He watched the children cavort on the playground. It seemed to be covered with wood chips. How natural it all was, the little ones cocooned in bulky winter clothes—the temperature was eleven or twelve, he estimated—and running about, some on the monkey bars, others on swings, still more playing in what dirt they could find. The manner of dress told him that these children were well looked-after, and they were, after all, children. Except for one. Which one he couldn't tell from this distance—they'd need' photos for that, when the time came— but that one wasn't a child at all. That one was a political statement for someone to make. Who would make the statement, and exactly why the statement would be made didn't concern Movie Star. He'd remain in his perch for several hours, not thinking at all about what might result from his activities. Or might not. He didn't care. He'd write up his memorized notes, draw his detailed maps and diagrams, and forget about it. «Kolb» was years past caring about it all. What had begun with religious fervor for the liberating Holy War of his people had, with the passage of time, become work for which he was paid. If, in the end, something happened which he found politically beneficial, so much the better, but somehow that had never taken place, despite all the hopes and dreams and fiery rhetoric, and what sustained him was the work and his skill at it. How strange, Movie Star thought, that it should have become so, but the passionate ones were mainly dead, victims of their own dedication. His face grimaced at the irony of it. The true believers done in by their own passion, and those who sustained the hope of his people were those who… didn't care anymore? Was that true?
'MANY PEOPLE WILL object to the nature of your proposed tax plan. A really fair plan is progressive,' the senator went on. Predictably, he was one of the survivors, not one of the new arrivals. He had the mantra down. 'Doesn't this place rather a high burden on working Americans?'
'Senator, I understand what you're saying,' Winston replied after taking a sip from his water glass. 'But what do you mean when you say 'working' Americans? I work. I built my business from the ground up and, believe me, that's work. The First Lady, Cathy Ryan, makes something like four hundred thousand dollars per year—much more than her husband, I might add. Does that mean she doesn't work? I think she does. She's a surgeon. I have a brother who's a physician, and I know the hours he works. True, those two people make more than the average American does, but the marketplace has long since decided that the work they do is more valuable than what some other people do. If you're going blind, a union auto worker can't help you; neither can a lawyer. A physician can. That doesn't mean that the physician doesn't work, Senator. It means that the work requires higher qualifications and much longer training, and that as a result the work is more highly compensated. What about a baseball player? That's another category of skilled work, and nobody in this room objects to the salary paid Ken Griffey, Jr., for example. Why? Because he's superb at what he does, one of the—what? — four or five best in the entire world, and he is lavishly compensated for it. Again, that's the marketplace at work.
'In a broader sense, speaking in my capacity as a mere citizen instead of a Secretary-designate, I object strongly to the artificial and mainly false dichotomy that some people in the political arena place between blue- collar and white-collar workers. There is no way to earn an honest living in this country except by providing a product or a service to the public and, generally speaking, the harder and smarter you work, the more money you make. It's just that some people have greater abilities than others. If there is an idle-rich class in America, I think the only place you find them is in the movies. Who in this room, if you had the choice, would not instantly trade places with Ken Grif-fey or Jack Nicklaus? Don't all of us dream about being that good at something? I do,' Winston admitted. 'But I can't swing a bat that hard.
'Okay, what about a really talented software engineer? I can't do that, either. What about an inventor? What about an executive who transforms a company from a loser to a profit-maker—remember what Samuel Gom-pers said? The worst failure of a captain of industry is to fail to show a profit. Why? Because a profitable company is one that does its job well, and only those companies can compensate their workers properly, and at the same time return money to their shareholders—and those are the people who invest their money in the company which generated jobs for its workers.
'Senator, the thing we forget is why we're here and what we're trying to do. The government doesn't provide productive jobs. That's not what we're supposed to do. General Motors and Boeing and Microsoft are the ones who employ workers to turn out products the people need. The job of government is to protect the people, to enforce the law, and to make sure people play by the rules, like the umpires on a ball field. It's not supposed to be our job, I think, to punish people for playing the game well.
'We collect taxes so that the government can perform its functions. But we've gotten away from that. We should collect those taxes in such a way as to do minimum harm to the economy as a whole. Taxes are by their very nature a negative influence, and we can't get away from that, but what we can do is at least structure the tax system in such a way that it does minimum harm, and maybe even encourages people to use their money in such a way as to encourage the overall system to work.'
'I know where you're going. You're going to talk about cutting capital-gains taxes, but that benefits only the few, at the cost of—'
'Senator, excuse me for interrupting, but that simply is not true, and you know it's not true,' Winston chided brusquely. 'Reducing the rate of tax on capital gains means the following: it encourages people to invest their money—no, let me back up a little.
'Let's say I make a thousand dollars. I pay taxes on that money, pay my mortgage, pay for food, pay for the car, and what I have left I invest in, oh, XYZ Computer Company. XYZ takes my money and hires somebody. That person works at his job like I work at mine, and from what work he does—he's making a product which the public likes and buys, right? — the company generates a profit, which the company shares with me. That money is taxed as regular income. Then I sell the stock and buy into another company, so that it can hire somebody else. The money realized from selling the stock issue is capital gains. People don't put their 'money under the mattress anymore,' he reminded them, 'and we don't want them to. We want them to invest in America, in their fellow citizens.
'Now, I've already paid tax on the money which I invested, right? Okay, then I help give some fellow citizen a job. That job makes something for the public. And for helping give a worker a job, and for helping that worker make something for the public, I get a modest return. That's good for that worker I helped to hire, and good for the public. Then I move on to do the same thing somewhere else. Why punish me for that? Doesn't it make more sense to encourage people to do that? And, remember, we've already taxed that investment money once anyway—in actual practice, more than once.
'That isn't good for the country. It's bad enough that we take so much, but the manner in which we take it is egregiously counterproductive. Why are we here, Senator? We're supposed to be helping things along, not hurting.
And the net result, remember, is a tax system so complicated that we need to collect billions to administer it—and that money is totally wasted. Toss in all the accountants and tax lawyers who make their living off something the public can't understand,' SecTreas concluded.
'America isn't about envy. America isn't about class rivalry. We don't have a class system in America. Nobody tells an American citizen what they can do. Birth doesn't count for much. Look at the committee members. Son of a fanner, son of a teacher, son of a truck driver, son of a lawyer, you, Senator Nikolides, son of an immigrant. If America was a class-defined society, then how the heck did you people get here?' he demanded. His current questioner was a professional politician, son of another, not to mention an arrogant son of a bitch, Winston thought, and didn't get classified. Everyone he'd just pointed to kvelled a little at being singled out for the cameras. 'Gentlemen, let's try and make it easier for people to do what we've all done. If we have to skew the system, then let's do it in such a way that it encourages our fellow citizens to help one another. If America has a structural economic problem, it's that we don't generate as many opportunities as we should and can do. The system isn't perfect. Fine, let's try to fix it some. That's why we're all here.'
'But the system must demand that everyone pay their fair share,' the senator said, trying to take the floor back.
'What does 'fair' mean? In the dictionary, it means that everyone has to do about the same. Ten percent of a million dollars is still ten times more than ten percent of a hundred thousand dollars, and twenty times more than ten percent of fifty thousand. But 'fairness' in the tax code has come to mean that we take all the money we can from successful people and dole it back—and, oh, by the way, those rich people hire lawyers and lobbyists who talk to people in the political arena and get a million special exceptions written into the system so that they don't get totally fleeced—and they don't, and we all know that—and what do we end up with?' Winston waved his hand at the pile of books on the floor of the committee room. 'We end up with a jobs program for bureaucrats, and accountants,
