Flat tax and pulling your own weight

182 thoughts on “Flat tax and pulling your own weight”

1. The top 1% could pay far less % in taxes for all I care, as long as they’re not withdrawing services directly from government, and not infringing on my freedoms.
   Every time I read something like this paen to the libertarian ideal, I always wonder what alternate reality the author lives in. For one, the wealthy never get no services from the government (as the author tries to imply). For openers, the government provides a lot of services that writers like this blissfully ignore. Protection, both physical (police and military) and legal, leaps to mind, but those are hardly the only ones.
   In fact, I don’t understand how they resist the lure of one place on earth which already is run on their libertarian, no government, ideal. That would be Somalia — but perhaps they just haven’t heard of it.
   Once someone gets a grip on reality, it idea that a “flat tax” is obviously not fair on any reasonable definition. But by the same token, someone who is a flat tas enthusiast is pretty clearly not tightly connected to reality. And there is generally no point in trying to persuade someone who isn’t.

2. The weak must die. It is the Law. If you don’t know that it is the Law, you are probably weak and therefore should be dead, so kindly type your GPS coordinates into the computer to facilitate rapid delivery of a Hellfire.

3. Doc, maybe you should put Norman Rockwell’s Coming and Going
   (sorry, don’t know where you get your images, but I hope that poster will be enough of a lead)

4. I prefer the Shopping Mall Rental analogy.
   You are a Cinnabon in a mall. You are opposite a Target. Who pays more rent, you or the store that has ten times as many customers spending ten times as much, and using the bathrooms, correidors, parking lots, etc, as well?
   You pay a percentage of sales.
   Which means Warren Buffet should pay as much of his income as his secretary, not less.

5. We don’t have a failure to understand here. We have a conflict of fundamental premises. All the analogies in the world aren’t going to make that go away, or shift anybody’s opinion.
   You think fairness is defined by, “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” The fact that somebody has a lot of money is, by itself, reason enough to tax them heavily, and how much the services they get actually costs doesn’t show up in the equation at all.
   While the fact that somebody wants/needs something is reason enough to spend whatever it takes to provide it, and never mind whether they’ll pay for it, or even whether they’d think it was worth it if they did have to pay for it.
   We think fairness is, “You pay for what you get, and get what you pay for.” Sure, it’s a shopkeeper’s morality. Whatever, like that’s an actual bad thing.
   If Bill Gates and Joe Blow both walk into McDonalds, they both pay 99 cents for a hamburger. Gates doesn’t pay $990 dollars, just because he has more money. That’s fairness in operation.
   And if a homeless person comes in, and somebody foots the bill for their food, that’s not fair, that’s charity. Which is a distinct category from fairness, a departure from fairness, which people are entitled to engage in with their own money, not other people’s.
   “Every time I read something like this paen to the libertarian ideal, I always wonder what alternate reality the author lives in. For one, the wealthy never get no services from the government (as the author tries to imply). For openers, the government provides a lot of services that writers like this blissfully ignore. Protection, both physical (police and military) and legal, leaps to mind, but those are hardly the only ones.”
   And every time I read this, I know I’m going to soon be reading a rant about how what the wealthy get from society is that we don’t immediately rob them, rape their daughters, burn their homes to the ground, and drive their weeping children into the desert. And, really, isn’t that service worth everything they’ve got, and more?
   Because, really, the alternative to the shopkeeper’s morality is the protection racket’s morality. And it always drops the mask sooner or later in these discussions.

6. Not chiming in with Brett, but regressive does not mean not progressive.
   Nomenclature aside, there are likely fair points to be made about Cain’s notions about tax code implementation. But the President proposes; he does not dispose. If he can’t convince Congress, then it goes nowhere.
   Same as now, really.
   I’m actually kind of surprised that people are attempting to evaluate Cain’s “plan”, rather than note that it’s not really enough of a plan to evaluate.

7. In theory, the plus of a flat tax is that it gives everyone an equal incentive to ensure that gov’t uses their money wisely.
   I like Doc S’ metaphor, because it allows for the following questions:
   1. Who put the baggage on the third floor in the first place?
   2. The 20 year old has to take down more than his fair share everyday, or every year, regardless of how much he is responsible for putting there in the first place.
   While I concur that a progressive system is more fair, for the reasons stated below, the equities do not lie solely in that corner. The well off do consume much less in gov’t services and those who consume the most pay the least. They are incentivized to demand more services because there is no cost to them associated with any increase. This lets politicians pander to those consumers, just as politicians pander to taxpayers, both sides arguing disingenuously that they only seek a fair middle ground. They seek election and advantage.
   A somewhat, ultimately capped progressive system is more fair than a flat system, given disparities in earning levels and asset accumulation. Period. If the well off consume less gov’t services, they benefit more from the stability produced by a society where some bare minimum standard of living exists. In my world, that standard would be so low that there is clear incentive to work, save and live within one’s means, but that’s just me.
   More importantly, the debt we now have makes discussion of a flat tax pointless. If we aren’t going to tax ourselves into prosperity, neither are we going to get their by cuts alone. The debt has to be addressed, near and long term and not allowed to repeat itself absent an existential threat. Only those with the means to do so can pay down the debt.
   If I were directing traffic here, we wouldn’t discuss flat taxes because it is the political equivalent of debating the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin. It is doctrinaire conservative eye candy, nothing more. Not going to happen, not worth fussing about.

8. If Bill Gates and Joe Blow both walk into McDonalds, they both pay 99 cents for a hamburger.
   The (somewhat unstated) premise here being that paying taxes is a fee-for-service transaction.
   I’m not sure that’s a given.
   To me, the most persuasive argument for a progressive regime is Adam Smith’s, from “The Wealth Of Nations”. It’s based on the use value of an individual dollar to a poor person, vs a rich person.
   Take ten percent of a poor person’s income and you likely deprive them of a meal, or heat, or some other essential good or service.
   Take ten percent of a rich person’s income and you likely deprive them of a luxury, if that.
   So, the argument goes, a progressive scheme is a way of spreading the pain in relatively equal degrees.
   Whenever this topic comes up, it always strikes me that the assumption is that we have to fund the government through income tax.
   We didn’t always do so. We’ve run the country on tariffs, luxury taxes, sale of land, and any number of things, in various combinations. We could tax wealth, directly.
   There are options, if an income tax is too noxious.
   But I suspect that someone’s ox will always be gored, no matter how we do it.
   If we’re going to tax income, a progressive regime makes sense to me because it allocates the *value* of the tax burden more equally across the population.

9. Take ten percent of a poor person’s income and you likely deprive them of a meal, or heat, or some other essential good or service.

   Sure. And if you (for instance) levy excise tax on things that no one can currently do without, such as gasoline or other motor fuel, you similarly deprive them of more important things than a wealthier person would be deprived of.
   Ditto corporate sales tax. To the extent that corporate taxes affect pricing of e.g. food items, they hit lower-income people disproportionately.
   Ditto Social Security, which seems to morph from tax to retirement benefit and back, depending on what point debaters wish to make.
   Ditto property tax, which affects both renters and owners, even if you own outright.
   I could probably go on at length, but I’m starting to bore myself. This seems like exactly the same kind of dead-horse-beating conversation that we (ObWi collective commentariat, not you and I in particular, russell) get into every time the question of equity of taxation comes up. Taxes aren’t going to get flat, and they’re not going to get fair. Depending on your definition of “fair”, of course.

10. Brett: The fact that somebody has a lot of money is, by itself, reason enough to tax them heavily, and how much the services they get actually costs doesn’t show up in the equation at all.
    While the fact that somebody wants/needs something is reason enough to spend whatever it takes to provide it, and never mind whether they’ll pay for it, or even whether they’d think it was worth it if they did have to pay for it.
    This is a strawman, and a flimsy one at that. I’m not even going to bother getting into details.
    McKinney: The well off do consume much less in gov’t services and those who consume the most pay the least.
    To both, what “doesn’t show up in the equation at all” is how much the well off benefit from government services, whether the costs of those services can be directly attributed to the well off or not.

11. Brett is right about the fundamental nature of the disagreement, I’ll give him that.
    The rest of his post I disagree with, obviously.

12. Brett: We think fairness is, “You pay for what you get, and get what you pay for.” Sure, it’s a shopkeeper’s morality. Whatever, like that’s an actual bad thing.
    McTx: The well off do consume much less in gov’t services and those who consume the most pay the least.
    The notion that the “government” (federal/state/local) is some sort of service provider, or can be reduced to such, is, quite frankly, ridiculous. As if the sum total of government contributions to society is the marginal cost of, well, what? I guess, if you use the court system then the time/salary of the judge/clerk/bailiff. If you use the roads, then I guess the wear and tear inflicted by your car. Flying on a plane? Then whatever it costs to employ the FAA/TSA folks and the runway landing impact (among other things, surely).
    Missing from this libertarian/right wing/reactionary/conservative view of gov’t as a “fee for service” organization (just like McDonalds!) is any consideration of the asset base from which the services flow. It’s as if the courthouses, roads, air traffic towers, etc. appeared fully formed from the head of Zeus, and that so long as the taxes I’ve paid to cover the marginal cost, asking anything else is an affront.
    I’ve mentioned the below here before I believe, but I’ll do it again in my futile attempt to get Brett to understand. About 2 years ago the street in front of my house was totally dug up and regraded. Not one of those scrape and drop asphalt jobs, but a full on dig down 3-4 feet to redo the drainage sort of thing. It took about a year. The cost, according to the sign, was around $3 million, for a half mile of road.
    I drive on this street pretty much every day. Neither I nor my wife, together, have ever paid anywhere near $3 million in taxes in our lifetimes, and certainly not during the 7 years we’ve lived in our house. Even if you were cynical enough to argue that the price of regrading the street was inflated 10 fold due to gov’t inefficiencies, and should have been only $300k, that’s an enormous amount of money in its own right, much less to be extracted via tax (and yes, my wife and I have likely paid that much in taxes over the past 7 years).
    But that’s for just a freaking half mile of road! I have a short (distance wise) 6 mile commute. That’s $1.8 million at the “government is 90% inefficient” rate. Never paid that much in tax. So I guess I’m a leach/parasite.
    The “fee for gov’t services” frame just don’t hunt. You’re using the asset base, which you haven’t even remotely paid for, even if you’re Bill Gates.

13. If Bill Gates and Joe Blow both walk into McDonalds, they both pay 99 cents for a hamburger. Gates doesn’t pay $990 dollars, just because he has more money.
    If McDonald’s had any brains, they’d charge based on how badly each wants the hamburger, and how many hamburgers they can reasonably deliver in a particular time period. That’s what baseball teams, concert venues and soda machines are starting to do.
    The well off do consume much less in gov’t services and those who consume the most pay the least.
    This is an assertion that requires a great deal of proof. How much use do poor people have for, e.g., the SEC?

14. The disagreement is fundamental. The Libertarians and flat-taxers assume that it’s all about individuals; your analogies are about groups.
    The difference is that Libertarians simply don’t comprehend human group interaction, while other types of “conservatives” divide people into “us” and “them” and try to ensure that “they” get as little of the pie as possible.

15. I mean, I’ve seen you make that same statement in various forms over and over, McK, and it requires more than just your say-so to make it, well, so. The well-off own more property, for one thing, so “consume” more in the form of police protection, the existence of the county (or other jurisdictional) recorder’s office, the courts, whatever utilities are provided by government entities, and so on.
    Unless you have some evidence to back this idea up, I’m going to call BS on it every time. Food stamps and unemployment aren’t the only services out there.

16. There is a definite difference in values here.
    One values system says, “Even though we have different earning capacities, we are all Americans and should have a team spirit about our tax responsibilites.”
    The other vaules system say, “It’s not fair that my money might benefit anyone but ME. It’s MY MONEY. For ME. MY MONEY for ME, ME ME. MY. MONEY. ME.”

17. The well-off own more cars so “consume” more services from the DMV and put more wear and tear on the roads, produce more waste so use waste disposal services more and have more environmental impact, etc., etc. This “the well-off don’t use as much government” is just infantile silliness.

18. The well-off own more property, for one thing, so “consume” more in the form of police protection, the existence of the county (or other jurisdictional) recorder’s office, the courts, whatever utilities are provided by government entities, and so on.

    And, owning more and more valuable property, generally pay more property tax. Grant Hill the professional basketball player paid $145k a year in property taxes; Gary Hill the mobile home dweller paid $1100.
    None of which is intended to negate the by-the-drink point made by Ugh.
    I’m not sure how you would tot up the value of police protection consumed, honestly.

19. @McTex The well off do consume much less in gov’t services and those who consume the most pay the least. (Not to pick on him particularly. He’s just made the most succinct statement of the point.)
    That’s true if (and only if) you limit the discussion to those things (goods and services both) which are directly provided to individuals as individuals. But the rich probably consume more if you consider those things which are supplied collectively.
    For example, who gets more benefit from the police, the rich or the poor? Well, absent police constraints any sensible thief will steal from the rich rather than the poor, simply because there is more there to steal.
    Similarly, who gets more benefit from the military (and I’m not talking from military spending; a whole different discussion)? Absent the millitary, is a rich country more likely to get invaded or a poor country? With no military, would you invade the US or would you invade Zimbabwe?
    And we could go on, as in the examples that Ugh provides and more. But we’ll keep seeing the same thing. Which things are provided changes with income/wealth. But the cost of provision is hardly monotonic decreasing.
    So overall, I’m not really buying the thesis that the poor clearly “get more” from the government. At the very least, the answer is a lot less clear cut than folks like Brett imply.

