Kevin D. Williamson of National Review Online wrote an
article that was published on February 14, 2014 in which he says that the
notorious Tom Perkins has a point. In fact this is the quote that serves as a
subtitle; it is also the last sentence that appears in the article whose title
is: “Taxation and Representation.”
Essentially the Perkins point – the one that Williamson says
is valid – boils down to doing away with the one-man one-vote principle, and
replacing it with the one-dollar one-vote principle. That is, in a country like
the United States of America, for example, instead of having something like 250
million people cast 250 million votes, you will have something like 2.5 million
people cast something like 2.5 trillion votes which means that on average, each
of the voting characters will be casting something like a million votes.
The point that Perkins makes to justify that idea – the one
that Williamson embraces wholeheartedly – boils down to this argument: Because
the taxes that people pay are proportional to the income they make, it stands
to reason that the weight of the vote they cast should be proportional to the
amount of taxes they pay. Williamson was so impressed with this argument; he
failed to see that the result will be that a handful of rich people will get to
control the government more than they do now. Or maybe he saw that result but
did not worry.
What else can happen under the Perkins-Williamson scenario?
Here is a realistic vision as to how things may develop: It will be the
establishment of a system of governance in which making more money will cause
you to pay more taxes but also entitle you to amend the taxation regime so that
you and your cronies will pay fewer taxes next year and every year after that.
Even then, you will still maintain control of the government because you will
make sure that each year, you and your cronies will pay 50 percent plus one of
the dollars collected in taxes. It will be a time to say goodbye democracy of
the people by the people; hello plutocracy of the plutocrats by the plutocrats.
If you want to know what is wrong with that idea, you can
see it from the way that Williamson defends it. He says this: “The principle of
equality under the law suggests, to my mind, that every man's standing in
relation to the state should be the same as every other man's, regardless of
his wealth or income.” On the surface, this sounds like a reasonable stance;
even a moral one. But when you look at it closely, you find that behind it
stands a mediocre intellect that cannot leap from the one-dimensional world
where it lives to the multi-dimensional world where reality unfolds.
This will become apparent to you because you will see that
having stuck in there the qualifier “regardless of his wealth or income,”
Williamson froze his thinking process, and blinded himself as to the different
situations in which the principle of equality may be put to the test. To see
how that works, we look at the following examples:
Example one: Rich or
poor, driving your car, you come to an intersection. If the light ahead is
green, you proceed. If red, you stop and allow the cars crossing your path to
proceed. This is equality under the law in its simplest form because it deals
with an action that suggests no ramification and no follow-up. It is a case
that even a one-dimensional intellect can grasp; one that Williamson felt
comfortable with but could not go beyond.
Example two: Rich or poor, you are in an ambulance, and you
come to an intersection. Whether the light is red or green, the driver proceeds
because everyone else has obeyed the law and stopped. Was the principle of
equality violated here? Or was it that equality was applied in a way that
conforms to the situation at hand? A mediocre intellect would most likely cry
foul and complain that the principle of equality was violated.
The difference between this intellect and one that is
enlightened, is that the latter will see in the situation the possible
ramifications and follow-ups that may arise at other times. That is, someone
else may be in the ambulance on another day, and even though you may have the
green light, you will stop and let him proceed.
Thus, even if on the surface, the principle of equality
seems to have been violated here too, the fact that the law has made the same
exception in both cases when the circumstances were similar makes it a law that
treats everyone equally.
By the same token, whether it is Perkins, Williamson, you or
me that is rich, we shall be asked to pay the same amount in taxes for the same
amount of income we make, and shall have only one vote each. And the qualifier
that applies in this case will be Jew or gentile, tall or short, young or old,
bald or hairy, and so on, and so forth. The principle of equality will have
been upheld, not violated.
Endowed with a mediocre intellect, Kevin Williamson was so
awed by the wealth and aura of Tom Perkins that he failed to make the leap from
the one dimensional world where he could only see the rich and the poor, to the
multi-dimensional world where there is a full scenario at play. He thus
embraced the Perkins argument and missed the big picture.