Don't Be A Playa Liberal Hatuh

by publius

Like Yglesias and Atrios, I find the press’s “Everything That Happens Is Bad for Democrats” narrative extremely annoying. (See yesterday’s Post for the most recent example). The more interesting question though is why it keeps happening. Why do ostensibly liberal reporters keep returning to this narrative frame?

Although unintentionally, I think Andrew Sullivan’s interesting article on Obama provides a possible answer: liberal guilt. Examining how the generation-gap affects Clinton and Obama’s respective liberalism, he writes:

A generational divide also separates Clinton and Obama with respect to domestic politics. Clinton grew up saturated in the conflict that still defines American politics. As a liberal, she has spent years in a defensive crouch against triumphant post-Reagan conservatism. The mau-mauing that greeted her health-care plan and the endless nightmares of her husband’s scandals drove her deeper into her political bunker. . . . She has internalized what most Democrats of her generation have internalized: They suspect that the majority is not with them, and so some quotient of discretion, fear, or plain deception is required if they are to advance their objectives.

Frankly, I disagree that Obama is free from these demons. But still, Sullivan is on to something larger here. And that larger point is that liberals over the past two generations have been afraid to express their real views.

I’m not sure where it comes from. Maybe Nixon’s victories. Maybe Reagan’s. Maybe Bush’s. Maybe from 1994. Maybe from the Latina union-supporting, ERA activist who dumped Mickey Kaus in college. I’m not sure. But somewhere along the way, liberals got it in their heads (not always wrongly) that showing their true colors risked professional and political harm.

On the political front, we’ve seen manifestations of these fears in every election since 1988. The DLC; Clinton ’92; Clinton ’94-’96; Gore; Kerry; the BOLD 2002 prescription drug plan – all of the underlying strategies of these various movements were rooted in fears of looking too liberal on the big issues of our day.

On the professional front, liberal journalists and pundits internalized the view that the public disagreed with their fundamental beliefs. Accordingly, they feared the consequences of showing their true colors. Being too liberal -- lacking moderation and understanding, even in the face of ridiculous positions – would prevent them from reaching the highest levels of DC Pundit-land.

Hell, I’m not exactly one to criticize on this front. Perhaps foolishly, I write anonymously strictly out of fear that my too-liberal statements could cause professional harm. More generally, academics have internalized the Horowitz Cultural Revolution more than they care to admit. As a result, they've become timid and scared in recent years.

The big problem though – the hypocrisy we have all shared in recent decades – is that the fears cause us to say things we don’t always mean. We moderate when our hearts aren't in it -- and we come off sounding phony. Or, we remain silent when we shouldn’t and come off looking cowardly.

It would be different if the GOP's political success had made liberals fundamentally change their opinions on, say, social and environmental issues. But it hasn’t. It’s just changed how we talk about them. Either silently or privately to each other, we continue to be pretty dismissive of many (though certainly not all) conservative arguments without expressing just how patently stupid we think some of them are (e.g., evolution, pretty much every anti-gay anything).

But despite this internal confidence, the fear remains that expressing deeply-felt opinions will bring harm. It’s similar to hiding your emotions from someone you love for fear they will turn on you after learning what you really think. This is what liberals have feared – the stigma of being an unserious, fringe lefty. We’ve heard about “real America” since the 60s, and we’ve internalized it, deeply. We’ve internalized how our idealized Middle America will view our opinions – they never much care for them, thank you.

Turning back to the Post, it’s these types of fears that are driving the narrative Yglesias identifies -- the great undead narrative that isn't really alive, but never seems to die. I have no doubt that the Post reporter thinks global warming is a big deal. She probably even thinks doubters are either industry hacks or fools. But because global warming is one of those issues, the instinct is that expressing support will bring retribution. As a result, the fear gets projected out and frames the story. It's risky, risky. It will make people think you're a hippy. And not just this story, but every story. The rise of Pelosi triggers the fears that Crazy Leftness will send everyone running back to Nixon. And on it goes.

Unlike my usual work, these aren’t exactly empirically-rigid points. But assuming there is something to this (as I do), things do seem to be getting better on this front. To me, one of the lasting legacies of the liberal blogosphere will be that it revitalized liberals by making it ok to be unapologetically progressive again.

And since Ezra brought it up, this is precisely why I loved – and dearly miss – Billmon’s blog. Everyone with writing aspirations grows up wanting to be Hemingway or Fitzgerald. Well, not me. I wanted to be Billmon. I couldn’t of course – because no one can be. But he is the reason why I started. And what I loved (reading in those dark days of 2003) was how unabashedly and unapologetically angry he was. (In this respect, the rise of the blogosphere is related to the rise of Howard Dean). There wasn’t even the slightest attempt to be Broderish, to meet halfway on the Iraq war. There was no guilt. No triangulation. No trying to come to terms with “real” America. It was extremely refreshing, having just seen Daschle and every other major presidential candidate fall over themselves to support the war.

In a way, I hope we see him again. But then again, maybe not. It adds to the lore. Better to burn out than rust and all that...

Comments

[Phil]

the idea that the people in the upper brackets in a progressive tax system aren't the ones who receive the most benefits is mind boggling to me. Who do you think is more likely to get a cop when he needs one, Joe CEO or Joe Ghetto? Who is more likely to get a 20-year property tax abatement, Wal-Mart or me? Which people in our culture are more likely to do time in prison, regardless of the nature of the crime?

Yeah, the upper brackets just can't get a break in America.

PS When you account for sales and payroll taxes, taxes are mostly flat anyway. Really.

[Ugh]

I would be willing to support repealing the estate tax only if bequests are taxed as ordinary income to the recipient. Since, you know, they are income.

Yes, the estate tax is a substitute for an inheritance tax - it doesn't really matter which one you tax economically, though upon who the administrative burden (and liability) fall differs, depending on the tax.

[liberal japonicus]

See Lysander Spooner's essay "No Treason" for a detailed response to the suggestion that we are bound by some social "contract". More like "an offer you can't refuse".

In graduate school, I was drawn to language endangerment and revitalization, and so spent time seeing how minority cultures are often on the short end of the stick for precisely this, and since we are talking about the US, Native Americans readily come to mind as groups of people getting offers they can't refuse. But for someone who is, I believe, in a position of higher social status in relation to those groups, to scream about how unfair this is to him is more than a touch ironic.

I also seem to remember (though if I am wrong, please correct me) you making suggestions that we shouldn't admit non-English speaking immigrants which seems like the precise opposite of the sentiment you give above.

[Gary Farber]

"The best way to fix it would be to exempt, say, $5 million per spouse,"

Would there be a limit on the number of spouses I could claim, Ugh?

[russell]

I think that this is attributing motivations of greed and selfishness where for the most part none exists.

IMO this is a very fair objection.

I'd like to try to take you up on your 10:24, in the form of making some replies to your post from the point of view of someone to your left.

I think your point about the role of private initiative / entrepreneurial effort / etc. is worthwhile. Government does not create wealth. It can, to some degree, encourage the conditions that make the creation of wealth more likely, but it does not create wealth.

And, without at all implying a selfish or materialistic POV, there are many, many good and important things that depend on wealth being created.

Whether a million bucks put in the hands of private initiative, or government, creates more good, however, depends entirely on what the good is you're trying to create.

Private agents don't want to deliver a letter to any address in the US within a couple of days for 42 cents. They don't want to guarantee potable water to every home in the US. They don't want to build and maintain decent roads to every location in the country. Not for a price that will make it available to everyone.

They don't want to provide health care for every man, woman, and child in the country, probably for any price.

They don't want to do these things because these are, basically, uneconomic things to do. They should not want to do them, and shouldn't be asked or expected to do them.

But, all of these things need doing.

If they're going to get done, then, folks need to do them for themselves. Some of these tasks are straightforward, and a handful of folks can just decide to do them.

Some of them are too large or complex for a handful of folks to just go do. For things like that, government is a fairly natural choice of agent.

In my view, which I think is pretty common among liberals and/or left-leaning people, government is the institution that people use to do the things that they want to do collectively. It should be precisely big enough to do what they want it to do, whether that's tiny, middling, or enormous.

If it gets in the way, scale it back.
If it needs to do more, scale it up.

It's easy to say that here in the US because, as of yet, we still have some levers to control the government. Other places, not so much.

But, the US, and more broadly western democracies, are what we're talking about.

Government is, regrettably, necessary for the moment, until we find SOME way to dispense with it. But it is still an evil, and should only be resorted to when the only alternative is some greater evil.

Brett, you and I will never, ever agree on this. I think you're wrong, and I think this point of view is irresponsible and destructive.

Human beings create governments, more or less as soon as they get in groups bigger than about 10. There will never, ever, ever be a condition where there are humans without government, and viewing that as a desirable state undermines the truly valuable role that government plays.

If you, Brett, actually want to live without government, you can. It is, in fact, possible, in this country, to carve out a lifestyle where government intrusion is so vanishingly small as to be negligible.

I know a handful of folks who live this way.

To do this, however, you need to be rigorously committed to doing more or less everything that needs doing for yourself. If you can't sign up for that, you can't avoid government.

You will also need to recognize that virtually the entire rest of the human population is going to go on creating and living under governments, with or without you.

Thanks -

[Ugh]

Would there be a limit on the number of spouses I could claim, Ugh?

For you Gary? No.

I meant, per individual, of course.

[dutchmarbel]

And, without at all implying a selfish or materialistic POV, there are many, many good and important things that depend on wealth being created.

People sometimes forget that wealth is a mean, not and end.

[OCSteve]

Gary: Cite? It would likely be helpful, though, if you also mentioned approximately what number of families you consider to be sufficiently large as to be a significant problem, or objectionable level…

One.

Yes it’s an exaggerated talking point. The number of estates affected is very small. If not lost then some very large tax bills that must be paid off or you must commit to keeping it for 10 to reduce the rates. That’s all fine if you’re truly rich. A farm/business valued at $5-10M may not make you rich but if you want to keep it rather than liquidate, the $1.3M tax bill may be a serious problem. And yes, that happening to one single person dealing with their parent’s estate is too many.

Nate: I'm not sure the AMT or estate taxes are great rhetorical cudgels to use against liberal, since the general liberal line I've seen on them is they should be reformed, and they should be indexed with inflation.

I was using it as an example of a tax that was originally sold as impacting only the very rich, but then through changing times came to impact many more people. I’m saying some people won’t accept that argument anymore because we’ve seen it often does not stay that way over time.

As for defending liberal principles, people have already quoted the polls that find broad popular support for most liberal programs, such as Social Security, health care, and not starting wars with coutries that didn't attack us. Broader among the population than in Congress, even.