20. The whole topic of police protection is I think beside the point, because police are funded (at least where I live) from property taxes, which means that wealthier do in fact pay more for police protection than less wealthy people do. Ditto schools and other things funded from property tax revenues.
    But everyone pays.
    Judge for yourself whether this arrangement meets your notion of fairness.

21. We can attempt to calculate the incalculable, or we can figure out what works while causing the as little suffering as we can manage. Like russell said, someone’s ox has to be gored one way or another. The best we can do is make the pain minimal, when looking only at the cost to the individual irrespective of the benefits.
    On fairness, and I’ve written this before – we tax income based on, well, income, not on who makes it. We’re all subject to the same rules. Yes, we have to consider if we are making the incentives so perverse that our economy can’t function properly.
    That doesn’t mean that if some number of people decide it’s not worth their while to earn more because of whatever marginal tax rate they’ll pay, that we’ve screwed things up. That’s fine, so long as someone else is willing to pick up the slack, if that’s even necessary. (Benie Madoff could have opted out without anyone taking his place, FREX.)

22. or Bernie

23. “2. Now suppose the group is a band: 2 guitarists, bassist, drummer with a full kit, and the guy who plays the harmonica.”
    Well, depending on the relative success of the band, the harmonica player and a roadie would be sleeping with the instruments in a truck in the parking lot.
    Now, if it were The Who, when Keith Moon found out there a was a harmonica player in the band he would throw the player, his harmonica, the TV set, and as many of the toilet fixtures he could dislodge out of the bathroom through the third-floor plate glass window onto the street below and then maybe pee on the heads of the parasites below charged with cleaning up the mess.
    I like Keith Moon.
    “If Bill Gates and Joe Blow both walk into McDonalds, they both pay 99 cents for a hamburger. Gates doesn’t pay $990 dollars, just because he has more money.”
    So, if the IRS charged everyone the same for government services, they could name the tax the “Happy Tax”?
    I don’t know, I don’t think in America you can get anyone to say those two words in the same sentence regardless of the tax regime.
    Actually, each individual should be weighed when they come into McDonald’s and charged according to their future liability on Medicare, Medicaid, etc.
    The fairest tax I can think of is a tax surcharge on each individual incidence of complaining about taxes. Not to mention, an extra tax on the guy at the end of the bar who segues from “We oughta go in there to Uzbekibekikissistanislauski and kick some bekia*ssy” to, in the next breath, “taxes are theft and when’s it going to stop?”
    Somehow, I don’t think Reagan’s principle of “if you want less of something, tax it” would work in the important American pastime of whinging about taxes.
    Also, regarding Brett’s expectation of my rant, two quick questions before the violence starts:
    Do we rape your daughters before we drive them into the desert, or after?
    And, how many tolls do we have to pay on the highway to the desert?

24. And, owning more and more valuable property, generally pay more property tax. Grant Hill the professional basketball player paid $145k a year in property taxes; Gary Hill the mobile home dweller paid $1100.
    Well, yes. But property taxes are flat: $x per $x,xxx of assessed value. The rate doesn’t go up as the size of your home goes up.
    The whole topic of police protection is I think beside the point, because police are funded (at least where I live) from property taxes, which means that wealthier do in fact pay more for police protection than less wealthy people do.
    Where I live, there’s a municipal income tax, and it’s charged on gross (pre-tax, pre-FICA, pre-Medicare) income. There’s been a municipal income tax every place I’ve ever lived as an adult, in fact. They fund your police out of property taxes? That’s . . . yikes.

25. “Where I live, there’s a municipal income tax, and it’s charged on gross (pre-tax, pre-FICA, pre-Medicare) income. There’s been a municipal income tax every place I’ve ever lived as an adult, in fact. They fund your police out of property taxes?”
    Wow, in all my life I have never lived anywhere that had a municipal income tax. Al local taxes have aalways been property taxes.(or a local sales in one place)
    I wonder what the comparative prevalence of those two methods is? I don’t really have time to look it up now so I am just wondering out loud in case russell wanted to do the work. 🙂

26. @HSH Yes, we have to consider if we are making the incentives so perverse that our economy can’t function properly.
    Absolutely true. But what is the tax rate that breaches that threshold? If memory servers (just from reading; as a child at the time, I don’t remember personally) the top tax rate in the 1950s was roughly triple the current top rate. And yet, the economy seemed to function quite nicely, thank you.
    It may function better with a lower top rate. And I’m certainly not arguing for a return to those 90% top rates. But apparently progressive income tax rates can get pretty extreme at the highest levels without sending the economy into a tail spin.

27. You are lucky, then, Marty. I’ve got Federal income tax, Ohio state income tax, a 7.75% county tax rate, city income tax and property tax. And I’m still a liberal!

28. “Well, yes. But property taxes are flat: $x per $x,xxx of assessed value. The rate doesn’t go up as the size of your home goes up.”
    So what? The amount goes up. I mean, what are you arguing, that a 2000 square foot house costs 4 times as much to keep burglars out of as a 1000 square foot house? I doubt it even costs twice as much in services. But, in any case, fairness suggests you should charge for the services themselves, not based on some faulty proxy for them.

29. I mean, what are you arguing, that a 2000 square foot house costs 4 times as much to keep burglars out of as a 1000 square foot house?
    I wasn’t the one who drew a connection between size of home and cost of law enforcement in the first place, so it’s not my argument to make. I said that it’s a non-starter that the well-off consume fewer services, given X, Y and Z. Try to keep up with the grownups or just sit quietly, please.

30. Where I live, there are no municipal (other than water and sewer charges based on usage) or county taxes – it all comes out of property taxes.

31. ‘One values system says, “Even though we have different earning capacities, we are all Americans and should have a team spirit about our tax responsibilites.”
    The other vaules system say, “It’s not fair that my money might benefit anyone but ME. It’s MY MONEY. For ME. MY MONEY for ME, ME ME. MY. MONEY. ME.”‘
    Simplistic!
    There are some who are against ‘progressive’ tax schemes and yet are not ‘pure’ libertarians. I am certain several here have noted in the past how it is difficult to fathom how ‘not wealthy’ conservatives can eternally vote for conservative Republicans when, to all appearances, its not in their economic interest. The fact is that some of us do not value wealth (or endless government services) above all other things. Notions of loss of individual liberty is what drives this, since ‘greed’ can hardly be a factor for those who have little.
    I would trade an appealing reduction in the power and influence of the Federal government for some ‘progressive’ scheme of taxation. But my impression is that those who want to get the well off to pay more are not interested in such a limitation.
    Anyway, there may indeed be a greater range to the values scheme than noted above.

32. It all boils down to people making the (absurd, in my view) claim that “I don’t use government services. THOSE people do, and I pay for them and that sucks.”
    Or thereabouts. I hear it all the time.
    I could quote Elizabeth Warren, or any number of other liberals to explain, better than I can, why that’s wrong.
    But I think it comes down to personal experience and self-awareness. Either you see the indirect benefits of our system or you don’t. I’m not going to open your eyes with a post here.

33. Brett Because, really, the alternative to the shopkeeper’s morality is the protection racket’s morality. And it always drops the mask sooner or later in these discussions.
    Actually, it isn’t. The police, for example, are not supposed to attack you physically for refusing to pay for “protection” — which is what a protection racket does. At least, I’ve never heard of a protection racket which claimed to protect you from attacks by third parties, just from attacks from them if you didn’t pay them. But maybe you have wider experience in these matters than I.

34. On Flat Tax proposals generally, they are almost uniformly not flat (though Mr. Cain’s proposal may actually be so, I haven’t seen it spelled out anywhere). Usually, there is some exemption of the first $X in income, after which income (however defined, another nit) is taxed at Y%. I usually take this as an implicit admission that progressive taxation is the right way to go – even among those who most push a “flat” tax. After that kind of acknowledgement, it seems we’re merely haggling over the price, so to speak.

35. Brett: So what? The amount goes up. I mean, what are you arguing, that a 2000 square foot house costs 4 times as much to keep burglars out of as a 1000 square foot house? I doubt it even costs twice as much in services. But, in any case, fairness suggests you should charge for the services themselves, not based on some faulty proxy for them.
    See, this is the problem. What is the 2000 sq ft. homeowner actually paying for in this circumstance? The specific cost of protection – literally, having the police stand outside the property to ward off burglars? Is it the deterrence value? And how are the police supposed to make it to that house in the first place if we’re on the “fee for service” plan? Suppose that is the only house in the precinct worth burglarizing, then what?
    I mean, you’ve already admitted the need for some sort of publicly funded police force (though tell me if you feel differently), so all we’re talking about is the mechanism to pay for it.

36. if police departments were run on “fee for service” plans, they would become profit-driven. so, prices for services would rise until only the rich could afford them. that would lead to the rise of police insurance agencies who will sell you policies that would cover common policing needs. this would allow the police industry to charge even more for services.
    eventually we’d reach a point where police insurance itself would be too expensive for most people, and ever-increasing percentages would go without this insurance altogether. then, uninsured and unable to afford even basic police services, the uninsured would become vulnerable to people who know who can summon police and who can’t. this would lead to large chunks of communities lawless and governed by violence. the violence would, of course, spread as the criminals became bolder, richer and better-equipped. the police would have to charge more to keep up with the challenge.
    when the overall community finally got sick of this, and demanded universal police coverage, “conservatives” would insist that the answer is more guns.

37. cleek wins this thread.
    Why the morality? The rich have used the power of the state to become rich. The laws and public policies we now have in place act to transfer wealth upward. If that’s not a reason to support progressive taxation, well, then there simply aren’t any. So cast futile disagreements about fairness aside.
    Further-power corrupts. You’ve heard about that, right? Don’t believe that happens here? Don’t be absurd. Taxing the wealthy within an inch of their lives is manifestly the best way to maintain the social contract and anything like an effective democracy. So, in that sense, punitive taxation on the wealthy is actually good for them, and the externalities are all positive.
    It beats hanging bankers from lamp-posts.

38. “If police departments were run on “fee for service” plans, they would become profit-driven. so, prices for services would rise until only the rich could afford them.”
    In much the same way as every other product has risen in price until only the rich can afford it, I presume?

39. Further-power corrupts.

    I don’t disagree with this.

    Taxing the wealthy within an inch of their lives is manifestly the best way to maintain the social contract and anything like an effective democracy.

    But…wouldn’t that involve an exercise of further-power?
    

40. But…wouldn’t that involve an exercise of further-power?
    Only when you have stopped beating your wife.

41. You brought up the concept of ‘using government services,’ in your example.
    One thing not commonly referred to is how the rich do disproportionately use our common resources. They avail themselvse, throught their businesses primarily, to the courts. They tend to use more fire protection. They tend to use more police protection.
    But beyond that, they are INDIRECT beneficiaries. An educated, well-kept middle class is a great market from which the rich can profit. Whereas the slums in which they’d put us through their selfishness… Not so much.
    Let’s look at Walmart. Without the Interstate Hightway System, they don’t exist. They can’t. They’d be at the hands of the railroads and when rail had a quasi monopoloy on delivering goods… Well, let’s just just Walmart’s carefully timed distribution network wouldn’t survive it…
    Or education. An educated populace has the capacity to provide both better employees and, through better wages earned by skilled, educated labor, better customers.
    And so it goes. Year after year the wealthy ignore the truth of how our ‘socialized’ programs have made their wealth possible and grasp their John Galt mentality.

42. Not sure how this would play out in the real world, but a flat tax on ‘disposable pay’ would be slightly fairer than a flat tax on total pay.
    A poor person may spend nearly all their money on basic living essentials such as housing and food, being left with little to no leftover pay for extras.
    A tax on disposable pay would be far less crippling than a flat tax on total pay for this example person.
    A rich person has an absurdly greater amount of their income as ‘disposable income’ due to their basic living costs being so much lower as a % of income compared to the poor.
    Though the pay disparity is still so great you’d probably need some sort of logarithmic tax escalator linked to high pay to keep the tax paid burden on the rich close to that paid by the poor, even with this system.

43. Anyone disagreeing with cleek, please answer this question: how does your ideal society differ with the current situation in Somalia? Seriously, there’s a place where only the (relatively) rich can afford to hire portection. Everybody else is at the mercy of whoever has the most guns. And guns are very, very widely available.
    So Brett, et al., how is the situation different from what you appear (at least to my limited understanding) to be advocating? Because the only difference I can see is the (unfounded, IMHO) belief that “people here wouldn’t act like that.” What makes anyone think that?

44. And, owning more and more valuable property, generally pay more property tax.
    Wealthy people generally keep the vast majority of their wealth in property other than real estate.
    In the recent bailouts, the US taxpayer spent trillions of dollars to protect that wealth from the incompetence, stupidity and short-sighted greed of the wealthy people that held it.
    There’s more to protecting the property of rich people than making sure no poor people walk on their lawns.

45. To answer, my ideal society would have zero governments, not 23 or so, which I understand to be the case in Somalia. Really, though, I shouldn’t have answered that silly jab; It’s no more appropriate a question than asking a ‘liberal’ how their ideal government differs from North Korea, except that your average conservative isn’t shamelessly stupid enough to ask such a thing.
    Ok, seriously, and in the present context: As I say, I believe “fairness” consists, in this context, (Taxation) of getting what you pay for, and paying for what you get. Now, the distribution of wealth is such that some people simply can’t pay for what we’re giving them. That they don’t have to pay for it is not a manifestation of “fairness”, it’s a manifestation of “charity”.
    Or would be, anyway, if the difference were being made up by other people voluntarily pitching in. Which it isn’t, and compulsory charity is an oxymoron. But I suppose it’s something kind of vaguely related to charity.
    Probably the best we can hope for, since a fair taxation system is impossible, is to come as close as possible to charging people for the costs they actually incur, with a small addition for those who can afford it, to make up the shortfall from people who genuinely can’t afford their fair share.
    A system like this would be even more ‘regressive’ than a flat tax, since the only thing flat about a flat tax is the rate, and since the cost of government services does NOT rise in proportion to wealth, (Unless you define it so as to make it a tautology, as several have done above.) a flat rate will overcharge the wealth. Importantly, it would subject the average person to enough of the expense of government, that the majority would have motive to care about the government being frugal. They’d have ‘skin in the game’, as some put it.
    Of course, the point of progressive taxation is the exact opposite: To minimize the number of people who “have skin in the game”, so that the majority of voters will have no reason to care about the cost of government programs, and will vote for programs they’d never think reasonable if they had to pay for them.

