FIRlnGLlne WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. MICHAEL KINSLEY "IS DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA WORKING?"

Transcription

1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 0 FIRlnGLlne HOST: GUEST: SUBJECT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. MICHAEL KINSLEY "IS DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA WORKING?" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of the Firing Line program (#1067/2517) taped in New York City on November 10, 1995, and telecast later on public television stations. copyright 1995 FIRING LINE

2 MR. BUCKLEY: Michael IGnsley and I have shared the same television camera maybe 100 times, but this is the first in which he is formally here as the "guest of Firing Line." That formal reason is the appearance of his book, Big Babies, which is a collection of his art as a columnist for Time, The New Yorker and The New Republic. But simultaneously there is a major development. The restless Mr. IGnsley, who stopped writing regular columns awhile ago, is now ending a long career with CNN as the conscript who has to defend the liberal side of every question that comes up. And to what is he turning? To a new magazine to be done through Internet as a part of the expanding empire of Bill Gates. But to touch quickly on the necessary formalities, Mr. IGnsley is a graduate of Harvard who did advanced studies in Oxford, then returned to Harvard to get a degree in law, a discipline he never practiced, turning instead to journalism. He did a stint with The Washington Monthly, then served as editor of Harper's, then as editor of The New Republic before settling down to copious freelancing in addition to regular appearances on Firing Line, first as a panelist, then as a moderator. His book Big Babies biings his recent work together. You will wonder about the title. What it tells us is that the American voter is a baby in that he wants one thing in principle, another in practice. Framing that point on a big canvas, he is asking, Does democracy work? On this matter, I begin by asking Mr. IGnsley: How is it that deserting your constituency, you came out in favor of a constitutional limitation on spending? MR. IGNSLEY: For the balanced-budget amendment. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. IGNSLEY: I had high-minded reasons and low-minded reasons. The high-minded reason was that, although I think it's unfortunate to muck around vvith the Constitution, certainly the fiscal problem we faced was such that it was worth it. And the low-minded reason was, it seemed to me we had been having a dishonest debate about spending for 12 years, certainly since Reagan came in, and with the Republicans saying they are for smaller government without actually telling people what that would involve, and the Democrats are similarly dishonest. The Republicans were winning the dishonest debate, so I thought it was time to have an honest debate. It seemed to me that an honest debate, which the balanced-budget amendment

3 would force, probably would be good for the Democrats. People would be forced to decide, as they are being forced to decide now, as a matter of fact, even without a balanced-budget amendment, how much government they want and how much they are willing to pay for. MR. BUCKLEY: There is a sense of philosophical rectitude in much of your stuff. Somewhere in there you say that-- MR. IGNSLEY: [laughing) I guess that's a compliment. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, wait till I'm through. [laughter] Somewhere in there you say you probably would be better off with bad principles than with no principles at all and you list that as an example: Everybody screams and yells for a balanced budget and everybody screams and yells for lower taxes. And so what we end up having is neither. And I think to quote you, you say you'd rather try it one way or the other, even if it turns out not to be the way that you would prescribe. MR. IGNSLEY: Well, there are three possible outcomes. One is a balanced budget with fiscal responsibility and a liberal vision of government, fiscal responsibility and a conservative vision of government, and fiscal irresponsibility. That's the third outcome. That's worse than the other two and that's the one we've had. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, v.re might have that in any event, would we not, if by fiscal irresponsibility you simply mean spending unnecessarily or spending-- MR. IGNSLEY: Spending-- MR. BUCKLEY: --under false auspices. MR. IGNSLEY: We can argue about what's necessa1y and what's unnecessary, but whatever we decide is necessary, we ought to pay for. That's my point. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, how is life in a liberal community that requires you to confront so frequently the contradictions in liberal doctrine? Among them the husbandry that FDR said he was going to promulgate in 1933 that never happened-- Plus also the-- Of course on Mr. Clinton you are pretty resolute, but you continue to call yourself a liberal. Primarily why? 2

