Ross Douthat discusses the two major political parties and the debt:
In this landscape, no matter which painful solution polls better in the abstract, a political coalition that’s actually laid the groundwork for what it wants to do seems more likely to succeed in doing it. The Republican Party is an unserious party in many ways, but it has leaders (from Paul Ryan to Tom Coburn) who understand that crucial point, and who have spent the last few years elaborating the kind of entitlement reforms that the conservative vision of government requires, and putting their fellow Republicans on the record in support of them.
I think even this is giving the GOP too much credit. The GOP is not willing to put their name to any specific entitlement reforms that could hurt them with voters – especially when it comes to Medicare, and Medicare is nearly all that matters when it comes to the long-term debt. In the recent “fiscal cliff” negotiations, Republicans flatly refused to propose entitlement cuts, instead demanding that Obama propose them. In the 2012 election, Romney and Ryan relentlessly attacked Obama for cutting Medicare spending, essentially surrendering this issue to Democrats by treating cuts to Medicare as unthinkable.
Douthat continues:
From Barack Obama on down, I don’t see the same thing happening on the Democratic side; instead, I see a party that’s still loath to acknowledge that its program requires sacrifice from anyone save the wealthy, and that just responded to a moment of maximum leverage by narrowing its definition of who constitutes the rich. If Democrats want to raise middle class taxes — and I mean really raise them, not just cut deals that nudge revenue upward a little here and there — they need to lay the political and policy groundwork for that kind of push, and they need to start relatively soon.
I think this is absolutely correct. Barack Obama, by swearing to never, ever raise taxes on anyone but the top half of the upper class, has essentially surrendered on revenues to the Republicans. The Democratic Party’s agenda is simply not affordable if we take the position that no American earning under a quarter million dollars a year should pay for it.
When Bush passed his ten-year tax cuts, Democrats pointed out – correctly – that the tax cuts were unaffordable, would lead to soaring deficits, and would make paying for a first-world government impossible. Now Democrats have made 82% of Bush’ tax cuts permanent, and bizarrely, are counting that as a coup.
Having seen the film Lincoln, and then read the book Team of Rivals from which much of the material for the film is drawn, I can’t help comparing Lincoln and Obama.
The comparison is perhaps a bit unfair, since Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents the USA has produced, if not the greatest, and Obama is clearly somewhere in the middle. But their situations are similar: the top leadership position in a country that is deeply polarized and seems on the verge of tearing itself apart.
Lincoln seemed to have clear ideas of what he wanted to achieve, even if they evolved during his career, he was willing to expend large amounts of political capital when necessary to achieve it, and he had a very good sense of timing: when to hold off and when to plunge ahead.
By comparison, I still have no clear idea what Obama intends to accomplish with his 8 years in the presidency; I suspect that that’s because he doesn’t really have any goals that are more important to him than being president. And that’s why he has never been willing to stake very much political capital on anything.
Universal health care is an example: this could have been something he would be remembered for, but in the early days of the debate, when the public was behind him and some arm-twisting and campaigning might have gotten somewhere, he spent his time trying to get a Kumbaya moment of bipartisan Congressional support, which Clinton’s experience should have shown him was impossible. He frittered away the momentum (rather like General McClellan), allowing his support to dissolve into milling confusion and his opponents to organize themselves and dictate the terms of debate, and now we have a Frankenstein’s monster of a “Universal Health Care” law that was mostly written by the insurance companies.
The most charitable interpretation I can come up with is that Obama has never transcended his experience as an Illinois politician. In most US States, politics is simply endless horse-trading, rather like a never-ending crap game, where getting rich is secondary to not going broke and having to leave, and the consequences are mostly who gets what political plums. The presidency is different: the game is over in at most 8 years, and what you do has long-lasting national and international consequences.
Back when the Nobel Prize committee gave Obama the prize for simply getting elected president, I thought it was really insulting: as if getting elected president were already the limit of what a black man was capable of (cf. the Samuel Johnson quote about women preaching .) Unfortunately, I fear that, in Obama’s case, they may have been right. Simply being elected despite being black may end up being the limit of his presidential accomplishments.
“Barack Obama, by swearing to never, ever raise taxes on anyone but the top half of the upper class, ….”
I’ll know tomorrow personally when my first pay stub of the year is posted. But from what I’m hearing that promise was not kept.
