by Eric Martin
Jonathan Chait has a fine piece in TNR about the Republican Party's inability to respond to crises and other issues where the necessary response does not come from one of the GOP's predetermined groupings of acceptable policies. I discussed this phenomenon here. Chait adds his perspective:
Several years ago, I wrote in these pages that the fundamental difference between economic conservatism and economic liberalism is that the former is driven by abstract philosophical beliefs in a way that the latter is not. Conservatives believe that small-government policies maximize human welfare. But they also believe that they increase human freedom. Liberals, by contrast, believe in government intervention only to the extent that it increases human welfare.
If liberals could be persuaded that tax cuts would actually increase living standards for all Americans, they would embrace them. (This is why nearly all liberals believe that some level of tax rate, be it 50 or 70 or 90 percent, becomes counterproductive.) If conservatives came to believe that tax cuts failed to increase economic growth, most would still support them anyway, because they enhance freedom. As Milton Friedman once put it, “[E]conomic freedom is an end in itself.”
For this reason, liberals tend to do a better job at devising policies that maximize human welfare. They do not do a perfect job, nor is there always a singular definition of “human welfare”–some of the thorniest dilemmas of public policy involve trade-offs over whose welfare to maximize. Still, you’re going to fare better at maximizing human welfare if that is your sole goal, rather than one of two oft-competing goals.
Conservatism can succeed at maximizing human welfare when faced with government failure or some other circumstance that naturally lends itself to ideologically congenial tools, like inflation in the 1970s. But conservatism is plagued by blindness in the face of even textbook cases of market failure.
In the graphic below, some of The New Republic’s staff have compiled a brief history of conservative opposition to social reform over the last century. It puts on display conservatism’s miserable record of predicting the outcome of various liberal reforms, in the social and political as well as economic spheres.
One of those items is a diatribe against the passage of Medicare delivered by Ronald Reagan in 1961. Earlier this year, National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg called Reagan’s address “still fresh today.” This is a strange description for even as committed a right-winger as Goldberg. In his speech, Reagan predicted that Medicare would lead to the government dictating how doctors might practice and where they’d live, and that, if it came into law, “[Y]ou and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”
To their advantage, Democrats and progressives have been ideologically liberated* such that they are free to pick and choose from the full menu of available options. If some inclusion of tax cuts, deregulation or private sector solutions will do the trick, then bring them on board. Plenty of Democratic legislation and executive decisions have involved variations of those policies (see, ie, the Clinton years). If, on the other hand, tax increases, tighter regulation and/or public sector solutions are more conducive to efficiently addressing the problem at hand, then go with those. That's the overarching framework, allowing for distortions by various powerful interests.*
Republicans, on the other hand, have been boxed in by a dogmatic rigidity such that cutting taxes (and/or making them less progressive), deregulation and privatization are always the right course of action. Without fail. Regardless of conditions in the real world, or the contours of a particular problem, those are the tools to address them. From Chait's piece:
David Frum, the former Bush speechwriter turned conservative apostate, recently recounted his attempt to persuade a group of young conservatives that they had to bend their principles in the face of economic calamity. As Frum recalls it, one of the conservative interlocutors replied, “Maybe it was a good thing we weren’t in power then–because our principles don’t allow us to respond to a crisis like this.”
Whether there's a surplus, a thriving economy, a recession, a zero-bound recession or a general economic malaise, it's always the right time for tax cuts! Whether or not a particular problem is caused by overly lax regulation or market failure, the cure is always to deregulate further and increasingly turn the situation over that same failing private market.
Senator Jim DeMint introduced a GOP stimulus plan, authored by the Heritage Foundation, that consists of making the Bush tax cuts permanent and adding onto them a series of permanent tax breaks heavily tilted toward corporations and high-income earners. It would cost more than $3 trillion–more than triple the cost of Obama’s stimulus–over the next decade, after which point its costs would continue to accrue (whereas the stimulus will end after a few years). This is some sort of ideological brain-stem reflex, not the product of any analysis of the state of the U.S. economy.
One observer dismissed DeMint’s plan thusly: “It is not innovative or particularly clever. In fact, it’s only eleven pages.” Oddly enough, this observer was DeMint himself, talking up his proposal in a speech at the Heritage Foundation. On the contemporary right, it is a mark of intellectual integrity that even a massive economic cataclysm would not prompt any revising of one’s economic prescription. And, while DeMint speaks from the fringe of the party, his beliefs are by no means confined to it: 90 percent of the current Senate GOP caucus voted for his plan.
Unfortunately, the real world doesn't treat such inflexibility kindly.
(*At least in theory, and based on ideology, although there are always the pernicious influences of money and lobbying in terms of skewing the panoply of acceptable policy choices.)
The TRN’s graphic (more like list of quotes), really puts into perspective the accusations from the right wing that global warming is a “scare”, and doing something about it would be a first step to global tyranny etc.
This sections sums up so much, for me:
“Conservatives believe that small-government policies maximize human welfare. But they also believe that they increase human freedom. Liberals, by contrast, believe in government intervention only to the extent that it increases human welfare.”
I’d add that the human welfare enhanced is best measured in how it expands real freedom — the capacity of people to live their lives as they see fit. At least, in my understanding of “liberal”.
I’d add that the human welfare enhanced is best measured in how it expands real freedom — the capacity of people to live their lives as they see fit. At least, in my understanding of “liberal”.
Really, Point? I guess you don’t believe that ensuring a clean and non-toxic water supply, a safe and reliable food supply, an effective transportation network that facilitates all manner of economic activity in conjunction with resonably reliable communications and energy infrastructure, and a social safety net protecting the elderly and disabled from destitution is not an excuse to enslave Americans through undue taxation. So naive – you can’t even see your shackles.
It’s not as if at least part of the conservative movement would not still cling to the notions in that list. Female suffrage for example (or voting by the have-nots in general for that matter) is still tacitly or occasionally even openly opposed (even by some conservative females) in parts of the movement. I remember a GOP strategist in connection with one of the last elections to state (paraphrased) that ‘too many people vote and that’s bad’. At least one evangelical leader only accepted Palin after being assured that she had asked the First Dude for permission to run for office first because wives have to submit to their husbands (and females should not lead males in general).
Many conservatives consciously deny the welfare clause in the constitution or interpret it in a rather outlandish way.
etc.etc.
If conservatives came to believe that tax cuts failed to increase economic growth, most would still support them anyway, because they enhance freedom. As Milton Friedman once put it, “[E]conomic freedom is an end in itself.”
I discussed this briefly in an exchange with Brett B a few posts back; I think that this formalation prevents any rational discussion of economic policies and their costs & benefits. Libertarians claim that free markets produce superior outcomes, but once cornered on the issues with this position they retreat to the inassailable position that free markets are a moral good. On the other hand, if confronted on a moral question, they will then switch back to discussing economics.
By switching back and forth between arguments, conservatives can never be cornered into defending either proposition. In my experience, the only way to combat this tactic is to agree beforehand to limit the engagement to either practical or moral grounds, and not to comingle the arguments.
Hell yeah! Conservatives of my acquaintance often talk as if us libruls love paying taxes. That is reason No.47 why those conservatives are not very bright. If I thought we could run the Navy on bake sales and fund the NIH with telethons, I’d be calling for tax cuts myself.
Here Chait commits the usual error of ommission: he talks about tax rates without talking about tax brackets. And sloppiness: does “50 or 70 or 90 percent” mean aggregate taxes as a fraction of GDP, or is he talking about a “90 percent” top marginal tax rate? I can only speak for one liberal, but I challenge any conservative to explain how a 90% marginal tax rate kicking in at $100 million a year would be “counterproductive”.
Well sheeeeit, price cuts of ANY sort enhance “economic freedom”. A 50% drop in house prices would certainly enhance my “freedom” to buy a house. Probably more than a 50% tax cut would. And just for yucks, I wonder if old Milton had anything to say about patents and copyrights. Do those “enchance” what good conservatives call “economic freedom”?
–TP
I’d add that the human welfare enhanced is best measured in how it expands real freedom — the capacity of people to live their lives as they see fit.
I think you’re running a lot of concepts together here into a muddy mess. You can be perfectly free- yet crippled, brain-damaged, terminally ill, ignorant, unhappy, poor, frightened, and alone.
The only reason to call that state a perfected enhancement of human welfare is that it allows the substitution I mentioned above- rather than making a coherent argument for an economic policy, you merely claim it increases freedom in your opinion (ie “real freedom”, as opposed to?), and that this freedom is the only measure of human welfare.
“I guess you don’t believe that ensuring a clean and non-toxic water supply, a safe and reliable food supply, an effective transportation network that facilitates all manner of economic activity in conjunction with resonably reliable communications and energy infrastructure, and a social safety net protecting the elderly and disabled from destitution is not an excuse to enslave Americans through undue taxation.”