True – but I’m talking more about the total program(s). As I noted with Obama he is talking about progressive issues but staying light on the solutions. I guess I should change it to “liberal solutions to problems” rather than liberal principles. I contend that a politician talking not only about what the problems are but how liberals would solve the problem would be unelectable. Ask anyone if they want a “clean environment” and I’m sure the response will be positive. Tell them that to accomplish that you plan to “drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions” and you may get a few frowns and head scratches. Explain to them in detail what that means and you lost their vote.

[Phil]

You know, all the comments about the estate tax above are especially trenchant -- if it affects one farm, it's one too many! -- when you can find, on a daily basis, class warfare gems like, say, conversative darling Thomas Sowell (hey, did you know he's black?) arguing that you shoudn't feed homeless people because -- wait for it!! -- it encourages idleness.

Like, first of all, speaking of idleness, can someone remind me exactly what Paris Hilton does for a living?

And second, does Sowell imagine that, absent the scraps being handed out at the soup kitchen, homeless people are an afternoon away from a position on the board of General Electric?

[Jesurgislac]

OCSteve: It’s an exaggerated talking point

It's a lie. Well, no, there are examples of the family home being lost because of the estate tax. But not ones conservative politicians would care to use.

I was using it as an example of a tax that was originally sold as impacting only the very rich, but then through changing times came to impact many more people.

No: it's a tax that still usually only impacts the very rich, with one significant exception. It's just that it suits the very rich to lie to you that the tax impacts more people who aren't among the very rich and therefore the tax ought to be abolished

The main group of people who severely impacted by the estate tax (the very rich can afford to pay for the best tax advice) are same-sex couples - or rather, the unrecognized widow or widower left to deal with the estate taxes now payable on their partner's half of their shared home, or all of it if the home was in their partner's name. The solution to this - if conservatives were actually concerned about the estate tax meaning people lost their family home - is of course to repeal DOMA and pass legislation ensuring same-sex married couples can access all federal benefits of marriage.

Do you see that happening, OCSteve?

Do you see the campaigners to make sure their children inherit vast sums instead of vast sums minus the estate tax - a good, rousing, conservative campaign "Make the rich richer!" always sounds well! - picking out as examples, same-sex couples where one partner died and the lack of legal marriage and the impact of the estate tax as a direct result, meant the family farm was lost?

Of course not. Anti-gay policies take priority over anti-estate tax policies: but in any case, the campaign to repeal the estate tax isn't one geared to helping ordinary people affected by it, but to make sure that the children of the very rich get to inherit the whole pile, not have to pay their share.

[OCSteve]

Phil: if it affects one farm, it's one too many

Gee that sounds bad without context… I said “That’s all fine if you’re truly rich”.

The one is one too many is the person dealing with their parent’s estate that has to choose between:
A. Keep the biz/farm and commit to not selling it for ten years to lower the tax rate and assume a large tax bill.
B. Liquidate. That may mean putting people out of work etc.

Jes: Couldn’t figure out what you were talking about there for a minute as my comment you referenced was talking about the AMT – then I saw where you could read it as applying to the estate tax as well.

[dutchmarbel]

when you can find, on a daily basis, class warfare gems like, say, conversative darling Thomas Sowell (hey, did you know he's black?) arguing that you shoudn't feed homeless people because -- wait for it!! -- it encourages idleness.

As I just read at James Joyners blog OTB :
"Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday."

[Ugh]

The one is one too many is the person dealing with their parent’s estate that has to choose between:
A. Keep the biz/farm and commit to not selling it for ten years to lower the tax rate and assume a large tax bill.
B. Liquidate. That may mean putting people out of work etc.

Well, (i) the estate tax is out there, it's not obscure, people who might be hit by it certainly have the means to plan to deal with it's consequences; (ii) I don't recall how debt is taken into account in the estate tax, but I believe it reduces the value of the estate, so why an estate worth (on a net basis) 5-10M couldn't borrow the funds necessary to pay the tax in order not to liquidate is a bit odd.

But in any event, people face hard choices all the time so why, of all people, those subject to the estate tax should be exempt seems a bit mysterious to me.

And really, where does the idea of inherited wealth (and especially inherited super-wealth) fit into the conservative ideal of a meritocracy? (not aimed at you OCSteve).

[russell]

One.

That's a snappy reply, but I'm not sure you want to go down that path.

How many is too many people who die because they can't afford health insurance?
How many is too many people who freeze to death because they can't afford heat?
How many is too many people who have to choose between eating and buying meds they need?

And, sad though it may be to sell off the beloved family farm, the recently bereaved in your example split $3.7M. And, when you "liquidate" a business, meaning convert it's value to cash, that generally means somebody buys it, so it's highly likely that no jobs are lost.

I don't see that taking this particular rhetorical strategy will be to your advantage.

Anyway, you very reasonably asked what the liberal position was. Here you go, to the degree that I can speak for it.

Liberals believe that people who share a political identity form a community, and that as such, they have responsibilities to each other. They shouldn't let each other go hungry, go without shelter, or suffer from any of the other ills that are the common lot of humankind, if in fact it can be helped. And, usually, it can.

This, BTW, is the social compact that so many dread. Another name for it is "being a human being".

So far, with few exceptions, conservatives will still be on board. If not, it's time to buy some guns and a diesel generator, fill up a suitcase with ben franklins, and run the jolly roger up the mast, because it's every man for himself and god against all. My only request is that, if folks want to take that path, they go somewhere else and live their pirate life, maybe someplace like the Sudan that already has no effective government, and leave those of us who are willing to try to work together to carry on in peace.

Assuming you're not in the pirate camp, the place liberals and conservatives part ways is in their understanding of the role of government in folks carrying out their responsibilities toward one another. Liberals think it's fine, conservatives don't.

I, personally, think it's fine. I think it's fine because it means it gets done, it means I, personally, have a hell of a lot more input into how it gets done that would otherwise be likely, and it means that if the folks responsible for doing it aren't getting it done I can, perhaps, do something to get their sorry behinds thrown out. When things that concern the public interest are left to the private arena, those things are generally less true, if true at all.

So, for the most pragmatic of reasons, I am firmly on the left.

Public actions in the public interest mean public control. And, even the useful but uneconomic things will actually happen.

Private actions, far less public control and accountability. And, it don't happen unless somebody can make a buck off it.

I like useful things to actually get done, and I like having at least a tiny piece of the leash in my hand.

There's also the whole moral dimension to it, but it's probably best to just stick to the pragmatics for here and now.

Thanks -

[Gary Farber]

"A farm/business valued at $5-10M may not make you rich but if you want to keep it rather than liquidate, the $1.3M tax bill may be a serious problem. And yes, that happening to one single person dealing with their parent’s estate is too many."

This is a more important cause than saying one person going homeless is too many? Or saying one person going without medical coverage is too many?

On the scale of national priorities, why would making sure that not one family, out of some handfuls of well-off families having to pay tax on very large amounts of property, which they can afford to do, but will notice the bite, be high on the list of problems for the country to address?

Secondly, you asserted that:

I think a more realistic take is that when you say today “it’s just a tax on the super rich and doesn’t impact most people” we think “yeah, but what about tomorrow”. Once upon a time the estate tax did only impact a few families. Now families are losing the farm they have owned for generations due to the appreciation of the land value.

I'm a little confused. Are you now saying that "[n]ow families are losing the farm they have owned for generations due to the appreciation of the land value" isn't true?

If so, how would that be an example of how now significant numbers of people are losing their farms, thus demonstrating how taxes will inevitably grow to affect "most people"? Where are the "most people" -- most farmers, let's leave it at -- now losing farms?

[...] I was using it as an example of a tax that was originally sold as impacting only the very rich, but then through changing times came to impact many more people. I’m saying some people won’t accept that argument anymore because we’ve seen it often does not stay that way over time.

But how is the estate tax such an example? What does it mean to your claim when your example doesn't support it?

And I have to ask, out of curiosity, why did you declare that "[n]ow families are losing the farm they have owned for generations due to the appreciation of the land value" if you believe that "Yes it’s an exaggerated talking point. The number of estates affected is very small"?

[russell]

conversative darling Thomas Sowell (hey, did you know he's black?) arguing that you shoudn't feed homeless people because -- wait for it!! -- it encourages idleness.

Every once in a while, I read something of Sowell's.

Every single time, I walk away thinking, when this guy was a kid, somebody stole his lunch money, or scuffed up his new sneakers, or broke his favorite toy -- something like that -- and he's never gotten over it.

It's kind of sad.

Thanks -

[Brett Bellmore]

"If you, Brett, actually want to live without government, you can."

In my experience there are only two things liberals don't grasp about the concept of necessary evils.

1. That they ARE evil.

2. That they're none the less necessary.

Thanks for yet again demonstrating the latter incomprehension of the concept. Tomorrow I can mention that sticking needles into people and injecting foreign substances isn't something we really want to do unless it's really necessary, and you can accuse me of wanting to contract polio.

[Anarch]

Tune in next week when Brett feverishly reminds us that, though breathing is necessary, it is nonetheless EVIL...

[Dantheman]

Brett,

When you talk about comprehension of other people, it helps your believability enormously to not be failing to comprehend what the people you are talking to are saying. Russell and I have both set forth why we don't think government is evil. And shreiking that we aren't comprehending that it really-o truly-o is evil just isn't a response to what we are saying.

[liberal japonicus]

Brett,
you might want to put down that broad brush you are using there, I think you are going to throw out your back...

[russell]

In my experience there are only two things liberals don't grasp about the concept of necessary evils.

Brett, I understand perfectly well what you're saying. I understand perfectly well what necessary evils are, and that they exist. Grasping is not the issue.

I just don't agree that government is one.

You could easily sell me on "necessary but annoying", "not particularly efficient", or even "pain in the ass".

I just find "evil" to be an extraordinary stretch. Extraordinary. So much so, that it makes it hard for me to know where to begin to even try to find any kind of common ground.

To turn your analogy around, your statements here, to me, are akin to saying that hypodermic injections are "evil". Nobody likes to get them, particularly, but they don't hurt any worse than a bee sting, and for nowhere near as long, and they keep us from getting sick. They are not evil.

Sooner or later, many or even most folks end up seeing or, perhaps, even experiencing things that are, actually, evil. Sadly, there are no shortage of them.

Things that are merely annoying, inefficient, or even occasionally uncomfortable -- those don't quite rise to that level. Especially if they also have an upside.