46. my ideal society would have zero governments, not 23 or so, which I understand to be the case in Somalia.
    I wasn’t intending to ask a silly question. From what I know of Somalia, there is no single central government. There are, as you say, numerous would-be governments.
    But absent a single central government, that is hardly surprising — people form organizations (call them governments or not). After all, even if you don’t want a government intruding on you, others are likely to see some merit in one. Which leaves you, as with people in Somalia, either fighting solo against them (physically fighting), or forming your own organization. At which point, you have just instituted something that looks amazingly like a government.
    And, in order to maintain that organization, someone has to pay for it. (Pay in their own time, or pay money to someone else to put in the time.) Maybe everybody chips in; more likely some are happy being free-riders. At which point, you are stuck with either letting the free-ride option sit there looking attractive to everyone, or mandating and enforcing contributions — i.e. you now have taxes.
    You can have an ideal of zero governments. As long as you realize that it is an ideal which can never be realized in the real world. The desires of the rest of humanity simply won’t allow it (unless maybe you can find an island in the remote reaches of the Pacific — one which has nothing anybody else wants).

47. Of course, the point of progressive taxation is the exact opposite: To minimize the number of people who “have skin in the game”
    you are not this stupid.
    why pretend otherwise?

48. In much the same way as every other product has risen in price until only the rich can afford it, I presume?
    the police would be an armed monopoly, with the sole power to legally apprehend criminals in your city. and they will present you with a bill which you cannot negotiate, should you need their services. if you fail to pay, they will fail to protect and serve you. this will be public knowledge.
    what keeps their prices down? what prevents them from offering top-rate services to people who can pay more, and cut-rate services to everyone else?
    show your work.

49. I don’t really have time to look it up now so I am just wondering out loud in case russell wanted to do the work. 🙂
    LOL.
    But I’m not biting.
    Although when I lived in Philly I paid city income tax, IIRC.
    My guess is that in municipalities where more folks have income than own property, there’s an income tax. When the opposite is true, it’s a property tax.
    But that’s a guess.
    They’ll find one way or another to get ya.
    To answer, my ideal society would have zero governments
    I’m sure you know this already, but na ga ha pen.
    You might as well say, in your ideal society, people are not going to use tools.
    cleek wins this thread.
    It’s good that cleek doesn’t post that often, because if he did he’d make a lot of ObWi redundant.
    Me, certainly.

50. wkwillis:
    Under the “family trip” model, Buffett should pay a much higher percentage of his income in tax than his secretary, because 20% of her income is a real burden that affects her daily life, while 40% of his income still leaves him with more than anyone could possibly need.
    Why does the “shopping mall” model work for you better than the “family trip” model?

51. Brett:
    Why does the “McDonalds burger” model for society work for you when my “family trip” model apparently doesn’t? Do you think that when Strong Son takes Grandma’s stuff downstairs for her that’s unfair in some way? I have been to clinics where payment is on a “sliding scale”; is that unfair?

52. If the rich get more out of the government, should they get more votes?

53. Can the 20 year old insist that grandma live on the ground floor if she wants to move stuff in and out of the house every year?

54. I’m actually kind of surprised that people are attempting to evaluate Cain’s “plan”, rather than note that it’s not really enough of a plan to evaluate.

    You may not be reading the polls. He’s number one in “positive intensity” by Republicans, and by more or less every poll leads as the #2 Republican choice for President.
    But people shouldn’t bother to evaluate what the guy who is either the #2 or #1 Republican candidate for President at this time is saying and proposing?

55. Analogies are useful in clearing up misunderstandings. The Left/Right divide is not a “misunderstanding”.
    I understand the arguments from the Right perfectly well. My disagreement with them is not due to the Right’s failure to come up with a homely enough analogy. I think Brett would say the same about arguments from the Left. The Left/Right divide boils down to different notions of “fairness”, which no analogy will ever reconcile.
    I don’t know where out individual notions of fairness come from; they are congenital, I’ve begun to think. Even if I’m wrong about that, they are certainly near the core of our “self”. Brett Bellmore would be a different person if he changed his notion of fairness; and so would I.
    However we got to be the persons we are, we can only live as one nation if we all agree about something. One thing we have usually all agreed on is that the very essence of democracy is this: THE MINORITY DOES NOT GET ITS WAY — even on questions of what’s “fair”. Or maybe especially on questions of what’s fair.
    After all the debates and all the arguments, whether direct or by analogy, we ultimately decide on policies by VOTING. The point of voting is to count heads (in preference to bashing them) and do what the majority wants. The minority, Left or Right, is practically guaranteed to think the majority preference is “unfair”.
    Analogies may help to persuade people who have not yet made up their minds, but I’m not sure anybody who reads ObWi falls into that category.
    –TP

56. If Bill Gates and Joe Blow both walk into McDonalds, they both pay 99 cents for a hamburger. Gates doesn’t pay $990 dollars, just because he has more money. That’s fairness in operation
    Actually, if it takes 10 minutes to wait in line, Gates does pay $990, or more than that.
    Which is ridiculous but that is where we are.

57. Doctor Science: The reason your family trip analogy doesn’t work, is that Obama ain’t my father, and I’m not a little kid. IOW, families are absolutely atrocious analogies to government. Citizens not being little kids, not particular reason to think the ‘parents’ feel any love towards them, families not being scalable, and so on.
    “One thing we have usually all agreed on is that the very essence of democracy is this: THE MINORITY DOES NOT GET ITS WAY — even on questions of what’s “fair”.”
    The essence of democracy is that the majority gets it’s way on things which are decided democratically. Which should, ideally, be as little as possible; While it is better, on the whole, that the majority oppress the minority, rather than the other way around, it is better still that people not be oppressed.
    And in the end, democracy, like any other system of government, is just a way of organizing oppression, and a free people will want as little of it as possible.

58. If the rich get more out of the government, should they get more votes?
    Posted by: Sebastian | October 20, 2011 at 11:59 PM
    
    They hardly need them, since they can essentially buy the laws they want anyway.

59. It’s no more appropriate a question than asking a ‘liberal’ how their ideal government differs from North Korea, except that your average conservative isn’t shamelessly stupid enough to ask such a thing.
    The “average conservative” has spent nearly every day of the last three years calling corporate lackey Barack Obama a communist. Try harder if you’re going to troll.

60. They hardly need them, since they can essentially buy the laws they want anyway.
    and they get to select the candidates before the rest of us get to vote. and they generally are the candidates.
    there are not a lot of landscapers or librarians in Congress.

61. If the rich get more out of the government, should they get more votes?
    Seb offered this in jest (right?), but the funny thing is, that this has not been an uncommon sentiment throughout the history of the nation.
    This is perhaps OT, sorry if so.

    Those who own the country ought to govern it.

    Attributed to founder John Jay.
    The idea that there is a natural aristocracy, which by right ought to rule, and that the accumulation of property is a reasonable outward sign of someone being a member of thereof, is a pretty old and ingrained doctrine.
    The essence of democracy is that the majority gets it’s way on things which are decided democratically. Which should, ideally, be as little as possible
    Maybe it’s just me, but I find this to be a remarkable assertion.
    I appreciate that, all things considered, it’s great to be left the hell alone to do whatever the heck it is you want to do.
    In fact I more than appreciate it, it resonates to the marrow of my bones.
    The problem is that over 300 million people live here, mostly in fairly close proximity to each other.
    “Live Free Or Die” is a great motto for, frex, New Hampshire, because NOBODY LIVES THERE. The whole state has about the population of metro Milwaukee, and most of them are in Nashua and Manchester.
    IMVHO libertarianism is a great philosophy, but I do not see how it scales to reality.
    There are too many of us. We have to deal with each other. That means we need an organized and hopefully peaceful way to sort out our various conflicting interests.
    If you can think of a better means than democracy, in either its direct or representational forms, by all means let us in on it.

62. Brett asserts that … in the end, democracy, like any other system of government, is just a way of organizing oppression, and a free people will want as little of it as possible.
    A truly free people might have its own notion about what “as little of it as possible” means, and it might not be the same as Brett’s. How do we reconcile that little difference of opinion? Short of elevating Brett to the Throne of Freedomstan, I mean.
    –TP

63. If the rich get more out of the government, should they get more votes?
    Well, when you get to absurdities like, “money equals free speech”, today’s conservatives flip this from a question to an assertion of fact.

64. Those who own the country ought to govern it.
    -Attributed to founder John Jay.
    One of the driving forces to initiate the Constitutional Convention was the concerns and interests of Rev. War bondholders.
    Kinda’ makes a mockery of all this flapdoodle about ‘limited government’.

65. IOW, families are absolutely atrocious analogies to government.
    Keep that in mind when discussing federal deficits and debt.

66. But people shouldn’t bother to evaluate what the guy who is either the #2 or #1 Republican candidate for President at this time is saying and proposing?

    My point is that it’s not specific enough to perform any sort of evaluation that you could hang your hat on. Which might be deliberate, certainly.
    Cain’s implied or stated outright that the 9-9-9 proposal is a stepping-stone to the flat tax, which I believe does carry some low-income exclusions. I don’t expect that Cain would propose something preposterously worse for low-income people than the flat tax as an intermediate step to the flat tax, so from my POV it’s logical to assume that we just don’t know all of the details.
    I’m far from well-versed with either scheme, but the flat tax has been rather better described than the 9-9-9 scheme.

67. Wealthy people generally keep the vast majority of their wealth in property other than real estate.

    That’s a good point; I was focusing rather narrowly on real property.
    I’d guess that wealthy people have MOST of their wealth in real estate and/or investments. WRT investments, that wealth has been taxed via regular income tax as earnings, or will be taxed as income on withdrawal. One partial escape is inheritance tax, which I am ok with changing.
    If all of those tax structures fail to capture the cost of protecting those assets, then the tax structures have not been designed properly.
    IMHO, of course.

68. Yeah, I’d say noting that the plan is so lacking that it can’t be evaluated (probably meaning “analyzed”) is, itself, an evaluation, if on a different level than looking at the details, which happen not to be there (at least according to Slart’s argument – I don’t know, but saying there actually are details worthy of analysis would be a different criticism of Slart’s position).

69. Sebastian: If the rich get more out of the government, should they get more votes?
    Why doesn’t that cut the other way?

70. I don’t expect that Cain would propose something preposterously worse for low-income people than the flat tax as an intermediate step to the flat tax
    Why not? Despite* his current surge in popularity among GOP voters, he’s proven himself to be a remarkably confused and stupid man in nearly every interview he’s given.
    *(I’m using “despite” very, very generously here.)

71. Brett: As I say, I believe “fairness” consists, in this context, (Taxation) of getting what you pay for, and paying for what you get. Now, the distribution of wealth is such that some people simply can’t pay for what we’re giving them. That they don’t have to pay for it is not a manifestation of “fairness”, it’s a manifestation of “charity”.
    Let me try this again. You, personally, Brett, will NEVER, “pay for what you get” in terms of the government infrastructure and services you use in the course of a week (or even in the course of a single day, I’d be willing to wager). How does it feel to accept this charity while you rail against it?

72. Dr Science is sharing a really profound insight and it’s largely being overlooked in the comments. What she had addressed is something economists call “utility” (if intentional methaphor – nice job, if independently thought up; very impressive – hats off either way).
    Utility is value or, more simply, hapiness. How much utility a person gains from some economic unit is how much hapiness they get from it. An economic unit can be a car, vacation time – or, most commonly, money.
    As Dr Sci. notes, a poor person gains a lot more utility from the next dollar in his bank account than the wealthy person does because that extra dollar represents so much more needed (as opposed to conspicuous) consumption. Or, to illustrate, the poor person really needs that extra dollar to eat or keep a roof over his head whereas the wealthy person already has so much that the purchase of some luxury item, like the newest greatest Rolex, doesn’t bring him a great deal of marginal hapiness.
    The more you have, the less marginal utility is gained on the marginal dollar.
    One way to perceive a fair and equitable tax structure is to base it on marginal utility and, doing so, a progressive arrangement results.

73. Flat tax advocates are Social Darwinists. I’m talking true flat taxers, not the folks who say they want a flat tax and then mitigate it with an exemption so that those below a certain line don’t pay at all. That “flat tax” is, as someone up thread pointed out, a progressive income tax that isn’t very progressive.
    Look at all this rationalizing about the unfairness of those who have more paying more. Supposedly it’s taking away their freedom, it’s a protection racket, or charity which is assumed to be a bad thing.
    Phooey. Taxes are membership dues. They are essential. In a diverse and complex society people who demand that their taxes pay only for those things they approve of or use themselves are being self indulgent. So what is a fair way to pay ones membership dues to this complex large scale organization?
    Well if we all had exactly the same income earning capacity, if would make sense to tax everyone at the same rate. But we don’t. We do not all have the same earning capacity.
    A flat tax takes out the same proportion of everyone’s paycheck but the effect on everyone is not the same. A person who already has huge amounts of disposable income would have even more income from a switch to a flat tax. A person who lives hand to mouth would suffer in a life threatening way. People who now have modest amounts of disposable income would have less. How can this be justified as fair?
    This is where the Social Darwinism starts to come out. Those who expect to benefit from a flat tax always get to it sooner or later: I earned my money! Why don’t those other people just earn money like I did if they don’t want to suffer or be inconvenienced by a flat tax? It’s their fault! They had choices! Why didn’t they go to law school, become a doctor, become a bankster, start a pizza empire, inherit or marry wealth, get into the high end real estate market? Why should I have to carry those losers?
    First of all the idea that a progressive income tax makes the higher end people carry the lower ends ones is bullshit, but that’s not my point here. My point is that the notion that “I shouldn’t have to pay for them” is based on a sense of superiority to “them”. It has to be based on that. It’s based on the assumption that “they” are lower in the income hierarchy due to their bad choices and they could have been higher in the hierarchy if they had just made better choices. But “they” lacked the ambition to be higher in the hierarchy or lacked the academic smarts or whatever. Lacked something that those higher in income had. It’s fundamentally disrespectful of human life and human beings to assume superiority based on income.