Let’s go through this:
a clean and non-toxic water supply
a safe and reliable food supply
Not having externalities make you sick is a great way to enhance real freedom, I find…
an effective transportation network… in conjunction with resonably reliable communications and energy infrastructure
Being able to travel from place to place, communicate with others, and have access to energy do as well. If left to the private sector, even with more money from lower taxes, would do a poor job replicating these capacities, even for the wealthy, and would do so not at all for the majority.
a social safety net protecting the elderly and disabled from destitution
At some point, if we’re lucky, we grow old. A social safety net that frees the young from organizing their lives around security at age 60, not to mention giving citizens hope for a retirement with continued independence, is a net plus for human freedom. (Similar logic for illness and disability)
“Hell yeah! Conservatives of my acquaintance often talk as if us libruls love paying taxes”
No, we talk about how liberals love to make other people pay taxes.
I find this whole piece a little confusing. Because liberal, Democrat and progressive are used interchangeably so I can’t dispute any point because because the three aren’t the same. Nor are conservatives and Republicans the same thing.
Conservatives have the capacity to actually come up with solutions, unfortunately the current Democratic leadership is not as open to differing perpsectives as portrayed here. Progressives may be, liberals definitely are as entrenched as conservatives are accused of being and Democrats are just being as political as Republicans. Pick a topic, but just discuss one at a time.
Not having externalities make you sick is a great way to enhance real freedom, I find…
First, what is it with the “real” freedom? What other kind of freedom is there? Maybe if you explain these “fake” freedoms your point will be more clear.
Second, I dont see why you think that being sick is not being free, somehow. If two people get sick- one from toxic waste, and the other from a genetic condition, is the first guy “not really free” but the second guy is “really free”?
“You can be perfectly free- yet crippled, brain-damaged, terminally ill, ignorant, unhappy, poor, frightened, and alone.”
Seems highly problematic — at least in my understanding of real freedom, which is the ability to live your life as you see fit.
Is it a person’s choice to live life as a cripple? Maybe, but I’d say they’re a very small minority. Same for being brain damaged, terminally ill, or poor.
OTOH, I know plenty of people — myself included — who have every intention of being alone for the rest of their lives. A hypothetical attempt to make one of us do otherwise (by say arranged marriage) would decrease his/her freedom, and, in doing so, their welfare.
I see this as the natural result of the failure of a set of political ideas. Ideas have a lifecycle, especially in a democratic system where for the most part failed ideas can be rejected by voters.
1) That lifecycle begins with an unsolved problem. For instance, “lots of people don’t have health insurance”. Existing ideas that have been implemented cannot claim to solve that problem, because the problem continues to exist.
2) So, new ideas – or old ideas that were never really tested, or that people have forgotten about, or tweaks to existing ideas – come to prominence that aim to address that problem.
3) Those ideas are adopted by politicians or prospective politicians who are looking to get elected or re-elected by promising to get things done for their constituents. The kind of ideas that are persuasive to constituents are ones that have either academic support or have demonstrably worked in other places. The public likes science and it likes empiricism, because they associate those with successful policies of the past.
4) If those politicians are successful in getting elected in enough numbers, the ideas have a chance to become policy.
5) A period of time passes and the effectiveness of those policies is assessed by the public, the press, and academia. A verdict is rendered on whether they have succeeded, and they are either incorporated into the permanent policy of the government (Social Security), or they are rejected and usually removed from policy (Prohibition).
6) After ideas have proven or disproven their usefulness, they are mostly removed from the platform of the politicians that opposed or supported them. They cease to be active political questions. This happens because espousing discredited ideas is no way to get elected. Segregation or alcohol prohibition are no longer overt political questions. This is a painful and slow process but essential if politicians want to get elected.
Now none of that is particularly a partisan matter. When new ideas arise, they naturally gravitate to one or the other party depending partly on how well they fit with the existing ideas that that party has adopted, and partly (perhaps largely) on how they affect existing interest groups that are tied to one party or another.
But what has happened with the Republican Party – and this is not really new, it was happening in the 1920s and 1930s the same way it happened in the 1960s and onwards – is that the question of how existing interest groups are affected by policy has become almost the sole determinant of which ideas are adopted and which are not. Some of those interest groups are also voters – religious conservatives, upper-income-bracket earners – but clearly the most important interest group to the Republican Party is the class of corporate executives. And that is not because they deliver votes, but because they deliver money, jobs, and other goodies to members of the Republican Party. That money can be used to buy a lot of TV advertising, and simultaneously those corporations are also pushing their influence through think tanks and media outlets.
So, the Republican Party’s principle criterion for assessing ideas is not whether they work, but whether they serve corporate interests.
This screws up every aspect of the normal idea lifecycle by skipping the empirical questions about the effectiveness of ideas. But since that process still matters to voters, a veneer of empiricism and academic and popular support is created through the deployment of large amounts of money.
Now this process works for steps 1-4 above. You can create the appearance of academic support for your policies. You can get elected on the basis of those policies. You can enact them into law. You can even blow smoke about whether or not they’re working, for a long time, but eventually step 5 is going to catch up with you.
Because eventually ideas either do or do not work to solve the problem they were claimed to solve. And eventually the public will notice, and if your ideas didn’t work, and the problem was sufficiently painful, even large amounts of money pumped to the media and academia are not going to fool anyone.
Well, the Republican Party is at the end of one of those cycles. It had a set of ideas – not very complicated ideas – a very few of which got adopted and incorporated in policy at a basic level, and most of which have been implemented in government and to a large extent discredited. Foreign military adventurism? Discredited. Deregulation at all costs? Discredited. Tax cuts solve all problems? Discredited.
The natural next step of a party that wishes to get re-elected is to drop the discredited ideas and come up with some new ones. But the Republican Party has departed from this course, because it has elevated the effects of policy on corporate interests above the effects of policy on solving the actual problems they claim to address. As such, they cannot drop the ideas of low taxes and deregulation even though they have failed in the real world. Their only hope is to hide and confuse the question of whether those policies have been discredited, which they do partly through media outlets and academia, and partly by trying to obscure what those past policies actually were.
In fact there is a desperate delaying tactic which can be deployed as you realize your ideas are failing, and that’s to covertly adopt the ideas of your opponents and implement them. That’s exactly what happened from 2000-2008: in response to a recession, policies characteristic of a Democratic administration were implemented – very loose monetary policy created the appearance of an economic boom driven by housing. But, there is a problem with this. If you claim that the housing boom is the organic result of low taxes and deregulation, you don’t look for a bubble blown by monetary policy, and you don’t have the tools to deal with it bursting.
So the end result of that is electoral disaster. Which is where we are now. I think the scale of the turnaround for the Republicans is often understated: they were demolished in 2006 and especially in 2008. I mean, a black guy with a funny name won by a large margin over White War Hero John McCain. The ability of the Democrats to blow that advantage is quite spectacular, but the advantage was real.
The next question is whether the Republican Party can see its way to abandoning some of the ideas that have been discredited in the real world, or whether it will continue to espouse them and simply claim that they haven’t actually been tried and tested yet, and blow sufficient smoke that people get confused over what they just experienced. I think they’re betting the farm on the latter. I don’t think it’s going to work. Electoral politics are, eventually, a Darwinian contest; continued survival requires the ability to get re-elected. In the end, even if existing Republicans stick to the conservative agenda, new Republicans will emerge that don’t – because those are going to be the only ones who can get elected.
Making their life much easier, though, is the adoption by a significant minority of the Democratic Party of much of the pro-corporate agenda. This is natural and understandable, though not excusable; sucking up to corporate interests has worked pretty well for the Republican Party and especially for individual politicians. But it’s dangerous for the ability to get elected if you get too close to them; and it’s dangerous to the ability to distinguish yourself from the opposing party if you adopt their ideas to help out your corporate buddies.
Clinton tried and Obama continues to try to reconcile the need for effective policy and the need to satisfy corporate interests, with some success. Given the ability of said corporate interests to affect public opinion, this is probably inevitable. But that isn’t the same as saying it’s healthy.
“First, what is it with the “real” freedom? What other kind of freedom is there? Maybe if you explain these “fake” freedoms your point will be more clear.”
Sure — a great example of “fake freedom” is the freedom to buy something you can’t afford. (Most “economic freedom” that irks conservatives seems to only affect a minority that’s pretty well off, as is.)
A more complex example is the “freedom” to apply for a job you stand no chance of getting, when the limitations that hold you back stem from things you can’t control (e.g. you didn’t have access to as good an education, or you just don’t have the connections that comes from being well born).
I should be able to just say “freedom”, but there’s so much “fake freedom” (or “BS freedom”) out there in the discourse, that I get to feeling I have to make the clarification.
“Second, I dont see why you think that being sick is not being free, somehow. If two people get sick- one from toxic waste, and the other from a genetic condition, is the first guy “not really free” but the second guy is “really free”?”
No, both have their freedom decreased, both from disease — the difference being that one comes from toxic waste, and the other from a genetic condition. Neither are within their control, so both are “externalities”*.
*Forgive me — I may have used an non-ideal word here
Seems highly problematic — at least in my understanding of real freedom, which is the ability to live your life as you see fit.
Is it a person’s choice to live life as a cripple? Maybe, but I’d say they’re a very small minority. Same for being brain damaged, terminally ill, or poor.
So if a person is crippled by an accident (and not by choice), then they are no longer really free? As I said above, I think you’re creating a new definition of the word that goes far beyond the normal definition.
