Alabama Governor Bob Riley is a very conservative Republican who is now fighting tooth-and-nail to rise taxes, increase school spending, and make the tax system more progressive. Currently, the effective tax rate on Alabama’s poorest citizens is about 10 percent of income; on the richest, it is less than 4 percent. Gov. Riley has decided that this is not What Jesus Would Do.

I think there are three crucial reasons why people on the left of center (the Civil Rights organizations, liberal Democrats, MoveOn, and others) should be rushing to Alabama and making a hero out of Gov. Riley:

• His proposal will lose without organized support on the left, butit could win with such support. Current polls show that Riley is getting only 27 percent support in households that earn less than $30,000, and only 44 percent of African Americans support the reforms. Poor people and people of color in Alabama are suspicious of government and especially of a Republican governor—understandably so. But they could be persuaded that the Riley plan is directly and powerfully in their interests. Imagine the effect, for example, of a Bill Clinton endorsement on Black radio stations.
• Changing Alabama’s tax code matters. There are 4.49 million souls in that state. Their tax code is deeply unfair, and their schools are terrible because of under-funding. The difference between passage and defeat for the Riley proposal is much more important than, say, the difference between a Schwartzenegger or a Davis victory in California.
• There is a potential to form a new coalition including African Americans, liberals, and some white evangelical Christians. There is no reason that white evangelicals should favor libertarian economic policies. Typically, their parents voted for FDR, and they should vote for equitable taxation. People like Gov. Riley are driven by principle. Their principles are wrong, in my opinion, when they consider such matters as whether the Ten Commandments should be engraved on huge boulders in courthouses. But they are principled people, and they could be persuaded to move left on economic matters. As Gov. Riley says,”According to our Christian ethics, we’re supposed to love God, love each other and help take care of the poor. It is immoral to charge somebody making $5,000 an income tax.”

So why aren’t the liberal national organizations running ads in Alabama?

My hunch is: they don’t want a Republican to get a “win,” and they’re not paying attention to a Southern state because they live on the East and West Coasts and wrote off Dixie long ago. If

I’m right, shame on them.

[Discussing this topic with colleagues today, I learned that Peter Beinart makes a very similar argument in an article entitled “Eyes on the Prize” in the New Republic (08/29/03). His article is very good, although it only chastises the civil rights organizations. I would think that other liberal groups are equally remiss.]

I’m increasingly dissatisfied with programs to redistribute

wealth from the rich to the poor. To be sure, redistribution

can increase aggregate happiness and opportunity, since an extra dollar

makes much more of a difference to a poor person than to a rich one.

Also, there is some evidence that inequality

reduces health and longevity (regardless of the total amount of

wealth in the society). Nevertheless, I think that aiming for more

redistribution is politically foolish, since a majority of American

households are now wealthy enough that they do not imagine themselves

as the beneficiaries. Even some of those who might benefit from redistribution

consider it undesirable. It’s coercive; it’s divisive; it may be economically

inefficient (at best, it’s zero-sum); and it makes the recipient feel

beholden and dependent.

The alternative would be to increase people’s opportunities

to become creators of wealth. There could be two parts to

this agenda. First, we could strive to lower barriers to entrepreneurship.

This is a Republican goal, identified especially with Jack Kemp (who

has done good work). The problem is the standard Republican solution,

which boils down to tax cuts. Cutting taxes does nothing to increase

opportunities for people who don’t have much money to start with.

The Hope Street Group,

an organization of business executives, is working on much more serious

ideas for expanding real economic opportunity. They say:

"Equality of opportunity" is the notion that all Americans

should get a genuine chance to make the most of their talents and

efforts to benefit themselves, their families, and their communities.

It requires that children have the educational opportunities that

allow them to realize their own potential. It requires fair access

to job markets, capital markets, and the home market. It requires

that government lighten the burden of those who are just beginning

to build up their earning power and their savings. It requires a

system in which people can bounce back from failure, so that they’re

not afraid to take risks and to invest in themselves in the first

place.

While helping more everyone to contribute to the market economy,

we could also increase citizens’ opportunities to make public

goods. To do this, we would encourage public service by expanding

(rather than brutally cutting) Americorps; by opening new routes into

professions such as teaching and nursing; and by making such professions

more desirable and satisfying. Indeed, we would encourage all

the learned professions to recover their civic and public purposes.

And we would increase public contributions to the government itself,

for instance by asking citizens to collect GIS data on environmental

issues, or by assigning important regulatory issues to citizen juries.

Not all public goods are created in the state sector. For example,

as I’ve argued in several articles (for instance, this

one), there is a "digital commons" composed of the protocols,

the open-source software, and the free webpages of the Internet. The

Internet was built by volunteers, including teenagers and poor immigrants;

by nonprofit associations; by the government; by profit-seeking entrepreneurs;

and my major corporations. All these players were doing what Harry

Boyte calls "public work,"

that is, working together to build an accessible public good. The

Internet commons is now in grave danger from several directions (spammers

and virus-makers, corporate monopolists, government censors). However,

groups such as the New

America Foundation have lots of concrete ideas about how to expand

and protect the Internet and other public assets.

Putting all these policies together, we could have a movement

whose goal would be to make everyone a creator of wealth.