Rob asks whether anyone will "dissent" from his view that "the existence of the estate tax -- putting aside questions of rate, when it kicks in, etc. -- is supported by CST, and perhaps more strongly, that its elimination would be condemned by CST[.]"
I would not term my thoughts here a "dissent" but, I have to admit, I am not sure how to "put aside questions of rate, when it kicks in, etc." because, it seems to me, such questions are inseparable from an effort to apply the principles of CST to the issue at hand.
Does CST require a regime under which -- in addition to sales taxes, property taxes, progressive income taxes, capital-gains taxes, gift taxes, etc., all in the service of the common good -- all estates of more than $1 million are subject to an additional tax of (say) 50%? Of course not. Would a movement -- defended in good faith in terms of overall economic benefits to the nation -- from such a regime to one where the tax rate was reduced to 45%, and the tax kicked in at $2 million, clearly be inconsistent with principles of CST? Of course not. Would the elimination of the estate tax altogether, as part of a comprehensive package of tax reforms and increases that, taken as a whole, increased productivity and government revenues, which were then -- we can dream -- conscientiously directed toward the common good, in accord with subsidiarity, the preferential option for the poor, and so on, clearly violate principles of CST? (I am not saying, of course, that I have any idea what such a package would look like). Not necessarily.
Now, Rob asks about this proposal:
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the estate tax were to apply only to estates of $100 million or more, and that its rate was 5%. At these numbers, it is difficult to discern significant incentive-based consequences in terms of wealth creation and productive behavior. There would still be calls for its elimination, of course, but they would run along the lines of "It's mine -- hands off!" Such bright-line principles, lacking a functional justification relating to the common good (or the option for the poor, solidarity, etc.) appear to me to be directly opposed by CST.
I suppose I share Rob's instinct about such a proposal. On the other hand, I wouldn't think it fetishizes private-property rights to say that it is not the case -- is it? -- that one's right to lawfully acquired property dissolves whenever the public authority asserts a need that might be served by taking that property. And, it seems to me that it would be reasonable, when assessing Rob's proposal under CST principles, to ask whether the (minimal) funds raised through such a tax actually would be used to promote the common good. What if, for example, the funds were ear-marked for embryonic stem-cell research?
Now, I'm sure that Rob is right and that, in fact, much of the opposition to the estate tax proceeds simply from an excessive enthusiasm for the "hands off! It's mine!" principle. (I'm also sure that much of the support for the estate tax has little to do with the common good, and reflects instead pandering to the "soak the rich!" instinct.) Still, I continue to think that, with respect to most policy questions relating to taxation, regulation, and spending that are likely actually to be presented, CST provides principles that we are bound to employ, but not bright-line answers.
An office-supply company just came out with a survey showing that about 43 % of office workers work on vacation, up from 23% in 1995. 41% of the workers surveyed said it was their laptop computers that helped them do this. On top of all that working on vacation, the survey found that only 61% even use all the vacation time they have coming to them.
This might be too incendiary (or hypocritical) a suggestion to make on a blog, but I can't help but think that this has to be one of the major contributors to the breakdown of the family. I speak as someone who is finding herself having more and more difficulty resisting the siren call of the Internet, both on vacations and even during evenings at home. Sure, now I can be in the same room with my kids while I'm checking my e-mails, with The Wiggles singing and dancing in the background, but I'm not singing and dancing with my kids. (Of course, that might just be the effect of age, or of just being sick to death of the jingles of those four goofy Australians and their irritating furry friends, rather than the fact that I'm working on my laptop.)
I recently met a school psychologist, and asked her what the major problem was that she was seeing in elementary school kids these days. She said it was anger. Could our kids be getting mad because we are all spending less and less time giving them our total, undivided attention, even when we're not at work?
Sometimes I have the sinking feeling that just about all policy issues (other than abortion and same-sex marriage, perhaps) can be too easily shoe-horned into the realm of "prudence" despite the wealth of wisdom offered by Catholic social teaching. In an attempt to bolster my flagging confidence, can we agree that the existence of the estate tax -- putting aside questions of rate, when it kicks in, etc. -- is supported by CST, and perhaps more strongly, that its elimination would be condemned by CST?
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the estate tax were to apply only to estates of $100 million or more, and that its rate was 5%. At these numbers, it is difficult to discern significant incentive-based consequences in terms of wealth creation and productive behavior. There would still be calls for its elimination, of course, but they would run along the lines of "It's mine -- hands off!" Such bright-line principles, lacking a functional justification relating to the common good (or the option for the poor, solidarity, etc.) appear to me to be directly opposed by CST. And unless we have in mind a fixed maximum amount of revenue that the government should be empowered to collect, it doesn't make sense to speak of balancing the estate tax's elimination through an increase in income taxes, for example (which could bring incentive-based consequences). Eliminating the estate tax would simply reduce society's collective capacity to pursue the common good with no clear functional benefit.
Any dissenters from this view? And is the dissent itself grounded in the norms of CST?