Id like to grow wings and fly- is not being able to do that mean Im not living my life as I see fit? Are the multitudes of the world’s poor who wish that they were incredibly wealthy being denied freedom by not being given tremendous wealth? Are they unfree due to their poverty, or merely free and also poor?
Thought experiment: a man is alone on a desert island. He can do anything that is within his capacity to do, without any legal or social constraint. But he has a bum knee. Is he still not as free as he can possibly be?
No, we talk about how liberals love to make other people pay taxes.
How I long to move to Martyland, where being a “liberal” means I no longer have to hold down a job.
Jacob Davies, the problem is that even ‘out of power’ the heads of the conservative movement and the GOP still can live the good life and in case of getting kicked out of office and mandate go either into hibernation, using the revolving door or joining the lucrative roadshow until the wind changes again. If the damage they did in office (and the attempts to prevent the now ruling opposition from gaining credit for repairing said damage) blows up in the faces of the repair crew, they can expect to be ‘in’ within a relatively short time. If even such despicable excuses for human beings as the Newt can stage a comeback, Palin can make millions from book sales, Rove lands a job at Fox etc., then the ‘conservatives’ have no incentive to change their SOP or their ‘philosophy’. Call me back when failed politicians are starving in the streets or get dogs set on them when they are recognized in public.
How I long to move to Martyland, where being a “liberal” means I no longer have to hold down a job.
Or, you’re a limousine liberal, a dilettante unaffected by the issues you support. Supporting liberal policies makes you one or the other, limousine liberal or parasite.
CW,
Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought it was pretty well freedom (“real” or “fake”) is something that exists in degrees, and isn’t a singular entity you either have or don’t.
So* if there is such a thing as “absolute freedom”, it is something that may well be beyond imagination — or perhaps only within it.
So if someone is crippled in an accident, all other things being equal, they are less free than if they hadn’t been in the accident.
Likewise, AOTBE, you have more freedom if you can fly than if you can’t.
And global poverty, just about by definition, limits freedom, in shortening life span, tying people to cycles of low wages, and generally perpetuating itself.
*in answer of your thought experiment
To be fair, “It is not innovative or particularly clever. In fact, it’s only eleven pages.” is really not a bad thing in many cases – it means everyone else is overlooking the obvious. And in particular, saying it’s only 11 pages – well, remember Dijkstra’s comment about how we should speak of lines of code spent. And “clever” is often something you want to avoid, seeing as “clever” often means poorly designed and brittle.
Of course, all that is contingent on the thing actually working, and actually being “not particularly clever” as opposed to just stupid.
No, we talk about how liberals love to make other people pay taxes.
Together with my wife, we earn well into the top bracket. Does that mean I’m no longer liberal because I support tax increases on myself? If so, what am I now?
I find this whole piece a little confusing. Because liberal, Democrat and progressive are used interchangeably so I can’t dispute any point because because the three aren’t the same.
Eh, they’re close enough for this discussion since all three will, in fact, support pragmatic solutions involving dereg, tax cuts and privatization at various points.
Nor are conservatives and Republicans the same thing.
True, but which ones from either colum support any of tax cuts, tighter regs or public sector provision of services?
Probably more conservatives do, but even they’re a dying fringe.
Conservatives have the capacity to actually come up with solutions, unfortunately the current Democratic leadership is not as open to differing perpsectives as portrayed here.
You asked me to pick a topic, why don’t you? Show me conservatives or Republicans being flexible on those three.
Because I can point to Clinton era laws that cut taxes, deregulated (GLB) and turned to the private sector to provide (charter schools). These were supported by liberals, dems and progressives to varying degree.
Counterexamples?
“No, we talk about how liberals love to make other people pay taxes.
How I long to move to Martyland, where being a “liberal” means I no longer have to hold down a job.”
After listening to the liberals argue among themselves for months over who should pay taxes, as long as its not this group or that group, it seems to me to be a very fair assessment. And yes, limousine liberals and the middle class both fall into the category of people who want others to pay taxes.
In fact, the people that should pay taxes gets narrower by the day, people with cadillac HCR plans are the latest limited represented group to be singled out, because there is just something wrong with having an employer willing to provide great healthcare. So their plan is going to get taxed, so well, that will get passed along in one of three ways. Employers won’t provide them so the worker is screwed, the employer pushes more of the cost to the worker creating a screwed worker, or the employer just pays out the nose.
In the end the middle class will have to pay, no matter how many times the WH says it won’t, there just isn’t enough to collect from all those “other” people to prevent it. The only question is how much more will it be we pay when the truth hits home that this isn’t a free lunch.
Foreign military adventurism? Discredited.
I wish.
And yes, limousine liberals and the middle class both fall into the category of people who want others to pay taxes.
Um, please see my comment and explain. Thanks.
And yes, limousine liberals and the middle class both fall into the category of people who want others to pay taxes
And conservatives and Republicans don’t?
Ha!
Carlton Wu, perhaps Point’s use of “real freedom” has to do with the available set of opportunities to exercise one’s freedom. Whatever your degree of (inate) ability is to act in a given way, there can be external limitations on the exercise of that ability. To the extent that those limitations can be minimized through various public policies (or whatever means, in the general case), one can be said to have more “real freedom.”
Futher, if avoidable decreases in your health (and inate abilities) do not occur because of public policy (say, not sufferring the effects of poisoning thanks to the government prohibiting private actors polluting drinking supplies), you can be said to have more “real freedom” than if those same avoidable health decreases were to occur.
“Real freedom” means having actual opportunites to act, given your inate abilities. I might be quite able to drive to Cleveland, but not “really free” to do so without a road to drive on. There may be a fine road to Cleveland, but being blinded by toxic pollutants in my drinking water, I wouldn’t be “really free” to drive there.
I don’t think it’s such an abstraction. [Would you like to be free from paying some number of dollars in taxes in exchange for having little to no ability to make (or otherwise keep) those dollars (or the ones you would have been able to keep, regardless) in the first place?]
“And conservatives and Republicans don’t?”
I have never seen a tax cut bill from a conservative that actually was just for the rich, I have seen a tax that was just on the rich.
Ha! Ha!
“I wish.”
Iraq war approval: 62% oppose, 36% support
Not as discredited as one might want but as Hartmut correctly points out, there is a limit to how much Republicans can be induce to abandon broken ideas, since they tend to be rich enough that real consequences of failure don’t hit them.
I have never seen a tax cut bill from a conservative that actually was just for the rich, I have seen a tax that was just on the rich.
You’ve never seen the proposals to repeal the estate tax?
If you have a nation of 100 people, with:
10 “rich” people each having $10
70 “middle class” people each having $1
20 “poor” people each having 10 cents
Taxing the income of the middle class by 10% would yield $7. Taxing the income of the rich would by 10% yield $10.
This is my simplistic view of how tax cuts work. Can someone point out what’s wrong with my example? Because otherwise, I don’t see why we are doomed to tax the middle class, as marty predicts. Are the rich not rich enough to handle more taxes? Will rich people all move to Monaco if we change the marginal tax rate back to what it was under Reagan?
“You’ve never seen the proposals to repeal the estate tax?”
I said “only”, there is a difference in kind between the liberals “tax the rich” and the conservatives “reduce taxation on everyone”. I personally think a good solid estate tax of 50% or so on something above some millions(I would move it up a little from the current 3)is perfectly fine, but I am odd I guess in that I feel like redistributing wealth is more equitable than redistributing income.
I have never seen a tax cut bill from a conservative that actually was just for the rich, I have seen a tax that was just on the rich.
Ha! Ha!
I was going to say estate tax.
Not sure what you mean Marty. The estate tax repeal was a cut only for the rich.
And what about the hedge fund manager loophole?
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Er, payroll taxes? Is there some legislative history I have never heard about where it was Republicans who pushed for payroll taxes to support Social Security and Medicare?
Not only do they affect the poor, but because of the caps they affect the poor considerably more than they affect the rich.
“”I wish.”
Iraq war approval: 62% oppose, 36% support”
Jacob,
I found it astounding in that poll that 50% of the people found the Iraq war was somewhat successful(with another 18% saying the war was only somewhat unsuccessful). Only 7% found the Iraq war was very successful etc.
No, we talk about how liberals love to make other people pay taxes.
Thank you, Marty. I did not want to accuse conservatives of my acquaintance of saying something that stupid, myself. Now, I don’t have to.
In the end the middle class will have to pay, no matter how many times the WH says it won’t, there just isn’t enough to collect from all those “other” people to prevent it.
Where to begin? How about here: did the Bush tax cuts mainly go to “the middle class”, in your view? If yes, then letting them lapse will indeed hit the middle class. If no, then letting them lapse won’t. Which is it?
–TP
And yes, limousine liberals and the middle class both fall into the category of people who want others to pay taxes
Still trying to wrap my head around this one. Seems to me that “limousine liberals” would, by definition, be rich. So who are these mysterious “others” that they think should be paying more taxes?