“Back when the Nobel Prize committee gave Obama the prize for simply getting elected president, I thought it was really insulting, ….”
I thought it was really insulting because he had in no way fufilled any of the requirements for the prize. From Alfred Nobel’s will discussing the disposition of his estate into the funding for the Nobel Prizes:
Ok, this is more than an Obama fanboy can endure.
There’s no such thing as a permanent tax rate. Obama has merely locked in the bargaining positions from which future tax debates will begin. Similarly, ObamaCare is not the end-all and be-all; it’s merely the new status quo positions from which all future health care reform proposals will begin.
Yeah, it’s nice to fanaticize about maximalist bargaining, assuming that if only Obama had played more hardball we could have achieved more. Of course, Republicans engage in the same kind of fantasies, which is why we have so much gridlock — even when polls show that gridlock is a losing strategy with voters.
“Evolved”? As in, categorically saying that he did not support using the presidency to promote abolition – and then using the presidency to promote abolition? That’s quite an evolution, all right.
Uh … other than getting us out of the recession, adopting national health care, raising taxes on the wealthy, winding down a couple wars, refraining from committing troops to new boondoggles, and getting Osama Bin Laden? Yeah, I’m stumped, too.
Well, let’s see: Presidents have been trying to adopt a national health care plan since at least Truman. Which of them got further than Obama?
And as for that nifty parlor trick Obama has perfected – you know, the one that involves getting elected president despite being a black man – a quick perusal of the list of people who have managed to pull off this feat gives me cause for pause. Sure, Obama makes it look easy. But just try it yourself sometime. You might find that it’s even harder that catching flies out of thin air….
Uh … are you sure you saw the movie? Read the book? We’re not talking about the ones that involve orcs or Inspector Javert, right?
Cuz if you have occasion to review the book or movie again, you might spot a few hints about Lincoln’s views on horse-trading and the dispensing of political plums. It can be subtle, I know, but once you know to look for them, they pop up like Easter Eggs. You’ll see.
Then again, what else would we expect from an Illinois politician like that?
Look, for decades Republicans have been whining about the need to make government the right size to be drowned in a bathtub. Obama knew he wasn’t going to change this ideological commitment. Instead, Obama was able to exploit that commitment to get Republicans to support building the world’s biggest bathtub – and stimulating the construction industry at the same time. So I’m cutting the guy some slack.
We’re still in a recession, and we don’t have national health care.
OK. Boilerplate Keynes tells us that you don’t raise taxes in a weak economy. You cut ’em, for the same reason you borrow & spend. Tax cuts are stimulative.*
So that’s basically what Barack Obama has done since he first took office.** And you’re complaining why?
Because you’re concerned about our long-term debt. Well, don’t worry; be happy. There is no problem. Thats why our treasuries are so expensive. Last I checked (few months back) they were so expensive that you had to pay the US Govt in order to lend money to them.
*Even tax-cuts for the wealthy are stimulative…its just that their multiplier is low.
**Except for the wealthy, but see the first “*”. You can get away with raising taxes on the rich during weak times, particularly if you redistribute the money to a more stimulative person (like a poor one). They’ll spend it and help us recover.
Which has been pointed out by numerous people since, oh, a long time before the actual election.
Which the Democrats are deathly afraid to do, as it will cost them the votes of the middle class.
Which the Democrats are deathly afraid to do, as it will cost them the votes of the entitlement recipients.
Just out of curiosity, what percentage of GDP has to go to government to have a “first world” government? And given that for many decades, the US was pretty much the definition of “first world”, when did the definition change? Because we’ve spent broadly the same amount on government for a long time.
@3
I’m not sure if you’re playing wordgames or just clueless.
“Abolition,” in 1860, referred to a specific proposal for eliminating slavery (one of many): that is, simply outlawing everywhere in the USA, and tough on the slaveowners. The Republican party was based on the goal of eliminating slavery, but not necessarily by abolition. When Lincoln said he wouldn’t “promote abolition,” it was this one, most radical proposal that he would not promote, partly because he saw no legal way to do it and partly because it didn’t seem politically feasible at the time.
I don’t think you actually read my post. My concern wasn’t that Obama is a horse-trader. Horse-trading, plums, etc., are an unavoidable part of politics, and all good politicians are good at it, even revel in it. My question was: what exactly is Obama horse-trading for? What larger goal does he have?