Thanks -

[Brett Bellmore]

There's a distinction between "evil" and "an evil" that you're missing here. But it's time for me to blur the distinction between "sleepy" and "sleeping", so I'll let you tackle it yourself.

[Doctor Science]

I'm glad other people brought in the estate tax, because that's what I was going to use as an example for OCSteve. You can see actual numbers of farms affected by estate tax here -- very, very, *very* few.

I live in an area where it farmers are definitely very stressed by high property values. But you know what has actually forced a farm near me to sell their land? *Medical insurance*.

They've been able to keep farming only because they are adjacent to a large corporation's research facility, and the corporation would rather have one farm as a neighbor than a hundred houses. So the corporation bought the farm development rights, and the family can keep farming.

[DaveC]

Brett, face it. You'll never be able to convince people here that The Sheriff of Nottingham is NOT Robin Hood. There is some basic confusion here about whether private property confers freedom. I think it does. I would rather buy food at a grocery store rather than being distributed food at a food distribution center, On the other hand, I would rather be able to drive on roads without stopping every few miles to pay a toll. Here in Illinois, we have to pay tolls to the State for the right to drive on Federal Interstate Highways, but at least with RFID, we don't have to stop as much anymore.

I am the type who wouldn't like to work at a place where there is a lot of office politics. Other people want to live in a world where EVERYTHING is politics, from your private business, to policing your very thoughts, because they know what is best for you. Me, I think that I know what is best for me. I also believe that it is better to encourage people to take care of themselves, rather than surrendering that right to the government.

[russell]

There is some basic confusion here about whether private property confers freedom.

Nope.

There is some basic difference of opinion about whether private property confers freedom. Difference of opinion is not the same as confusion.

Private property confers privilege. Not the same. Privilege is not, in fact, a bad thing in and of itself. More than a few folks have worked hard for, earned, and richly deserve, privilege. But freedom, it is not. Or at least, ought not be.

Where private property is required to confer freedom, the poor are slaves. Those places exist. I don't want to live in one.

And, you know, with the exception of the folks who were insane or chemically impaired, anyone I've ever known who got their food from a "food distribution center" would have preferred to buy it at the grocery store. So, there's nothing special about you. They went to the "food distribution center" because it meant they could eat.

Thanks -

[Bruce Baugh]

I think that the idea of government and taxation as imposed evils not fundamentally justifiable in terms of basic human rights stems from a lack of awareness for one's existing bonds within society. In theory, I suppose, there could be a society in nobody ever benefitted from an unearned benefit at the outset of their life, or suffered from an undeserved penalty. In that kind of a condition, where with every new life the roster of externalities started completely fresh, then there'd be some room to argue that "what's mine is mine and that's all there is", and given a sufficiently rigorous enforcement mechanism to keep one's heirs, associates, colleagues, bystanders, etc., from passing on consequences of your actions, it might work.

In practice, of course, nothing like that applies. We are all the recipients of a tremendously complicated web of good and bad externalities, many of which we will never in our lives know about or be able to identify. Nothing is ever purely ours - not unless we managed to come into this world altogether free of race, sex and gender, any deviation from the theoretically perfect genome for health, any impairing emotion or failure in reasoning, and so on, and then managed to preserve that blankness. But nobody goes through life behind Rawls' veil of ignorance. (Some are thoroughly wrapped in stupidity, but that's not the same thing.) We are all of us living among stolen goods, the fruits of good and bad luck, the results of corrupt justice and honest reckoning, the spoils of war, and a whole lot more, and we never escape that - there is no point in any human life when we are free of the consequences of other people's lives that give us benefits and liabilities completely unrelated to anything we can know or choose.

Hence, government.

The state isn't free of the matrix of legacies either, of course. But it is outside individual citizens' knots, and therefore capable of acting free of some of the many complications facing individuals and groups interested in honest and fair dealings now - particularly when it comes to dealing with others who are interested in neither of those things. Further, it's adjustable in light of new circumstance, and can therefore shift the matrix as a whole as we individually and collectively better understand what parts of our inheritance we wish to strengthen and which to put down.

There is, contrary to some of the more intemperate libertarian rhetoric, nothing mystical in this, no power suddenly vested in the group. It's a simple fact that groups taken as wholes have properties not necessarily given to any individual member (no atom of gold is yellow in color or ductile), and by adding together many individual circumstances can damp out some of the inevitable irregularities that come from small data pools. If that's mysticism, so's statistics. (I keep hoping someday to find a sufficiently consistent anti-state argument that will lead to that conclusion, but so far they all chicken out short of that, or of denying the existence of externalities.)

Government is separate from individuals and their other associations only in the way that the climate overall and specific weather are separate from individual spots of ground. In both cases, there's a larger system that encompasses both, and neither is innately evil...or particularly innately good, really. Weather's what happens when physical forces of earth, sea, and sky interact with each other and the universe beyond; government's what happens when individuals interact with each other and seek a level of consistency, efficiency, scope of action, and justice greater than they can achieve separately. Any argument capable of denying the fundamental validity of the state can also be deployed against weather, and probably against universal gravitation.

[russell]

There's a distinction between "evil" and "an evil" that you're missing here.

One is an adjective and one is a noun.

If there's more to it than that, you're right, I'm missing it. Either that, or the distinction is rhetorical, in which case I basically choose to ignore it.

Thanks -

[DaveC]

Difference of opinion is not the same as confusion.

No, I still think it is confusion. What Brett was trying to explain is that government is in fact coercive. There is a matter of degree. An extreme example is Zimbabwe, where there are very few private property rights, and the food situation there is not very good, unless you are of the correct political persuasion.

Private property rights mean that there are things that the government du jour cannot take everything away from you. Whether or not the government would give your stuff to other people who are more worthy does not come into consideration. I think that most people in the US agree that private property and free trade by and large maximize the wealth of the largest number of people. Certainly, a social safety net is desirable, but that doesn't mean that all wealth should be redistributed. In the case of estate taxes, almost 50% of the wealth, after the exemptions.

Except in 2010, when there is no estate tax and all the evil Republicans will kill their grannies. I'm thinking that carbon monoxide poisoning would be the most humane, gentlest way, but am perplexed because this could lead to global warming.

Actually the exemptions (until 2011) are pretty good right now for the Federal Estate Tax, but Inheritance Taxes, which are different and added on by states are really, really bad. Wonder why there are so few family farms, and agriculture is more and more a large corporate business? Just look at the Estate Tax and something like Iowa's inheritance tax. Part of our heritage in the Midwest has been irrevocably lost, and this talk about how only 5000 farm families per year are affected is like saying that most of the horses have escaped the barn; might as well leave the barn door open for a while longer until the rest of them clear out.

[Jesurgislac]

DaveC: What Brett was trying to explain is that government is in fact coercive.

And yet, you know, nothing actually prevents either you or Brett from moving to a small island somewhere and doing without government entirely. Of course, as I believe has already been pointed out to you, you would have to severely restrict the numbers allowed to move to this small island with you - since whenever humans gather together peacefully in any numbers, we begin to invent government.

It's the bedrock of civilisation, DaveC, and I've never yet encountered a libertarian who wanted to do without the advantages of government: they only complain, at length, about having to pay for the benefits they get.

[Bruce Baugh]

I'm quite comfortable saying that the state is coercive. I don't think a coercion-free environment is possible, and that the state has a prospective legitimacy (if its leaders and employees and the public at large choose to work at it) that the sum of anarchistic interactions does not and probably cannot. A good government reduces the prevalence and intensity of coercion, and particularly reduces the extent to which individuals and groups intruding on others can enjoy their ill-gotten gains. A good government increases practical liberty - the opportunities available for average people of all sorts to pursue their desires and achieve satisfaction, health, safety, and prosperity. A society in which more people live in fear and experience reduced opportunity and well-being is one in which, in practical terms, there is more coercive force being flung around than one in which taxes are collected and services made available widely.

[liberal japonicus]

DaveC,
What isn't 'coercive'? My daughter wants ice cream and comes up to my wife and me and says 'Pleeeeese', that is 'coercive' to her (not to me, I'm always up for some ice cream) We've just had Brett treat us to the notion that getting vaccinations is the same as being sliced up by Jack the Ripper, so I'm not sure if I can get across the fact that there are differences involved.

Also, this coercion is the price we pay for certain things. And it is still possible, even if it is difficult, to live 'off the grid', if you really want. But I feel that a lot of people who carry on about their libertarian ideals and about how hard it is to do that, it suggests that they are less interested in being off the grid and more interested in letting everyone know how independent they conceive themselves being. (that's a general observation, not a slam I should add)

[DaveC]

since whenever humans gather together peacefully in any numbers, we begin to invent government.

Government exists also in the absence of peace, or fairness. The trick is to try to get the balance of the government right, and not to stray to far to the tyranny of the ruling class, the tyranny of the wealthy or the tyranny of the majority. That's why the private sector, especially small businesses, families, and so forth have to be given greater consideration than large entities like government and big business. Property rights give a great deal of protection to the little guys, or at least the medium sized guys - hence, the "negative conception of rights" that Brett pointed out - things that cannot be taken away from you.

[russell]

What Brett was trying to explain is that government is in fact coercive.

Aha. Thanks for clearing that up. Somehow, I failed to make the connection between "government may use force" and "evil".

Here in the USA, the government can demand exactly the amount of your property that the law allows it to. The government can use exactly those levers granted it by law to do so. The laws are made by folks we elect.

The government can NOT, in fact, arbitrarily seize whatever of your property it chooses, at its whim. Not yet, anyway. Unless you're suspected of violating a drug law. Which is one more reason I don't vote for conservatives, but that's another story, and perhaps a cheap shot in context.

Moving on.

You are absolutely, completely, 100% right to say that private property rights means the government "can't take anything away from you". That is one of many rights we recognize. That right does not confer the others, it is simply one among many. A wonderful one, in fact, one we should treasure. But, one among many, and not an extra-special one that magically confers the others.

I bet it is true that respecting private property contributes to the relatively widespread wealth we enjoy. It's one factor among many. But, I have to say that I still fail to see the cause and effect relationship between wealth and freedom.

I was always taught that freedom was about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Depending on your tastes, you might need lots of money for your particular pursuit of happiness, but there are also lots of folks who can be pretty happy with quite modest means.

So, perhaps the confusion is not on my part.

I am, however, curious to know how you are going to get a social safety net with no wealth transfer.

I'm sorry farmers are having a tough time in Iowa. Here in MA, we still have lots of family farms, even though we labor under the same federal inheritance taxes you all do. Maybe there are some other factors in play. Market forces, perhaps.