And just for the record: I’m most definitely middle-class, and I’d happily pay more in income taxes if we could get real universal health coverage in this country, be it via the Canadian model, or the French, or the British, or the Dutch, or the Swiss, or what have you. So, Marty: either I’m lying through my teeth, or I don’t exist. Your choice?
Hairshirt more or less sums me up
It’s the conservatives who want to raise other people’s taxes. Specifically red state politicians and the conservative voters who elect them want blue state tax payers to subisdize their economies. Conservatives support farm price supports, big government programs like Medicare and Social Security, Bonneville Power or its equivalent, and subisdies for business which exploit federal resources such as loggers and ranchers. That is tosa they support those things in their own states and for their own benefit. They want to cut taxes in their own state, thus shifting the burden for their own demands on to the taxpayerws of blue states.
Which brinngs up another point about conservatives–they don’t believe their own philosophy. Or, at least, they don’t want their philosophy to be applied to them.
And no, conservatives don’t have lots of good ideas. In the last one hundred years every significant piece of legislation which ahs stood the test of time to be a positive benefit to our society was initially opposed by the consersatives at the time the legislation was intiated. IN the last one hundred years there is nothing conservatives can point to and say “We accomplished that !”
Conservatives have a few bad ideas that don’t work in the real world which is why they don’t wnat to experience the consequences of those ideas themselves while they reap the benefit of liberal ideas meanwhile insisting that their wants and needs be funded by others.
That’s why consevative politicians are so dependent upon lying or fearmongering to get elected.
I find it interesting that in every comment here, especially wonkie, the subtext is that conservative = rich. There are conservatives that are poor, even middle class. I have also now been accused for the first time of being part of the conservative machine that forced through Medicare and Social Security and farm subsidies.
And yes, repeal of the Bush tax cuts counts as a middle, and upper, class tax increase. See how that works, it impacts both.
“And what about the hedge fund manager loophole?
Ha! Ha! Ha!”
I am not sure I saw anyone “propose” a loophole.
HA! HA! HA! HA!
First things first: what passes for conservative in the US these days is actually reactionary.
I call guys like McKibben, or Wendell Berry, conservative.
I call Thom Hartmann conservative, but who the hell knows who he is.
Peter Viereck seems like an interesting guy, maybe.
Buckley was, apparently, the best of the modern American so-called conservatives, and his goal was to stand athwart history and yell “Stop”.
The political term for “standing athwart history and yelling stop” is “reactionary”.
Full stop.
And yes, limousine liberals and the middle class both fall into the category of people who want others to pay taxes
My wife and I have a nice combined household income, but we live in a part of the country where housing prices are really high, so we net out to middle class.
Count me among those who want to see the top marginal tax rates increased.
That would likely cost me a bit of money, but would cost very wealthy people more.
Here is why I think that is just fine:
1. The country needs the money
2. They have it
If you increase the taxes on people that make less money, it means they have less to spend on food, shelter, clothing, transportation, education.
If you increase the taxes on people with lots of money, it means fewer luxuries for them.
Either that strikes you as an eminently sensible, just, and moral argument for a progressive tax scheme, or it doesn’t.
If it doesn’t, we have nothing to discuss. I’ll simply make it my goal to utterly bury your point of view in any situation that effects public policy, to whatever degree that I can.
The median household income in the US is $50K. That means half the people in the country make less, and half make more.
If you make $1 million dollars a year, you make more than half the people in this country make in 20 years. There are scenarios where I can see that as being fair. In other words, I can imagine people doing things that create more than 20 times the value created by the efforts of any individual from half of the rest of the population.
If you make $10 million a year, you make more than half the people in this country would make if they worked for 200 years. Now we’re pushing the envelope.
If you make $100 million a year, you make more than what any individual from the bottom half of the income distribution in this country makes in two thousand years.
Two thousand years.
Wake up, take a shower, put your clothes on, get on the bus, and go to work and do your scrapyard thing each and every day for two thousand f***king years.
And some swinging d*ck on Wall Street makes that in a year. Because he can.
Two thousand years ago Jesus Christ was nine years old. Approximately.
I can’t think of anyone in this entire goddamned country that does anything that creates anything remotely approaching the value of 2,000 years of labor of any other person I can think of, including Walmart stockboys, the kid behind the counter at Burger King, or the folks that bag my groceries.
Because we’re talking about stocking shelves, serving me fries, or bagging my groceries for *two thousand freaking years*.
That’s a long, long, long damned time.
Add a new marginal rate of 50% that kicks in someplace in the economic stratosphere. Call it $10M, or $50M, or $100M. Take every other dollar that anyone makes above that sum.
Problem solved. Some of them, anyway.
If there are any doctrinaire Galtians that would prefer to keep their money or their labor out of the productive economy under such draconian conditions, screw them. Somebody else will fill their slot. They can go j*rk off in Galt’s Gulch, and we’ll never miss them.
Nobody’s that irreplaceable.
The country needs the money, and they have it. They can pony up, or they can get the hell out.
My two cents.
I wonder, Marty, why you sort of sideways defend a political entity which wouldn’t defend you – would purge you, in fact. Not only do ‘conservative’ and ‘Republican’ not mean the same thing, as you are so often at pains to point out when it’s rhetorically convenient, but they are becoming mutually exclusive. There are precious few conservatives in the GOP these days, as you must have noticed. The Bush tax cuts had nothing to do with any conservative principle. Bush himself joked about it, calling an audience of very wealthy donors ‘my base’. Defend conservative principles? Fine. Defend Republican policy of the last 30 years? Different task.
Ha ha ha ha HA ha ha!
btw, re: the hedge fund manager loophole: I would be amazed if anybody on ObWi didn’t know full well that Democrats can be corrupt too.
Russell, I’m pretty ok at those relative ranges. But at that stratosphere, and I would pick 3-5M somewhere (thats not a range of very many people but it could be earned) the net wouldn’t pay for anything we are spending money on, even if we took 90% it couldn’t cover. So with the bottom 47% paying zero and the top 1% paying 50% we would still need a middle class tax increase to cover a trillion dollar deficit.
“I wonder, Marty, why you sort of sideways defend a political entity which wouldn’t defend you – would purge you, in fact”
Simple, I only have two choices that are not good. Whichever one lies the least usually gets my vote. McCain won that contesst hands down. The number of people just now recognizing the silver tongue devil in Obama is depressing.
The latest example is the “unprecedented” (his words) 12 page nonbinding agreement in Copenhagen that makes nobody do anything.
Or, perhaps, someone could explain the great HCR victory to the people who will die in the next 4 years while their preexisting conditions still keep them from being covered, or the 23M that won’t ever be covered under this bill.
Or maybe it is the new term “deficit neutral” that is actually meaningless here because 500B of the cost savings the CBO counted are not identified yet, but because the bill says the cuts “will be identified” the CBO is required to count them.
So I only sideways defend them, unless they do something good, and only halfway attack the Democrats, until they go too far. But Obama is a constant stream of partial truth and sly rhetoric to hide the facts.
Simple, I only have two choices that are not good.
That’s what we all have, unfortunately. Welcome to the Reagan Revolution. But I’m talking about policy, and principle. You now want to talk about personality. Why?
I won’t concede that McCain lied less, but even if that were so, what difference does it make in the end? If he was marginally more truthful, in your reckoning, in touting senseless policies, why is that better?
I think you miss the boundless cynicism in someone like McCain. Boundless cynicism. I think Chait actually calls it ‘nihilism’, and that’s what it is. My criticisms of Obama would be probably even more withering than yours – but he still beats nihilism.
I would pick 3-5M somewhere (thats not a range of very many people but it could be earned) the net wouldn’t pay for anything we are spending money on, even if we took 90% it couldn’t cover. So with the bottom 47% paying zero and the top 1% paying 50% we would still need a middle class tax increase to cover a trillion dollar deficit.
Handy CBO spreadsheet here.
From 2005 (the last year represented):
Percentiles 99.0 – 99.5 : 560,000 households
Percentiles 99.5 – 99.9 : 451,000 households
Percentiles 99.9 – 99.99 : 99,000 households
Top 0.01 Percentile : 11,000 households
Corresponding average pretax and aftertax household incomes:
588,100 / 413,300
1,207,200 / 830,100
4,699,500 / 3,191,600
35,473,200 / 24,286,300
Crude calculation using only one bracket: Taking 50% of pretax income from the 1st group, 60% from the 2nd, 70% from the 3rd, and 80% from the 4th (leaving these last poor bastards a measly $400,000 a month per household, on average, to scrape by on), that’s $1.13 trillion.
Based on the #’s above (multiply the # of households by the difference between pretax and aftertax income), the top 1% paid about $540 billion in income taxes in 2005. The difference would be an additional $600 billion.
Also note that in 2005 there were 110,000 households with pretax income of more than four and a half million dollars. To me that’s a few more than “not…very many.”
And just to throw in my favorite appalling statistic, from this thread last spring:
In 1979, the after-tax income of the lowest quintile was $14,400; of the top 1% of 1% it was $4,188,300. The top 1% of 1% were taking home (after taxes) 291 times the bottom quintile.
In 2005, the after-tax income of the lowest quintile was $15,300; of the top 1% of 1% it was $24,286,300, or 1587 times the bottom quintile.
