A shifting sense of equality

It’s interesting that the Left wing believe it’s perfectly reasonable to seize the assets of the “rich” through the death tax to achieve some kind of national goal of “equality.” A year ago, President Bush proposed a similar measure to reform Social Security by indexing benefits to either wages or prices, based on income. With this mathematical trick, the wealthy would receive fewer benefits while the lower-income class would continue to see their benefit grow when indexed to wages. This redistribution of wealth through indexed Social Security payments was (of course) rejected by the Democrats because it would supposedly undermine the political support for the program:

JIM LEHRER: But what about, why isn't the president getting more credit -- I'll ask you, Mark. Why isn't the president getting more credit from Democrats over the idea that it's progressive? In other words, he is going to preserve the benefits, the "promised benefits" for the low-income people by some measure but just take it out -- but lower the benefits, the perceived benefits of those who are better off?
MARK SHIELDS: I think, Jim, there's really not a political problem here; there's a philosophical problem. Social Security has been social and it's been security. It's been equal across the board.
JIM LEHRER: Everybody gets the same.
MARK SHIELDS: And once you start -- make it sort of on a welfare plan approach, the idea that well, those -- it means the program itself is vulnerable to popular support. The universality of the program has provided near universal popular and political support. And I think that's part of it.

A certain New York Times columnist saw through Bush’s nefarious plot:

Mr. Bush comes to bury Social Security, not to save it. His goal is to turn F.D.R.'s most durable achievement into an unpopular welfare program, so some future president will be able to attack it with tall tales about Social Security queens driving Cadillacs.

Perhaps Americans believe they can, or should, stay the course with Social Security because the inherent equality of the system can endure. (It can’t.) But if “equality” is the overriding concern for the Democrats then I have a proposal: extend the death tax to everybody. If Democrats are so sure about the need for equality in government payments, let’s see how Americans feel about equality of government taxation. Because, after all, they’re two sides of the same coin.