Wise Up! The Rational Response to Critiques of Conservative Taxation

I recently read John L. Camp­bell’s 2025 book Pay Up! Con­servative Myths About Tax Cuts for the Rich. Campbell is a Pro­fessor of Sociology Emeritus at Dartmouth College, and he felt the need to dispute what he calls “myths” pushed by conservatives after a friend of his expressed confusion over why people fall for them. The book is structured around five central myths: 1. Taxes are too high. 2. High taxes hurt the economy. 3. High tax­es encourage government waste. 4. High taxes are unfair. 5. High taxes threaten freedom

Throughout the rest of the book, Campbell does a decent job reviewing some conserva­tive and neoliberal scholars, but presents a narrow vision of what conservatives in America today want when it comes to taxes. In my view, conservatives desire: A flat tax rate, a simplified tax code, a tax code that doesn’t dis­incentivize productivity (e.g., no tax cliffs), lower taxes (for some conservatives, low enough to si­multaneously maximize revenue and growth), or much lower to curtail the government’s ability to overreach its purposes.

Campbell notes in the preface, à la Joseph Schumpeter, “If you want to understand how a soci­ety is organized – what it values, who it favors, who has the pow­er – then you need look no far­ther than its system of taxation,” and immediately turns this into a strawman about conservative infatuation with “wealthy and large corporations.” No time is spent considering the fact that the tax distribution currently favored by conservatives – a flat tax rate – testifies to an egali­tarian society where everyone is equal in the eye of the law, a position which used to be sum­marized by the word “liberal”. The current tax system is full of so many carve-outs and special exemptions that it can hardly be considered liberal and fair.

When it comes to a flat vs. pro­gressive tax rate, Campbell says, “some people, such as Republi­can senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz and a few businesspeople,e such as Steve Forbe,s call for a flat tax that imposes the same income tax rate on everyone. Yet most people agree that this isn’t fair and that the more af­fluent should pay a progressive­ly larger share of their income than the less affluent.” Campbell conveniently ignores those who are punished by a progressive tax rate for reasons other than being wealthy. One big example is anyone with an intermittent and variable income, for exam­ple. a book author who might make sizable revenue one year and then subsist off the proceeds for the next few years – in the year they sell their book, they are taxed at the highest com­bined bracket instead of spread­ing the income out. The ridic­ulousness of implying that the highest earners don’t pay enough income tax is belied by the fact that the top 1% of income earn­ers in 2022 paid over 40% of the income tax, according to the IRS’s own data (Campbell lowers this figure to 25% in his analysis by including other taxation like excise). Campbell’s argument rests on “fairness” – that a per­son barely making ends meet is much more affected by a 10% tax than a millionaire. This ignores once again the reality of a flat tax – just because it scales linearly doesn’t mean the offset is 0. The idea of a negative income tax is not new. Popularized by Milton Friedman, workers earning be­low a threshold would receive supplemental pay instead of ow­ing taxes. For example, a flat tax formula might look like: 10% * (your income – $36,000). Imag­ine how much time you would save before April 15! Beyond saving time filing taxes, this sys­tem would significantly simplify welfare bureaucracy.

Next, let’s consider the effects of simplifying the tax code – a topic on which Campbell and I share some common ground. To start, allow me to introduce the Laffer Curve, which models how, at a certain point, increas­ing taxation will actually lead to decreased tax revenue. This makes sense if you consider the extreme – a 100% tax will cause people to either produce noth­ing (since they can’t own it) or to evade taxes wholly – in both cases, leaving the state with 0 revenue. 

Campbell’s book discusses Arthur Laffer’s ideas but large­ly dismisses them out of hand. While the Laffer Curve is a valid model, it is admittedly difficult to use in practice. One cannot be sure which side of the curve they are on until they start tweaking parameters. The Laffer Curve identifies the existence of a glob­al optimum for both tax rate and tax complexity. Increasing either the complexity or the rate from this optimum reduces revenue. The conservative position on tax reform is that a simple tax code that operates at a low rate and generates a modest revenue is considerably preferable to a byzantine tax code with high rates generating the same reve­nue. Campbell does not spend as much time addressing this posi­tion as I might have hoped. To give an example lacking in the book, consider the juxtaposition between Oregon (ranked near the bottom in competitiveness) and neighboring Washington (no personal income tax). De­spite a lower burden on taxpay­ers, Washington collects more revenue per capita than Ore­gon. In fact, Multnomah County (home to Portland, Oregon) has seen such a high migration out that the county lost $1.1 billion in taxable income between 2020 and 2021, largely attributed to stifling taxes.