P.S. I am not proposing these tax percentages, just presenting some interesting numbers. I also recognize that at my playing-around rates it’s not enough to raise the rates on the top 1%. Expanding to include the rest of the top quintile (at lower rates than for the top 1%) expands the possibilities, though.
Speaking of which, is the top quintile, excluding the top 1%, the middle class? If so, what does it imply that you have to be richer than 80% of the country to be considered middle class these days?
What I would like to do is take half the after-tax income of the top 1% of 1% and give it to the bottom quintile (reducing the after-tax income of the top 1% of 1% to a mere $12 million per household, while increasing the after-tax income of the bottom quintile households by about a third). Doing it indirectly by means of the method Russell has suggested often here — increasing wages at the bottom — would be fine with me.
Look, you have 60 Senators, the House, the Presidency. You can’t possibly have any excuses when your side owns this bill, can you? Why are you blaming Republicans? We’re forever obstinate anyway, as you’ve shown, and besides, why would a rational group of people NOT look forward to garnering all the acclaim and credit for themselves? I’m looking forward to seeing Good Government from progressives — access is surely going to increase and health costs are surely goint to tumble come 2010. The whole point of the 2008 miracle was that you were going to show us all how it was done right?
Given the demise of infrastructure for delivering clean water in the United States, the recent neoconservative operation by President Obama ( yes, Eric, I am well aware he’s nominally of the Democratic party ) in organizing a buffet for the national ‘insurance’ scam interfering with health services ; one would be hard pressed to say who was interested in providing necessary services to maintain public survival…let alone health.
I run enough feed readers concentrated on that subject at my.opera.com/oldephartte/links and opitslinkfest.blogspot.com locations to give one a ‘heads-up’ on that any day of the week : but if business seems slow, you are welcome to check Current TV’s group under JanforGore monitoring the mess. And for backup there is
http://opitslinkfest.blogspot.com/2009/07/water-wealth-power.html
Just think. I haven’t even started on food from Monsanto or failures in containment of fly ash or…
Marty: No, we talk about how liberals love to make other people pay taxes.
Yes, but that’s because conservatives lie a lot, even to each other.
Claiming that you vote by preference for the politician who tells you fewest lies is an interesting claim in a thread in which you yourself are doing nothing but repeat conservative lies. Can you even be honest when talking to yourself?
Conservatives need to tell lies about their policies in public, we understand that: in a democracy where in principle everyone has the right to vote, it is necessary for a group of people who want to deny human rights and basic freedoms to anyone too poor, too black, too female, or too gay to in their view “deserve” them, to lie about what they want. For many conservatives, of course, this means they have to lie to themselves – to mindlessly spew out the lies they were fed by their corporate masters, without thinking about them very much. Or at all.
You can’t have a decent discussion with a person who hasn’t got anything to say but mindless lies or interjections of fake “ha ha”, and that is Marty, right now.
Marty seems to have forgotten or never got the info in the first place (no blame there, it was not widely publicised) that Bush got complaints because his tax cuts were not skewed enough towards the rich and that too much of the money would end up in the pockets of the rabble/peasants/etc.
That’s why I have fantasies of Grover Norquist and fellow(er)s being abducted and slowly starved to death (with heavy emphasis on slowly).
“Liberals, by contrast, believe in government intervention only to the extent that it increases human welfare.”
Considering that liberals ALSO believe that every last government intervention they’re in favor of “increases human welfare”. So, in the end, they only favor the interventions they favor.
Oh, that’s so impressive: They actually do oppose interventions they’re against!
As for the Republicans, Ron Paul has been known to oppose a government interventions to do things he favors, but Ron Paul is something of an oddity within the GOP. So you’re damning the GOP for a principled position that’s almost uniformly violated by elected Republicans.
Who cares about the Republicans. They are irrelevant to politics and policy.
The real question is what direction will policy take as the U.S. becomes a one party state. Will things become more moderate as the former Republicans start voting in the Democratic primary. Will the Democrats keep fighting old battles? Who will be the winners and losers in the coming one party state?
Brett: Considering that liberals ALSO believe that every last government intervention they’re in favor of “increases human welfare”.
You have that exactly backwards, but you’re probably smart enough to know that.
Government interventions that increase human welfare are favored by liberals: conservatives only favor government intervention that decreases human welfare in favor of making the rich much wealthier, or that makes them feel powerful by killing people. (Libertarians, OTOH, generally just seem to be stupid people who don’t realize their comfortable safe lives are made comfortable and safe by living in a country under government – and who complain about having to pay for the services they receive.)
Whichever one lies the least usually gets my vote. McCain won that contesst hands down.
Er. His twice referring to an expensive, complicated, precision piece of scientific equipment as an “overhead projector” should have put paid to that right away. Not to mention not only trying to make Joe Wurzelbacher an important public figure, but some kind of blue-collar hero, when he is in fact mentally retarded.
Look, you have 60 Senators, the House, the Presidency. You can’t possibly have any excuses when your side owns this bill, can you? Why are you blaming Republicans?
Because they’re the obstructionist jerkoffs who have made 60 Senators, rather than 51, some kind of important number.
Whichever one lies the least usually gets my vote. McCain won that contesst hands down.
“[Sarah Palin] knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.”
–John McCain
Pull the other one, Marty, it’s got bells on.
I agree with every word Russell wrote above, but I’d like to point out that an obvious humorous comeback by those who disagree with him would be to answer his final sentence — “My two cents.” — with “Well … 1.13 cents, after taxes.”
I have bigger fish to fry. Cracker confederate, anti-American terrorist fish over at Redstate, to be precise, and the other murderous, prayerful scum in the zombie Death Palin Party beseeching their hitman God to bring the winter storm to Washington D. C., which caused traffic deaths, damaged American infrastructure, including power production — and — to kill Senator Byrd before he could make it to the floor of the Senate for the healthcare vote.
Now, these alien zombie bugs lurching around in human form believe literally in the efficacy of prayer — Error Erratason at Redstate told us the other day that his faith was forged as a young, vaguely paunchy, terrorist fanatic from the slave-owning South when he placed a $20 bill in the collection plate at church and he returned home and each of his parents laid $100 bills on him — this was when God was not yet a hitman, but merely an ATM — and polls routinely show that the majority of Americans believe prayer affects the material world.
I take them at their word. Which means that the plane with 150 people on board that slid off the runway in Jamaica over night, losing an engine and cracking the fuselage, may well be an act of domestic terrorism by these homegrown haters.
Follow me here: the plane originated in Washington D.C. — the target epicenter of all of this malign prayer — for its flight to Jamaica, and I suspect the cold weather brought by murderous prayer may have damaged the plane’s instrumentation or other parts of its operation, causing this wreck.
Luckily, no one was killed on this plane this time around, but remember, the WTC was bombed once before finally being destroyed in 2001 by the Republican Party’s terrorist brethren holding out in caves abroad.
Are the CIA, the FBI, and Homeland Security looking into these prayer attacks on my fellow Americans?
A ruefully funny sidelight to this criminal phenomenon is that a teabagging bug called into C-Span last night (TPM) and related his fear that their terrorist prayer might have missed their intended target — Senator Byrd — and accidentally taken out Senator Imhofe, who missed the vote.
The good news is that Senator Imhofe missed the session and thus lives because HE was busy praying for Senator Byrd’s death.
The bad news is that Senator Imhofe and his inner zombie as*hole bug lives to pray for my death another day.
So, we have these terrorists walking the streets of the U.S.A. using prayer to murder their fellow Americans.
What should be done about this? If I come face-to-face with one of these pieces of scum in the act of praying for my death or anyone else’s death, what action should I take, in self-defense?
Anyone have any ideas?
So you’re damning the GOP for a principled position that’s almost uniformly violated by elected Republicans.
Um, yeah. I give Ron Paul and his supporters props for principled consistency. But what does that have to do with the price of eggs?
Since I seem to be tilting at windmills this week, I am going to object to this:
In this post it, in an uncharitable and unnecessarily negative way, explains why Republicans have not been an active part of the negotiations on this bill. On principle and practicality they don’t believe an 875B huge bureauracy is the way to solve the problem. It matters little what is in and out of the bill, the bureaucracy and cost are just not the answer. That doesn’t make them obstructionists, it means they are doing their job. Nor does it mean they are just playing politics, although both sides do that in the presentation of their positions, it means they don’t believe in the solution offered.
When faced with reviewing the bill in the subcommittees they offered some amendments, but almost all were denied on a party line vote, how much time do you waste on that? It isn’t “big government is bad” it is huge pieces of legislation that create big government all at once that will last forever are bad, and this piece of legislation is very bad even at that.
And once Harry Reid had his 60 Dems they certainly never talked to a Republican again, they didn’t care about bipartisan input, they just cut out a few Republicans they thought they might need.
Many Democrats don’t believe this bill is the answer either, but they will take the payoff and pray that President Obama can sell it as a grand accomplishment rather than a bill passed over the objections of 2/3 of Americans.
Marty,
Every effort to court Snowe was made. She made requests, the Dems agreed, and then she said she didn’t like it anyway.
