> saith O'Hare: It’s worth a close look because the author is a law professor, not some high-school dropout Limbaugh lemming, and because the tone of entitlement and whining is typical of a fair number of the comments I got on my post about intergenerational equity (and by extension, equity).
That little snippet gives the whole game away. We have a strange situation in which Michael O'Hare, speaking as an ostensible advocate of "equity" and "the poor", nevertheless casually mentions that he would not pay attention to a word coming out of the mouth of an actual poor person, and that only a law school professor is worth listening to.
Of course, he wouldn't frame it that way. There is a tacit and unspoken mental calculation in which "Limbaugh listener" cancels out and reverses the street cred of "high school dropout", and in which "rich" reverses the intellectual cred of "law professor". So he feels fully entitled in trashing a poor person who does not share his views.
He does not spare one moment to consider that perhaps his views are a function of his power and social class as a Berkeley professor, rather than the outcome of some Platonic reasoning process. He believes what he believes and mouths what he mouths because that's what everyone else around him believes, and because political deviation is punished with social ostracism.
In particular, he is one of those who calls most loudly for "equity" without practicing it himself in his treatment of others.
The point is that there are other things in life that people value beside income. Income can be quantified, so we tend to fixate on that. But what about things like looks? Or IQ? Or power? Or status? Like the status to get people to take you seriously. Especially the last.
That can't be taxed, at least not directly. Imagine how Harvard professors would howl if Harvard degrees were handed out willy nilly, or redistributed from the (no doubt privileged) people who'd earned them to the unprivileged who hadn't. Imagine if column inches of New York Times columnists were taxed and redistributed to people who don't have as much of a say in national affairs.
The narrow focus on income happens for a reason. People who have more status than money (like O'Hare and Delong) are using the government to attack people who have more money than status. There is no question that Brad Delong will come out better in this trade, because he and those like him are the ones dictating its terms.
That little snippet gives the whole game away. We have a strange situation in which Michael O'Hare, speaking as an ostensible advocate of "equity" and "the poor", nevertheless casually mentions that he would not pay attention to a word coming out of the mouth of an actual poor person, and that only a law school professor is worth listening to.
Of course, he wouldn't frame it that way. There is a tacit and unspoken mental calculation in which "Limbaugh listener" cancels out and reverses the street cred of "high school dropout", and in which "rich" reverses the intellectual cred of "law professor". So he feels fully entitled in trashing a poor person who does not share his views.
He does not spare one moment to consider that perhaps his views are a function of his power and social class as a Berkeley professor, rather than the outcome of some Platonic reasoning process. He believes what he believes and mouths what he mouths because that's what everyone else around him believes, and because political deviation is punished with social ostracism.
In particular, he is one of those who calls most loudly for "equity" without practicing it himself in his treatment of others.
The point is that there are other things in life that people value beside income. Income can be quantified, so we tend to fixate on that. But what about things like looks? Or IQ? Or power? Or status? Like the status to get people to take you seriously. Especially the last.
That can't be taxed, at least not directly. Imagine how Harvard professors would howl if Harvard degrees were handed out willy nilly, or redistributed from the (no doubt privileged) people who'd earned them to the unprivileged who hadn't. Imagine if column inches of New York Times columnists were taxed and redistributed to people who don't have as much of a say in national affairs.
The narrow focus on income happens for a reason. People who have more status than money (like O'Hare and Delong) are using the government to attack people who have more money than status. There is no question that Brad Delong will come out better in this trade, because he and those like him are the ones dictating its terms.