Robin Hood Economics Falls Flat in Debates

By Michael Barone Robin Hood is dead. Or at least seriously ailing. The politics of taking from the rich and giving to the poor -- the politics that philosophers from Aristotle to James Madison dreaded -- just doesnt seem to be working as it used to. Thats not to say that the United States is about to give up on progressive taxation. With its graduated income tax the American tax system is by some measures the most progressive in any advanced country. For a generation the jousting between Republicans and Democrats has been waged within a pretty narrow range. The former want a top rate of 33 percent the latter 42 percent. However Hillary Clinton evidently trying to win over wary Bernie Sanders fans now says she wants to raise it to 65 percent. Whats apparent from the first presidential debate and the vice presidential debate is that the arguments for this Robin Hoodism arent persuasive. The two gimmicky catchphrases enunciated by the members of the Democratic presidential ticket seemed to land with a thud. Trickle-down economics all over again Hillary Clinton characterized Donald Trumps tax plan. I call it trumped-up trickle-down because thats exactly what it would be. A clever phrase but not one she repeated as the debate went on. Tim Kaine came prepared with a novel formulation: Do you want a youre hired president in Hillary Clinton or do you want a youre fired president in Donald Trump? Mike Pence congratulated him on his gimmicky turn of phrase and viewers didnt hear the line again. Kaines phrase at least had a somewhat contemporary reference point Trumps trademark line in his reality TV show. Clintons trickle-down political shorthand with an ancient lineage once triggered a more elaborate argument familiar and persuasive to many working-class Democratic voters. It would have been readily understood for example by the 125000 people -- mostly men mostly white mostly union members -- who gathered in downtown Detroits Cadillac Square to hear Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy speak on Labor Day in 1960. You dont see rallies like that in the now-renamed Kennedy Square anymore. They believed that the high tax rates imposed by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1930s (top rate 63 percent) and then by bipartisan consensus during World War II and left in place thereafter (top rate 91 percent) were a way of taking the outsize gains of a few corporate bosses and movie stars and distributing the proceeds to ordinary workingmen and their families. As it happens as president Kennedy didnt make that argument at all. Recognizing that high tax rates encourage tax avoidance and discourage growth he proposed what became the 1964 tax cuts which were a model for former actor Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The problem with trickle-down and hire/fire is that they are addressed to a segment of the electorate that no longer exists -- or at least is no longer a plausible target for Democratic candidates. One recent poll showed non-college-graduate white men voting only 17 percent for Hillary Clinton. Trump does better than that with Hispanics. The era of boss-vs.-worker politics in which the key issue was economic redistribution has long been over. For at least a generation maybe two we have been in an era of identity politics in which cultural issues divide voters. Democrats were able to squeeze a few votes as the tribune of workers versus bosses in Midwestern target states in 2012 against Mitt Romney the son of an auto executive. But that hasnt been working against Trump. Downscale whites dont see Trump as a boss who would fire rather than hire them. They see him as a champion who might somehow fire the cultural elitists who look down on them as waste material in a basket of deplorables vermin infected with implicit racism. Trump does arouse fears among many voters -- fears of impulsive foreign initiatives trade wars attacks on political enemies. Multiple provocative comments have provided some basis for those fears. But they dont fear the specter that Clinton and Kaine sketched out that his tax cuts would produce financial collapse. No serious economist -- liberal or conservative -- believes those Democrats preposterous theory that the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts led inexorably to the 2008 financial collapse. Clinton and Kaine seek to rally a coalition of blacks Hispanics young people and college-educated single women large enough to total 50 percent. Robin Hood economics as they seemed to recognize as they dropped trickle-down and hire/fire doesnt get them there.