Here are some things that might help you out:

Zoning laws
Policies that encourage the purchase of locally produced goods
Publicly funded land banks
Public/private partnerships to help keep farming families on the land

Those work here. You might give them a try.

Thanks -

[russell]

That's why the private sector, especially small businesses, families, and so forth have to be given greater consideration than large entities like government and big business.

We have found a point of agreement.

I'm gonna quite while I'm ahead.

Good night!

[DaveC]

Tip to lj:

If you have created a family dynamic where you daughters have the same "equal voting rights" as you, then you are in for a world of hurt down the line.

[liberal japonicus]

Too late, that horse has left the barn...

[slightly_peeved]

It's the bedrock of civilisation, DaveC, and I've never yet encountered a libertarian who wanted to do without the advantages of government

It seems that the main thing that libertarians want to prevent the government from taking are pieces of paper produced by the government, with the faces of former government leaders on them, of a value determined by the government that only maintain their value (or not, in the case of the current US version) as a result of good government policy as to how many are printed.

[Hartmut]

I feel reminded of that old ballad by some of the arguments brought up here (and by the "conservatives will kill their grannies in 2010") ;-)
http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Tantenm%C3%B6rder>Der Tantenmörder (the Aunt-Slayer)

[dutchmarbel]

No, I still think it is confusion. What Brett was trying to explain is that government is in fact coercive. There is a matter of degree. An extreme example is Zimbabwe, where there are very few private property rights, and the food situation there is not very good, unless you are of the correct political persuasion.

OF course in the absence of government the biggest bully will be coercive. An example could be Afghanistan.

It is nice to talk about how government robs you, but you do have a voice in the matter (funnily enough the word voor voice and vote is the same in Dutch). You know who are robbers imho? The young educated Dutch folks who grow up in the Netherlands, with medical insurance, computer acces, good schools and universities - and afterwards start complaining about the taxes and move to the US.

[Phil]

What Brett was trying to explain is that government is in fact coercive.

Whereas a situation in which 5% of the population controls nearly half of the country's wealth is not at all coercive, nor does it have any negative consequences whatsoever.

[Brett Bellmore]

I don't know about "negative consequences"; Probably it does, compared to some possible worlds you could imagine. Coercive, though? I've noticed some people have an awfully broad definition of "coercion", encompassing things like their daughter saying "Aw, please!".

Bill Gates coerces you: "If you don't do what I want, I won't give you this money!"

The government coerces you: "If you don't do what I want, I'll send a goon squad to drag you off, and lock you away for the rest of your days in a little box. Oh, and if you put up a fight, they'll kill you."

Bill Gates doesn't coerce, he persuades.

"An evil" vs "Evil"... "An evil" is something which, apart from any instrumental value it might have, is undesirable. Sticking needles in people, cutting them up, and so on. Generally speaking, if you can achieve the instrumental value an evil provides, without resorting to any evils, you should.

If you'd rather resort to evils when they're avoidable, well, that's where "evil", the desire to do harm for it's own sake, shows up.

Government is always "an evil". The only thing it brings to the table that can't be found in the private sector is the ability to get away with coercing people, and coercing people IS, all things being equal, undesirable. Alas, in the real world, government is very often just flat out "evil", without the "an".

But, sadly, government is also necessary. For the moment. Until we find something better.

We're never going to find that something better, if we don't bother looking, because we don't find coercing people objectionable.

[liberal japonicus]

I've noticed some people have an awfully broad definition of "coercion", encompassing things like their daughter saying "Aw, please!".

One could note that you have an awfully broad definition of evil. I leave it as an exercise to the reader whether they would prefer to know when someone is trying to get them to do something that they might not, on reflection, agree with vs being able to make blanket moral statements on a wide range of activities that the majority of people find unobjectionable. I certainly agree that there is a tyranny of the majority operating in any society, but since you seem to be placed firmly within that majority, it is hypocritical for you to be arguing how put upon you are.

We're never going to find that something better, if we don't bother looking, because we don't find coercing people objectionable.

You realize that this is diametrically opposed to any definition of conservatism that is operative in this world.

[OCSteve]

Russell: How many is too many people who die because they can't afford health insurance?
How many is too many people who freeze to death because they can't afford heat?
How many is too many people who have to choose between eating and buying meds they need?

One.

Gary: On the scale of national priorities, why would making sure that not one family, out of some handfuls of well-off families having to pay tax on very large amounts of property, which they can afford to do, but will notice the bite, be high on the list of problems for the country to address?

Dr.S: You can see actual numbers of farms affected by estate tax here -- very, very, *very* few.

Nowhere did I say it’s a national priority or more important than homelessness or health insurance. I said don’t try to sell me on a tax using the argument that it will only impact the super rich because at some point in the future there will be unintended consequences. Fine – I chose a poor example – I should have stuck to the AMT. The wingnut brainwashing kicked in, what can I say.

I admitted that “losing the farm” is mostly a talking point. It is a very emotional issue, which is why it makes a good talking point.

I don’t know where you (Gary) get “which they can afford to do”. A typical family farm will be lucky to clear $75,000 in a decent year. The investment in equipment is enormous. Would you want to assume a million dollars in tax debt that the government will most generously allow you to pay off over 15 years?

And if the numbers are so small then why is this such a contentious issue? It can hardly matter to the government coffers right? Just a handful of people paying a reasonable tax… The government will piss away more than that processing the estates…

Phil: Whereas a situation in which 5% of the population controls nearly half of the country's wealth is not at all coercive, nor does it have any negative consequences whatsoever.

Whereas a situation in which the top 1% of earners pay taxes in an amount equal to 95% of the rest of the country is not at all coercive, nor does it have any negative consequences whatsoever. (PDF)

And obviously isn’t progressive enough…

[russell]

"An evil" is something which, apart from any instrumental value it might have, is undesirable.

Thanks for clarifying, that's helpful. I also think your definition of "evil" -- the desire to do harm for its own sake -- is right on.

The issue here, IMO, is the authority or sanction by which the state may coerce private individuals.

If the state may coerce you to do whatever it wants you to do on any given day, I'm with you. It's a rogue actor.

If the state's ability to coerce you is limited by law -- particularly when you have input into how those laws are made -- then I'm not with you.

I'm not sure where your hope of a human society without government comes from, but I think it's a vain one, and one with absolutely no precedent that I'm aware of in human history. Even anarchists have a governance of some kind, even if they claim not to.

That means the issue is whether government is accountable, transparent, and responsive. I.e., whether government will do what the folks who are governed want it to do.

The problem we face, here in the US, is less that government is out of control, and more that we have wide disagreement on what it is that we want government to do.

I don't think we can blame "government" for that. It's just an instrument. That particular problem lies with us.

And, you know, when it comes right down to it, "government" is just people doing stuff. It's not a machine, it's not an elementary particle or force, it's not a law of nature. It's a human institution. It will always be prey to the same flaws that we, ourselves, are, because we are what it is made of.

Thanks -

[Phil]

Of course the top 1% pay more, Steve. they have most of the money. Surely you understand this.

[Phil]

And let me tell you something about the top 1%, Steve. The company I work for is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Last year Warren Buffet came and spoke at our annual sales meeting to about 150 of us. Know what his biggest complaint about our country was? That he and people like him aren't taxed heavily enough.

Using Bill Gates as an example is pretty funny, Brett. Remind me again of which methods of persuasion MS used to achieve its market share.

[OCSteve]

Phil: Surely you understand this.

Sure – We have a very progressive tax. Just keeping with the “tax the rich” meme…

Let me ask though – how much is enough? Are you with Alice and Dr. S? The government should determine an “enoughness” figure and take every dime after that?

What percentage or dollar amount do you believe a person should be able to keep for themselves?

Buffet: There is nothing in the world that prevents him from paying extra to the government. People don’t though unless they have to. If he really believes that why doesn’t he just pay more? Or why doesn’t he shelter less of his income and just expose it to taxation? Why doesn’t he pony up an extra $100M and then challenge every other billionaire in the country to match him?

Why is it that in “Taxachusetts”, one of the bluest states, most people pass on the voluntary higher tax rate? Why do only .03% voluntarily pay more, with the wealthiest suburbs opting out almost completely? (Sorry for the blog only link, but the original article is no longer available at the Boston Herald.)

[Dantheman]

DaveC,

"On the other hand, I would rather be able to drive on roads without stopping every few miles to pay a toll. Here in Illinois, we have to pay tolls to the State for the right to drive on Federal Interstate Highways, but at least with RFID, we don't have to stop as much anymore."

In other words, you want to get the services of the government building and maintaining the road without paying for them. And you have the temerity to call the those of us who recognize that these things need to be paid for supporters of thieves.

[Amos Newcombe]

Everyone still arguing how conservative (and now libertarian) principles are wrong rather than how liberal principles are not out of the mainstream… OK…

You want polls? Digby's got 'em.

Basically, as far as peoples attitudes on several left-right questions, the conservative revolution peaked in 1994 and has been backsliding ever since. A little bit at first, growing to a torrent, as main streams should.

OCSteve, you talk about the mainstream as if it were written in stone. And you cherry-pick the time interval, the last thirty years, that will best support your case. The mainstream in 1937 was very different. And in 2017 it will be different again.

The literal main stream in the US is the Mississippi River: notorious for twisting and turning and cutting itself an entirely new channel if it wants.

I actually agree with your point in a limited way. At the moment, on a national scale, using say Gary's definition of liberal and not the current wussified American version, then yes, a liberal cannot get elected. Yet. But explain Eliot Spitzer to me, if liberals can't get elected.

It speaks well of you that you hold on to your conservative ideals in the face of the corruption and hypocrisy of conservative leaders. But the mainstream is not as principled, and will shift, as it has done before.

And in another generation or two, as the corruption and hypocrisy of liberal leaders comes to dominate the national dialog, it will shift back. Maybe you'll live to see it.

[Ugh]

Why is it that in “Taxachusetts”, one of the bluest states, most people pass on the voluntary higher tax rate? Why do only .03% voluntarily pay more, with the wealthiest suburbs opting out almost completely?

there is nothing that keeps anyone from paying more in federal, state, or local income taxes. People are free to forego deductions, overstate their income, make mathematical errors in favor of the gov't, etc. The gov't will be happy to take your extra cash.

[john miller]

Ugh, actually not.

Many many years ago, my wife and I received a refund from the government which was several thousand dollars (well, a couple) above what we thought we would get.

We informed the IRS via telephone and registered letter that they had made a mistake and sent the check back.

They resent the check with an explanation that we had made a mistake on our return.

In actuality, however, no such mistake had been made.

Granted you could overstate your income and forego deductions, which, in fact some people do to avoid being audited. But making calculations in error won't matter.