4 MR. KINSLEY: Because I don't find that a difficult conundrum. Look, there is hypocrisy among liberals, certainly among liberal politicians; there is hypocrisy among conservatives. As I point out in this book, there is a very enormous hypocrisy among the voters themselves, who consider themselves beyond labels. I am a liberal because I believe that the government has a positive role to play in achieving social justice and achieving economic justice even, to go a bit further, and in other ways. I think it is important not to become what Kevin Phillips calls a reactionary liberal, meaning someone who defends every government program as it now exists, but wouldn't dream of proposing any new ones. Every government program should be subject to enormous scrutiny. Some of them have not worked. But the principle that the government has a useful role to play remains. That would be a-- MR. BUCKLEY: But I've got a problem with your terminology. Just to begin with, the marketplace's allocations can be very eccentric and by no means are they the same as mine. I think the market is extremely important in deciding who should receive the dollar that you want to spend on this, but by no means ought that to be confused vvith value. For instance, let's say that the market allocates a million dollars to a gangsta rap album while allocating a thousand dollars to a struggling but brilliant violinist. Now is this anomaly something that summons to your mind the question of economic justice? MR. KINSLEY: Well, it summons to my mind the question of should the government step in and subsidize the arts. If it's going to do that, I don't think economic justice can explain it. I think this violinist knows when he enters the marketplace as a violinist he is going to have a rough road and he is taking his chances. The case of government subsidy of the arts, and it's one I am not completely comfortable with, is one of social goods, not specific economic justice to the violinist, but the idea that there is a social good that having violinists, as opposed to gangsta rap artists, is good for society as a whole, like clean air, like bridges and highv,rays and so on. MR. BUCKLEY: Okay, my next question is, inasmuch as the government is simply the vehicle through which the popular v.rill is transacted, what leads you to believe that the government's intervention is required in order to get money from the people to the violinist? MR. KINSLEY: Well, the question is, Should vve as a majority decide what we don't decide to do as individuals? And I am uncomfortable with the question of subsidies of culture on the liberal grounds in that they are 3

5 economically regressive. The average beneficiary, the average customer, of the arts that get subsidized--opera, symphonies, that sort of thing--is better off than the average customer of the arts that manage to do it on the basis of the free market. So I am very troubled by the idea of taking money from the guy who goes and buys a football ticket and giving it to the opera-goer, which is essentially what you're doing. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, does that hesitation include government loans to people going to college on the grounds that they are taxed from people who don't go to college whose prospective income will be much less than people who do go to college? MR. ICTNSLEY: Yes, I have all these hesitations. I don't think that's the bottom line. I think there are countervailing interests, but I think you have to recognize that there is-- I am all in favor of redistribution, but I think it should be progressive redistribution. It should be from the people who have the most opportunity, from the people who have done the best in our society, to the people who haven't been as lucky. MR. BUCKLEY: Now the fact that you are in favor of it doesn't necessarily mean that this is just, right? MR. ICTNSLEY: Well, I think it is just, so obviously it's my job to try to persuade my fellow citizens, because we are in a democracy. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, how do you appeal to the concept of justice when you say, I am going to tax Barbra Streisand a million dollars and deploy it wherever. If you don't like the musicians, then deploy it wherever. MR. ICTNSLEY: I do like the musicians. MR. BUCKLEY: No, I mean if you don't want to use that money for the musicians because musicians-- MR. ICTNSLEY: Use it for people who aren't as talented as Barbra Streisand. I would argue the justice of the case son\ething like this: Barbra Streisand's enormous wealth comes partly through her own hard work, initiative, creativity and so on and so forth. It also comes partly-- MR. BUCKLEY: Endowment. 4