Lincoln’s goal was to limit and eventually eliminate slavery. He never expected to get as far as he did, but he only did so because he kept his eyes on the prize.
For that matter, George W Bush was in my view a terrible president, but he had clear goals: to eliminate Saddam Hussein and to reshape US government to benefit his class (the plutocrats of the US), and by staying focussed on them he succeeded at both.
What prize or prizes does Obama have his eyes on? OK, he got elected, but every president has managed that, and it was over and done with by January 2009. What did he become president for?
My complaint is that he has consistently horse-traded everything away that we thought he might be trying to accomplish with his presidency. He actually reminds me of Stephen Douglas, who hoped to find some compromise path that would make everyone happy and ended up supported by nobody.
AMM:
Yeah. That’s pretty much it. Obama became a State Senator after getting his primary opponent knocked off the ballot by challenging his nominating petitions, rather than actually beating him at the ballot box (the general election against the GOP was a charade in that district, Jesus would lose there if He ran on the GOP ticket). Once he was in the Combine, he got along by going along and voting “Present” more than anyone else, enabling him to gain the benefits of power while avoiding taking actual positions on anything. He became Senator when the Illinois GOP decided that getting rid of the GOP incumbent who insisted on serving the public rather than playing along with the Combine’s money and power games was more important than holding the seat.
AMM again:
Our President never actually had to accomplish anything in any of his previous offices (What? What did he do in them?). His goal seems to be to maintain power for himself and those who support him and reward them with taxpayer money whenever he can. Forget his words. To give the Devil his due, he’s very good at words. But look at his deeds through the years, and tell me why would anyone think he was going to do anything different once he became President?
It’s because he’s black and without a substantive record at the time of the first election.
So as of 2003, conservatives who are racist will critique him from racist grounds, and be dismissed (rightly) as stupid racists. Conservatives who aren’t racist will critique him from non-racist grounds, and be dismissed (understandably) as crypto-racists. Liberals who are racist will keep quiet because they don’t want to get in trouble with the other liberals; liberals who aren’t racist will refrain from critiquing him in any strong terms because they are aware of how what they would like to say sounds just like what those racist conservatives are saying, and self-censor. (“It’s racist to think that the president should have some accomplishment other than going to a good school and holding some state offices, if the president is black. It must be; otherwise everyone else would be saying it. I’ll be quiet.”) Some people on the far left will critique him, though usually from the standpoint of hes-too-conservative; that’s still pretty brave, though. (Hi, Amp!)
I recall critiquing him (in the course of a wide-ranging and very generous-with-the-criticism survey of all the candidates) on a liberal-heavy e-mail list I subscribe too, and being told I should be ashamed of myself for saying such things. (Basically, that he wasn’t experienced and hadn’t shown any track record that would make anyone think he was good for much.) Shame is a great motivator for good social manners, but a bad motivator for a well-informed electorate.
A lot of people have gotten over it now, and we see a lot more honest critiques of him from the left, and some willingness to listen to critiques from the right that don’t seem heavy on the dog-whistles. In that sense he has done the nation a very great service: the next black politician to come along on the national stage will be torn a new one, as should every person running for office, and will be elected or not by an electorate that has been familiarized with his or her strengths and weaknesses. We’ll know we’ve reached a point of fairness and equilibrium when either Obama, or the next black national politician, does something enormously boneheaded and is absolutely eviscerated for it on the late-night shows and SNL or The Daily Show. Hasn’t happened yet; we’re en route.
AMM wrote:
Tell you what: Let’s have all the representatives and senators from Arizona, South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas,Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina decide to abdicate their positions and no longer participate in votes in Congress, and then see what the Democrats can get through Congress.
Until that happens, the claim that Obama and Lincoln face similar situations in regard to passing legislation through Congress, is ridiculous on its face.
To make it a fair comparison, those states also have to make war on the US and, at least at first, look like they’re winning. And their delegations should not think much of Linc…er, Obama.
It may be a silly comparison since things are so different, but I (no Obama lover) am reasonably receptive to the idea that he had a tough row to hoe with Congress for a number of reasons.
Nope. It’s not. It’s NOT understandable.
Ron, quoting me, wrote:
Your taxes will more than likely go up due to the expiration of the temporary payroll tax cut. I don’t think that’s reasonable to call a broken promise, for a couple of reasons.