74. Supposedly it’s taking away their freedom…
    People can always choose not to make enough money to be subject to whatever marginal rate they think is unfair. We also allow anyone who wants to leave the country and renounce citizenship to do so, short of any detention for specific legal reasons not related to emigration restrictions.
    Hell, some people might even object to a flat tax if the rate were too high for them. What to do?
    I’d be curious to know how many flat taxers would object to paying a certain effective rate under a progressive tax scheme while being fine with paying the same rate under a flat tax, based simply on the fairness objection. At least under the progressive scheme, there would be a way to lower your effective rate by earning less. Not so under a flat tax – less choice for the individual there.
    I’m being a bit cute here, only because arguing with people who object to the very concept of progressive taxation is an exercise in the absurd. It takes you to some pretty weird places.

75. If resource distribution rules are set that my time given to a corporation, away from my family and from what i would, as a would be free man, prefer to do is less compensated then to some manager, now you conservatives want even more of my compensation to be given back. And the distribution rules are set by force and controlling power not by democratic tendencies. Check out this study about what Americans perceive and what distribution want comparing to ideal and Sweden type distribution.
    You so called conservatives want even more unequal unjust distribution then already is, even tough the other study says that US taxation is the most progressive of all developed world, but also the most unequal.

76. I mean, arguing with people about what the rates should be and where they should kick in results in a discussion of practicalities – how it’ll affect various personal decisions and types of economic activity and such.
    This sh1t just ends up off in the weeds.

77. One way to perceive a fair and equitable tax structure is to base it on marginal utility and, doing so, a progressive arrangement results
    So is a 100% wealth tax on Buddhists fair and equitable?

78. *but also the most unequal wealth distribution.
    IF you look how the taxation is set up and what it pays for separate of the larger picture, or in other words if you look at every single tree, you would never find two branches equal as when you look at the forest and how stable and orderly it is. Wealth distribution affects order and stability and should be looked at as such. Taxation is part of wealth distribution.

79. ‘Despite* his current surge in popularity among GOP voters, he’s proven himself to be a remarkably confused and stupid man in nearly every interview he’s given.’
    The links here address Cain’s personal position on abortion and his lack of detailed knowledge on specific smaller nations. Neither of these is likely to register as significant for those who think we need to deal first with domestic threats and then with what takes place on foreign soil. Two areas that must be addressed domestically are tax reform and domestic energy resources policy as the current administration refuses to do so. It took three years for the administration to move on essentially non-controversial trade treaties so it is too much to expect action on ‘hot’ topics.

80. Laura, what you are saying is, the flat tax argument regarding my failure to become an NBA basketball player (and so be able to cash in big time on that) has to do with my failure to try hard enough, and nothing to do with the physical equipment that genetics has endowed me with. (Why would slow reflexes, poor coordination, and low, for a basketball player, height matter?)
    And is mental ability (which is disproportionately rewarded in our current economy) any less inherited than physical ability? Which makes the “poor choices” argument look particularly silly, not to say utterly self-serving.

81. You, personally, Brett, will NEVER, “pay for what you get” in terms of the government infrastructure and services you use in the course of a week
    what we all get out of government infrastructure and universal services is a constant, and high, standard of living.
    if i never have to avail myself of direct police help, i can thank the police for keeping the crime rate low enough that it never affects me – and they do that by taking criminals off the street and delivering them to the justice system.
    when they take a local burglar or murderer off the street, they have made the town safer for me and for everyone else in the town. that’s a valuable service. everybody benefits from it. why should one household have to pay?

82. wj
    What Laura is saying is that income inequality has political causes while your inability to become NBA player and cash it out big time has natural causes.
    And mental ability is not disproportionately rewarded in our current economy but moral flexibility is.

83. Russell, I offered it in jest, because obviously they shouldn’t, but I offer it seriously because ‘obvious’ cuts pretty hard against the analogy.
    If grandma always wants her stuff moved around from the top floor to the bottom floor, does the 20 year old EVER get to say no? Can he insist that she move to the bottom floor to make things easier to move in and out if she is going to be cranky about it? Is he allowed to say that he doesn’t want to go on the eighth trip with grandma because he is courting a girlfriend instead?
    Even in families (where we assume MUCH MUCH greater responsibilities between members than we do with people who share nothing more than being in the same state as each other) there are pretty hard limits.
    I’m ok with progressive taxation, but like all moral insights I think the “marginal utility” one gets out of control fast. I tend to think that the US should be more progressive than now AND that the middle class is crazy if it thinks that taxing the rich for most of the current wants (and apparently all the future ones) is completely unfair and probably impossible. The Democratic Party’s “no new taxes for the middle class” isn’t going to work well for the country.

84. “what we all get out of government infrastructure and universal services is a constant, and high, standard of living.”
    What we get out of living in the society we live in, of which government is only one factor, and scarcely only a positive factor.
    We also get a constant, and high, standard of living from modern dentistry, and plumbers, but that doesn’t imply that either dentists or plumbers are entitled to a steeply progressive share of everybody’s income.

85. Hey Seb thanks for your reply.
    Yes, at some point the 20 year old gets to say “no”.
    Is that time now?
    Income tax rates are historically very low. Income tax receipts as a percentage of GDP are historically quite low.
    The nation is running a deficit and has a sizable and increasing debt load. The reasons for this are numerous, but include two very lengthy and expensive wars, huge increases in spending on ‘homeland security’, and very large direct payments to very large banks to avoid total financial collapse.
    So I would say no, it is not time for the 20 year old to say “no”.
    And in fact, I agree with your thought about the middle class, and would say that dad, mom, and son should all put aside notions of saying “no” right now.
    Maybe grandma gets a pass, maybe daughter.
    I would welcome having my taxes returned to what they were in 1999, because we need the money.
    I appreciate the philosophical debate about fairness and liberty and all of that, but the bottom line is that we have bills due.
    Taxes pay for useful stuff. If that stuff doesn’t get done, things start falling apart, in many cases literally. Then, it costs more to fix them, or they never get fixed, which also sucks.
    We spent the money, we should pay the bill.

86. Not that it’s particularly relevant to the specifics of the discussion we’ve been having, but it seems to me that there are a number of flat-taxers out there who think the flat tax is a good idea because the tax code is too complicated and that, somehow, a flat tax would significantly reduce that complexity. They’re very confused in that regard, but they’re out there. In fact, I’m related to at least one of them.

87. critical tinkerer, you may feel that “And mental ability is not disproportionately rewarded in our current economy but moral flexibility is.” But while moral flexibility is arguably rewarded, anyone who thinks that mental ability is not rewarded needs to take another look at the data. That’s not to say that it is the only way to fame and fortune. But it certainly is one of the easiest ways. There are, after all, a lot more people doing quite well in IT than all of the NBA players in history. And, by the time they are 50, a lot more multi-millionaires, too.
    Are there more bright people who are rich than morally flexible ones? I haven’t seen any demonstration of that. And I suspect that it would be hard to answer the question without figuring out how to control for those who are both — that is, you may want to include Buffett, but certainly not Gates, if you want to prove the point.

88. Taxes pay for useful stuff.
    What would you say if I said that taxes are really a way to manage aggregate demand by draining purchasing power from the private sector so that public spending doesn’t overheat the economy? And maybe to prevent over-concentrations of wealth to prevent de facto aristocracy, if necessary?

89. So government is NOT like a family but it IS like a plumber. Got it. Sounds legit.

90. hairshirt: I’d be curious to know how many flat taxers would object to paying a certain effective rate under a progressive tax scheme while being fine with paying the same rate under a flat tax, based simply on the fairness objection.
    Good question. By “the fairness objection”, I assume you mean something like: “I don’t object to paying X% of my income in taxes; I do object that people with smaller incomes than mine pay less than 20% in taxes.”
    I bet there exist people whose notion of fairness is like that. I bet one such person is whoever it was who answered “Yes” when I asked some months ago:
    “Would you consider a dictatorship that collects 10% of GDP in taxes to be a ‘smaller government’ than a democracy that collects 20% of GDP in taxes?”
    –TP

91. wj, the word “disproportionately” is probably carrying some amount of weight in CT’s comment. Yes, mental ability is rewarded, but is it disproportionately rewarded? (Not that I claim to know whether it is or not, or what that even means, exactly. Or even what the relevence is of the proportionality or lack thereof.)

92. We also allow anyone who wants to leave the country and renounce citizenship to do so, short of any detention for specific legal reasons not related to emigration restrictions.

    I have to leave the house to spend much of the day boringly at the hospital, getting prescriptions, waiting many hours for them to be filled, getting some tests done, etc., but I looked into this question only a couple of weeks ago, and it turns out, in fact, that the U.S. government makes it extremely difficult to renounce your citizenship if there’s the faintest reason for them to suspect you’re doing it to avoid paying taxes.
    I won’t give cites just now, due to lack of time, but if folks are interested, I can come back over the weekend with them.
    The whole “renouncing citizenship” thing is somewhat complicated.
    (Part of how I ended up down a bit of a rabbit hole on this was as follow-up on al-Awlaki, FWIW.)

93. Neither of these is likely to register as significant for those who think we need to deal first with domestic threats and then with what takes place on foreign soil.

    As it happens, our bases in Uzbekistan, and the negotiations with Karimov’s immensely repressive government, have played an absolutely key role in the war in Afghanistan, costing the American tax payer many billions of dollars. Moreover, we’re pretty hated now in this key country, due to our colloboration with the dictator. You might want to look into this; certainly anyone running for President needs to have a clue.

94. Since Brett doesn’t seem to have an answer for my question regarding his use of gov’t provided infrastructure/services and his lack of payment for it (not that he’s obligated to have and/or provide one, of course), let me answer for him.
    “Sure, I don’t pay for, at least, 99.99% of the gov’t provided infrastructure/services (“GPIS”) I use on a daily basis. Thus, I’m a leach/parasite on society despite my protestations to the contrary and my accusations about others. But I pay more on a per unit basis for my consumption of GPIS than that deadbeat down the street because I make more money than she does and while I also use more GPIS than she does, the progressive rate structure causes me to pay more.” (cue Monty Python scene about repression and coming to see the violence inherent in the system) This would, it seems to me, be a little bit more defensible intellectually, but it loses a lot of its moral heft once one realizes that everyone is using more GPIS than they’re paying for (“Did you see him repressing me? You saw it didn’t ya’?”)
    But, that’s not the point Brett’s making, I don’t think.

95. …it turns out, in fact, that the U.S. government makes it extremely difficult to renounce your citizenship if there’s the faintest reason for them to suspect you’re doing it to avoid paying taxes.
    I’m guessing that means taxes you already owe the US govt. Anyone leaving the country and renouncing citizenship will be avoiding most if not all US taxes in the future in favor of paying some other country’s taxes going forward.

96. We also get a constant, and high, standard of living from modern dentistry, and plumbers, but that doesn’t imply that either dentists or plumbers are entitled to a steeply progressive share of everybody’s income.
    my failure to fix a broken toilet does not raise the probability of my neighbor’s toilet breaking. but if my house if burgled, and the police catch the burglar, the probability of my neighbor’s house being burgled is reduced. everybody in the neighborhood benefits when a criminal is caught. so, everybody should pay.
    only my dentist and i benefit if i get a cavity fixed.

97. Gary: it turns out, in fact, that the U.S. government makes it extremely difficult to renounce your citizenship if there’s the faintest reason for them to suspect you’re doing it to avoid paying taxes.
    I don’t know about that, this website makes it seem rather simple. It notes that you might not be able to escape tax obligations by renunciation (which seems reasonable) or military obligations (which seems far less reasonable), but barring those two caveats, it seems easy. On the tax point, IIRC right now the U.S. imposes an “exit” tax on your assets (though I don’t know the %), after something like a $2 million exemption.
    That said, no doubt you’ve looked further into this than I.

98. ‘You might want to look into this; certainly anyone running for President needs to have a clue.’
    Thanks, Gary
    I understand. I suggest Herman Cain can have advisors on this topic just as Obama does. Or do you think Obama handles this without expert help? Not every candidate is knowledgeable at the same level on every important topic. That, in and of itself, does not make any of them confused or stupid people. Obama could certainly take some advice on creating employment opportunity in the USA. He getting some advice but he seems paralyzed or mesmerized by opposition from unions and environmental extremists. Took him 3 years to let go of those free trade agreements.

