Bastions of Liberalism
I’m sure that few would dispute the claim that our elite universities are bastions of liberalism. The faculty are well known for advocating public policy like integration, hiring quotas and all sorts of redistributive schemes. They tend to minimize criticisms, and the critics, of their schemes on the grounds that they are protecting class interests. The liberal outlook certainly places a higher priority on egalitarianism than on efficiency so I’m delighted to present an opportunity for our liberal academician friends to show us how enlightened they are by endorsing the plan put forward by Robert M. Dunn, Jr., a professor of economics at George Washington University.
A core value of American liberals is the importance of redistributing wealth from the prosperous to others, through highly progressive taxes and transfer payments. Which leads to a question: If redistributing wealth is a good idea for workers, companies, individuals, and families, then intellectual consistency suggests it should be equally valid for institutions like colleges and universities. Right?
Why should students at Princeton, where economist Paul Krugman teaches when he is not thundering against the “well off †on the New York Times editorial page, enjoy income from huge endowments, while students at poorer institutions have far fewer educational resources? How unfair!
Worse, the extreme inequality of colleges is subsidized by the government. Gifts to rich schools are tax deductible for the donors. Universities and colleges pay no taxes on their capital gains, dividend, and interest income. This is an outrage against liberal principles! Remedial legislation is clearly needed!
[ . . . . ]
It’s time for an egalitarian revolution. Liberal professors at Harvard, Princeton, Amherst, and Williams should follow the principles they proclaim and strongly support action to end campus disparities by redistributing educational wealth.
Congress should pass, and President Bush should sign, a hefty and progressive tax on large per student endowments. The funds should be transferred to poorer schools. The same tax should apply to future gifts from alumni.
And why stop there? If redistribution is good, the same concept should apply within universities. Why should the law schools at George Washington and Georgetown live in splendor just because their alumni make more money than theology or economics or anthropology majors? The wealth of these law schools should be transferred to poorer departments. Particularly economics!
Professors at rich schools will splutter that such taxes will sharply reduce incentives for alumni to make gifts. Are we to believe that graduates of Yale are so narrow-minded and selfish that they only want to help Yalies? Surely Yale, Princeton, Williams, and Grinnell alums will give just as freely knowing that their gifts are helping students at poorer schools, particularly since they were taught primarily by liberal professors devoted to income redistribution.
Administrators at rich colleges will claim they raised their money through great effort, that it is unfair to take it away, and that this transfer would eliminate the incentive for poor schools to do a better job of fundraising. We won’t take those arguments any more seriously than liberals take the similar arguments conservatives make about income taxes and death taxes.
So when members of the classes of 1956 and 1981 gather next June at their 25th and 50th reunions in the tony precincts of New Haven, Cambridge, Princeton, and Williamstown, they should expect to see 35 to 40 percent of their gifts whisked away to poorer schools. That should improve their feelings of virtue. In fact, they should increase the size of their gifts to make up for the tax. That’s the least they owe us all.
Why stop with wealth redistribution? This could be a great leap forward! Why, they could redistribute intellectual property such as patents held by the schools, campuses, library holdings, names and reputations and everything else they hold dear.
of course the ideal of income redistribution is to help the worst off, which college students, professors and alumni certainly are not. so taking from princeton and giving to rutgers is largely beside the point.
as to departments, i am under the impression there is already some degree of egalitarian redistribution going on there (e.g. overhead on grants, etc.)
well, i know many colleges, for example historically black colleges, have puny endowments and barely make it year to year. on the other hand, does harvard really need all of its endowment?
i think the real thrust here to address some issues with hypocrisy that get tiresome. for example, academics like to lecture about diversity, but faculties are not really that diverse, but my understanding is that they tend to balk at excessive interference in the hiring process….
>historically black colleges
that came to mind, and might be a half decent suggestion
>lecture about diversity
in a college interview I made the naive mistake of saying that I thought the students were quite homogenous
>they tend to balk at excessive interference in the hiring process
agreed… but, for example, there’s a world of difference between rent control and housing vouchers.
i bet liberals could be sold on say a 15% tax on university incomes that would be redistributed on a demographic basis
I think that conservatives could also be sold on a 15% income tax too. The more onerous the tax the more resistance I expect to see from both liberals and conservatives and the arguments would probably be quite similar despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
FICA is 7.5%, right?
…
how about a 33% national sales tax?
Too high a national sales tax will result in the flowering of an underground economy.
oregon and new hampshire don’t have sales taxes. and we aren’t going to tolerate a national consumption tax god damnit!
neither does delaware, but they’ll somehow find a way to turn it to their advantage.
you need a 33% sales tax to collect the equivalent of a 25% income tax — somewhat unintuitive
oregon and new hampshire don’t have sales taxes. and we aren’t going to tolerate a national consumption tax god damnit!