6 MR. IGNSLEY: --through her good luck at having been endowed with talent. It probably comes partly through her just random good luck. There are probably other people as talented as Barbra Streisand who haven't gotten as far. And it comes partly from the fact that she is living in a very wealthy society, which is the result of all of Americans working through several generations to build it. That's why she is able to charge what she can for her concerts. And Barbra Streisand ought to recognize, as indeed Barbra Streisand does recognize, that her own good fortune should obligate her to share it with others. MR. BUCKLEY: So as I understand you, the liberal is saying that the-- MR. IGNSLEY: I don't know-- MR. BUCKLEY: --amortization of the money that is put up by listeners ought to be part of the obligation of the person who is playing to them; i.e., if we didn't have television, in which a lot of money was invested, Barbra Streisand wouldn't be able to play on television. Therefore, the fact that she is playing there means that she has got to be taxed retroactively for the cost of developing television, is that right? MR. IGNSLEY: Well, I look at it this way. I am not sure I quite understand your point. But why does a barber in the United States make far more than a barber mal(es in a Third World country or that a barber made in the United States seven generations ago? He probably makes three or four times as much, at least, in real tem1s. It's not that he is three or four times harder working. It's not even that he is three or four times more talented. It's that he lives in three or four times or more a more prosperous society. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you know, there was that-- George Stigler, the professor of economics, said that an almost universal rule is that a barber charges per haircut exactly the cost of one hour of common labor, wherever. MR. IGNSLEY: I agree. You mentioned that to me, and I think that's what gave me the idea. MR. BUCKLEY: Are you saying therefore that if there is universal prosperity, which relatively there is in America, that it ought not to single out the barber because he is not responsible for any of the technical advantages that gave us that prosperity? 5

7 MR. KINSLEY: I'm saying even a barber--even a barber--who is not Barbra Streisand, who is not extraordinarily lucky, just someone of average good fortune in America owes his lot in life to forces that he can't claim are his own initiative. MR. BUCKLEY: Well-- Yes, yes-- MR. IGNSLEY: In part. In part. Obviously in part it is someone's own initiative. But we should all appreciate the extent to which we have been luclcy. MR. BUCKLEY: I wrote a book called Gratitude, in which I make that point. But I say in fact we do owe something to Aristotle and we owe something to Shakespeare and the way to requite that patrimony is by volunteer work. But what distinguishes, I think, my insight from simply liberal convention is that you want to simply pass tax codes according to whatever it is that you consider to be fair, intending to exact-- MR. IGNSLEY: Well, I believe-- MR. BUCKLEY: --that payment from people. MR. IGNSLEY: --if I remember Gratitude correctly -- you wanted to exact a tax in terms of forced labor from people. MR. BUCKLEY: No, I didn't say forced. MR. IGNSLEY: No, but you wanted to make things that are now granted automatically by the government to young people so contingent on their service that it would in reality be a tax. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I wanted to ignite an ethos, and ethoses are sometimes self-igniting and sometimes they are the result of ambient sanctions. People stopped feeling that blacks should sit in the baclc of the bus not only because there was civil rights legislation, but they recognized that it was the wrong thing to do. MR. IGNSLEY: Well, ambient sanctions could be interpreted--and I would interpret them in this case--if an ambient sanction is going to lead you to labor for two years in your youth at lower wages than you could otherwise 6

8 get, I would regard that as a tax. I am not against it for that reason, but it's a tax on your labor. MR. BUCKLEY: Well-- MR. ICTNSLEY: A tax representing the difference between what you could have and what you are earning. MR. BUCKLEY: The important thing is that it is self-imposed. There are something like 90 million Americans, if I remember the figures, who spend seven hours or more per week doing charity work, whether in the hospitals or on the environment, or in schooling or whatever. My thought was to mobilize that instinct and to make it forthrightly an expression of requital for one's patrimony. The average job in America is capitalized at something like $250,000 per job, to say nothing of the libraries and museums and so on and so forth. So this is a gesture to your forefathers saying, I want to say thanks; this is the way to do it. But it ruins the whole poetry of my epiphany to have you suggest it be taxed or conscripted. MR. ICTNSLEY: I am sony to tell you, but many of your fellow conservatives would have no trouble with that insight whatsoever. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, the libertarian people are against really any program in which the government plays a dominant role. I think that there is such a thing as fanatical egalitarianism here. But what confuses me is that somebody who uses words as fastidiously as you do should just trot out "economic justice" without any idea of what economic justice is. One character, one economist writing 25 years ago said nobody should earn more than six times as much as the least paid. Well, you know, that sounds good. But why shouldn't it be seven times or five times? And you become extremely arbitrary when you talk about economic justice. MR. ICTNSLEY: It is inherently arbitrary. All I would say is, there is a role for society through its proxy, the government, to slightly re-jigger the economic consequences of unalloyed capitalism. I am a great believer in free market capitalism. It's the most efficient way to produce prosperity, but it does exaggerate or exacerbate the workings of fortune, of luck. And there is nothing wrong 'vith society deciding we are going to even it out a little bit- not a lot, just a little bit. 7