Nationwide, the income tax rates are so extraordinarily hefty that most Americans are forced to shelter their wealth in tax-de­ferred or post-tax retirement ac­counts, jumping through hoops to avoid taxation, all while hop­ing that the system under which they’ve planned will be the same one they retire under. Some say tax incentives encourage pru­dent retirement planning, but in reality, they discourage investing and reduce prosperity. For in­stance, if someone wants to put their IRA towards an investment outside of the stock market, they might need to construct an IRA LLC, manage it without making unintentional extra contribu­tions (including contributing their own time), make sure to pay any new taxes like the Unre­lated Debt-Financed Income tax, where a simple mistake can lead to losing half the value of your account in penalties and taxes. This is an extreme example, but while the tax code may be sim­plest for W-2 employees with minimal investments, this is not a blessing. It instead prohib­its the fiduciary prudence that these policies claim to ensure. A convoluted tax code does not help Americans living paycheck to paycheck – it keeps them stuck there. Campbell presents a simplified tax code as helping businesses over average Ameri­cans, instead of acknowledging that the supermajority of busi­nesses are owned by those same average Americans. One of the contributing factors to rampant corporatism and “big business” is that it is becoming increasing­ly impossible to compete without spending an inordinate amount on navigating red tape.

Campbell actually gets close to coming around to this idea, acknowledging that “the more affluent often benefit far more than others from a slew of tax breaks and loopholes in the tax code – otherwise known as tax expenditures. This is what some have called the hidden welfare state, which skews the benefits of the tax system in an upward, not downward direction.” I agree with him here that convoluted tax codes do the least damage to those who can afford to navigate them. However, they do far more damage than a simplified flat tax. For example, consider some very possible case studies. A first-generation college student works 30 hours a week while taking classes. Because they are unaware of the nuances between the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Lifetime Learn­ing Credit, and lack the parental guidance to navigate the IRS’s dense eligibility worksheets, they leave thousands of dollars in refundable credits on the ta­ble. A freelance delivery driv­er juggling multiple apps lacks the time to decipher complex “independent contractor” regu­lations. Without a professional accountant to track micro-de­ductions like mileage or equip­ment depreciation, they end up paying taxes on their gross earn­ings rather than their net profit. These are the cases that require our empathy and are overlooked by an analysis like Campbell’s. Clearly, the system is much too complicated as it is.

The introduction to the book accurately summarizes neolib­eralism – the economic philos­ophy focused on free markets, economic freedom, and mini­mal government intervention as means of maximizing real dis­posable per capita income. How­ever, Campbell frames the rise of neoliberalism as some conspir­atorial “crusade” led by monied interests: “Propaganda with little empirical support and driven by the quest for profit, wealth, and economic power.” Odd, given that the premise of the text is that government should hoard the right to profit, wealth, and economic power, whereas neo­liberalism is based on the belief that these fruits should remain in the hands of the people.

The section on neoliberal­ism emphasizes how Republi­can presidents have often over­promised and underdelivered on tax cuts. Campbell will get no pushback from me on this point. However, his book is not titled “Political Incentives.” The position advocated by Campbell does not help these politicians cut taxes – instead, it fuels and enables politicians to continue finding newer and heftier ways to tax you, and implores you to shut up and accept it. In fact, the book’s first figure critiquing Bush and Trump tax cuts shows that all tax brackets saw an in­crease in after-tax income as a result. The issue, in Campbell’s eyes, was that these cuts bene­fited the wealthy. To quote Mar­garet Thatcher, “he would rather have the poor poorer, provided that the rich were less rich. That is the liberal policy.”

At the very least, this book serves to demonstrate how far the modern American Left has diverged from the ideals of lib­eralism and into the “warm” em­brace of collective authoritarian­ism. Campbell presents a book which repudiates restraining the size and role of the federal gov­ernment, wrapped in the guise of a liberalism which feigns so­licitude for the impoverished, without leaning into the one time-proven force which lifts people out of poverty: free mar­kets. Markets act to expand the size of the economic pie, rather than redistributing the spoils of an ever-shrinking one.

The arguments made through the rest of the book can be best summarized by this sentence from the first chapter: “Argu­ably, if the government is serious about raising more revenue, [the rich] are the people it should tax because these are the ones with the most money who can best afford to be taxed.” Argu­ably, yes, that does make sense. But it misses two key points: 1) the government should not be raising more revenue; it should be spending less. Americans agree broadly on this point; a recent survey from the National Taxpayers Union found that 54% of Americans say the government should reduce the debt by lowering spending, compared to only 13% who believe the solution is to raise taxes. And finally: 2) a higher rate of taxation does not mean higher tax revenue. Even The Washington Post recently published an editorial claiming that America is at or has passed the peak of the Laffer curve, i.e., higher tax rates will actually decrease tax revenue: “Politicians who want to raise taxes on the rich will be disappointed to learn they wouldn’t get much additional money to spend by doing so, though it would slow economic growth.” Therefore, when Campbell presents data showing how American tax revenue is a lower percentage of GDP than most European nations, he ignores the fact that increasing tax rates does not inherently increase revenue. In particular, it sidesteps the connection between higher taxation and lower GDP growth – a correlation which even Campbell acknowledges in Figure 3.1 of his book. To use another Thatcher-ism: “Eventually you run out of other people’s money.” 

In conclusion, you are presented with two choices. You can either believe that “there are no free people without free markets” (to borrow a left-wing slogan structure) and side with the common-sense neoliberal maxims regarding lower taxes, which Campbell rails against largely because he sees them as “unfair.” Or you can drink Campbell’s Kool-Aid and, as the title of his book implies, “(Shut Up and) Pay Up!”