Well said. As a liberal myself, I’d say most of us are Janus-faced when it comes to our values; yes, we’d like to provide the poor housing, and we will march for the rights of the homeless, but God forbid if anyone tries to build a homeless shelter in our neighborhood!
And this is why relying on people to do what’s right is not sufficient. We must design the system to promote good behavior and deter the opposite.
I am reminded of the Buffett Rule, named after American investor Warren Buffett. The rule would implement a higher minimum tax rate for taxpayers in the highest income bracket to ensure that they do not pay a lower percentage of income in taxes than less-affluent Americans.
Buffett and other rich Americans know that the current system is unfair, but it would also not be fair for only some rich people to pay more in taxes voluntarily. The system itself has to promote such behavior.
To give an example, if we want better schools for the poor neighborhoods to give children born to poverty a fair chance in life, collect property taxes and divide the revenue across the state fairly, not just apply the money to the locality where the tax was collected. With our current system, the property tax money is applied only to schools in the locality; it is no surprise that affluent areas with expensive houses and high property taxes can build better schools.
As another example, if we want to slow global warming, instead of providing people child tax credit to incentivizes childbearing, charge parents a carbon footprint tax for each child born based on the parent’s income level. The money raised will then be used to support green programs.
Good intentions are just talks if not realized in laws and policies.