There were internal memos leaked to the press that discussed GOP strategy to oppose HCR no matter what. Meaning, regardless of what compromises were made, they would oppose it. Becuase politically, it was their best shot.
These are their words, not mine. Even if you don’t like the way they sound. Can’t blame you much. I don’t either.
Many Democrats don’t believe this bill is the answer either, but they will take the payoff and pray that President Obama can sell it as a grand accomplishment rather than a bill passed over the objections of 2/3 of Americans.
Marty, the Dems that don’t like the bill want it to go farther than the 60th Senator would allow. Meaning, they like it, but not as much as a more comprehensive bill. Still, it is preferable to the status quo, and most Dems agree. And the 2/3 number is off for the same reason.
Let me also say this:
Thanks Marty. For being willing to hang in on this and other threads and more or less take on the world.
Brett drops in here and there to spell you, but only briefly.
I appreciate your willingness to dialogue. Sorry if you think I’m being uncharitable.
Superdestroyer: If the Democrats really achieve that kind of dominance, what is more likely is a split of the Democrats into the a center-right party, and a moderately liberal party, instead of staying as the current mish-mashed center-right with a few liberals party it is.
Marty: Let’s take your 47% number as accurate. So why do 47% of people not pay income taxes (though they pay sales taxes, payroll taxes, etc, etc, etc)? Because they don’t make enough money. By those numbers, 47% of people are poor. That’s a complete disaster! Almost half of the country is so poor it’s in the 0% tax bracket?
The question isn’t “how can we get these people to pay taxes”, the question is “WHY are these people so poor they don’t pay taxes”? And the answer to THAT lies in the fact that almost all of the economic growth over the last 30 years has gone to the tippy top of the economic spectrum, the top 1% and the 1% of those 1%.
But, y’know, noting that fact is commie class warfare and marks me as a dirty @$!#ing hippie, so hey!
“Marty, the Dems that don’t like the bill want it to go farther than the 60th Senator would allow. Meaning, they like it, but not as much as a more comprehensive bill. Still, it is preferable to the status quo, and most Dems agree. And the 2/3 number is off for the same reason.”
Actually none of this paragraph is true. Mnay conservative Dems don’t like this approach or this bill period, and neither do the majority of Americans. In Nebraska the people are against this 61%, you think the payoff will buy them off? The Obamaites(?) keep chanting to themselves to “ignore the people they will come around after we impose this on them”. A perfectly elitist point of view. Potentially successful, btw, but elitist nonetheless.
And just to add, maybe you should read what I write Eric, I addressed everyhting you saidd in your response in my comment.
But it is easier just to replay the “we talked to Snowe, that means we were bipartisan” crap and the “we got a few out of context messages frrom Republicans on the politics of this” so that means they don’t have any other actual thoughts, beliefs or principles which is assinine.
Actually none of this paragraph is true
Wait, what? Are you saying there are no Dems that don’t like the bill because it doesn’t go far enough? Have you ever heard of Jane Hamsher? Howard Dean?
Mnay conservative Dems don’t like this approach or this bill period
True, but they are relatively few when looking at the total Dem dissatisfaction with the bill.
and neither do the majority of Americans
How do you know?
Can you show me a poll that indicates such? Including reasons for disliking the bill?
Thanks in advance.
I second Eric’s thanks to Marty!
I addressed everyhting you saidd in your response in my comment
No, you didn’t. You did not mention the memos.
But either way, the only ACTUAL proposal from the GOP would have had the same costs and covered less people. Becuase it was tied to the only course allowed: privatize, deregulate, cut taxes.
And you didn’t address that in your comment either.
And Marty, come on, I never said that we talked to Snowe, therefore we were bipartisan.
She asked for specific things, and we agreed to them.
Then she asked for more, and we agreed.
After all the concessions, she said no.
That’s just what happened.
So with the bottom 47% paying zero and the top 1% paying 50% we would still need a middle class tax increase to cover a trillion dollar deficit.
The bottom 47% does not pay zero.
Everybody pays taxes.
As of 2005, the lowest quintile makes 4.1% of pretax income, and pays 0.9% of all federal taxes.
Second lowest quintile, 8.9% and 4.4%.
Third lowest, 13.9% and 9.7%.
Second highest, 20.4 and 17.6%.
Highest quintile, 53.5% and 67.2%.
Some federal taxes are progressive, some flat, and some regressive. Transfer payments and tax credits tilt the table a bit more to the benefit of the lowest quintile.
Net/net, we have a moderately progressive federal tax regime, in which everyone, or very nearly everyone, pays.
There are likely some folks within the lowest quintile who end up with a negative overall tax burden. The lowest quintile isn’t broken out in greater detail, so we can’t tell from the tables.
If so, it’s well under 20%, and *way* less than 47%, of the population. And if so, they end up with no federal tax burden because they’re *really really poor*.
If we want to get them generating revenue, we need to give them a bigger piece of the pie. Not through transfer payments, but through earnings.
The US economy generates an astounding amount of wealth. The folks that do the things that create that wealth should get more of it.
Until that happens, folks making more money than they can find a way to spend should STFU if the other 99% of us ask them to kick in a bit more.
In case folks haven’t noticed, the country is seriously messed up at the moment. Folks are losing their jobs and homes, they are going bankrupt because of medical bills, small businesses can’t get credit, banks are going under on a daily basis.
And folks on Wall St are investing the $700B we lent them instead of lending it out, making lots of money, and rewarding themselves with billions in bonuses.
If you’re making millions (plural) in income, you can afford to kick in a bit more. The country, by which I mean the other 300 million people who live here, need it.
They need it so we can extend unemployment benefits, so we can help folks who have lost their health insurance make their COBRA payments. They need it so they can keep cops, firemen, and teachers on the payroll in their cities and towns.
I’m not even going to get into the horrendous ongoing cost of two wars, at a million bucks per soldier per year.
We need the money. When and if the economy picks back up, revenues from all sectors will rise again, but right now they’re not. So we need the money.
So yeah, I want “the other guy”, by which I mean people earning incomes in excess of seven figures, to pay more taxes.
Not so much that they’re going to be beggared, or even so much that it’s actually going to crimp their lifestyles in any significant way.
Just enough to help get us through the current mess.
If a middle class increase is also needed to make the whole package work, fine with me. I have a job, a place to live, my car runs, and I’m not missing any meals. Lucky freaking me. I don’t mind kicking in more.
If folks simply can’t abide the idea of paying more taxes to keep the wheels on when tens of millions of their neighbors are losing their shirts, then I’d like those folks to please go live somewhere else.
“I find it interesting that in every comment here, especially wonkie, the subtext is that conservative = rich. There are conservatives that are poor, even middle class.”
I don’t see that as the subtext at all. The people who benefit from Bonneville, ranch and logging subsidies and farm price supports are often not wealthy. They are hypocrites who think alk about small governemtn and low taxes while demanding big government paid for by someonneelse’s taxes, but not necessarily rich hypocrites. In fact it is because so many conservatives are not rich that conservative politicians have to lie to get elected. A conservative who ran for office in a red sate by saying “I plan to cut taxes but not for you and I will balance the budget by ending the federal subsidies that under pin this state’s economy” would not get elected. Or a conservative who ran by saying, ” I will cut taxes but not for you and increase the deficit by continuing to fund this state’s subsidies but I oppose the subsidies other states get but I will have to support those subsidies in order to get other conservatives to suypport your subsidies so the net result of voting for me will be increased local taxes on the middle and lower classes, breaks for the rich and a hug federal debt.” also would not get elected.
So instead conservatives lie to their nonrich constituents. The usual pattern is to get votes by trumping up false issues which appeal to fearful ignorant people who are not rich and have an over developed need to hate somebody. Hence the whole stupid tea bag phenomenon. And fear of teh gays, And redbaiting. And welfare queens. Remember term limits? That worked for one elction cycle. Then the vast majority of conservative politicians who got elected on that plank forgot all about it (Frist was the exception)and stayed on for term after term. And their constituents forgot about it too. On to fear of terrorists!
I know we’re a little past this argument, but I had trouble commenting yesterday, and still want to make the point.
people with cadillac HCR plans are the latest limited represented group to be singled out, because there is just something wrong with having an employer willing to provide great healthcare.
Marty,
In fact, the tax treatment of employer-paid health plans is an inequity, or at least an inconsistency in how income is taxed. The inconsistency tends to favor the better-off members of our society.
It’s hardly unreasonable to limit the degree to which we allow people to take advantage of this. Nobody is saying the employer can’t provide a cadillac plan, just that the tax privilege is going to be limited to more basic levels of coverage.
I know it’s been awhile, but:
FWIW, I found that “real freedom” is actually a
real term, and is pretty close to the concept I was talking about.
It should also be noted that none of these groups are “singled out.” No one is saying, tax only that group. The question is how to adjust comparative rates and balance taxes that EVERYONE is paying.
So, liberals don’t want other people to pay taxes exclusively. Though they may opt for more progressiveness in the tax code.
Can you show me a poll that indicates such? Including reasons for disliking the bill?
How about here
Marty,
That poll proves my point. Thanks for the link.