Forbes reports that "a bill that would make it a crime to take a pregnant girl across state lines for an abortion without her parents' knowledge passed the Senate Tuesday, but vast differences with the House version stood between the measure and President Bush's desk." The piece continues:
Struggling to defend their majority this election year, Republican sponsors said the bill supports what a majority of the public believes: that a parent's right to know takes precedence over a young woman's right to have an abortion. . . .
Democrats complained that the measure was the latest in a series of bills designed chiefly to energize the GOP's base of conservative voters.
"Congress ought to have higher priorities than turning grandparents into criminals," said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
Understandably reluctant to enact legislation that might "energize the GOP's base of conservative voters," it appears that the Democratic leadership in the Senate is not giving up in its efforts to protect such grandparents. The Forbes story reports:
Procedural hurdles also stood in the way. Following the vote, Democrats prevented Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., from appointing Senate negotiators to help bridge the differences with the House version. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., objected to the conferees' appointment on the grounds that the bill had not been considered by a committee and that negotiations were premature.
"I hope this is not a sign that they're going to try to obstruct this bill," Frist said.
Polls suggest there is widespread public backing for the bill, with almost three-quarters of respondents saying a parent has the right to give consent before a child under 18 has an abortion. . . .
Faith, Reason, God and Other Imponderables By CORNELIA DEAN
Nowadays, when legislation supporting promising scientific research
falls to religious opposition, the forces of creationism press school
districts to teach doctrine on a par with evolution and even the Big
Bang is denounced as out-of-compliance with Bible-based calculations
for the age of the earth, scientists have to be brave to talk about
religion.
Not to denounce it, but to embrace it.
That is what Francis S. Collins, Owen Gingerich and Joan Roughgarden
have done in new books, taking up one side of the stormy argument over
whether faith in God can coexist with faith in the scientific method.
With no apology and hardly any arm-waving, they describe their
beliefs, how they came to them and how they reconcile them with their
work in science.
[To read the article, click here.] _______________ mp
Paul Horwitz has a very good post, over at Prawfsblawg, commenting on Geoffrey Stone's claim that President Bush's veto of the public-funding-for-embryo-destroying-research bill exhibited "reckless disregard for the fundamental American aspiration to keep church and state separate." Stone writes:
What the President describes neutrally as “ethics” is simply his own, sectarian religious belief. Is this an ethical (or legitimate) basis on which a President should veto a law? Of course, Mr. Bush is entitled to his belief. He is entitled, for his own religious reasons, to choose not to donate an embryo he creates to try to save the lives of living, breathing children. More than that, he is entitled to protect the interests of others who do not want the embryos they create to be used in this manner. Thus, he could ethically veto a law that required all embryos to be destroyed in the name of scientific research, even over the religious objections of their creators. But in what sense is it “ethical” for Mr. Bush – acting as President of the United States -- to place his own sectarian, religious belief above the convictions of a majority of the American people and a substantial majority of both the House of Representatives and the Senate? In my judgment, this is no different from the President vetoing a law providing a subsidy to pork producers because eating pork offends his religious faith. Such a veto is an unethical and illegitimate usurpation of state authority designed to impose on all of society a particular religious faith.
Paul writes:
[The President's] veto statement does not speak in clearly religious terms at all. Rather, he simply argues that the bill does not strike a proper ethical balance. Surely the President's sense of what is ethical is substantially derived from his religious beliefs, but the same could be said, directly or indirectly, of many Americans. And for those whose ethical beliefs are at least nominally untethered to any religious views, those of us who are non-philosophers are likely at some point to come to rest on arguments that are equally publicly inaccessible: "It's just right." "It's just wrong."
Unless Professor Stone thinks that we are all obliged to appeal to some form of utilitarian philosophy, or some other closely reasoned form of moral philosophy, every time we give our sense of what is ethical or unethical, I can see no reason why the President's publicly offered reasons can be seen as intrinsically "unethical." And if I am wrong, then I would expect that Professor Stone would demand the same level of reason-giving from any legislator who voted for the stem cell bill on the basis that encouraging medical research is the "ethical" thing to do, or simply "the right thing to do."
Politicians may justifiably suffer if they offer reasons for their actions that satisfy only a narrow band of the public; one of the political benefits of publicly accessible reasons is that they enable public officials to retain the support of larger coalitions of voters. But Professor Stone seems ultimately to argue that there is something unethical or illegitimate not just in speaking in religious terms, but in having religious motivations, and acting on them, regardless of what reasons the public official gives publicly. That, I think, is altogether too expansive a view of "the separation of church and state." I may think the President's veto was wrong, but it certainly was not wrong for those reasons.
