After the Presidential election cleaved the country in two, pitting Trump’s “poorly-educated” deplorables against Hillary’s college-educated elites, it was probably only a matter of time before Republicans went after their tribal opponents. To this end, both the House and the Senate have proposed tax plans that include a 1.4% tax on the investment income of college endowments. ...
The Republicans have announced no serious rationale for this plan. With college campuses becoming increasingly liberal and the college-educated leaning more heavily Democratic than ever, it is a fairly transparent attempt to hit their opponents where it hurts. The justification that it treats colleges in line with private foundations, which currently face a 2% tax on investment income, rings hollow given that the proposed tax will only apply to about 140 institutions. The plan has faced backlash from liberals and conservatives alike ...
But please, Congress, pass it anyway.
Most income is taxed in some form, whether it be salaries hit by income tax, business revenues that face corporate tax, or private investment earnings slugged by capital gains tax. By failing to tax Stanford’s endowment at all, the government is effectively handing us a large subsidy (in addition to the government funding we already receive). The government is implying that it is happy to tax working Americans more than it otherwise would in order to give Stanford students, and their endowment, a free ride. In light of the damage that elite colleges do to the world, there’s really no excusing this.
...
The rest is Wolfe's justification, put in terms of simple economics and the left's own arguments for distribution of wealth. Worth reading.
Update: Or maybe it's not so surprising the Stanford Review published it. The Review claims to be "Stanford's Independent Newspaper" and some current headlines there include:
It's Time to End Net Neutrality
Rally Against Islamophobia Exposes the Double Standards of the Campus Left
Stanford Students Pretend to Support Free Speech, Stumble at Final Hurdle
Why America Still Needs Guns
Wolfe's article seems to be typical. Nice to know.
2 comments:
Stanford seems to be a worthy institution. Their Encyclopedia of Philosophy is one of the great resources in the field.
Not that it is without objectionable qualities:
Nisbett and Cohen (1996) maintain that patterns of violence in the South, as well as attitudes toward violence, insults, and affronts to honor, are best explained by the hypothesis that a culture of honor persists among contemporary white non-Hispanic southerners.
It speaks to the institutional prejudice that they will capitalize "South" and "Hispanic," but not "Southerner." All the same, it's a decent resource; where it's wrong, you can often still learn something.
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