Progressive Taxation as a Political Shield for Globalization
Mark Thoma sends us to David Wessel:
Economist's View: Progressive Taxation as a Political Shield for Globalization: David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal says there is increasing support for income redistribution policies to compensate the losers from globalization and prevent a backlash against trade liberalization:
The Case for Taxing Globalization's Big Winners, by David Wessel, Commentary, WSJ (free): A new argument is emerging among the pro-globalization crowd in the U.S...: Tax the rich more heavily to thwart an economically crippling political backlash against trade prompted by workers who see themselves -- with some justification -- as losers from globalization.
The sharpest articulation of this view comes not from one of the Democratic presidential campaigns, but from economist Matthew Slaughter, who recently left President Bush's Council of Economic Advisers to return to Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business.
"Policy has become more protectionist because the public is becoming more protectionist," Mr. Slaughter and ... Yale political scientist Kenneth Scheve, write in the new issue of Foreign Affairs magazine. "And the public is becoming more protectionist because incomes are stagnating or falling."
Globalization, the two academics argue with unswerving conviction, is good for the U.S. ... But the benefits ... have been distributed unevenly. ... The conventional response from fans of globalization, including the Bush administration, is rhetorical support for more aid for workers hurt by imports ... and better education to equip the next generation of Americans with skills needed to command high wages in a global economy. Both are crucial. Progress on both is painfully inadequate.
But trade-adjustment assistance is traditionally targeted narrowly at workers hurt by imports. Today's angst about globalization is far more pervasive. ... And education takes generations to pay off.
What to do? ... "It is best not to address increasingly salient concerns about inequality by interfering with trade," Mr. Summers argued [recently]... His solution: use progressive taxation to offset some, but not all, of the increase in inequality. For starters, return tax rates for couples with incomes above $200,000 to the levels they were under President Clinton.
"Truly expanding the political support for open borders requires making a radical change in fiscal policy," Messrs. Slaughter and Scheve argue. Their particular proposal: eliminate the Social Security-Medicare payroll tax on the bottom half of workers -- roughly those earning less than $33,000 a year -- and make up the lost revenue by raising the payroll tax on others.
This, obviously, would be a sea change in fiscal policy. ... But all this talk is likely to influence any Democrat who takes the White House in 2008. He or she will almost surely move to raise taxes on the best-off Americans -- both to raise revenue to pay the bills and to resist the three-decade-old inequality trend...