99. Took him 3 years to let go of those free trade agreements.
    Which he could just ratify by fiat?

100. What would you say if I said that taxes are really a way to manage aggregate demand by draining purchasing power from the private sector so that public spending doesn’t overheat the economy?
     I’d say I hope that isn’t what drives our tax policy.
     And maybe to prevent over-concentrations of wealth to prevent de facto aristocracy, if necessary?
     I’d say there might be better ways to prevent over-concentrations of wealth.
     Not to be overly flippant about it, these are questions with a lot of aspects to them. It just seems like it would be better to address either of the above more directly, rather than indirectly through tax policy.
     In my opinion, the primary goal of tax policy should be to raise whatever revenue we need to run things.
     I recognize that political considerations come into play, but the starting point, at least, ought to be that the point of taxes is revenue generation, rather than economic engineering.
     IMHO.

101. Ugh, you have to understand that Obama is, by definition, responsible for anything bad that is done, or anything good that is not done. Therefore the failure of the Senate to ratify those treaties must be laid at his door by any right-thinking person.* Q.E.D.
     *pun intended

102. Took him 3 years to let go of those free trade agreements.
     1. They are trade agreements. The use of the word “free” is simply salesmanship.
     2. Adoption will create few, if any, jobs.
     3. They are opposed by many of his constituents in the Democratic Party.

103. russell: In my opinion, the primary goal of tax policy should be to raise whatever revenue we need to run things.
     I recognize that political considerations come into play, but the starting point, at least, ought to be that the point of taxes is revenue generation, rather than economic engineering.
     I wholeheartedly agree here. But it seems to me that the “political considerations” point has trumped all for about, say, the last 35 years. Thus, things that cannot be accomplished directly through actual cash expenditures are done indirectly through deductions and credits in the tax code. Why? Because we are the U!S!A! and don’t have a central industrial policy, except that we do.
     To the extent we manage to actually do things directly via expenditures, loans, and/or loan guarantees, any misstep blows up in the Administration’s face (see, e.g., Solyndra, which now threatens to take down any kind of subsidy/targeted deduction/credit to the clean energy industry, despite that fossil fuels are supported up the wazoo (“up the wazoo” being a technical term)).
     So, since we’re “champions of the free market,” any tinkering therewith to favor one industry over another, must generally be done through the tax code (unless it’s defense) because it (a) disguises it’s true cost; (b) can’t be pinned particularly on either party (the GOP loves it because it’s a “tax cut,” Dems are in favor because it’s close to spending $$ on the same cause); and (c) is hard to quantify any “waste.”
     Shorter Ugh: since the tax code is the only way to conduct industrial policy in the U.S. at least in the short-medium term, that’s what we do.

104. Hairshirt: “What would you say if I said that taxes are really a way to….”
     I’d say that you are dead on. I’d also go on to state that taxes essentially create demand for the currency in a fiat currency system.
     And Russell above, I deeply regret to say that I disagree with you. Taxes are indeed social engineering. It’s all part and partial about how we decide to cut up the economic pie. In the final analysis, the size of the pie is dictated by available resources (land, labor, capital, etc.), but the size of the various slices (in aggregate) are political decisions.
     Tax policies should be part of overall fiscal policy…i.e., managing aggregate demand. Who pays which taxes is the gritty politics of the thing….the distribution of our economic output. That is indeed social engineering.
     See economists Jamie Galbraith and Dean Baker for more. Thanks.

105. Ugh, I’ll respond to your flight of fantasy when my eyes finish un-dilating some time this evening. Right now it’s too hard to read.

106. BRETT!!!
     Hudlering soprask finitop gopluhr???

107. I’d also go on to state that taxes essentially create demand for the currency in a fiat currency system.
     Yes. That, too.

108. that doesn’t imply that either dentists or plumbers are entitled to a steeply progressive share of everybody’s income.
     They appear to hold a different opinion.
     Taxes are indeed social engineering. It’s all part and partial about how we decide to cut up the economic pie. In the final analysis, the size of the pie is dictated by available resources (land, labor, capital, etc.), but the size of the various slices (in aggregate) are political decisions.
     Tax policies should be part of overall fiscal policy…i.e., managing aggregate demand. Who pays which taxes is the gritty politics of the thing….the distribution of our economic output. That is indeed social engineering.
     I guess I disagree with some key parts of this.
     I see what you (and Ugh) are saying about taxes as a lever of fiscal policy, and I see the value of that. The government is a huge actor in the economy, and it’s hugely sensible for the government to balance it’s mix of raising revenue vs spending to help keep the economy on a stable footing.
     Because (a) it can, and (b) it has to do those things anyway.
     But the main purpose of taxation is not tweaking the economy, it’s raising revenue for government operations. Or, should be, IMVHO.
     It’s the difference between doing a necessary thing in the most beneficial way, and doing it purely for the secondary benefit.
     If that makes sense.
     I think that the division of the overall pie being a political decision is not such a great idea. How the pie gets divided should really be a primarily private decision.
     Or, the result of millions of private decisions.
     IMVHO, of course.
     What properly belongs to the public sphere, again IMVHO, are the rules by which the division occurs.
     So, not engineering specific outcomes, but preventing gaming and manipulation, and insuring that all interests are considered and respected.
     All IMVHO.
     Shorter Ugh: since the tax code is the only way to conduct industrial policy in the U.S. at least in the short-medium term, that’s what we do.
     I suspect my fine and noble arguments have been nutted by reality.

109. But the main purpose of taxation is not tweaking the economy, it’s raising revenue for government operations.
     In a fiat money system, the government does not HAVE TO tax in order to spend. Think of taxes as a tool…if that helps.
     As you said, any type of tax gores somebody’s ox. The Antebellum South was up in arms over tarrifs, the main funding mechanism for the federal treasury at that time. The rich hate income and inheritane taxes for obvious reasons…..taxing liquior really pisses me off and cuts into my drinking.
     It could be fair to say that taxes are not necessarily adopted to have consciously chosen social engineering consequences (sin taxes, which see), but they all have social engineering consequences due to their distributional effects.
     IMHO

110. Ok, Ugh, my vision has returned to functioning levels. Sorta functioning levels, anyway.
     Let’s see, where to start? I guess with the fact that you know precious little about me, and so can not confidently make such a statement unless you’re defining your terms so as to make the conclusion somewhat tautological.
     And, of course, looking over your rant, I see you did exactly that. “Once one realizes that everyone is using more GPIS than they’re paying for“. Yup, you constructed a tautology, by defining paying your share in a bizarrely irrational way designed to render your position unassailable.
     Guess I’ll leave it at that, as you were doubtless aware of what you were doing when you penned that screed, and couldn’t really expect a serious response.

111. @russell So, not engineering specific outcomes, but preventing gaming and manipulation, and insuring that all interests are considered and respected.
     Which would seem to be a very strong argument for massively simplifying the tax system. I am willing, I admit it, to throw a huge number of tax preparers and tax attorneys out of work. I thing even with the loss of those jobs, the net benefit to the economy would be worth it.

112. I thing even with the loss of those jobs, the net benefit to the economy would be worth it.
     BLATANT SOCIAL ENGINEERING!!!!!
     :):):)
     

113. DIEtalics?

114. Grrr, I seem to have forgotten how to do that…

115. (Or not.)

116. And, of course, looking over your rant, I see you did exactly that. “Once one realizes that everyone is using more GPIS than they’re paying for”. Yup, you constructed a tautology, by defining paying your share in a bizarrely irrational way designed to render your position unassailable.
     Actually, Brent, GPIS might be viewed like fax machines. Having one fax machine is basically meaningless, because you can’t fax anyone and no one can fax you. Having a limited number of fax machines is of limited utility, but when you have a relatively large number of people owning faxes, the network adds a particular value that is fundamentally _not_ paid for.
     Unfortunately, by viewing the network as simply the sum of what people paid into it completely misses the value that is added when the network is large and extensive. Like GPIS, and I suspect that Ugh chose that acronym because so many folks want to simply piss it all away…

117. bobbyp, on that criteria, any and every change to the law, of any kind, constitutes social engineering. Which may be true in some senses, but makes the term a bit useless for discussion of any particular change. 😉

118. but they all have social engineering consequences due to their distributional effects.
     Yes, I agree with this.
     Regarding the ‘fee for service’ tax concept, maybe what we could do is have a kind of tax rumspringa.
     Folks can get a year or two with no taxes, and they will receive no services other than what they purchase on a fee basis.
     If at the end of that time, you like the pay as you go thing, you can opt out permanently. No taxes ever, and no services, ever.
     And that means no access to courts, no police protection, no public school, no fire department protection.
     Mail is already pay-as-you-go, so you’re OK there.
     You’ll be assessed a fee for using public stuff that you can’t possibly avoid using, like roads. Couple of moving violations, though, and you might be banned. It’s not your road anymore.
     You can have access to some other stuff, like public parks, for a fee at a non-taxpayer rate.
     There will also be non-taxpayer surcharges for things that are private but which are partially subsidized by public money, like air travel, train travel, events at some sports complexes.
     You’ll probably pay a higher rate for water and electric service. Or, you can dig a well or generate your own power.
     You might be exposed to civil action if, frex, your house burned down and caused damage to somebody else’s property.
     There’s more to it than meets the eye.
     If after your year of liberty you decide you’d really rather opt back in, no worries, no questions asked. Back in the fold.
     One-time deal, whatever you decide at the end of your year, you live with until you die.
     It would be interesting to see how many decided to opt out permanently.

119. “Shorter Ugh: since the tax code is the only way to conduct industrial policy in the U.S. at least in the short-medium term, that’s what we do.”
     I don’t like this, at all.
     Seriously. If you can’t get industrial policy through the legislature when people are looking, the fact that you can sneak it in the tax code is a BAD THING, not a good thing.
     I feel the same way about the idea that constitutional amendments are so hard that we *have to* make the changes through judges.
     It doesn’t sit well with me that things you can’t do in the open can be rammed down the polity’s throats through the back channels. And even if that is realistically a description of what is happening now, I don’t have to support it and I don’t have to like it.

120. They are not even pretneding anymore. Eric Cantor’s aide told a reporter that his speech on income inequality would “”…will zero in on how Washington could […] make sure the people at the top stay there”.
     There is quite a bit of overlap bertween the people who passed voter supression laws, attacked the economic security of government employees, are anti-union general,oppose increasing the minimum wage, opposed Mit Romneys’ health reform plan after Obama supported it, are responsible for most of the national budget deficet, dishoestly claim that ta cuts for the wealthy creates jobs, and are now spreading the lie that 47% of the population pays no taxes. Those are the same people who wanted to gut the funding for Medicaid and unemployment while extending tax cuts for themsleves yet again. The same people who turned down a .05% tax increase on the wealthiest to pay for teachers and first responders.
     A subset of those assholes are supporters of a flat tax. I’m speakig of Republicans in COngress, of course, and many stgate leglislatures.
     But the same correspondence shows up right here. There is an awful lot of overlap between the people who rationalize a flat tax and the people who rationalized the actions of Republican politicians at the national level or the state level in places like Wisconsin,Florida, Ohio and Tennesee.
     It is all about makikg sur that those on top stay there.Andit si also about making sure that those who are not on top get pushed down farther. It’s the old Medieval idea of the Grfeat Chain of Being mutated inot madern language. The assumption is that if you have that narrow set of skills that make you a winner inthe competion, then you get to keep your resources for yourself and get everythig you need or want by buying it. On the other had if you do’t have those skills then it is your own fault and even if you work hard you cannot expect to get a minimally decent life. No support in your old age, no health care now, no oability to join with other people to get higher wages, a big hassle trying to vote because unworthy need to be kept away from the polls….and out of your insufficent wage you will pay sales tax, local taxes, income taxes and fees for services that used to be paid for out of federal dollars but aren’t anyhmore because it is so importat to serve the rich and pay off the Republican deficet.
     Honestly I don’t know how conservatives live with themselves.

121. but they all have social engineering consequences due to their distributional effects.
     Social engineering is not the consequence but the purpose for taxation.
     To see how, why not investigate how taxation started and for what purpose, but also need to know purpose of government and how it started.
     Cleek explained previously how government in Somalia can start to organize. Primary purpose of a government is to keep order and stability, secondary is to solve the next biggest problem for society that is out of capability of individuals.
     Before 1913 there was not much taxation, government revenue came from tariffs and land royalties. Revolution in information speed and philosophical thought moved public opinion and forced government to stabilize the banking system that was causing repeated booms and busts. Higher revenue was raised trough higher land rent taxes.
     It was the fear from worldwide communist rise that will arrive in the US during Great Depression that forced FDR to calm population by equalizing wealth inequality trough income taxation.
     Moderating the wealth distribution trough progressive taxation was done to keep order and stability as a primary purpose of a government. You all are aware of many instances of government sending police and army to shut down protests and strikes at the beginning of the 19th century and killing of many of them. What was McCarthy era for?
     Do you think Civil Rights would come if there was no mass protests at the time? Government purpose is to keep order and stability and it was doing it trough progressive taxation and welfare programs.
     Ever since 1972 the government kept on testing the limits of civil order and stability by progressively reducing progressiveness of taxation and equality of wealth distribution. It seems OWS will put stop to that. I hope.

122. Sebastian: If you can’t get industrial policy through the legislature when people are looking, the fact that you can sneak it in the tax code is a BAD THING, not a good thing.
     Seb, I think “sneak” is misguided. Maybe you’re thinking of the tax code as something different from tax legislation, but I don’t see how that makes tax laws different from most laws. A shady Congress can “sneak” provisions crafted to benefit the special interests of its campaign donors into any kind of legislation, and the agency responsible for implementing the legislation then has to write the code or the regulations to match. The IRS doesn’t get to “sneak” social engineering into the tax code; Congress is perfectly capable of “sneaking” social engineering into any area of the law.
     A perfectly good reason to implement social or industrial policy through the tax code is that it’s often convenient to implement even the most openly-arrived-at policies that way. If (if!) you think encouraging home ownership is good policy, it’s more convenient for the citizenry as well as the bureaucracy to put a mortgage interest deduction into the tax forms people have to fill out anyway, rather than set up a whole separate system of forms to apply for explicit subsidies. You can think it’s NOT good policy, of course, in which case I suppose you might prefer to make the implementation of it less convenient.
     But I don’t think it’s fair to say that policies big enough to count as social engineering “sneak into” tax law any more than any other kind of law. I could be wrong, of course.
     –TP

123. If you want flat tax then give me more equal wealth distribution, just like in most of the Europe. They can have flatter tax only because they have flatter income distribution. It is about the civil order and stability.