9 MR. BUCKLEY: Okay, now, Bill Gates is said to be worth what? $13 billion, and he is responsible for the creation of an enormous and productive empire. Now is he and ought he to be per se an object of redistribution or is he simply a casualty in the sense that his income falls above a specified level? MR. ICTNSLEY: I am not sure I understand. What is per se? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, because-- Should there be in effect an ad hominem tax for anybody who is that rich? MR. ICTNSLEY: No, look-- He is my new boss. I certainly don't want to say anything bad about him. [laughter J But I would say there is nothing- you are not punishing-- The idea is not to punish people. The idea is not to say that they are bad or that they shouldn't have been as successful as they are. It is simply to say that because they have been as successful as they are, they ought to be more prepared to help people who are less successful, and not really as a matter of charity, but as a matter of a social decision that society through the government is going to tal'e part of what they have had the good fortune to earn and help out the people who haven't had that much good fortune. And let me say, the way it works now, I would suspect, although I couldn't prove it, that the tax rate on Bill Gates' income, especially if you include the unrealized portions of his stock, is a heck of a lot lower than it is on the middle class. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you may have access to information that I don't have. MR. ICTNSLEY: No, no, I don't, let me hasten to add. I mean, that's a guess. MR. BUCKLEY: But figure 50 percent is roughly what the highest tax is. MR. ICTNSLEY: Well, somehow or other Bill Gates has managed to accumulate, you say, $13 billion, is that correct? MR. BUCKLEY: That's the figure I read, yes. MR. ICTNSLEY: Well, he certainly-- I would be amazed if along the way he has paid $13 billion in taxes or anything like it. 8

10 MR. BUCKLEY: Well, if he had paid $13 billion, he would.be worth zero, wouldn't he? MR. KINSLEY: No, no, no. If in the process of accumulating a fortune he had paid a dollar tax for every dollar he had accumulated, at some point he would have paid $13 billion in taxes if he had accumulated a $13 billion fortune. So in fact he has been taxed at a far lower rate than that. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, there are unrealized gains. MR. KINSLEY: Right. MR. BUCKLEY: If you buy a stock for $1 and it becomes $100 tomorrow, you don't pay taxes until you sell it. MR. KINSLEY: But you\re got that $100 the same as if-- MR. BUCKLEY: It's an asset on your books. MR. ICTNSLEY: It's the same way it would be if you had earned it in wages and put it in your savings account, only in that case you would have paid taxes on it. MR. BUCKLEY: No, it's not quite the same thing because you can't go to the grocery store and-- MR. ICTNSLEY: Sure you could. MR. BUCKLEY: Only if you liquidate. I think we're getting too technical. Let me ask you this. The moment you start talking about that, you do wade into legal questions. When you studied the law, I assume emphasis was put on the equal application of the law? MR. ICTNSLEY: Yes, that occasionally came up, sure. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: At Harvard very infrequently, you mean? [laughter] MR. ICTNSLEY: No, quite-- Probably more than you would prefer, Bill. 9

11 MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you'd have to make that call. The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal application of the law, and the Sixteenth Amendment came along and authorized progressive income tax. Now how are those two reconcilable? MR. IGNSLEY: Well, the one that comes along later-- First of all, I don't think that the equal protection clause would necessarily forbid the income tax. I believe there was another question, what the Sixteenth Amendment overturned was a provision in the original Constitution that said that revenue had to be raised proportionately by state-- MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. IGNSLEY: --which would make the progressive income tax impossible. I don't see-- You know, I don't think there is any obvious answer to the question what form of taxation supports the principle of equal protection of the laws. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I do, and so does Friedrich von Hayek. MR. IGNSLEY: Well, I guess that settles it, right? [laughter J MR. BUCKLEY: Well, it's more important than if it were my uneccentric position alone. MR. IGNSLEY: I would agree with you about that. MR. BUCKLEY: He calls that the Achilles heel of free society, the fact that you can treat you one way and you another way based simply on how many hours you run your taxi. You choose to do it 60 hours, he does it 40 hours, and so you get taxed a higher rate. MR. IGNSLEY: Yes, that's a very clever point, except for the fact that-- MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I specialize in clever points. [laughter] MR. IGNSLEY: The problem with it--a problem \Vith it--is that the differences in income in this country have almost nothing to do with how many hours you choose to drive your taxi. 10

