would pay that year as “fair,” as opposed to 35 percent who called their income tax “not fair.”10
Libertarians aim to absolve the rich of any social responsibilities toward the rest of society. As a school of thought, libertarianism is based on three kinds of arguments. The first is a moral assertion: that every individual has the overriding right to liberty, that is, the right to be left alone, free from taxes, regulations, or other demands of the state. The second is political and pragmatic: that only free markets protect democracy from government despotism. The third is economic: that free markets alone are enough to ensure prosperity.
Such an approach, while promising liberty, democracy, and prosperity, is a grand illusion. We know from both historical experience and economic theory that free markets alone cannot begin to ensure efficiency and prosperity; without government, we’d lack the highways, safe environment, public health, and scientific discoveries that make us productive. We know from historical experience that countries will not risk their democracies by levying taxes. Indeed, the heavily taxed countries of Scandinavia score higher than the United States on rankings of quality of governance and control of corruption. We also know from experience and moral tradition that although liberty is indeed an important value, it’s not the only one that counts. If we have to choose between the liberty of a billionaire to avoid paying taxes and the needs of a poor and hungry child in need of food that would be supplied by those taxes (through food stamps, for example), most of us would choose the needs of the hungry child over the “liberty” of the billionaire to avoid helping the child.
When libertarians deride the idea of social fairness as just one more nuisance, they unleash greed. The kind of unconstrained greed that is now loose in America is