Elizabeth Warren’s Non Sequitur
...Has anyone seen this social contract that obligates you to surrender a “hunk” of what you produce under penalty of violence? Sorry, I don’t trust unwritten open-ended so-called “contracts” into which any advocate of government power may read conditions ex post. (The idea of social contract can be construed more sensibly. See this.) Moreover, why aren’t honest production and exchange of valuable goods counted as payment forward? Just as our living standard is the fruit of previous generations’ production, so today’s producers are helping to raise the living standard of the next generations.

Boiled down, then, Warren’s argument is that since everyone has paid taxes to provide services without which wealthy people couldn’t have made their money, they should pay more. How does that follow? She’d first have to show that they are paying too little now. She only assumes this. (See Steven Horwitz’s discussion of this matter.) That’s not good enough. And maybe the services cost too much — wouldn’t we expect that from a protected monopoly?

She might respond that the presence of the deficit shows that not enough money is collected in taxes and therefore the wealthiest should pay more. Still not good enough. As she herself intimates, the George W. Bush years were marked by unfunded spending. That sounds like a problem of overspending, not undertaxation. Solution: Cut spending.