12 MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that's a metaphor. Or how much talent you bring into it. MR. IQNSLEY: Well, talent is-- MR. BUCKLEY: I don't know how hard Einstein worked or how many hours. MR. IQNSLEY: Talent is a very different question. Talent is God-given, I assume you believe. MR. BUCKLEY: You mean because it is congenital, therefore it should become taxable? MR. IQNSLEY:. No, but-- Well, yes, in a way, because it is no longer a question of work-- MR. BUCKLEY: That's a very clever answer. MR. ICTNSLEY: It's no longer a question of working harder; it is no longer a question of driving your taxi 60 hours instead of 40 hours. If you are in a position to drive your taxi 40 hours and make 50 percent more than the guy who is also driving it 40 hours, because you are a more talented taxi driver, that raises a more difficult question, it seems to me, for your side of the argument. MR. BUCKLEY: Okay. Two people drive 40 hours. One is extremely affable and gets bigger tips. Now is this a taxable aspect of his inheritance-- MR. IQNSLEY: Well, I have a-- MR. BUCKLEY: --that he should develop those manners? MR. IQNSLEY: --colleague, Bob Wright, who has VVIitten a book--a New Republic colleague-- called The Moral Animal, about evolutionary psychology, and he would argue that yes, even affability-- MR. BUCKLEY: Should be taxable? 11

13 MR. KINSLEY: --is congenital--congenital--is a matter of your good fortune, your fate, not a moral quality that you bring to the product yourself. MR. BUCKLEY: But you know, the-- MR. KINSLEY: I agree that these lines-- MR. BUCKLEY: --implications of your line are really absolutely frightening, the notion that the state ought to burrow around in the eugenic patrimony of each individual and say, Well, she's pretty and she's not; under the circumstances she ought to be taxed at a higher rate. MR. KINSLEY: That's not even close to what I am saying. All I am saying- and it's a principle that everyone except a few people such as you and Hayek accept--is that if you've done better in society you ought to contribute a larger proportion of your income to the things we have decided to do as a society. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you are. If you have a million dollars a year and are taxed at 20 percent, you are paying much more tax than somebody who has $20,000 a year. MR. IGNSLEY: Proportionately more, I said. MR. BUCKLEY: Proportionately, yes. But I am surprised, given the skepticism you show in your book here and there about what government ends up doing, that you should be so comfortable with the notion that these disparities are for the government to malce. MR. IONS LEY: Well, actually, you know, if you had to boil down what I really think to an oversimplified nutshell, to mix about five metaphors, I am a libertarian; I sympathize with the libertarians a lot. I think the government ought to get out of the way and let people live their lives, earn their money, but then once a year it ought to say, Okay, we're going to even things out a little bit. MR. BUCKLEY: What have you got against 12 times a year? MR. IGNSLEY: Well, all right, 12 times a year, even better. MR. BUCKLEY: Is this a case against deducted taxes that you're making? 12

14 MR. IGNSLEY: No, no, no, I was just using that as a rhetorical example. MR. BUCKLEY: But I don't see how you can understand this as a gesture of freedom to say at the end of the year: I, the government, will decide how much of your product I wish to take for whatever purposes. MR. IGNSLEY: Let me give you a concrete example. If we had what Milton Friedman wanted and George McGovern wanted, a negative income tax in this country, where the government would through the tax system guarantee everybody enough money to make the minimally decent choices of lifestyle, to support themselves in a minimally decent way, then I would be very amenable to the idea that why should we be subsidizing the arts? Let people decide what they want to spend their money on, football or on concerts or whatever. If dollar ballots, to use the Ee 1 term, become more and more important--people vote with their dollar ballots and that's how we decide what the economy does--then the distribution of the ballots becomes more important too. MR. BUCKLEY: Which is where you run into the big baby problem, right, where simultaneously you want two things which are mutually exclusive. I've got to thank you, ladies and gentlemen; thank you, Michael IGnsley, author of Big Babies. Thank you. MR. IGNSLEY: Thank you. 13