While voters oppose the health care plan, they back two options cut from the Senate bill, supporting 56 – 38 percent giving people the option of coverage by a government health insurance plan and backing 64 – 30 percent allowing younger people to buy into Medicare.
In other words, majorities want the bill to be MORE progressive, not less.
The problem with polls asking questions about support for “this bill” or Obama’s handling of the situation is that Obama’s left flank will mostly say they don’t like this bill or his handling of the situation.
That’s how I would answer in a poll.
However, I and many like me believe, nevertheless:
1. The bill is better than the status quo.
and
2. The way to make the bill better is to expand its better features, not scale them back.
Marty: How many of the people who disapprove of the handling of health care reform oppose it from the “left”, because it doesn’t go too far enough? Similarly for the economy, how many people are mad because Obama’s been too nice to the fraudsters who crashed the economy, rather than giving them too few tax cuts? (I’ll note Obama’s still favored by a ~20 points over the Republicans in Congress on most of these issues, according to those polls)
Support for a public option has also grown a great deal in the time on these polls. Which doesn’t suggest to me that the problem is too many crazy wild-eyed hippies pushing single payer on a resentful populace.
Russell,
First this:
“The bottom 47% does not pay zero”
I am tired of this argument Russell, the bottom 47% don’t pay income tax which is how you would reduce the deficit.
Second, despite the outrageously long rant, I think you agreed with me.
It should also be noted that none of these groups are “singled out.” No one is saying, tax only that group. The question is how to adjust comparative rates and balance taxes that EVERYONE is paying.
So, liberals don’t want other people to pay taxes exclusively. Though they may opt for more progressiveness in the tax code.
I’d add, as someone noted on an ObWi thread a really long time ago, the “groups” we’re discussing are not fixed sets of specific human beings. They are groups based on income levels. If people are so troubled by paying too high a marginal tax rate, they are free not to make the marginal income subject to that troubling marginal tax rate. (It’s not like oppressing people who are black or gay or female based on their intrinsic qualities.)
I know one of the arguments against rates above some level or another (Laffer Curve) is that it will suppress productive activity by reducing economic incentives. Well, like russell wrote earlier, let someone else make that money.
And like many others have written before, most of the really driven and more successful people in this country (and the world) do what they do for reasons other than money. The few who are in it simply for the money are most likely to be the Bernie Madoffs of the world, so I don’t mind reducing their incentives one bit.
Even further, no one I’ve heard from is proposing a 100% (or greater – make less by making more) marginal rate, so there will always be some incentive to make more money through productive activity at any income level, given that you’ll be able to keep some of the money.
Ah yes, the ridiculous canard that liberals want to “tax others.” Implicit in this is an assumption that liberals are poor or otherwise non-tax payers (read: welfare queens) who want to tax the good, hard-working, high-earning Conservatives.
What a crock of shit. My wife and I have a household income that probably puts us in the top ~5% or more. Adjust that for cost of living in CT, but still we’re doing very well. We both work full time. Neither gets to work in a limo.
Both of us voted for Obama and the Dem candidate for our Congressional district (though, this being CT, the Republican didn’t strike me as a total reactionary). We agree that, given debt, the deficits, and the looming crunch when the Boomers get truely old, we’re going to have a pay more taxes. And we’re fine with that. Unlike SOME PEOPLE (wink wink, ha ha) we love our country (more winks and smilies here).
The richest segment of this society has been kicking ass and taking names for decades now, while everybody else treads water or eats a tasty shit sandwich. And then some of them have the unmitigated gall to whine about paying taxes.
It’s infuriating.
I am tired of this argument Russell, the bottom 47% don’t pay income tax which is how you would reduce the deficit.
It’s not an argument, Marty. It’s a fact. But don’t let that get in your way. (Unless I’m misunderstanding what you’re trying to say, because the bottom 47% most certainly do pay income taxes.)
Actually, after re-reading, if you’re talking strictly about federal income tax, you may be right, Marty. But the bottom 47% certainly pay federal taxes of one kind or another, if not necessarily income taxes. And, depending on what state they live in, some of them pay state income taxes.
“How many of the people who disapprove of the handling of health care reform oppose it from the “left”, because it doesn’t go too far enough?” etc.
Interesting but I don’t believe I specified that only conservatives thought it was a bad bill. The poll I cited had a huge majority for the Medicare solution offered last wweek including Republicans. (As an aside I have been an advocate of expanding Medicare to all uninsured from the beginning).
However, they don’t wwant a NEW bureaucracy, despite Eric reading into it what he wants.
“Actually, after re-reading, if you’re talking strictly about federal income tax, you may be right, Marty. But the bottom 47% certainly pay federal taxes of one kind or another, if not necessarily income taxes. And, depending on what state they live in, some of them pay state income taxes.”
hsh, this has been what I have said all along. It is the taxes we keep talking about raising or lowering based on income at that impact the federal deficit.
Interesting but I don’t believe I specified that only conservatives thought it was a bad bill.
Marty, when I said that Dem dissatisfaction was the bill didn’t go far enough, you disagreed. The poll you cited proved my point as I mentioned upthread.
However, they don’t wwant a NEW bureaucracy, despite Eric reading into it what he wants.
They want a public option or an expansion of Medicare. There are no poll questions as to whether or not they would support these if it required some growth of the bureacracy or some new bureacracy – as they, by definition, would.
Why is it that federal income tax is the only tax that matters? That doesn’t make much sense. The only number people should really care about is their overall tax burden. All taxes. Federal, state and local.
Marty,
What am I “reading into” this?
While voters oppose the health care plan, they back two options cut from the Senate bill, supporting 56 – 38 percent giving people the option of coverage by a government health insurance plan and backing 64 – 30 percent allowing younger people to buy into Medicare.
Those options were cut to appease conservative Democrats/Lieberman. Also, to try to coax support from Snowe.
“We agree that, given debt, the deficits, and the looming crunch when the Boomers get truely old, we’re going to have a pay more taxes”
Yes Rob, me too. That is the challenge in saying Democrats/liberals or Republicans/Conservatives.
However, everyone seems to assume that wanting other people to pay taxes implies that you don’t pay.
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
In fact, the liberal position is that since I am willing to pay that means it is ok for me to impose those taxes on others and,in fact, impose any tax on others at any amount I believe they should be able to pay.
Those others may or may not agree with what I want to spend the money on or how much we should spend, but it doesn’t matter, because I am willing to pay for it that makes it ok to take their money also.
“we got a few out of context messages frrom Republicans on the politics of this” so that means they don’t have any other actual thoughts, beliefs or principles which is assinine.
That Gregg memo was a strategy memo. What’s ‘out of context’? The Kristol memo in the early 90s was quite similar: obstruct at all costs.
Nonetheless, the point here is that the GOP policies you insist on defending are always the same regardless of the nature of the problem at hand. In the post, Eric cites the classic: cut taxes! The Bush rationale for cutting taxes the first time was the surplus (‘it’s your money’); when the economy sputtered and revenues fell, the remedy was…cut taxes! That’s not a ‘principle’, because it’s not abstract enough to be a principle. That’s pure reflex.
Chait was talking about conservatives, but you and I were making a distinction between the GOP and conservatism. What’s the principle behind filibustering every Federal judge Obama nominates, even if they’re all moderate or even conservative? What’s the principle behind obstructing just about everything which moves through congress? There is no principle, except ‘We want power’.
You do show amazing persistence on this blog, but what’s the value in defending the indefensible? I mean, it’s an insult to conservatism. Plenty of actual conservatives, from Larison and Bartlett, to tories around the world, are appalled at the American GOP, and rightly see it as dangerous and irresponsible.
Neither conservatives nor liberals in the US have good political choices, but the choice is worse for conservatives in a sense, because while there are some liberals in the Democratic party, the GOP has explicitly rejected conservatism. They aren’t about conserving anything except their donor’s wealth, and conserving their own power. That sounds flip, but..really, I don’t see what else. It’s tough, but that’s the way it is, Marty. Why blame Democrats for that?
I’d also note that there is not much gloating about this fact around here. On the contrary, I know Eric and several others have bemoaned the death of American conservatism for years: it’s hard and treacherous to synthesize new policy if you have a thesis but no antithesis.
A Republican says: cut taxes, and revenue will grow. And taxes are cut but revenue shrinks. A rational person would say, ‘Well, your policy didn’t work’, but the honest Republican will say, ‘tax cuts are just what I believe in, whether they ‘work’ or not.’
That’s not a philosophy – that’s faith, and a hard faith to defend.
[FWIW, I thought the ‘ha HA’ stuff was harmless fun – don’t know why Jes was pissed off about it]
I’d also note that there is not much gloating about this fact around here. On the contrary, I know Eric and several others have bemoaned the death of American conservatism for years: it’s hard and treacherous to synthesize new policy if you have a thesis but no antithesis.
Yes, that’s why I promote people like Larison and Bacevich. And jonny knows that I have been begging for a real, principled GOP for years.
FWIW, I thought the ‘ha HA’ stuff was harmless fun – don’t know why Jes was pissed off about it
Me too!
“Yes, that’s why I promote people like Larison and Bacevich. And jonny knows that I have been begging for a real, principled GOP for years.”
