Our social contract with the government is on the verge of being changed again. It was transformed with FDR's New Deal during the Great Depression, when government engaged in income redistribution. While marginal tax rates have decreased significantly from FDR's time (marginal tax rates exceed 90% during his Presidency), his legacy of a safety net remains. Conservatives should support a safety net as a type of altruistic redistribution.
Julian Sanchez clarified the different types of income redistribution by their purpose when the issue arose during the election in 2008. There's incidental redistribution, which provides for public goods that benefit most everybody, or at least do not exclude anybody. Items that fall in this category include national defense, infrastructure, and public education. On the other hand, Sanchez describes altruistic redistribution as:
What I’m talking about here is transfer programs aimed at helping the badly off, where the justification for the program is specifically the benefit to the worse-off, and not centrally any benefit to the people footing the bill.
Like most conservatives, I support some forms of altruistic redistribution. I believe that Americans who play by the rules can suffer major income shocks through no fault of their own. You get laid off and can't find a job while you have a family to support, or you suffer a major illness and are on the verge of declaring bankruptcy due to medical costs that your insurer will no longer pay. In scenarios like these, I do believe we're morally a better society for helping people in need. While I believe capitalism provides the most opportunities for all, as a reflection of human nature, it's a flawed system. Not as flawed as some of the social democratic type of mixed economies in my opinion, but I have no desire to go back to the era of the Great Depression when many of the unemployed ended up homeless, setting up make-shift shanty towns.
My qualifiers to altruistic redistribution is to think of it what's sometimes described as a help up, versus a hand-out. A help up is often means-tested and temporary. We have many safety net programs like this, to include unemployment benefits, or COBRA health insurance. I also accept that there are some vulnerable groups that cannot fully participate in a free market society, to include children and the elderly. I just want these programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, to be reformed so they are fiscally sustainable.
Altruistic redistribution is distinguished from egalitarian redistribution. This type of redistribution is what Obama's "share the wealth" refers to, as a way to level the playing field. It's an attempt to equalize outcomes. Most conservatives including myself do not support this. In previous posts, I outlined the trade-offs between egalitarianism and freedom, and I fall more on the side of freedom than income equality.
A egalitarian society will have generous entitlement programs, but an expansive government that grows bigger and bigger to regulate the most trivial aspects of our lives since, for example, in the case of health care, we have to start policing what people eat because the increased costs of obesity have become socialized. This type of society grows government at the individual's expense, and nibbles away at that American dream slowly via taxation, in a death by a thousand paper cuts fashion. But a free society with a safety net promotes opportunity. It acknowledges unfairness, but believes the individual in most cases is best equipped to deal with those circumstances. And when misfortune is particularly severe, it provides a help up, not a hand out. This is the type of society I support.
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