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MORE CIVIL DISCOURSE

June 25, 2005

Over at Tax & Business Law Commentary, Stuart Levine has this to say:

Some commentators have taken issue with my denominating those who follow Republican economic nostrums as being either knaves or fools. I have detailed at some length on this blog the outright lies of the right wing commentators with respect to the tax system (e.g., that the estate tax threatens closely-held family businesses and farms, that the U.S. tax system is beginning to burden the wealthy, etc.) and their willful omission of critical facts (e.g., that if you abolish the estate tax and replace the revenue loss by repealing the basis step-up rules, you shift the tax burden from the very wealthy to the less wealthy).

I believe that when individuals supporting a proposition regularly and repeatedly lie about the facts of their proposals and regularly and repeatedly fail to set forth relevant facts, they can justifiably be classified as knaves. I also believe that when the lies and omissions appear with sufficient regularity and are as egregious and transparent (or easily discoverable) as they are, individuals who buy the crap that these individuals are selling can justifiably be called fools.

We count ourselves among the commentators taking issue with the whole "knaves and fools" thing.

Calling opponents names isn't just bad manners; it is ineffective. In many issues there is a large audience that has unformed views but that might not yet agree with your position. There is also a group with tentative views that might be changed if challenged with a coherent argument. Calling such folks "knaves and fools" for not agreeing with you yet doesn't do much to bring them around.

Mr. Levine also paints opponents with too broad a brush. He seems to believe there is a monolithic "right wing" that universally follows a single set of "Republican economic nostrums." That's no more accurate than saying there is a single left-wing policy.

I may be "right-wing" from Mr. Levines standpoint. There's something I find viscerally unsettling about the state claiming a majority of somebody's net worth at death. Yet I am not dogmatically opposed to an estate tax; I see where the basis step-up it allows at death provides tremendous advantages in administering the income tax. I am opposed to the estate tax in its pre-2001 form, with its 50%+ rates and its application to a broad and growing sector of the upper middle class. I am also opposed to all of the small-business carve-outs, which are almost impossible to use anyway.

I do favor a much lower rate and a much higher exemption, so only the wealthiest have to screw around with all of the complexity involved, and so there is less need for all of the baroque loopholes in the estate tax rules. I don't think that makes me a knave, or a fool.

My views may be wrong. By disagreeing with Mr. Levine, I realize I am disagreeing with a smart man, and I have no reason to doubt his good intentions. But Mr. Levine is a lot more likely to convince me I'm wrong by pointing out how I'm wrong than by saying I'm evil or stupid. And if I continue to disagree with him -- well, grown-ups can look at the same situation and honestly come up with different conclusions. When another issue comes up, he's more likely to get my sympathy if he hasn't recently called me evil and stupid.

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