I think Eric and Andrew Sullivan should understand they are the next generation of the GOP and step up to the task rather than sitting on the sidelines kibbutzing.
“FWIW, I thought the ‘ha HA’ stuff was harmless fun – don’t know why Jes was pissed off about it
Me too!”
me too!
In fact, the liberal position is that since I am willing to pay that means it is ok for me to impose those taxes on others and,in fact, impose any tax on others at any amount I believe they should be able to pay.
Those others may or may not agree with what I want to spend the money on or how much we should spend, but it doesn’t matter, because I am willing to pay for it that makes it ok to take their money also.
Really? Because conservatives don’t believe in taxing people at all at any rate? And conservatives don’t have preferred policies at odds with the preferred policies of other tax payers? What you’re describing is the way anyone who believes there should be taxes to pay for a government that should do anything thinks. I didn’t like paying some amount for the Iraq War, but that didn’t seem to concern Dick Cheney or Bill Kristol very much.
What we’re arguing about is what percentages of what levels of income people should have to pay. It’s always going to be about that, and sorting out the competing view points is what our representative democracy is supposed to be sorting out. Of course we disagree with each other on the details. If we didn’t, any one of us could make all the rules and everyone would be happy to follow them.
I think Eric and Andrew Sullivan should understand they are the next generation of the GOP and step up to the task rather than sitting on the sidelines kibbutzing.
For the foreseeable future, the GOP wouldn’t have them, Marty. The GOP wouldn’t have YOU (too reasonable). I’d also note that you are the one sitting on the sidelines, or rather on a very narrow picket fence..ouch!
“For the foreseeable future, the GOP wouldn’t have them, Marty”
If they lead, real conservatives will follow.
As Michael J. Fox said in The American President:
Palin,Beck and Limbaugh are the desert of conservatism. We do need someone new at the microphone.
The more I think about it, Marty, were you or were you not advocating that the bottom 47% pay federal income taxes? Such advocacy would come under the liberal position as you described it.
hsh, I was actually not advocating any position. I was pointing out that any attempt to pay for all of this stuff we are doing and plan to do would require the now infamous middle class tax hike. All that at the end of some other stuff.
There were internal memos leaked to the press that discussed GOP strategy to oppose HCR no matter what. Meaning, regardless of what compromises were made, they would oppose it.
Of course. During the Clinton attempt at reform, part of the GOP public strategy was, in effect, “The evidence from the rest of the world is that single-payer, or regulation of private insurance firms that yields the same results, is so popular once established that there is no possibility of ever repealing it.”
The “keep your government hands off my Medicare” statements are a home-grown US example of the same thing. Once in place, so popular that it would be almost impossible to repeal.
I suspect that, secretly, some GOP strategists are happy to see the expansion of Medicaid that is in the bill. It makes the program more expensive for states, and I believe will eventually lead to some states withdrawing from it.
hsh, I was actually not advocating any position. I was pointing out that any attempt to pay for all of this stuff we are doing and plan to do would require the now infamous middle class tax hike.
Okay. You’ve dodged the liberal bullet…for now.
“FWIW, I thought the ‘ha HA’ stuff was harmless fun – don’t know why Jes was pissed off about it
It’s snowing here and I’m cranky.
It’s snowing here and I’m cranky
Aw, come on Jes, White Christmas an all 😉
Marty’s characterization of the liberal position on taxation:
Those others may or may not agree with what I want to spend the money on or how much we should spend, but it doesn’t matter, because I am willing to pay for it that makes it ok to take their money also.
They get the same 1 vote I do. Sometimes their candidates win. Sometimes mine do.
There are people who think it’s great that we spend what we do on the Department of Defense and related things. But the same thing applies: their votes against mine. Do I get to whine ceaselessly about them “spending my money?” I can, sure. It’s a free country. It’s just kinda pathetic if I do it.
The “liberals like to tax other people” line is, IMO, not intended the way you apparently read it. I think I got it right the first time. It’s about worthless, lazy people taking the virtous, Randian heroes’ money away.
Rob has a point.
Conservatives seem more than happy to spend my tax money on their pointless wars, weapons systems, and Pentagon waste, etc.
So why isn’t that the conservative motto?
“They get the same 1 vote I do. Sometimes their candidates win. Sometimes mine do.”
But when you win you think its ok to raise taxes and spend more, unlike the recent conservatives who just thought it was alright to spend more. I don’t really like either one. It is the spending more part I object to most I have to admit.
And, btw, it is intended exactly the way I read it, because I wrote it, so that is what I meant.
“Conservatives seem more than happy to spend my tax money on their pointless wars, weapons systems, and Pentagon waste, etc.”
It is, I think….. although I am confused on the pointles wars, that seems to be a bipartisan objective.
Sadly, yes.
But at least (some) Dems realize that you have to pay for them now, and that spending without paying for them just kicks the can down to our future generations.
And, btw, it is intended exactly the way I read it, because I wrote it, so that is what I meant.
Authorial intent is passe! We’re into post-post-structuralism now.
I concede to Phil, thats one (or two) more “post” than I can process.
But when you win you think its ok to raise taxes and spend more, unlike the recent conservatives who just thought it was alright to spend more.
Actually, much like you, I am not a carbon copy of the Party Platform. I too prefer to lower spending. My cuts would likely differ somewhat from your cuts, though. IMO, tax increases + spending cuts = the only realistic way to address the structural problems in the budget, long-term.
And, btw, it is intended exactly the way I read it, because I wrote it, so that is what I meant.
Fair enough, sorry. As you might have noticed, I reacted to it as “the old canard.” In other words, I’ve heard it plenty, from others. And their meaning ain’t your meaning.
Which isn’t your fault.
One addition to my last post: I prefer, over the long-term, to spend less. RIGHT NOW, no. I believe that counter-cyclical spending is the way to go and that spending cuts during a recession are a bad idea.
It frustrates me, of course, when I see no action on the debt during good times. The Dems are complicit in this. But they are the far, far, far saner option at this moment. If and when they aren’t, I’ll jump ship.
“My cuts would likely differ somewhat from your cuts,”
As an aside, several months ago I suggested that we just take 50B out of each side of the budget, defense and nondefense and use it to pay for HCR. I thought both sides could find 50B and then we would be prioritizing our spending rather than adding to it. But then I just wanted to extend Medicare to the uninsured (with the ta system as the collection and distribution for need based coverage) too so what do I know.
ta = tax
100B gets it done? The current bill is at ~900B, isn’t it? Even if you assume that the current bill sucks and your attempt would be better, that’s a big gap.
100B gets it done – 100B a year
I suggested that we just take 50B out of each side of the budget, defense and nondefense and use it to pay for HCR.
OK, this makes ME cranky (a little). I have never understood arbitrary cuts like this. McCain’s idea of a spending freeze (‘across the board’) was not only dangerous (pro-cyclical), but mindless. I guess that or a 50/50 makes a good sound bite, but arbitrary cuts don’t actually make sense. Cut where it makes sense to cut, and don’t cut (or even raise) where they don’t.
We’re having an ice storm here in Chicago. Retailers are really cranky, and i don’t blame them…
“Cut where it makes sense to cut, and don’t cut (or even raise) where they don’t.”
Which is why nothing ever gets cut, because instead of saying you have to do that to get HCR we just add it on. 50B isn’t arbitrary, it was enough to cover HCR, so find the right places to cut. Isn’t that what you would do to pay for it if you suddenly had to?
Which is why nothing ever gets cut
Things *do* get cut, Marty, it’s just usually things associated with a politically weak constituency, like Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches – i.e. things for poor people. I’m not saying that $100 billion is arbitrary, but that the 50/50 split is.
I’ll take a $50 billion spending cut and a $50 billion tax hike.
Then, triple the Medicare tax.
“I’ll take a $50 billion spending cut and a $50 billion tax hike.
Then, triple the Medicare tax.”
Well see thats the problem, lets send them off to do 50 each and when they come back 44 and 46 then thats probably enough. Then we can just double the Medicare tax and cover everyone…… but no we’ll just pretend we can get 50B a year from just cutting Medicare, that seems pretty arbitrary to me.
but no we’ll just pretend we can get 50B a year from just cutting Medicare, that seems pretty arbitrary to me
Hate to be a stickler here, but that’s definitely NOT the only source of funding.
There are tax increases and there are other spending cuts/savings.
“Hate to be a stickler here, but that’s definitely NOT the only source of funding”
You are correct, they pay for the other 40B a year.
Because, as far as I can tell, it’s the only tax that folks are proposing to mess with.
Why is it that federal income tax is the only tax that matters?
Because, as far as I can tell, it’s the only tax that folks are proposing to mess with.
But can’t people propose changing the federal income-tax code while taking into account the other taxes people have to pay? Besides, I propose messing with payroll taxes (so there – *sticks out tongue*).
Because, as far as I can tell, it’s the only tax that folks are proposing to mess with.
Changes have been proposed both to estate taxes (in both directions) and FICA (to raise the cap on SS wages).
Sure. And, sure, Marty could be more specific when saying there are people who don’t pay any taxes, that he’s referring to federal income tax.