124. I’m guessing that means taxes you already owe the US govt.

     I’m afraid not. That is, sure, part of the goal is to prevent that, but the idea is to both prevent and deter.
     The whole issue is to prevent American citizens overseas from escaping U.S. taxes. The U.S. is the only country in the world, apparently, that maintains the right to tax citizens living outside the country. Attempts to evade this, and future taxes, by renouncing citizenship, is something the U.S. has taken strong steps to try to prevent.
     Some background.
     Among many other harsh measures, was the Reed Amendment, barring entry to the U.S. to any individual whose motivation for expatriation was tax avoidance. Who determines this motivation? The IRS. Oddly, they tend to decide that anyone with any significant amount of money is renouncing citizenship to avoid taxes, and your application to renounce your citizenship is denied.
     I don’t want to overwhelm, but a variety of other relevant links.
     Then in 2008 — I’m not going through the earlier history, but I recommend my previous links — Congress also passed an exit tax on anyone trying to renounce citizenship.

     […] Congress predicted that the exit tax would raise $249 million from 2008 to 2013, and $162 million from 2013 to 2018 […] The provisions of the tax apply to those deemed “covered expatriates”, defined as someone who meets any one of the following three tests:
     Income Tax Test
     The expatriate’s average annual U.S. income tax liability over the 5 years prior to expatriation was over $145,000 (for renunciations as of 2010; the figure will be adjusted annually for subsequent years).
     Net Worth Test
     The expatriate’s net worth is at least $2 million.
     Compliance Test
     The expatriate does not certify that he met all U.S. tax obligations for the five years before expatriation.

     Then there’s:

     […] Mark-to-market tax: an exit tax on the “deemed sale” of all your assets
     Tax on deferred compensation and non-grantor trusts
     Tax on gifts to U.S. Citizens (including bequests after your death)

     State Department guide.
     It’s true that if you have assets under $2 million, you probably don’t have much to worry about, but as we keep hearing, that’s not wealthy. 😉
     Meanwhile, the IRS is increasing the squeeze on citizens living overseas, which also does increase motivation to renounce, which is a major reason the numbers of people doing it have been going up, along with some obviously doing it for various other reasons.
     Meanwhile, you can’t, say, lose citizenship simply by fighting against the U.S., or advocating such. The law doesn’t allow that. Not unless you’re convicted in a court of law.
     Which is why al-Awlaki wasn’t stripped of citizenship. He couldn’t be, without a trial.
     Which is why the Administration never claimed he wasn’t a citizen. Lots of People On The Internet mouthed off about this, but the law is the law.
     Which is how I started looking into all this.
     Though none of these links are those I looked into the other month; that’s long enough ago that I don’t recall what I was reading, save that it was none of the links above.

125. bobbyp, on that criteria, any and every change to the law, of any kind, constitutes social engineering. Which may be true in some senses, but makes the term a bit useless for discussion of any particular change. 😉
     Yes. It is commonly observed that the words “social engineering” are usually brought out as a club to end discussion rather than engage in one….as if the laws, etc., supported by those who spit those two words out with a sneer do not, in fact, “socially engineer” anything.
     Discussions regarding local land use zoning laws is a particularly eye opening example.
     Those who throw those two words out as an epithet should be shunned.

126. TonyP said:
     I don’t know where out individual notions of fairness come from; they are congenital, I’ve begun to think.
     The discussion here makes me think that Goerge Lakoff is right, and that family models are central.
     Specifically, the picture my “family trip” metaphor seems to give Sebastian and Brett is crucially different from what I had in mind.
     Sebastian said:

     Can the 20 year old insist that grandma live on the ground floor if she wants to move stuff in and out of the house every year?

     He seems to be assuming (or visualizing):

     • that the conflict or balancing act is mostly between Strong Son and Grandma, the other family members are not involved; I was assuming that the parents were actually making many (or most) of the decisions
     • that the stuff is on the third floor because Grandma *wants* it to be; I was assuming that they were all living together in a third-floor walk-up apartment
     • that the frequency of such family trips is something Grandma controls, that her “wants” are the driving force; I assumed that the whole family is doing this *together*, as a collective decision

     Meanwhile, Brett said:

     The reason your family trip analogy doesn’t work, is that Obama ain’t my father, and I’m not a little kid. IOW, families are absolutely atrocious analogies to government. Citizens not being little kids, not particular reason to think the ‘parents’ feel any love towards them, families not being scalable, and so on.
     …
     And in the end, democracy, like any other system of government, is just a way of organizing oppression, and a free people will want as little of it as possible.

     Brett seems to be assuming that one of the *individuals* in my “family trip” metaphor corresponds to the government, that government is one of the parties. I was assuming that *everyone* is part of a democratic government, just as everyone is part of the family.
     I agree with Brett that families are not terribly scaleable; I would argue that *that’s why we have governments*: because there are tasks we need to live that aren’t well-coordinated by market exchanges. And because we actually do (or should) care about people we’re not related to.
     lightning appears to be correct, that the core issue is that Brett & Sebastian are perceiving my analogy to be about individuals, when I’m trying to talk about a *group*. As zie says:

     The difference is that Libertarians simply don’t comprehend human group interaction, while other types of “conservatives” divide people into “us” and “them” and try to ensure that “they” get as little of the pie as possible.

     I have to agree: I’ve long felt that liberatarians can be defined as “people who don’t believe humans are social animals”: who believe that all adult cooperation is or can be rational and voluntary, or else it’s oppression. Is it, as TonyP said, a congenital difference? Or is Lakoff right, and it’s mostly about what kind of family you grew up in?

127. I wasn’t being particularly coherent and I apologize for that. I think that there are lots of causes of icome inequality. Some are structural politicaly and/or economically, some have to do with the talents and skill which are rewarded financially as opposed to those that are not, some have to do with making good decsions as opposed to self destructive ones.
     However we have literally thousands of years of discussion over this moral question: are people who get up every morning and go to work and the work they are capable of doing entitled in exchangefor their labor to a decent life? Or are those who are more powerful entitled to screw them over relentlessly just because they can?
     I realize that “decent life” is an ambiguous term. It’s also one that is relative to the times a person lives in. In modern America I thik a decent life includes health care. In the Middle Ages not so much.
     Historically there winners in the competition for power and wealth have had rationalizations exploiting those who didn’t compete succesffully. Or sometimes te raioalizations were just for not giving a shit about the ones who did not get to a level wher they could exert politcal or economic power over others or exert political or economic power for their own benefit
     I have to go to work soon so this is short: the Peasents’ War and the Great Chain of Being. The revolutions and the enlightenment. The struggles to form labor unions. Thee struggles to reform capitalism through legislation such as the child labor laws. and Social Darwinsim which was to some extent a push back against that.
     Our ecoomy has fiancial rewards for very few people. Fifty percent of the employed people last year only earned about 25,000 dollars. Either oe assumes that thosse people, our fellow Americans are entitlted to well funded schools for thier kids, functional infrasstructure, health care, a roof over theirr heads and food on thier table, the ability to organize iot unions, a dignified old age ie a decent life in exchange for their labor, or one doesn’t make that assumption. And if one doesn’t make that assumption then the assumption ahs to be that all of those people are just losers who ought to be like the winners, so screw ’em.
     Ereic Cantor planned to rtell an audience thatthe solutio to income inequality was for all college grads to be like Stene Jobs.
     Seem to me tha the modeern Republican party with all the blather about liberty ( my money for me, me,

128. I wonder how the Koch brothers would feel about being rich in a world where Eric Cantor’s wet dream came to fruition and all college grads were as successful as Steve Jobs.
     If EVERYBODY got rich, would “rich” have quite the cachet it has now?
     –TP

129. Dr. Science, we libertarians don’t so much disbelieve that humans are social animals, as draw different conclusions from it. If humans were not social animals, we might need to drive people to cooperate at gun point, but since we are, we can get along voluntarily.
     Indeed, ‘that’ is why we have governments, but ‘that’ scarcely implies the scale of government.
     I’ve remarked before that ‘liberals’ are like the guy who proves to his satisfaction that you can hotwire a car to get a dying man to the hospital, and having satisfied himself on that account proceeds to steal a car every morning for his commute to work.
     Ok, yes, sure, you’ve proven that government is necessary for some things. Now if we could only get you to admit that it’s not necessary for most things, and even positively undesirable…

130. Everyone here who thinks that government is “necessary for most things,” shout “Yeah!”
     :::::::::::crickets:::::::::::::::
     Keep on burnin’ that straw.

131. So if we as a society voluntarily decide to have things like social security, unemployment insurance, and environmental regulations how and when does this morph into “positively undesirable”?
     You might also at least try to define “most things” before you can even ask your opponents to “admit” something.
     So, when did you stop beating your wife?

132. Man, my wife and I spent the afternoon walking around in the North Chagrin Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks and you just would not BELIEVE the government all over everything. It was terrible.

133. The whole wifebeating conversation needs to have a rest, I think.

134. Before 1913 there was not much taxation, government revenue came from tariffs and land royalties.
     If I’m not mistaken, tariffs and land royalties are basically taxes.
     They’re just not income taxes.

135. I had to run out the door ad didn’t egven finish the sentence.
     Seems to me that the common ground between conservatives, liberatarians and Republicans is a desire to roll back centuries of human moral development in order to create a society premised on the assumption that those who are not at the top of the economic heirarchy are resposible for not beig at the top due to their inate inferiority and do not need to be treated like fellow humans or fellow members of the same society.

136. It seems to me that the common ground between liberals, leftists, and Democrats, is the desire to flatter people who are mostly at the bottom because their behavior keeps them there, so that these numerous people will vote to put the liberals, leftists, and Democrats on the top, where liberals, leftists, and Democrats, who actually despise those at the bottom, figure THEY ought to be.

137. Fifty percent of the employed people last year only earned about 25,000 dollars.
     A small correction:
     Fifty percent of employed people last year earned $25K *or less*.

138. It seems to me that the common ground between liberals, leftists, and Democrats, is the desire to flatter people who are mostly at the bottom because their behavior keeps them there
     I see one small flaw in your argument here.
     There aren’t enough actual leftists in anything like a position of influence in the US to support general statements about their positions on any topic. Let alone what ‘common ground’ they might have with liberals and/or Democrats.
     There is no meaningful left in the US. There are people who think the status quo is great, people who think the status quo is pretty good but we should remember to throw some crumbs to the less fortunate, and people who think the status quo doesn’t go nearly far enough.
     People who think the status quo is FUBAR? In a position resembling ‘there’, in the sense you mean when you say ‘keeps them there’?
     Gold star if you can name one – one – and explain why that person qualifies as a ‘leftist’.
     If you can come up with a half dozen, I’ll be amazed.

139. Well, once we get beyond the astonishing claim that a small band of current day Wobblies trying to overthrow the capitalist system by unionizing one or two Starbucks outlets and Senator Ben Nelson share the same underlying basic principle that is, well, well neigh inevitable in an allegedly democratic system where there are lots more poor people than rich people…we get to the real nub of it:
     …people who are mostly at the bottom because their behavior keeps them there..
     There it is. Because if you give a conservative enough rope, they inevitably will arrive at this place, pure unalloyed, supercilious, assholism.

140. And liberals will inevitably deny that the poor have any responsibility at all for their state, because the ultimate nightmare scenario for liberals is the poor ceasing to be poor and dependent.

141. Because if you give a conservative enough rope, they inevitably will arrive at this place
     There are times when I miss good old Brick Oven Bill, the man who demonstrated his superiority to the hoi polloi by growing his own potatoes and building a brick oven in his backyard, with his own two hands.
     He even showed us the pictures.
     Lentil stew recipes, too, and analyses of the calorie value of rice prepared in various ways.
     Good times.

142. Brett, you are so wound up by the imaginary liberals in your head that you simply can’t see straight. I won’t try and convince you of this, but really: your remarks could easily be cut from RedState, BigGovernment, Free Republic and pasted here.
     Cock-eyed conservative boilerplate (now, with extra social Darwinism).

143. ‘If you want flat tax then give me more equal wealth distribution, just like in most of the Europe. They can have flatter tax only because they have flatter income distribution. It is about the civil order and stability.’
     Here’s how the flat tax is one of the elements that will give you what you want. The flat tax will increase the tax burden on the middle class. Yes, it will. And that’s a good thing. It will be progressive at the low income level and that’s a good thing. The increased burden on the middle class will motivate the affected taxpayer-voters to pay attention closely to how their taxes are spent. All the tax expenditures that benefit the ultra-high income earners will be gone – that’s a good thing. While this is going on, the added attention from the voters will increase the focus of the legislators so that they will take actions to eliminate the kinds of conditions that allowed Wall St and the big bankers and big corporations to bring the economy to a standstill and this will help create a marketplace with less crony capitalism and corruption.

144. All the tax expenditures that benefit the ultra-high income earners will be gone – that’s a good thing.
     Sorry to go all spelling police on you, but I think you misspelled “that’s a pie-in-the-sky, naively delusional thing”.

145. ‘”that’s a pie-in-the-sky, naively delusional thing”.’
     Yes, it is, if the middle class voters continue sending the same jerks to Washington.

