In his column opposing progressive taxation, Blake Hasenmiller is missing the point, and he’s doing something far more serious and far more problematic.

But first, for missing the point: His editorial frames progressive taxation as a mechanism designed to either punish the wealthy or to redistribute wealth.

It is neither.

It is simply a mechanism to make our contribution to government fairer. If you make more money, you pay a higher percentage of it in taxes.

Think of it this way: if I make $1,500 a month, asking me to contribute 35 percent of that to running the government would be pretty harsh. As a graduate student, I can report that $1,500 is not a lot of money to live on. I can’t afford to contribute any more than I do now. But if I made $10,000 a month, I could handle it. If Hasenmiller can get Iowa State to work that our for me, I would seriously be happy to give 35 percent of it back.

Since the government does in fact need money to operate, it seems like asking for more from people who can afford it is fair. You are perfectly free to disagree with this, but it isn’t designed as any sort of punishment. It’s just more fair. Since most governments are having a hard enough time balancing the books, I’d hate to see all the tax rates cut down to mine.

Progressive taxation is a good way to generate revenue. One reason the deficit has grown so much during the past few years is that George Bush cut the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans. (The Bush cuts kind of proved where we are on the Laffer curve, by the way.) That’s bad news if you care about the federal budget. Rich people can dislike paying taxes — just like the rest of us — but somebody has to pay them. It seems fair to ask more of people who have more.

As for the other side of the problem, Hasenmiller implies — but doesn’t say — that somehow progressive taxes funnel money from rich people to poor people. To some degree that is true, since rich people probably won’t get every dollar’s worth of value they put in. But is our budget designed to “shift the wealth”? Taxes support infrastructure, defense, entitlement programs and everything else that government does. Some of that stuff is explicitly designed to help those in need. Most of it isn’t. The idea that progressive taxation is designed to redistribute wealth is silly. Rich people enjoy the protection our national defense industry provides just as much as poor people. Since the vast majority of federal income taxes go to entitlements — which is another conversation, but at this point entitlements aren’t about charity — and defense spending, that’s pretty much the end of that conversation.

To borrow the tagline for the article, Hasenmiller argues that “the answer to the less fortunate’s economic problems does not lie in taking wealth from one group and giving it to another.” Boy, he sure beat the hell out of that straw man.

And for the more serious problem with the editorial: If you have a practical or even ideological problem with our tax code, groovy; but Hasenmiller conflates having a difference of opinion to making a principled stand. That’s a problem. Pretty much every country on earth has some form of progressive taxation. So by Hasenmiller’s standard, the whole world is engaged in theft directed at the rich. We should be outraged. Will the suffering of the rich never end?

Or then again, maybe it’s silly to talk about progressive taxation as though it were a moral issue. Maybe it’s just a practical issue.

In the column, Hasenmiller argues that singling out the wealthy for higher taxation is analogous to passing laws to specially punish a minority. That’s pretty offensive and silly. From a legal point of view, this is just plain wrong — Google the phrase “protected class,” and you’ll see why. As ridiculous as this argument is from a legal perspective, if we evaluate it from an ethical point, it’s pretty reprehensible. Comparing the idea that people who benefit unequally from our economy should contribute unequally to our government to racial discrimination is, well, I’ll just say misguided and leave it there.

Hasenmiller writes, “don’t [encourage] the government to take money from one group of people and spend it on another. That’s not altruism. That’s theft.” By that standard social security, defense spending, highway construction, public support for education — like at Iowa State, for example — are all examples of theft. He also writes that supporters of progressive taxation are motivated by self interest. Well, some of them are. That’s kind of how democracy works. We get to advocate for ourselves. What’s cool is that through collective action and political work, we can advocate for other people, too.

Are taxes theft? Be serious. That claim, because it attempted to shut down debate about something that is a practical rather than an ethical concern, is an irresponsible and absurd tactic. Comparing paying taxes to stealing or to racism is really rather extraordinary.

By the way, you know what book endorsed progressive taxation? “On the Wealth of Nations.”

Jamie McAfee is a graduate student in English.