It seems to me that Professor Stone, like many others, assumes that an objection to public funding of research involving the destruction of human embryos is -- and could only be -- a "religious" or "sectarian" one. It is not the case, though, that the arguments against such funding require, or always involve, recourse to revelation. I am starting to think that *all* moral claims -- e.g., "it is wrong to deny equal protection of the laws on the basis of race" -- are, in the end, "religious" arguments, but put that aside. The claim that there is something about a human embryo such that its destruction for research purposes ought not to be funded by the government -- whether we are moved by it or not -- is not, it seems to me, any more "religious" than any other argument about how human persons ought to be treated.
Another possible change that could come with a more Augustinian pope would be in international law. Pope John Paul II was a consistent universalist (or a consistent centralist, if you want to put a negative spin on it). While of course upholding the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, to my knowledge Pope John Paul always opposed localistic isolationism: He favored a united Italy, a united Europe (which he thought his own Poland should join), and a stronger United Nations. But with "big" more and more seeming to mean "bad", I wonder whether our new pope might not seek to find new ways to defend particularism (somehow without abandoning the rest of the world).
U of Alabama lawprof William Brewbaker posts this on SSRN:
"Thomas Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Law"
I argue in the paper that [Aquinas's] Treatise [on Law] cannot be fully understoodabsent a focus on Thomas' metaphysics and that, indeed, Thomas'metaphysical approach raises important questions for contemporarylegal theory. . . . [Among other things,] attention toThomas' hierarchical view of reality exposes tensions betweenThomas' top-down account of law and his sophisticated bottom-upobservations. For example, Thomas grounds human law's authorityin its foundation in the higher natural and eternal laws. On theother hand, he is well aware that many if not most legal questionsinvolve determination of particulars - the resolution ofquestions that might reasonably be answered in more than one way.I argue that his metaphysics sometimes works against Thomas'inclination to give place to human freedom in the creation oflaw.
Welcome to my friend and colleague Lisa. From a few things I've read, I've seen several suggestions about what the pope's "Augustinianism" means:
(1) He is somewhat more pessimistic about the world and the possibilities for the Church benefiting from secular thought. Not totally pessimistic, but more so, compared with the Thomistic emphasis on human reason in which both Christians and non-Christians share. See, e.g., this analysis, which doesn't make this distinction exactly, or put John Paul II on the other side, but which does emphasize the "critical stance" toward the world that an Augustinian perspective generates.
Does this contrast with John Paul II? I'm no expert on this. But wasn't there frequently a sense in his writings that he was calling the world back to its highest and deepest principles -- protection of life, true freedom, and so forth -- rather than claiming that the orientation of the world was more fundamentally and deeply flawed (the Augustinian emphasis)? Again, no polar opposites here, but possibly differences in emphasis.
The article I cited above also raises a specific and interesting potential application of this difference. In his writings on economic life, John Paul II is relatively positive about the market system and the opportunities it affords for human growth and creativity. Not unqualifiedly so, of course, but reasonably positive: a kind of "two cheers for capitalism," as Joseph Bottum put it last year. Augustinians, according to the article I cited above, tend to "take a more critical approach, arguing that there are economic practices characteristic of [global capitalism] that cannot be squared with the social teaching of the Church." This may fit with Bottum's assessment that Benedict has given and will give only "one cheer for capitalism": that, although certainly no socialist, he "stands to the left of his predecessor on economic issues." (See here also.)
(2) I also have seen the speculation then that a more critical stance to the world will lead Benedict to favor a leaner, more doctrinally faithful if smaller Church. (But couldn't this come in tension with the Augustine who fought the Donatists, the people of their time who wanted a leaner, uncompromised church?)
(3) "This Augustinian orientation has made the new pope more sensitive to issues of spirituality in the life of faith" in contrast with a relatively greater Thomisic emphasis on reason. That's a quote from evangelical theologian, and a leader in the evangelical-Catholic discussions, Timothy George. I doubt that there's much difference from John Paul II here -- didn't he place a great deal of emphasis on spirituality (although it seems to have come from other philosophical sources)? In any event, the analysis I cited in #1 adds:
Pope Benedict is one of the many members of his generation who, while not disagreeing with the content of Thomist thought, believed that the scholastic presentation of the faith doesn't exactly set souls on fire unless they happen to be a particular type of soul with a passion for intellectual disputation. He has said that "scholasticism has its greatness, but everything is impersonal."
In contrast, with Augustine "the passionate, suffering, questioning man is always right there, and you can identify with him."
(4) According to George, Benedict's Augustinianism "has also given him a keen appreciation for another great German theologian, the Augustinian monk and church reformer Martin Luther. This enabled Ratzinger to play a key role in the historic Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, an important agreement between Lutherans and Roman Catholics."
I don't know enough about Ratzinger/Benedict to evaluate all these points; and perhaps I've emphasized issues of particular interests to Protestants like me. But I thought I'd lay out these suggestions that I've read, and see what others think.
Welcome to Lisa Schiltz! We are both honored and emboldened by your joining this conversation. Welcome! I'd love to accept Lisa's invitation to talk here about where Benedict XVI is perhaps inviting us to go, especially as regards "Augustine vs. Thomas."