[Ugh]

john miller - I think it likely depends on where you make a mathematical error, but you're right, they do at least some checking that would inure to the taxpayer's benefit.

[Jesurgislac]

OCSteve: I admitted that “losing the farm” is mostly a talking point. It is a very emotional issue, which is why it makes a good talking point.

It's a lie. It may be a very successful lie, but it's still a lie.

There's an outline here of how the estate tax really affects family farms and small businesses.

Note that the $2M threshold applies only if the people who own the family farm are a same-sex couple or an unmarried mixed-sex couple (or a single parent).

If you have concern about the value of family farms rising, the solution (which is certainly used in the UK by the government when calculating the estate tax baseline) is to have the base under which no estate tax is paid, be recalculated, year by year, to ensure that year by year, only the top 2% are affected by it. (Also, to epeal DOMA.)

This strategy is not appealling to conservatives whose policy goal is to protect the very rich at the expense of the poor (and of course, repealing DOMA contravenes the conservative policy of being anti-gay whenever possible). A better strategy from the point of view of conservatives is to refuse to recalculate the base figure, and hope that other problems cause a steep rise in taxable value leading to loss of estates that make good propaganda (ie, not owned by a same-sex couple, who ought to run the risk of losing the family farm, according to conservative principles).

There is also, as others have inquired, why cutting taxes for the very rich should be considered more important than ensuring that the very poor do not die of lack of healthcare or go hungry because they can't afford to buy food.

[wonkie]

The "losing the farm" talking point is a typical ploy of politicians who call themslelves conservatives and seek the votes of other self-proclaimed conservatives. It's dishonest, emotionally charged and calculated to hide the real agenda--just like pro-life, pro-family, strong defense, strict constructionist judges and fiscal conservtism area all bogus, emotional and ony marginally connected to the actual policies promoted by conservative politicians, .

It is another of many examples of how conservatives not only misrepresent themsleves, but misrepresent the issues as well.

Because no one, not even self proclaimed conservatives, wants conservatives principles to be applied to themselves.

I really donn't give a hoot about philosphy. I thinnk it is what people sdo that matters. So look at the legislative track record of conservatives over the last one hundred years:

opposed to child labor laws, all of the New Deal, the formation of the West Coast infrastructure necesary for fighting in the Pacific theater of WW2, the initial Civil Rights legislation, the initial environmental laws (Clean Air, Endangered Species, etc), the Wilderness Act, the Freedom of Inforamation Act.
Current conserrvatives either deny global climate change or oppose doing anything about it.

And what have thhey supporrted?

The Red Scare of the WW1 era, the Red Scare of the Fifties, fear of black welfare recipeints ( whle supporting Grover Norquist's to promote budget policies designned to bankrupt the federal government)fear of gay people, fear of terrorists.

When this pattern becomes too obvious the people who call themsleves conserevatives decide that their actions annd policies and thhe politicianns thhey voted for aren't conservativeas after all.

Conserrvatives have a philosophy (if you judge by behavior, not rhetoric), but it isn't what they say it is. TThey believe that coersive governmental powerre should be used againnst indiviuals to limmit choice in the very private realms of xsex and thought. They beleive the coersive powere of government should not be used to curb the abusive behavior of powerful interests. So government can force women and girls to carry fertilized eggs to term, but it's a violatioon of the principle of small goverment to pass anti-pollution laws.

And they dodge responisbility for thier track record by sayinng "Oh, that wasn't us! Thatt was fake conservatives mascarading as us!"

[Anarch]

The government coerces you: "If you don't do what I want, I'll send a goon squad to drag you off, and lock you away for the rest of your days in a little box. Oh, and if you put up a fight, they'll kill you."

Bill Gates doesn't coerce, he persuades.

Bill Gates persuades within the commercial paradigm established by the government using that very same coercion you're railing against. There's absolutely no way around this. Unless you think that you can somehow saunter into a store and take a copy of Windows for free, untrammeled by "threats of violence".

[And the irony of picking Microsoft, notorious for suing its competitors -- excuse me, threatening them with violence by proxy -- to establish its "persuasive" dominance, is just too much.]

Of course, it's also telling that you've picked Microsoft, manufacturer of what is in many ways a luxury product, as your exemplar of non-coercive ways. What about, say, your landlord? Or your local grocery store? They may not be coercing you into a specific course of action, but they're damn well coercive (see: theft above) and in the absence of government they could -- and would, if history's any guide -- become just as coercive as government without the electoral benefits of same.

You could respond by arguing that this merely proves that government is necessary but doesn't prove it's not evil, which is why I mentioned breathing above. All human societies involve "coercion" in some form or another. All of them. You might as well rail against breathing as an "evil" obstacle to our true freedom and happiness. I mean, my god, can you imagine how much more liberty we'd have if we were free of breathing? But that's a moot, and stupid, point to make because we don't have that option. Breathing is an inextricable part of our existence. And so to is coercion, for the simple reason that we can't always get what we want. Period. End of story. You can argue against this, you can beat your fists and shake your legs, but none of this will change a goddamn thing. All we can do is to arrange that the bulk of that coercion is effected by an accountable, transparent, and responsive actor (as russell said above): a government bound by laws, and the will of the people.

If for all this you still regard government as inherently evil because, my god, it might not let you do the things you like, well, I genuinely feel sorry for you. And if you still regard as evil the fact that government can, within the law, take some of that private property whose privacy that very same government creates... words cannot express the depths of my sympathy.

[LittlePig]

OCSteve, you talk a good game (other than pulling the ol' Socratic rhetorical dirty trick of equating 'conservative' in a broadly-worded poll question with 'conservative' to mean 'what OCSteve thinks it means"), but there is no way to do what you are talking about.

You don't want taxes raised. OK, what would an OCSteve conservative cut? (we know the Republicans won't cut anything, given they didn't during their full-control interregnum).

Defense spending? Good luck with that one in today's bedwetter-nation America?

Entitlements like SS and Medicare? Again, good luck with that (to use your 'why don't billionaires give the government money' analogy, why don't those 30% 'conservatives' give up their entitlements?)

Interest on the national debt? Please, the proposer would be hung.

Those three make up a huge chunk of all government spending, on the order of 70% last time I saw the figures. Most of the other is infrastructure building and admin functions that are what people generally think of as 'government'. Can't really cut that.

So, short of a massive effort to make people truly 'personally responsible' (i.e. get over the insane fear of terrorists and give up their entitlements), either taxes must be raised or keep deficit spending on credit.

The latter strikes me a no-no for a true conservative as I understand the word, so the responsible conservative position in the race of real life political pressure is to raise taxes.

Make it a flat tax if you wish, fine by me. But the deficit spending has got to be covered, otherwise we are all robbers (newsflash to Brent: There is no asphalt fairy).

And 'a rising tide raises all boats'? What a bunch of hokum. Real wages haven't risen with the tide, because that bit of Reagan idiocy only works when all share in the proceeds. If the 0.1%ers keep the difference, one quickly finds that some boats are a lot more equal than others.

[Doctor Science]

The government coerces you: "If you don't do what I want, I'll send a goon squad to drag you off, and lock you away for the rest of your days in a little box. Oh, and if you put up a fight, they'll kill you."

I have never actually been afraid of this. It may be theoretically true, but I've never experienced it as a fear.

My personal experience of direct coercion by organizations is from medical insurance companies, who regularly and as a business policy threaten people with injury or even death. This is such a common experience in the US these days that I really wonder how people like Brett have missed it.

[Doctor Science]

Ugh wrote:

Liberals believe that people who share a political identity form a community, and that as such, they have responsibilities to each other.

I think that this is also, historically, a conservative value -- that is, since human beings are social animals, the status quo is for them to keep living in groups and acting co-operatively. The difference between conservative and liberal comes in with regard to hierarchies and uneven distribution of resources (which are status quo, hence conservative values). The people who don't believe in this first proposition are libertarians, IMHO -- people who don't believe humans are social animals.

They shouldn't let each other go hungry, go without shelter, or suffer from any of the other ills that are the common lot of humankind, if in fact it can be helped. And, usually, it can.

This is where liberalism is distinguished from conservatism, IMHO. In an unjust world, any serious move toward justice disturbs the status quo and is thus unconservative.

It was perfectly possible for aristocrats to believe in a social compact where the lower orders did their part and the rulers did theirs. It recognized the reality of society and our mutual interdependence, while being deeply conservative.

[Fledermaus]

Jesus Brett, the Senate just confirmed an AG who is 'wrong on torture' as Sen Shumer noted, just before confirming him. And your railing about the tyranny of the estate tax?

[Ugh]

Dr. S - wasn't me.

[Doctor Science]

DaveC wrote:

There is some basic confusion here about whether private property confers freedom.

Not at all. One definition of "freedom" is "the ability to act without caring about other people", and private property definitely supports this kind of freedom.

But if private property confers freedom, then unequal distribution of property confers unequal distribution of freedom, and those with no property will be completely unfree.

So what's more important to you? Moderate freedom for all, or no upper limit to the freedom of the very rich?

[liberal japonicus]

There is the sweet sweaty aroma of a pile on here, so I will pull back a bit and apologize if I've gotten a bit too sharp.

[Doctor Science]

Ugh -- yes, I see it was russell. Sorry, both -- I'm easily confused because some sites I go to put the name under the comment, some above it.

[OCSteve]

Amos : And you cherry-pick the time interval, the last thirty years, that will best support your case.

I picked the period that was close to our time (easier to identify with and more pertinent than 1937) yet covered many years through war and peace and large economic swings (war and the economy being two of the most significant factors IMO). Anyway what are statistics for if not for cherry-picking? ;) Seriously – based on the criteria I described I think it is a good sample.

Digby's got 'em.

Again, the type of questions that most people would answer yes to. I modified my original question to include not just the liberal principle that most people would agree with but the liberal solution.

Gov’t should care for those who can’t care for themselves.
Sure – I don’t want people dying in the street. It smells up the joint and I have to step over them. (\heartless_conservative).

Gov’t should raise your taxes to care for those who can’t care for themselves.
Say what?!?

On those social and religious questions – I’m on board.

Let me make the challenge more explicit:
As a thought exercise, take each of Barak’s issues and then detail the liberal solution to the issue. On healthcare not “It's time to bring together businesses, the medical community, and members of both parties around a comprehensive solution to this crisis…” Rather tell me how: What are you going to ask of business, what are you going to ask of the medical community, what are you going to ask of the taxpayer… Obama may as well because his Republican opponent certainly will. I submit that if you provide that detail to the voters then it amounts to an unelectable platform.

