Elizabeth Warren’s non sequitur about taxes

People tend to think that theoretical and philosophical stuff can be left to professors, to the kind of people ready to write 100 page papers to argue a minor point (or no point at all). Common people tend to think that no harm may come from theory, even very bad theory. Unfortunately, it is not so. Ask the Germans, ask the Russians.

Elizabeth Warren, an American politician in the Obama administration, and also a Harvard law professor, made use of the arguments about taxes and ownership that professors Murphy and Nagel presented in their book The Myth of Ownership (Amazon). Here is Elizabeth Warren repeating the argument:

I have dedicated seven posts to the analysis of that very deficient argument: 
Murphy, Nagel, Sunstain, and Dworkin on property rights
Murphy, Nagel, and Lenin, on ownership
Rhetorical devices in The Myth of Ownership
Murphy, Nagel, and Marx on surplus value
Philosophers on the efficiency of Taxes and Welfare
Nagel and Hayek on government and wealth
Who needs a replacement for Marxism?


The main book, the most extensive defense of the fallacy, the source where everyone who wants to justify higher taxes goes for inspiration is The Myth of Ownership. But it is not the only source, as I mentioned in the posts cited above. Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulation Tzar, has adopted it too. So has done Ronald Dworkin, a law professor whose influence extends even to Argentina, where I was born and live. Argentines in high positions have a peculiar taste for unsound ideas.

What prompted me to publish the posts about the issue was the astonishing fact that, with the exception of a reviewer, nobody seemed to have contradicted the main argument of The Myth of Ownership, now repeated by Elizabeth Warren. And I have learned that when very bad ideas, presented by famous professors, praised by other professors, by reviews and newspapers, when these ideas meet little or no resistance, they become undeniable truths –the kind of truth that only ignorant people ignore, and half-educated people don't dare to question. Professor Sunstein feels that it is safe to write that those who refuse to accept the argument are “comically implausible”.

Elizabeth Warren is merely repeating an idea that has reigned almost unchallenged in the academia. Certainly, I have read that some journalists have attempted to defend Warren’s argument by diluting the poison in it. She doesn’t argue for collectivism, they say, only for higher taxes. But how high? And more importantly: on what grounds? For the grounds on which the higher taxes are justified will define the limits of the State that will impose them (or whether any limit will remain).

The grounds are collectivistic. As I have tried to show -see the second post on the issue- the argument runs against the most fundamental ideas that define property rights and contractual liberty, against the assumptions we share when we buy a car, start a company, or collect our salary. That is to say, it runs against the way we live our lives.