Robert Greenstein, president of the left-leaning think-tank Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, writes of the Paul Ryan

budget: "It is Robin Hood in reverse -- on steroids, because it would produce the largest redistribution of income from bottom to top in modern U.S. history."

! !

Two issues with Greenstein's statement. The first: his characterization of Paul Ryan as "Robin Hood in reverse" trades on what "reverse" is supposed to mean. If it is supposed to mean "in the opposite direction," then the characterization shouldn't be assumed to be negative. We root for Robin Hood because he takes money from those who have taken money from others, and sets things right. So if our government policies are enabling theft to occur, even if the theft is occurring in the opposite direction, that is, in reverse order, it's still theft. So the characterization of Ryan as Robin Hood shouldn't signal something prima facie problematic with Ryan's budget.

But if the "in reverse" in Greenstein's statement that Paul Ryan is "Robin Hood in reverse" means "opposite of," then the characterization is indeed exceedingly negative. And I would argue that it is unfair. Think about what it means to suggest that the Chairman of the House Budget Committee is the opposite of Robin Hood. It is to suggest that Ryan takes money from those who have had money stolen from them already, and gives the ones doing the stealing even more. He is not Robin Hood but his opposite: the Sheriff of Nottingham. But this is obviously not what Ryan's budget is doing, since his proposals do not involve stripping wages but entitlements. In other words, what's targeted is not what has been worked for, but what has been granted.

My second issue with Greenstein is a variation on the first. His warning that Ryan's budget would mean "the largest redistribution of income from bottom to top in modern U.S. history" is guilty of equivocating over "redistribution." In popular usage, "redistribution" is the goal of some functions of taxation, which involve taking income from the rich to give to the poor. There is the distribution achieved organically, and then there is a redistribution to attain some desired outcome (the poor being made more well-off). But in Greenstein's usage, "redistribution" means a de-redistribution as opposed to the redistribution of the original distribution. This is a different notion. This is no longer the notion of worked-for income being reapportioned, in the form of entitlements, to those who haven't worked for it, but the notion of the redistribution never having taken place. Calling this a "redistribution" is a strange use of language, though of course it is rhetorically speaking highly effective.