Ugh: there is nothing that keeps anyone from paying more in federal, state, or local income taxes.

Given a modified tax form (so there is no mix up or confusion) to provide for an explicit option to pay more, almost no one does. Shouldn’t one of the bluest states in the union lead the way if the answer is more taxes?

Mention of Buffet is what got me going on this though. The guy likely pays an amount more than the annual budget of my town to a team of tax lawyers to shelter his income then wants to claim the government should tax him more…
He doesn’t need to be taxed more. We just need to close loopholes and reduce his available shelters. He’d then certainly be paying a lot more…

LittlePig: pulling the ol' Socratic rhetorical dirty trick of equating 'conservative' in a broadly-worded poll question with 'conservative' to mean 'what OCSteve thinks it means

I’m not sure what that means. Should I tell you what someone else thinks it means? I can only tell you it means to me. And when Republicans masquerading as Conservatives stray too far from that meaning I no longer support them.

If you want to say that I’m not a very representative “Conservative” then I’d say you are right. Which means I guess you have all mostly been wasting your breath (typing?). Given my position on social issues I doubt the RNC will be pleading with me to run anytime soon. ;)

You don't want taxes raised. OK, what would an OCSteve conservative cut?

Off the bat nothing. The day I’m put in charge of such things my focus would be on eliminating corruption, waste, and pork. That would free up billions right there. Take the current water works appropriation bill. It grew by 50% in the conference committee, after both the House and Senate had approved their version. Got to love that new transparency. $8B and that’s a drop in the bucket… As that’s my hot button I’d start there and see how far I got before thinking about cuts.

BTW I never said taxes should never be raised. I’m on record saying that I would be happy (well…) to pay the amount I pay now for my health insurance to the government for universal healthcare (some restrictions apply). I just want my tax dollars spent with a reasonable about of care. Don’t tell me you need more of my money when you (Congress) are practically flaunting the corruption and waste as it is.

[Ugh]

Mention of Buffet is what got me going on this though. The guy likely pays an amount more than the annual budget of my town to a team of tax lawyers to shelter his income then wants to claim the government should tax him more…
He doesn’t need to be taxed more. We just need to close loopholes and reduce his available shelters. He’d then certainly be paying a lot more…

You mean shelters like the 15% rate on capital gains and dividend income?

[Phil]

Um, Buffet doesn't shelter his income. He gives it away to charity to let it do the work that government doesn't or won't. He's not exactly a profligate spends on himself.

Of the few honest to goodness multimillionaires I know or have known personally, not one ever complained about their personal income taxes or felt they were in any danger of being taxed into the poorhouse. Not one. One did used to complain about corporate taxes, but cut down on those by returning everything above a set goal into profit-sharing and bonuses.

[Nate]

News on the AMT: WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democrats on Friday pushed through an $80 billion bill to block the spread of a dreaded tax on middle-income people. The White House and Republicans, protesting tax increases in the bill affecting mainly investment fund managers, maintained that it would never become law.

Okay, for the issues, let's see. As I've been doing this, I've noticed many of these issues tie together, and their solutions interact.

Health care? Well, in this case, I know my preferred solution is outside the mainstream of political dialogue, but here it is. Kill the insurance companies, which are giant sucking ticks on the literal and economic health of the country. Leave the rest in place, and have the government act as a single universal health insurance company for everyone. Ideally, we could fund it with income taxes equal to what everyone is currently paying in insurance premiums (or less, even!) and then allow people to go to any doctor or hospital.
Or maybe it would be better simply to nationalize the insurance companies, take over the whole infrastructure they have, and start integrating things and such.

Net cost to the average taxpayer? Zero. Guaranteed health care coverage for all, regardless of if you lose your job or whatever, etc. Probably efficiencies to be had by taking out the profit motive which leads to denying claims, and by removing duplicate paperwork for a dozen companies etc.

The main sticking points with this are 1) the insurance companies would never let it happen, and have lots of money. 2) People would say "but what about all the insurance jobs!" which is why the second suggestion, about having the government take over the current companies and then gradually merge them and weed them down might work better. Only ones who'd lose their jobs to start would be the highly paid executives, poor dears, they'll never find a new job.

Like I said, it's far outside the mainstream of political discourse, and it needs refining, but I think the idea's salable to the public. No harder to sell than the "make insurance companies rich, keep a job you hate just for insurance, and let people who get sick get their claims denied" strategy of the Republicans, anyway.

Strengthen America overseas? It's broad, but easy to tell where to start.

Elect a president besides George W. Bush. Throw Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, and anyone else who's implicated in torture and lied about Iraq in jail. It sounds like I'm joking, but that would do a lot to restore our reputation, which used to be one of our greatest strengths.

Start getting out of Iraq. Fund our efforts to dismantle Russian (and our own) nukes to prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists. Put more troops and rebuilders in Afghanistan, where they should have been in the first place. Sign on to treaties like the Law of the Sea and generally help encourage international laws and diplomacy. Generally live up to our end of the bargains of treaties, and live up to our ideals.

Fighting poverty? Create universal health care. Many bankruptcies are caused by health care costs. Crappy health care for the poor helps keep them poor. Many homeless have mental or physical disabilities. (See: Homeless veterans) Create something like the civilian corps of the Depression, to work on rebuilding and repairing our national infrastructure. Improving our poorest schools would help here too. Much of the specifics will depend on the area, and why there's poverty there.

Energy and environment are pretty much tied together. First, I'd stop giving huge subsidies to dirty companies, especially oil and coal companies. Continue the funding for renewable energy, and set a countrywide goal for percentages. Commit the federal government to buying X% of its energy from renewable sources (and go up each year), to ensure there's a steady demand for companies to build into. Implement a carbon cap and trade policy. Take the advice of actual scientists and engineers, not just industry shills. Repair and update our energy infrastructure. Mandate energy efficiency for federal buildings and departments.

Covenant with seniors? Work on fixing the federal budget, with an eye to the Treasury Bonds that will need to be paid to Social Security. Medicare would be rolled into national health care. Get rid of the pharmaceutical company welfare prescription drug bill, which would also be under the national health care plan.

Homeland security. Install actual security at ports. Get rid of most of the invasive and pointless TSA searches and crap at airports. Stop tarnishing our bad name with torture and unjust occupations. Stop overwhelming our intelligence agencies with terabytes of information about Americans from internet and phone searches. Re-hire all the Arabic speaking gay translators that the military's fired. Basically reorient the whole thing toward actual threats instead of trying to make American citizens scared.

Immigration. Enforce the laws on hiring illegal immigrants, to reduce the demand for them. Talk to smart people about how to help Mexico's economy stop sucking, to cut down on the supply. Allow a path to legal residency for millions and their families who live here. Raise legal immigration limits, unlimited for Iraqi refugees who want to come here.

Enforcing the right to vote. Enforce the laws on the books. Require a paper trail for all voting. Investigate Diebold. Do a real investigation of the 2000 election, maybe 2004. Give felons who've served their time (and maybe another year or two out of jail?) the right to vote again. Stop voter purges.

Cleaning up corruption. Man. That's a hard one. David Brin suggests an independent US Investigator General, and that's probably not a bad idea. Stop treating corporations as "people" under the law, especially for campaign contributions. Make more things public on the Internet, with a good interface and search. Possibly public financing for elections.

Strengthening families and communities. Universal health care would help here. Apply all non-discrimination stuff to everyone. Encourage city planning to be based around people, not cars. Make contraceptives freely available. A lot of these though, would have to be local too, based on the history and character of the community.

Reconciling faith and politics. That, I can't help much on. Treating all faiths equally under the law infuriates some people. And as long as a large branch of Christianity is being used as basically a political machine for the Republican Party, this is a really hard one. Fred over at slacktivist might be a better place to look.

So, I don't know if that's detailed enough for you, OCSteve, but it's a lot of things to cover. And only some that I'm actually informed enough to get into much detail on. Hope that's sort of what you're looking for, though.

[OCSteve]

Nate: That’s exactly what I was hoping for.

Actually it was more than I hoped for, seeing as none of it (beyond one mention of “nationalize”) really scared me. In fact I agree with several of those just as you wrote them and at least some parts of most of them. And there is not one I would reject outright. If it was an all or none package I would not vote for it, but there is a ton of stuff there to form common ground.

So if that is representative of liberal principles/solutions it’s not so scary. I’ll retract my statement that the platform would be unelectable.

Thanks for taking the time to compose that.

[russell]

Whereas a situation in which the top 1% of earners pay taxes in an amount equal to 95% of the rest of the country is not at all coercive, nor does it have any negative consequences whatsoever

I'd like to revisit this for a minute.

The issue here is fairness -- is any section of the population being asked to bear an unfair proportion of the overall tax burden. The paper you cite fails to give a realistic picture because it only counts income tax, which is the most progressive tax levied by the federal government.

Here are some numbers from the CBO for 2003 and 2004. They track income and tax numbers for various quintiles within the population, as well as more detailed numbers for the uppermost cohorts.

Among other things shown here are total dollar income of each group as a percentage of total national income, and total tax burden of each group as a percentage of total national tax burden. In other words, what percentage of the total pie each group has, and what percentage of the total tax hit each group has.

The income numbers include not just personal income, but investment income and other non-salary forms of compensation. The tax numbers include not just income tax, but SS and excise taxes, as well as corporate taxes distributed according to the distribution of corporate income.

So, for the federal level at least, it's pretty much an all-in picture.

If you don't mind playing along, I'd like to lay out the proportional tax burden for each group, the proportional income for each group, and one additional value to show the difference. By "difference" I mean the relative tax burden minus the relative income share. The point of including the difference is to get an idea of who is paying more and who is paying less, and how much more or less.

Ready? Here we go. The numbers are tax burden %, pre-tax income %, and difference.

Lowest quint -- 0.9% 4.1% -3.2
Second quint -- 4.5% 8.9% -4.4
Third quint -- 9.7% 13.9% -4.2
Fourth quint -- 17.6% 20.4% -2.8
Highest quint -- 67.1% 53.5% +13.6

So, yes, the most highly paid folks pay quite a bit more of the tax burden relative to their percentage of total income. They pay 13.6% more in taxes than they get in income. The real pikers are the second quint folks, who pay 4.2% less, for a total differential spread of 17.8%.

Not inconsequential, but not quite the 1% / 95% ratio your paper shows.

And, it's most likely a bit lower because state and local taxes are generally not progressive.

The really interesting group, however, are your top 1%. Their numbers are 25.3% and 16.3%, for a difference of 9.0. They're taking a smaller hit, in proportion to their income, than the rest of their top quintile fellows. Same for the top 5%.