Especially since Oregon gets so much retail $$ from just-over-the-border shoppers from WA and CA.
I do think the elite liberals (those who can afford spendy liberal arts colleges) would balk at the redistibution of endowments, since their philosophy seems to be: to set up an economic system of OPM that they can use to help the poor, but to protect the wealth of them and their’s (witness Kennedy’s and Kerry’s lack of charity during the NO flooding)
On 25 vs 33 (I’ve always heard 30 if we’re discussing the fair tax, but I believe they claim other efficiencies to reduce the rate), that’s because the 25 is an inclusive rate and 33 is an exclusive rate.
For example, consider a 33% sales tax (calculated exclusively) on a one dollar item. The total cost to you is 1.33. So out of the 1.33 that you’ve earned, you’ve now paid 25% (technically 24.81%) of your earnings in tax.
Jody says:
For example, consider a 33% sales tax (calculated exclusively) on a one dollar item. The total cost to you is 1.33. So out of the 1.33 that you’ve earned, you’ve now paid 25% (technically 24.81%) of your earnings in tax.
Of course, you have just paid, what, 20+% tax on your earnings as well, so in all, for those who can’t shelter their income and who spend most of it, the effective tax is more like 50%.
I don’t know about universities, but I think it is time for a tax on personal wealth. Exempt the first million and tax the rest at 1%. That would bring in about $226 billion a year.
Actually, Krugman and quite a few others you label as “liberal” (apparently anyone not sticking to the Bush Doctrine of “Borrow, Borrow, Borrow, Spend, Spend, Spend”) don’t argue in favor of redistribution so much as a level playing field.
Wealth and political power in the hands of an elite few are being used to gather even more wealth and political power, increasingly stratifying society.
It doesn’t take a flaming liberal to see that stratified societies like Brazil aren’t great places to live for the vast majority of people.
“I’m sure that few would dispute the claim that our elite universities are bastions of liberalism.”
I dispute that. These people can’t really be called liberals, they’ve usurped the name but they bear little resemblance to classical liberals. Leftist statists is a more appropriate name.
Leftists don’t generally control the administration of most universities, who tend to be mainly liberatarian leaning.
i would posit that the fundamental failure of paleo-leftists was an insufficiency of intellectual humility.
i think this is the (very human) failure that drove everything else.
but i think there’s a corrolary. it would be dangerous to conclude that the failure of leftism is an indictment of all leftist philosophies, and thus not-leftism must be true.
Leftists don’t generally control the administration of most universities, who tend to be mainly liberatarian leaning.
any reasons for this contention?
it would be dangerous to conclude that the failure of leftism is an indictment of all leftist philosophies, and thus not-leftism must be true.
excellent logic, but this sort of turnabout is useful because ideological factions do not come to their conclusions via a chain of inferences from initial propositions. rather, it is a social process where “correct” opinions emerge from the zeitgeist. my experience is that arguing with an individual who espouses ideology X is futile if you grapple with proximate positions a, b, c and so on. but, if you start running the chain of inferences and push the logic to unpleasant conclusions than you can have people examine their proximate positions more rationally…of course, in an ideal world the proximate positions would stand or fall on their own merits IMO.
(or, i can pull a krugman)
razib, i think you’re saying that as an argumentation strategy it is useful. i would agree with that.
Liberals have long pointed out some conservatives who are hypocrites on moral issues, and rightfully so. I’d like to see more of this pointing-out of leftist hypocrisy.
For all the talk of diversity and of the lack of integration between economic classes, these professors very often live in very homogeneous areas, race and class-wise. Some of them are now calling for the displaced of New Orleans to be scattered into white, middle class areas. I say that doesn’t go far enough. How about white, UPPER-class areas? Manhattan? Princeton, NJ? Specifically, the areas they live in. I’m sure middle-class people of any race would gleefully help fund it. I’d also like for them to personally take in a few refugees for awhile, in particular, Krugman and his Princeton colleagues. Lots of middle-class people have done so.
Not always, but frequently the ones doing the spouting for these liberal ideas would very quickly change their minds if they or their children were involved.
http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/002059.html
btw – that was a nice post
Liberals have long pointed out some conservatives who are hypocrites on moral issues
Typical example: Contending that anti-abortion and pro-death penalty stances are contradictory.
It doesn’t take a flaming liberal to see that stratified societies like Brazil aren’t great places to live for the vast majority of people.
The U.S. is half-way to being Brazil, and the liberals are half-way at fault.
any reasons for this contention?
Personal expericane, the presistant prevelance of standardized testing and the economics of human behaviour.
In my opinion the Administration is ultimately concerned about the bottom line (i.e. they are greedy), they take leftist decisions to appease the views of some of the other stakeholders even when they don’t necessarily agree with them in private (Larry Summers debacle).