146. And liberals will inevitably deny that the poor have any responsibility at all for their state, because the ultimate nightmare scenario for liberals is the poor ceasing to be poor and dependent.

     I don’t deny that most people who aren’t severely mentally or physically ill have some agency.
     I do assert that different people have, due to circumstances often beyond their control, differing degrees of agency.
     Some people have almost no agency, for any number of reasons.
     Some people have tremendous numbers of possibilities, lacking handicaps of physical or mental disability, handicaps of obligations or circumstances out of their control.
     People vary in this. That’s all. That’s reality. It needs to be recognized.

     …the ultimate nightmare scenario for liberals is the poor ceasing to be poor and dependent.

     I have to say that I remain unthrilled with the folks who make absolute statements about “conservatives” or “Republicans,” because whatever the more *ssh*lish ones say, they don’t speak for All Conservatives or All Republicans any more than any particular Democrat speaks for all Democrats, any set of liberals speak for all others, etc.
     That said, the above is simply assertion, mind-reading, and ludicrous absolutist.
     It’s beyond silly. It’s, to be blunt, dumb.
     Brett, if I made an assertion as to what All Libertarians think, you know very well how silly I’d be being.
     Regrettably, since we let slide endless generalizations and absolute claims, as well as mindreading claims about “what conservatives think” (Laura, could you please be a bit less absolutist in your generalizations? Modifiers Are Our Friends at times), I can’t single you out, Brett, for going over any kind of line, but I can say that your claim is flatly untrue, insupportable, unsupported, and, hey, I just disproved it by not “inevitably” saying any such thing.
     Want to claim that You Know What I’m Really Thinking? And the same for everyone else who will point out that they think no such thing as you assert, and find the assertion, from our POV, ranging from wishful delusion, to… less desirable characterizations?
     Go for it.

147. GOB:

     [A flat tax] will be progressive at the low income level [….]

     How’s that?

     While this is going on, the added attention from the voters will increase the focus of the legislators so that they will take actions to eliminate the kinds of conditions that allowed Wall St and the big bankers and big corporations to bring the economy to a standstill and this will help create a marketplace with less crony capitalism and corruption.

     That’s a nice theory. Evidence?

148. Yes, it is, if the middle class voters continue sending the same jerks to Washington.
     A non-paradigm-shifting change in the tax structure isn’t going to magically make a complacent body-politic suddenly give up ingrained political behaviors that have been in place for generations and become persistently engaged. So, yeah, this is pure pie-in-the-sky.

149. The problem with family as a metaphor for a democratic government is that in a family, some people are generally acknowledged to have and deserve more authority than others, by virtue of their age and role rather than of some collective consensus. That problem could be avoided by instead using the metaphor of an idealised old-fashioned small town: decent neighbours help each other out when there’s need, and certainly don’t send each other the bill, or expect the old lady to reciprocate by doing some heavy lifting herself! But where it exists, that kind of decentralised social contract tends to require pretty serious sanctions for those who shirk their obligations, whether by not helping others or by not helping themselves. Right-wingers tend to object to the first type of sanctions, leftists to the second.

150. liberals will inevitably deny that the poor have any responsibility at all for their state
     Poverty in the US is measured in different ways, for different purposes.
     One measure is a measure of relative poverty, used basically for statistical purposes. This is typically what Census uses, and it’s usually measured as half of median household income.
     The other is intended to be more of an absolute measure, and indicates that a household doesn’t have enough income to obtain essentials of life – food, shelter, etc. HHS uses this to determine if you qualify for various forms of aid.
     As it turns out, the two measures track fairly closely for recent years. So, for instance, the Census threshold for a family of four in 2010 was $22,314, while the HHS guideline for 2011 for a family of four is $22,350.
     See here.
     By those measures, not quite a quarter of US households in 2010 were poor.
     I’m quite open to the argument that lots of people make their own luck, and that lots of people are poor because they’re reckless, or lack some basic life skills, or can’t leave their own personal jones alone. I’m sure all of that is true.
     I’m not sure what that should mean in terms of public policy, but yes, it is obvious that some people are poor because, for whatever reason, they are not very good at providing for themselves.
     I’m not buying that that applies to somewhere between 1 out of 4 and 1 out of 5 households in the entire country.
     In another thread, you mentioned ‘heuristics’. A heuristic is basically a rule of thumb. It’s a way of reasoning about a question that doesn’t require you to exhaustively answer every single point of fact.
     Basically heuristics are ways of seeing if some proposition passes the smell test.
     The idea that 20+ percent of all households in the country are straight up financially incompetent doesn’t pass the smell test.
     There are a lot of poor people in this country, and they’re not all poor because they can’t get out of their own way.

151. “Brett, if I made an assertion as to what All Libertarians think, you know very well how silly I’d be being.”
     And if somebody named Laura were to make such an assertion, I’d be wrong to respond to her in kind?

152. The idea that 20+ percent of all households in the country are straight up financially incompetent doesn’t pass the smell test.

     I wouldn’t have such a hard time believing that, if you expand your scope of search to all households, poor and less so. There’s no shortage of high-income people who can’t manage their money worth a damn. Or middling-high income people who are just not really diligent with their financial controls. Not sure where you’d draw the line for incompetence, though. It’s a value judgement.
     As a general statement, we all make poor choices from time to time, when we have choices at all. Just consider Lotto, and who is basically funding education in the states that use lottery-helps-fund-education as a way to make people feel better about engaging in innumeracy.
     None of which is intended to make fun of people, just to suggest that poor choices come in both small and large dollar denominations. There’s poor and competent, rich and incompetent, and every possible permutation of the two axes.

153. if somebody named Laura were to make such an assertion, I’d be wrong to respond to her in kind?

     I just ignore her when she does that, but it is interesting that she doesn’t get called out for it.
     Convenience, maybe. I don’t call you out for some of your more tendentious commenting, Brett, mostly because I know someone else will come along and do so in short time. I’ve actually moved over to mostly ignoring comments of that kind, but sometimes they get my goat. Laura doesn’t hardly get my goat anymore, for some reason.
     My goat is playing hard to get, perhaps.

154. “Brett, if I made an assertion as to what All Libertarians think, you know very well how silly I’d be being.”
     And if somebody named Laura were to make such an assertion, I’d be wrong to respond to her in kind?

     I just asked Laura if she could temper her generalizations.
     I’d ask anyone and everyone to not engage in “s/he started!” justifications.
     I’m sure you’re also familiar with notion that two wrongs don’t make a right.
     As to whether you’d be “wrong” to “respond in kind,” that’s contingent, but I’d suggest that I sincerely doubt it advances your argument in many people’s mind, or increases the respect anyone holds you in.
     I’d suggest, particularly what with you believing so strongly in charity, that you try being big about such things, insofar as you can.
     I don’t think anyone would do themselves a favor — hypothetically speaking — if they made an defense of your behavior or speech, that’s a classic for 7-year-olds.
     But this is simply my personal opinion, since you ask.

155. Russell: The idea that 20+ percent of all households in the country are straight up financially incompetent doesn’t pass the smell test.
     Slarti: I wouldn’t have such a hard time believing that, if you expand your scope of search to all households, poor and less so. … There’s poor and competent, rich and incompetent, and every possible permutation of the two axes.
     My heuristic is the 27% crazification factor. There’s financial poverty and there’s intellectual poverty. Since roughly a quarter, let alone a fifth, of Americans are intellectually impoverished when it comes to voting, it seems plausible that 20% are intellectually impoverished when it comes to finance.
     “Financially incompetent” and “poor” are not the same thing, as Slarti says. Not that Russell implied they are, either. The notion that they not only ARE the same thing, but that they’re causally connected, is more attributable to Herman Cain — who recently polled 27% himself.
     –TP

156. Good Old Boy:
     The flat tax will increase the tax burden on the middle class. Yes, it will.
     We agree!
     It will be progressive at the low income level and that’s a good thing.
     What makes you think that? As far as I can tell, the 9-9-9 plan is not progressive at all, and will increase taxes for 85% of the people.
     All the tax expenditures that benefit the ultra-high income earners will be gone – that’s a good thing.
     On what grounds do you think this? Unless removing the discount for capital gains is involved, I see no prospect for 9-9-9 or anything like it to *not* reduce taxes at the upper end of the income distribution.

157. Brett:
     I’m not sure why you’re dragging supposed liberal attitudes toward “the poor” into this discussion, because the 9-9-9 flat tax will raise taxes for more than 80% of the population.
     Are these the “numerous” people you’re talking about, who are mostly at the bottom because their behavior keeps them there?
     I oppose a flat tax because it burdens everybody who’s not rich, and the burden goes up as income goes down.
     The poorest 20%, who you seem to feel are “mostly at the bottom because their behavior keeps them there”, is largely made up of children, women (both mothers and elderly), and people with health problems. Some of those are mental health problems, so I guess their behavior *does* keep them there. Is that really who you’re talking about?

158. I keep getting stunned by the theory that .people who are mostly at the bottom because their behavior keeps them there, / believing that jobs are created for talents that people poses/ pulling yourself by the bootstraps. Most of the conservatives and a lot, a lot of liberals (considering the basic theories) believe in this fairy tale.
     Let’s say that bottom 20% does “pull themselves by the bootstraps” and arrive into better incomes. What to do with those jobs they used to occupy? do they disappear or get filled with robots, illegal aliens, legal aliens, or even better, aliens. That would fit better for that fairy tale.
     The problem is in 20% bottom jobs, not with people that occupy them. 20% bottom full time, slave wage jobs not people that occupy them, again.
     Just take a look at Europe where the same, absolutely same jobs as bottom jobs in US have similar wage and benefits to next income level jobs.
     It is about politically set up income distribution system. It is not, absolutely not, about talents, intellectual ability or any other imaginary division you can think of.

159. russell
     If you are up for moderation of other factual mistakes. Tariffs and land royalties would cover about 10% wealthiest Americans, let be even more generous and say 20%. That is not much taxation comparing it to present.
     Fifty percent of employed people last year earned $25K *or less*.
     correct one is Fifty percent of *IRS fillings last year earned 25K or less.
     Employees that earned less then $3500 and no dependents have no reason to file taxes to IRS. And i would guess there is 5-15% of population that fits that. Add to that 5% more of those that were not employed throughout the year and you can easily come to 65% of US population earned less then 25K.
     Adding to that that this number comes from IRS that counts households not families, since many are moving in with their friends and families the picture gets even worse.

160. if somebody named Laura were to make such an assertion, I’d be wrong to respond to her in kind?
     I don’t find it polite to talk about someone while they were, as it were, still in the room. However, since Brett and Slarti have raised the issue, my own personal viewpoint has been that Laura is a relative newbie and as such, I personally tend to give folks some time to settle down. Checking the dashboard, it seems like the first time she posted was in March of this year. Brett, on the other hand, has been here much longer than that.
     I also tend to think that if the internet has any kind of higher purpose, it is to let people blow steam off, so any kind of intervention by me would have probably been at a juncture where discussion was a bit more calm.
     That’s most probably more than anyone wanted to know about my inner thoughts about moderating, but since the implication seems to be that I, as a front pager, was cutting more slack to Laura specifically or anyone else generally, my own views is that newbies who may express themselves strongly but not directly at particular individuals are much less likely to get my attention than someone of long standing. At what point someone moves from a newbie to a person of long standing is a good question, and my answer for that is ‘it depends’.

161. Laura is a longtime poster who used to post under another handle, fwiw.

162. Basically all I did was take what she’d written, turn it around 180, and throw it into her face. This is what’s known as a “rhetorical device”. Perhaps I should have followed it up with ?
     As for poor people largely being poor through their own choices, doesn’t denying this essentially require you to reject one or both of the following propositions:
     1. Choices have consequences.
     2. Some people make better choices than other people.
     Heck, *I’m* substantially poorer than I had to be, because of stupid choices I’ve made. Am I to believe that phenomenon stops somewhere not too far down the economic ladder below me? I’m reasoning, based on general principles, that stupid financial mistakes, (And stupid mistakes in general with financial consequences.) are to be found all through the financial spectrum, but ‘depleted’ at the top, and ‘enriched’ at the bottom, because such mistakes move you down the financial spectrum.
     Look, I know you really, seriously, want to deny the poor have any responsibility for their situation. That doesn’t make it true, or convincing THEM of it particularly helpful. After all, the first step to learning is realizing that you’re making a mistake, do you really want to deny the poor the opportunity to learn?

163. Not sure where you’d draw the line for incompetence
     In the context of this discussion, what I mean by ‘incompetence’ is being personally responsible for the fact that you are poor.
     In other words, it’s unlikely (IMVHO) that poor folks are solely, or even primarily, responsible for the fact that they are poor.
     Some individuals, no doubt. Over 20% of households, I don’t think so.
     That is not much taxation comparing it to present.
     Yes, I get that, my only point was that tariffs etc are essentially taxes, just not income taxes.

164. As for poor people largely being poor through their own choices, doesn’t denying this essentially require you to reject one or both of the following propositions:
     1. Choices have consequences.
     2. Some people make better choices than other people.
     No, it doesn’t, since it requires engaging in a number of logical fallacies (question begging, the post hoc fallacy, and affirming the consequent, just for starters) to get from either or both propositions to your conclusion.
     This has been another edition of Simple Answers to Stupid Questions.

165. Thanks for the info Phil, I will resist the impulse to find out who it is, but just ask Laura to tone it down a bit, as she is familiar with how we do things. And while I’m at it
     Look, I know you really, seriously, want to deny the poor have any responsibility for their situation.
     Please knock off the mindreading. Thanks.

166. Be nice!

167. …or I will post a lengthy series of nauseatingly cute animal pictures.