The folks who are really getting it in the neck are the folks who are just into the top quintile -- folks with a total pre-tax compensation somewhere between $191K and $297K. The really, really rich folks actually do kind of OK.

Not for nothing, but I think you will do well to take Tax Foundation stats with a grain of salt. They're not actually false, they just don't tell the truth.

Thanks -

[russell]

p.s.

I like me some Nate.

Thanks -

[Anarch]

Ditto.

[john miller]

Well done Nate,

And OCSteve, I haven't gotten around to commenting here, aminly because I was really ticked off at Brett and didn't want to say something I would regret later.

However, interestingly enough, as you mentioned, liberal principles are pretty much accepted by the country. The question is putting the principles into practice, and there is no one specific way to do so.

Personally, I agree with much of what Nate said, but not all. Not principle wise, but practice wise.

The issue here is that the "liberal" label is still equated with "tax and spend", which isn't necessarily correct. And if nothing else, that is still more responsible than spend but don't provide revenue. That isn't a "conservative" principle either, not really, but that is what it would be fair to say based upon current Republican/conservative practice.

[Nate]

OCSteve: Actually it was more than I hoped for, seeing as none of it (beyond one mention of “nationalize”) really scared me. In fact I agree with several of those just as you wrote them and at least some parts of most of them. And there is not one I would reject outright. If it was an all or none package I would not vote for it, but there is a ton of stuff there to form common ground.

Glad it was the kind of thing you were looking for. I can't guarantee how representative it is of any other liberal's views but my own. Though since my political coming of age was through the late 90s and 2000s, and heavily influenced by blogs (including this one), so much of it's probably fairly similar to the "netroots platform", to the extent there is one.

I did say my part about health care would be definitely non-mainstream. :) Honestly, I think many of the problems in health insurance/health care come from insurance companies' profit motive. Because that makes them try to charge as much as possible, and pay as little as possible. Which leads to things like companies rescinding contracts, like Kevin Drum talks about here And it has ripple effects, from freelancers, people stuck in crappy jobs because they can't wait the three months for the new insurance, and so on as I mentioned above.

So my preferred solution is to get the profit motive out of health insurance. Or at least profit motive of the type we have now where companies have to have record profits each year otherwise their stock tanks. "Nationalize" is a boogeyman word, I know, but having the government just take things over as they are now and then work them into something better was one option for the change, to keep from just throwing everybody working at insurance companies out, and keep from having to do new plans for everyone, etc etc. There may be other ways to do it. But it's not terribly likely to happen, given the clout the insurance companies have.

There's a bunch of other stuff I support you might find more radical, much of it to do with limiting the power of corporations (partly covered by the "not count corporations as persons" thing), restoring some sanity to copyrights, a higher inheritance tax (with a$5-10 mil exemption, tied to inflation) to protect against aristocracy, and environmental stuff (we really have to completely redo how we do a lot of things), but some I'm fairly sure won't happen, or at least not through regular politics the way they are right now. And some I think are good ideas, but I'm not strident about implementing exactly that way. Also, we have many giant disasters to deal with, thanks to Bush.

And I could probably reach some kind of compromise on many of them, were I dealing with you, or my girlfriend, or some of the other reasonable conservatives I know. Not with the current Republicans though, because they deal in bad faith. And not to mention they and the groups and companies funding them (and partially the Democrats) would find them anathema.

I didn't mention how to start getting out of Iraq, because I honestly don't know. I've become convinced Iraq is so bad all we have are bad choices left, and in that case, I'd rather pick a broad goal such as (Get out of Iraq. Fairly Quickly) and then consult people who know what they're doing, and develop some kind of flexible plan. What that'd be, I don't know.

Thanks for taking the time to compose that.
You're welcome.

russel, Anarch, and john miller:
Thanks.

And I'd be happy to have people disagree with hypothetical me, because in general I'm not concerned with the practice for everything, but the results. So if it works, great!

[Brett Bellmore]

"So, yes, the most highly paid folks pay quite a bit more of the tax burden relative to their percentage of total income. They pay 13.6% more in taxes than they get in income. The real pikers are the second quint folks, who pay 4.2% less, for a total differential spread of 17.8%."

Of course, this whole analysis tacitly assumes that fairness consists of paying taxes in proportion to one's income.

You can't really determine whether our tax system is "fair" without some independent definition of fairness. For my part, I think that it's fair that people pay for what they get, and get what they pay for. Of course, by that standard even the flat tax is wildly unfair.

[Ugh]

Brett - I'll admit I haven't read all the comments, so if you've answered this I apologize fo asking again, but what is your fair tax system? User fees only?

Honestly, I'm curious.

[Nate]

What kind of user fees would the stock market have? Or police, or the military? Or the Federal Trade Commission? Department of weights and measures?

[Brett Bellmore]

Yeah, basically, the ideal 'tax' is a user fee, where you're allowed to turn down the service, or obtain it from somebody else if they're offering. IOW, it's the free market that's fair.

"What kind of user fees would the stock market have? Or police, or the military? Or the Federal Trade Commission? Department of weights and measures?"

Last time I checked, the stock market wasn't a government service, and it's paid for by charging brokers. The department of weights and measures could obviously charge for it's services: It provides certified references for... weights and measures, of course.

I'll admit that the police, and to a much greater extent, the military, are difficult to finance through user fees. Though we might try a check off system, it would certainly reveal which services people actually thought were worth paying for.

I'd suggest a head tax for those programs whose benefits can't be directly related to specific people, and quantified.

And if you protest that the poor couldn't afford such a head tax, I'll only respond that fairness is distinct from mercy. And that we should only levy excess charges on the wealthier to the extent that the inability of the poorer to pay their fair share makes it necessary, rather than to the maximal extent that's politically feasible.

[Ugh]

Brett - thanks.

[OCSteve]

russell: I'd like to revisit this for a minute.

Ohhh Kayyyy.

Not for nothing, but I think you will do well to take Tax Foundation stats with a grain of salt. They're not actually false, they just don't tell the truth.

I’ll consider that. Anyone can manipulate the data however they like…

Your normal sign-off is “Thanks”, but let me thank you. You responded and gave some very thoughtful replies to my questions on this thread. I appreciate that. I learned a lot and it was worth your time IMO.

john miller: The issue here is that the "liberal" label is still equated with "tax and spend", which isn't necessarily correct.

I’ve been fishing for a direct response for a couple of days. Tell me what liberals will do! Nate gave me exactly what I was looking for (if not what I expected). I realize I just wasn’t asking the question the right way. “Tax and spend” was what I was expecting, so Nate surprised me.

Nate: Though since my political coming of age was through the late 90s and 2000s, and heavily influenced by blogs (including this one)

Damned whippersnappers… Did I ever tell you about walking to school, up hill, both ways, in the snow…

I didn't mention how to start getting out of Iraq, because I honestly don't know.

I change my mind twice a day based on what I read last.

Thanks again for the response.

[Ugh]

Not for nothing, but I think you will do well to take Tax Foundation stats with a grain of salt.

Not addressed to me but I would also note that Citizens for Tax Justice stats/reports should also be salt licked.

[DaveC]

I'm not sure that anybody answered the question about what about liberals makes them good, but lots of comments about why conservatives are bad. And since older people tend to have more of the wealth, because of tax-deferred things like 401K's, older people must be really, REALLY, bad, unless they never took responsibility for their futures and are currently homeless, which I suppose would make them good, or at least gooder than people who saved their money and are clasified as rich.

[DaveC]

So the question is, if I have been very careful and saved and saved all my life to hit that sweet spot where I can retire on my savings, does that put me into the evil and selfish 2% category, or does that put me into some category where I am not a burden on my children.

And if I get killed in a wreck with a Point Beer Truck, (my wife would be driving, naturally; I'm a very careful driver), should my rotten kids get the money, or should half of that be taken away?

I personally would want the moollah to go to my kids, even though they are disrespectful liberals and would probably blow it all on tricked out Volvos.

[Jesurgislac]

OCSteve, would you like to take up DaveC's claim that conservative=rich and rich=conservative?

Brett, a flat-rate head tax, aka a "poll tax", is a tax designed to bear more heavily on the taxpayer the poorer the taxpayer is.

Of course, this whole analysis tacitly assumes that fairness consists of paying taxes in proportion to one's income.

Not only is that fairer, it's also more efficient. Of course, it has the unconservative effect of making taxes bear with equal weight on rich and poor alike, and goes directly against the conservative principle that the poor exist to be exploited and made poorer for the benefit of the rich.

OCSteve, you were saying earlier that in your view "conservative" doesn't mean "make the poor poorer and the rich richer". How do you feel about Brett and DaveC, your fellow conservatives, making clear that in their view that's exactly what "conservative" does mean?

[Phil]

I personally would want the moollah to go to my kids, even though they are disrespectful liberals and would probably blow it all on tricked out Volvos.

Every multimillionaire I've known has also been extremely insistent that his or her children would have to work and earn their own wealth rather than living off the success of their parents. Every single one.

Last time I checked, the stock market wasn't a government service, and it's paid for by charging brokers.

We already have ample historical evidence of what a stock market operating in the absence of securities regulators looks like. Perhaps you'd like to revisit those days. Perhaps you also are crazy.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Not only is that fairer, it's also more efficient."

What could be more efficient than charging everyone the same exact sum? It certainly reduces the amount of data you have to collect on people, and the calculations they have to perform.

Anyway, "bear more heavily"? I donno... If you dump a 400lb hunk of pig iron on me and the world's strongest man, it's certainly true that only one of us is still going to be lying there the next day, but it's indisputably true that the two loads weigh the same. It's just that we're not equally good at lifting. So I'd have to say in a literal sense, that a head tax bears EXACTLY as heavily on one person as the next.

But what I'm really arguing here is that people who get the same services, in all fairness, owe the same amount. If we chose not to charge one of them that full amount, and instead force the other to bear an extra portion of the burden, it isn't "fairness" that's in play, it's mercy. Which is a departure from fairness. Sorry, all the virtues don't necessarily direct you to do the same thing in any given instance...

And we shouldn't pretend that we're charging them the amount they properly owe. It should instead be regarded as a support program akin to food stamps. You could tax everybody what they really owe, and then provide the poor with "tax stamps" with which to pay the portion they can't afford.

********

Look, one of the great insights of economics, and the reason wage and price controls cause a disaster every time they're tried, is that prices are a feedback mechanism. They signal to people how much the things they're contemplating really cost, so that they can make an at least semi-rational decision about whether they're really worth it.

By divorcing taxation, the price of government services, from the services actually provided to individuals, we disable that feedback mechanism. Services there might be a great demand for get under-produced, services which most people wouldn't regard as worth it if they had to pay the piper get over-produced.

I suspect this is actually the real objection to funding government programs by honestly calculated user fees: That most people wouldn't chose to buy nearly as much government as you want them to buy, if they had good feedback on how much that amount of government actually cost. We tremendously over-purchase government due to the fact that the average voter doesn't see most of the cost of the government they're buying when they walk into the voting booth.

Needless to say, that's not an objection I particularly respect.

[Nate]

One of the problems I have with the "pay their own way" rhetoric is it's dishonest. It acts like the freeloading poor are living it up on everybody else's dime, especially the rich.

But the rich get the most out of government services. They get stock markets and assured weights and inspectors and regulators which let people have faith enough in the market to know that what they're going to buy is what they're going to get. They get the benefit of open financial markets and institutions. They get insurance for their banks so people will feel confident the bank's not going to go under or have a run on it, so people will use them. They get the benefit of legal systems to ensure their corporate contracts will be honored, and redress if it's not.

Yes, everybody gets these benefits. But the rich get most of these benefits, because they allow them to make their money in the first place.

But the other problem with the user fees idea comes from another basic insight of economics. Externalities, and public goods. How much is it worth to you to have a society where you can walk down the sidewalk. Should sidewalk owners charge user fees? Sidewalks broken up into different widths, differently maintained, and at different prices, how would those work to walk on? How about clean air and water? How much are air and water worth to you? How do you charge somebody for clean air, or clean water? And since air's a gas, how do you control who gets it? Do the people who pay user fees carry around cans of clean air, while people who pay less get a filter, and people who pay even less get a surgical mask, and some people just have to breathe toxic soup? What kind of user fee should people have to pay for New York City's trees? They provide $122 million in benefit to the city, after all. But what if acid rain from a coal power plant two states away kills New York's trees? How much should the birds who live in Central Park pay?

How much is it worth to live in a society where you can change your job without losing your health insurance? How much is it worth to live in a society where hard working independent businessmen don't end up dying of brain cancer because they couldn't get insurance? What kind of benefits would it supply to live in the kind of society where people felt secure in their health, rather than terrified of getting sick? What would it do to property values if mentally ill veterans didn't have to live on street corners, and could get treatment they need? What would it do to our economy if people could start their own business could do so without worrying about losing their business, house, and family the first time they got sick?

There are a lot of things prices don't work for, because they're things that are valuable, but hard to monetize. And other things provide such spread out benefits to society it's hard to point at one thing, or one person, and say they should pay for it. Good luck trying to calculate the way diffuse benefits split up between every member of society, especially when who gets what benefit from it could change easily.

Markets is notoriously bad at pricing public goods and externalities, for all of those reasons. So for the provision of public goods, "the market" is a poor choice. And markets aren't some abstract perfect ideal, anyway. They're systems created and maintained by people, and the rules people make for them. So don't cite the insights of economics about prices, and ignore the insights of economics about other subjects as well.

[Brett Bellmore]

"Externalities, and public goods. How much is it worth to you to have a society where you can walk down the sidewalk."

Which is why I proposed that, for services where the benefit can't be properly quantified for a given individual, a head tax was appropriate. Unless you're going to go all tautological on me, there's no reason to suppose that a millionaire values their life 100,000 more than a homeless person.

[Bruce Baugh]

I'd say that liberalism actually takes market rhetoric more seriously than conservatives. We believe that positive externalities exist very widely, and can be created in places where they don't now exist with some effort; we also believe that consistency of foundational expectations is good, that security in planning is good, and so on. For that matter, we take the division of labor seriously, and seek to consolidate the load for a lot of basic worries rather than inefficiently dumping it on everyone in the public at large. All of this is merely saying that a lot of what makes commerce works well also makes other parts of life work well - that is, that the claims are true, not just convenient dodges for self-interest.

More on this later.

[Nate]

No, but a millionaire gets quite a bit more benefit and use from most of those hard-to-quantify services than a poor person does, in general. Especially the net service of making sure people's lives don't suck enough to re-enact the French Revolution.

But surely, since you were talking about great insights of economics, you would know about marginal utility, Brett. If you have two dollars, and pay one dollar to walk on a sidewalk, that's half of your money. If you have a hundred dollars and pay one dollar to walk on the same sidewalk, that's 1% of your money. And if you have $100,000 and pay one dollar, that's .001% of your money.

When you have more money, each individual extra dollar of cost or earnings nets you less effect than the last. And each dollar you spend hurts you less, because you still have plenty more available. That's the entire point of progressive taxation, it's not a matter of screwing the rich, it's a matter of maximizing utility.

So that head tax, along with the user fees, is a much greater proportion of their money than it is for a millionaire. And that's not really "fair". It may be fairer in an absolute dollar sense, but it's not nearly as fair in the percentage of money paid, or the effective cost, because of the difference in how useful each marginal dollar is.

[Brett Bellmore]

Alternative conceptions of 'fairness', Nate. That's what I'm pointing out, "fairness" is an inherently contested concept, and it's not that liberals want to be fair to people, and conservatives don't. It's that they understand "fairness" differently.

[Jesurgislac]

What could be more efficient than charging everyone the same exact sum?

It's much, much more difficult to collect $90 from someone who has only $100 to live on till next payday, than it is to collect $90 from someone to whom that kind of sum is chump change.

The Conservatives in the UK discovered this fairly obvious fact by trying to do it: Margaret Thatcher got the boot because the inefficiency and expense of the poll tax had become inextricably tied to her.

[Nate]

Maybe that's what you've been trying to say, Brett, but mostly it's been coming off as "anything other than paying the exact same dollar amounts is unfair," at least to me.

[Brett Bellmore]

"It's much, much more difficult to collect $90 from someone who has only $100 to live on till next payday, than it is to collect $90 from someone to whom that kind of sum is chump change."

Well, yes, and I proposed a solution to that. I'm not suggesting that we charge a bum on the street the federal budget divided by the population of the country. I'm suggesting that we regard the fact that we don't as charity, not "fairness".

"Maybe that's what you've been trying to say, Brett, but mostly it's been coming off as "anything other than paying the exact same dollar amounts is unfair," at least to me."

And I'm as entitled to use my conception of fairness, which ain't exactly oddball, just as much as you are your's; Expect that when I say fair, I do not mean the communist slogan, "From each according to his ability..."

[Jesurgislac]

I'm suggesting that we regard the fact that we don't as charity, not "fairness".

It's "charity" to expect the very rich to pay proportionate to their income, and it's "fair" to give the very rich a free ride?

You're right: conservatives do interpret some words differently.

And I'm as entitled to use my conception of fairness, which ain't exactly oddball

No, no - it's a very standard conservative idea: the rich should get richer, the poor should get poorer. This is "fair" according to conservative ideas of "fairness".

[OCSteve]

Jes: OCSteve, would you like to take up DaveC's claim that conservative=rich and rich=conservative?

Not sure what you’re asking Jes. If conservative=rich then I missed the boat somewhere. Heck if conservative=rich then there wouldn’t be a single Democrat in America…

If Dave’s point is that conservatives tend to plan and save for their future more than others I’m not sure I agree with him. (In my gut I do but I’m not aware of any stats that prove that.) Some of us (like me) have absolutely no faith that the social security system we’ve paid into all of our working life will be there for us. And of course the I in FICA stands for insurance – it was never meant to fully fund retirement.

Being of the first generation to go to work when company paid pensions had mostly become a thing of the past, I’ve known since my first paycheck that I was on my own in terms of retirement. (First paycheck: Who the hell is FICA and why have they taken that big chunk of my money?!?)

But even though I’ve been careful with money and saved all I could all my life, I still have little hope of a traditional retirement. I’m pretty sure I’ll have to work to my dying day. Unless someone can clue me in to this conservative=rich thing.

How do you feel about Brett and DaveC, your fellow conservatives, making clear that in their view that's exactly what "conservative" does mean?

How do I feel about you putting those words into their mouths? ;)

[Jesurgislac]

OCSteve: Not sure what you’re asking Jes. If conservative=rich then I missed the boat somewhere.

In DaveC's comment on "November 09, 2007 at 10:47 PM" he uses "rich" and "conservative" interchangably.

How do I feel about you putting those words into their mouths? ;)

How do you feel about DaveC's assertion that rich=conservative and conservative=rich? How do you feel about Brett's repeated argument that the only fair tax system is one designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer? You were the one arguing that these were not conservative ideas, yet I don't see you arguing with Brett when Brett presents them as conservative ideas.

[Nate]

Brett, if you really think progressive taxation, or even a flat tax, is Communism, then I don't think any of this discussion is going to be productive at all. Which is what it sure sounds like you're saying.

[Jesurgislac]

OCSteve: Some of us (like me) have absolutely no faith that the social security system we’ve paid into all of our working life will be there for us.

Well, unless you get a long run of liberal administrations, it probably won't be. But if you want conservative government, you want a country in which ordinary people will be on their own and desperately scrabbling to fund their own retirement. Social Security is a liberal institution - an immensely successful and popular one, which means it's naturally been opposed by conservative government in the US. But there's no reason it shouldn't be there for you when you retire - unless you have a long run of conservative administrations determined to destroy it before people like you can benefit from it.

[Brett Bellmore]

"How do you feel about Brett's repeated argument that the only fair tax system is one designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer?"

I attribute this to the liberal tendency to assume that one's foes agree with you about the consequences of the policies you advocate, and stubbornly oppose them only because they don't want the good that would obviously come from them.

In fact, I have NEVER argued that a tax system has to be designed to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer, to be fair. A fair tax system *might*, or might not, have that consequence, depending on a lot of other things, but that consequence sure as hell isn't what I think would make it fair.

You always end up with this sort of attribution of evil motives, when somebody who believes in a procedural conception of fairness argues with somebody who believes fairness is dependent on end states.

[OCSteve]

Jes: How do you feel about DaveC's assertion that rich=conservative and conservative=rich? How do you feel about Brett's repeated argument that the only fair tax system is one designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer?

The only place I see those words are by you. I understand that’s what you believe they mean, but that is not what they are saying.

But if you want conservative government, you want a country in which ordinary people will be on their own and desperately scrabbling to fund their own retirement.

As an ordinary person, if I had invested that 12% since my very first paycheck and gotten an average rate of return of 7-8% I could retire comfortably at age 55. As it is, that lifetime of paying 12% won’t do a thing for me. They‘ll have to raise the qualifying age to 70 to keep it solvent and I seriously doubt I’ll live that long.