168. Would somebody please step up and enlighten us as to why this guy deserves to be poor. Thanks.

169. “…or I will post a lengthy series of nauseatingly cute animal pictures.”
     Yikes. Anything but that. Mind reading, wife beating, dividing by zero, anything……

170. And liberals will inevitably deny that the poor have any responsibility at all for their state, because the ultimate nightmare scenario for liberals is the poor ceasing to be poor and dependent.
     I consider myself to be a liberal, and I can’t imagine a more ideal outcome from our political and economic system than to eliminate poverty in the US. How does it benefit me for people to be poor and dependent?
     First, the best predictor for being poor is being born that way. What does that tell you?
     Sure, some number of people make bad choices and are, in the the greatest proximity, at least partly responsible for whatever situation they are in, living in poverty being one possible situation. The question is, under what conditions did they make those choices, and whether or not those conditions could be changed such that those choices would have been different, such that those people would not be poor.
     The problem I see is that too many people advocate policies that will make the conditions worse for people who are already struggling, such that people who are struggling will likely make poor choices under stresses that force difficult decisions.
     Here’s the thing: are we looking to punish people for their bad decisions or are we looking to help them not to make those decisions, or not to have to make those decisions?
     We can have a dog-eat-dog world where we simply decide people deserve what they get, there will be winners and losers, and the losers will lose so badly that they will suffer greatly or even die in the process. Meanwhile, it won’t really be any better for the winners, perhaps even worse in absolute terms.
     Why? That just sounds stupid and self-defeating to me (without even mentioning the fact that some people actually are misfortunate and struggle through no fault of their own).

171. And liberals will inevitably deny that the poor have any responsibility at all for their state, because the ultimate nightmare scenario for liberals is the poor ceasing to be poor and dependent.
     The more I think about the level of cynicism and the dim view of humanity required to believe this, that this is a driving force behind liberalism, the more I think Brett is simply a misanthrope. I don’t know if writing that violates the posting rules, but there it is.

172. I can’t see arguing that people with money couldn’t possibly deserve it and people without money are responsible for being poor.
     Neither and both of these are true. It just seems a waste of time to argue either end of that spectrum.
     People work hard, they make choices, they all have individual talents and starting places. Some get ahead, some don’t. Some are dedicated to making as much money as possible, others are more likely to trade off some income for lifestyle considerations.
     It is not true that the people that are extremely dedicated to making money don’t deserve to get it, it is also not true that the people who aren’t deserve to be poor.
     The challenge comes in creating a safety net so individuals can strive to change their economic status with a safety net to fall into and maximize equality of opportunity rather than just try to force equality.
     In that world there will still be rich and poor. The most fruitless conversation seems to be the one about making it so there are no poor people. There will be.
     Someone will always have the least, we will designate them poor.
     (On another note entirely, I get frustrated with the ridiculous generalized definition of poor. Thats 25k today, even though 25k in Dallas is very differentt than 25k in NYC. So are they both equally poor? Or does that number just make you poor anywhere?)

173. “And liberals will inevitably deny that the poor have any responsibility at all for their state, because the ultimate nightmare scenario for liberals is the poor ceasing to be poor and dependent.”
     Conservatives, Republicans and libertarians aren’t gunning for the poor. They are gunning for everyone except themselves with this sort of dismissiveness as the excuse.
     Let’s look at an example of the sort of American who thinks of herself as middle class but isn’t and thinks of herself as a member in good standing of our society but, according to the fundamental assumptions of the triad of modern Social Darwinists, isn’t.
     She graduated from high school barely because she does her duty but isn’t very smart in an academic way. She got married, had a child, got divorced, and her husband does not pay child support. The only reason she can afford to work is her parents take care of the baby during the day. Later the public schools will take care of the child while she works.
     She gets up and goes to work and makes about 11 dollars and hour. She does not get health benefits from her job. Where she lives that’s a pretty good job. She hopes for better and applies at better places regularly but with unemployment at nearly ten percent the odds are not in her favor.
     She pays payroll taxes and sales taxes. Her parents pay property taxes. She also pays fees which support government services such as her car tags. According to the flat taxers she should also pay an income tax which she cannot afford.
     Also according to the triad of modern Social Darwisnists she is not entitled to the Schip funds which provides medical coverage for her child, the Social Security and Medicare which supports her parents and her and which is her only hope for a minimally decent life in her own old age, the Medicaid which would be her only help should she suffer an serious illness since she can’t afford insurance, or the Obama care which she will be eligible for next year. Also according to the triad of modern Social Darwinists it is unfair to them if they have to pay taxes which support a whole array of programs and services and amenities which they can fund privately but she can not. If her car breaks down she rides the bus but the fares have gone up due to budget cuts due to cuts in revenues due to the rightwing get-something-for-nothing philosophy. The city park is poorly maintained due to staff being reduced. User fees are going up for all kinds of things. Funding for the local public schools is under attack. The community college which is already staffed by ridiculously over qualified and under paid staffers is now experiencing budget cuts. The county used to employ a child support reclamation officer but that position has been eliminated. In order to collect child support she will have to get a lawyer and pay for the lawyer. She already owes the lawyer money for previous attempts to collect. All of the cuts cause unemployment and unemployment drags the whole regional economy down and yet the something-for –nothing folks, safe behind their own economic security continue to push various schemes for cutting their own taxes and rationalizing away their obligations toward their fellow citizens.
     Because you see, if is her own fault she is where she is. It’s her fault for not being good at school, its her fault for having a child , it’s her fault for marrying the wrong guy and not staying married to him, its her fault for living at a time when unemployment is dragging wages and opportunities down, its her fault that she can’t buy a country club membership and goes the city park instead, its her fault that she can’t afford a new car and rides the bus when she is waiting for her brother to find the parts to fix hers. It’s her fault her job doesn’t provide insurance for her child. It’s all due to her innate inferiority and that innate inferiority is why the superior people should not be forced to provide charity (taxes) and should not be deprived of their liberty (money) by being taxed for things she needs and they don’t. After all she could be living in a box under a bridge in Costa Rica so that makes it OK to make life even harder for her and even easier for those who would win in the flat tax game.
     A flat tax would devestate federal revenues even more than the tax cuts for the rich did. A flat tax would just drwoned the government in debt even faster than Norquist planned. The ripple effect would be to devastate state budgets and then to devastate ordiary Americans.
     It isn’t about poor people who indeed will always be with us. As will the selfish and the mean, unfortunately.
     The issue is are we one nation, or are we disuntied into the haves/takers and everyone else?
     Or put another way, do we as a group owe it to the other members of our group to provide the basics of a decent life for those who work, or are we all just on our own competing and if you don’t get near the top of the heap then screw you, you are just a serf, who cares?

174. The most fruitless conversation seems to be the one about making it so there are no poor people.
     I don’t know who’s been having that exact conversation, but, if my stating an ideal socio-economic outcome was taken to be an attempt at such a conversation, it wasn’t.
     Yes, there will always be poor people and someone will have to be at the bottom, short of everyone having the same wealth and income, which isn’t going to happen.
     The point is to have as few people as is reasonably possible living at or close to whatever the bottom happens to be, IMO, and to make that bottom as not-horrible as can be managed.

175. ‘ A quantitative study of political invective. The research design should be fairly easy to set up. One category could be political office-holders, including, from both parties, all U.S. representatives and senators. Another category could be all political columnists on a defined set of major newspapers. A third could be talk show hosts and commentators from both radio and television. A fourth could be contributors to a set of major online magazines and blogs that have high political content—Slate, Salon, the Huffington Post, National Review’s Corner, and the like. The invective could be categorized. Comparisons with hateful people from the past (Hitler, McCarthy, Stalin, etc.). Accusations of lying. Accusations of stupidity. Accusations of treachery. Accusations of cruelty. Accusations of conspiracy. Ethnic slurs. Sexual slurs. Use of obscenities. There could also be a category for witty invective, but P.J. O’Rourke has the monopoly on that.’
     This is lifted from someone’s internet blog.
     Much time is spent addressing mental capacities and motivations while dismissing the notion that most people’s political and social views are mostly arrived at and held legitimately, IMHO.
     Many of these views are based on how the different people view ‘human nature’, (heritable genetic effects), and the resulting influence on ‘human behavior’.
     So, IMO it makes sense to argue positions using facts when available and identifying expressed opinions as such, while foregoing conclusions about motivations and mental capacity.’

176. That seems eminently sensible, GOB. Which means it is doomed to fail, I think.

177. I’ve read the thread and really don’t see anything wrong with anything that Laura has said. The “flat tax” and many other Republican legislative ideas seem designed to punish the working poor. Not only is that mean-spirited (and why not say it – it’s true), but I don’t see how it helps the country to have a large number of people distracted from their jobs and family responsibilities with the nightmare of wondering how they’re going to meet their basic needs. IMHO. If someone can explain the social up-side of making low wage earners miserable so that very wealthy people can have an extra couple of grand in their already well endowed bank account, I’d love to know what it is.

178. P.J. O’Rourke has the monopoly on that.’
     Well no, he does not. That aside, the guy used to be funny. He no longer is. He is mean spirited, narrow minded, and hectoring. Now I am not unalterably condemning that sort of behavior (ass covering here), I’m just sayin’ don’t call it “witty”. His current output consists mainly of overwrought invective.

179. Hellfire is a semi-active laser (SAL) seeking not a coordinate (GPS/INS) seeking system.
     Shopkeeper model plus some more Darwinism; we’re approaching inverse adaptation (idiocracy) where the weak and the lazy thrive just fine to no overall usefulness.

180. Here’s another senario.
     She went to college, got a degree, got married, had four kids, put three of them thourgh college. The fourth child has severe developmental disabilities. Her husband worked for the state. She worked part time because someone had to be home with the disabled child when school wasn’t providing daycare.
     She lives in Wisconsin.
     The Repuboicans of Wisonsin created a budget deficit for thier state by cuttig taxes for corporations. They the used their defict as an excuse for attacking the middle class and workig poor of their in every concievable way. Her husband, a state worker, first had his union attacked, then his pension attacked and now has lost his job altogether. He worked in one of those offices that gave out driver’s licenses and his office was eliminated as part of the Republican voter suppression effort. Her daughter got a placement in a Medicaid funded group home about a year ago but lost her placement due to budget cuts. Since her parents aren’t willing (unlke the Republicans of her state) to leave the daugher out on the street to die she has moved back home. That means at least one of the parents can’t work. The other is out looking for a job in a market that is extremely harsh.
     They have lost their health insurance although they will have a COBRA for awhile. They are using up their savings to make the mortgage o their modest home.
     They no longer have disposible income to use to support local businesses. Since it is the ability to sell goods and services that creates employment, not tax cuts for the rich, and since this family like many other families affeted by Republican policies no longer has any spending money, their unemployment is dragging the local economy downward, making it even harder to find a job of any sort.
     Romeny thinks they should hurry up and get foreclosed on already so that speculators can speculate with their house. Cain thinks that cure for unemplyment is to just go get a job.
     One of the problems with just blaming the poor for being poor is that many of the poor are poor because of the Republican notion, which seems to shared by some libertarians anyway, that running the country to benefit the weatlhy and corportations is supposed to magically help eeryone else when ifact it does the opposite.
     The initial subject of this thread was a flat tax and the pulling of one’s own weight. The lady in Wiscosin has pulled her own weight all her life as has the hypothetical highschool grad in my first senario. However without a progessive income tax peole like her and people likethe high school grad, in fact darn near everybody will sink. In spite of working. In spite of doig what we all think we should do: get an edcuation,get a job, pay your way as much as you can. We will sink because you can’t have a middle class or a miniamlly decent standard of livig for working people without sufficient revenues to support the government institutions and services and that can’t happen without a progressive income.
     And if it is invective to point out how selfish and irresposible people are for advocating policies which impoverish their neighbors, then I plead guilty. But my invective is not as harmful to anyone one as the flat tax, or the Republican tax cuts for the rich.

181. Re: Invective
     Invective has been a staple of conservative and Republican discourse for thirty years.
     “Nigg–” oopps, excuse me, “Bums on welfare”
     ads about scarey black men against a background of the faux issue of law n’order
     the faux issue of pro-life as opposed to all those childkilling anti-lifers
     the faux issue of evil gay people threatening the integrity of the American family values
     the faux issues of union thugs, Big Labor and especially evil teachers’ unions
     The attempt by Repubicans in Congress to make a boogey man out of supposed Medicaid cheaters
     the faux issue of community organizers, especially nefarious ACORN activists
     The faux issues of federal and state employees who make so much money and do nothing to deserve it
     The faux issue of all those horrible poor people who ever should have presumed to own houses anyway and caused the foreclosure crisis
     All this divide and conquer language and the the only thing Republicans ever actually do when they get in power is cut taxes for those who don’t need tax cuts and use the resultiig loss of revenues as an excuse for attacking the economic well being of their fellow citizens.
     Republicans, conservative and libertarians are always talking about personal resposiblity. Well my adivce to anyone who advocates for a flat tax or tax cuts for the wealthy or who votes for Republicans is “Take some responsiblity.” Don’t dish it out if you don’t want to take it. The people whose lives are threatened by your policies and by the invective of the Republican party get to fight back. One way to fight back is to label behavior for what it really is. The best way I can think of to avoid being labeled as selfish is to stop supporting selfish policies.

182. Checking the dashboard, it seems like the first time she posted was in March of this year.

     You’re confusing a handle with a person. Someone who has been commenting at ObWi for many years.
     Who used to have more trouble typing and seeing what she typed.
     Brett:

     […] Look, I know you really, seriously, want to deny the poor have any responsibility for their situation.

     Who, specifically, is or are the “you” you’re addressing in this sentence?

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