1) It’s pretty obvious that if Democrats could pass laws all on their own, the payroll tax cut would have been extended (at least until unemployment goes down). I don’t think it’s fair to say that by negotiating with Republicans and agreeing to a compromise position, Obama has broken his promise. The President is not a dictator, and it’s not reasonable to expect that he will never, ever compromise.
2) I’m not sure that it’s fair to consider the expiration of a temporary tax cut, to be a tax increase.
I mean, my December paycheck might be big because I’m getting a bonus, over and above my regular pay. When January’s paycheck as no bonus, is it be fair of me to claim that I’ve gotten a pay cut?
Nobody.Really wrote:
I’m a big fan of Obamacare, which I consider a potentially major accomplishment and, as you say, a much improved status quo from which to start future negotiations.
As for the taxes, what this deal does is put us in a much, MUCH worse place for future negotiations. And I see absolutely no sign that Obama or any other major Democrat even tried to make the case for – say – another three-year or ten-year extension. And given how good the Democrats’ bargaining position was (much better than it was two years earlier, when they did make the extension of the tax cuts temporary), I think to give permanency without even TRYING for anything better is irresponsible, and bad for our long-term goals.
I agree that imagining that Obama could get whatever we want if “Obama had played hardball more” is a damaging fantasy. Obama is not a dictator, and clearly a lot of compromise is necessary. I’m not someone who criticizes Obama for not getting single payer, etc..
But I think you’re committing the opposite fallacy, by acting as if nothing in Obama’s performance should be criticized, and vastly understating how a big a loss changing 83% of the Bush tax cuts from temporary status to status quo status is for Democrats.
In both of our memories, preventing Bush from making those tax cuts permanent was the major achievement of Democrats during the Bush tax cuts fight, the one thing Democrats could point to and say “at least we won that.” And now we’ve given it up as if it were nothing, without – so far as I can tell – even attempting to retain them as temporary.
And you know something? I’m THRILLED with that!
How many new wars have we sent troops to? NONE!
How many recommendations from scientific panels has the administration spiked because they ran contrary to someone’s religious edicts? NONE!
How many new Depressions have we triggered? NONE!
How many new acts of terrorism has Al Quida perpetrated on US soil? NONE by my count.
How many new ways have we contrived to drain the nation’s coffers to shovel money into the pockets of the rich? Well, probably not none; we may want to investigate that Solendra thing a bit.
But that’s chump change compared to no-bid defense contract stuff – not to mention the Bush tax cuts! Think of it: Bush had an economy fueled by the biggest financial fraud in the history of history – and we were STILL deficit spending! Imagine if we’d had some Republican yahoo in office instead! We’d be first in line to engage in “austerity” for social safety net programs – but still wouldn’t raise any taxes on the rich. Along comes Obama, and now we’re deficit spending for precisely the reasons that we’re SUPPOSED to run deficits: to stimulate demand during a recession.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Glory Hallelujah!
Has Obama rewarded his supporters with tax dollars? You mean, like, rewarding people struggling with unemployment by extending unemployment benefits? GOD DAMN RIGHT!
You mean, like, passing ObamaCare, the most progressive legislation in my lifetime? GOD DAMN RIGHT!
You mean, like, bailing out the auto industry to prop up unions? GOD DAMN RI… oh, wait, that was Bush. (Curiously, the Obama Administration refused to back the auto industries’ own, more lenient recovery proposals, and instead forced the firms to get tougher with all their creditors and suppliers – including the unions!)
In short, your assertions are preposterous: Obama campaigned on helping the nation’s economy recover, passing health care reform, winding down the war in Iraq (the “war of choice”) quickly and the war in Afghanistan by 2014, raising taxes on the affluent, discontinuing waterboarding, and sparing no opportunity to get Bin Laden. Each of these positions was a marked departure from the prior administration, and Obama had delivered on them all – at least in part.
But even if you are so myopic as to miss all of these accomplishments, perhaps the biggest thing Obama has accomplished is keeping the White House out of the hands of the Republican Wacko Machine. That’s worth a bust on Mount Rushmore all by itself. No joke: This truly is the accomplishment for which Obama received the Nobel Prize.
And if it were up to me, I’d give him two.
Finally, let me mention that long before discovering Alas, A Blog, I was exchanging messages with Amp and Robert. And in the misty times of yore, progressives were hiding in caves and licking our wounds, watching as Ronald Reagan won his second term in office, and his place in history. That was the time of – the Prophesy.
Reagan, some will recall, was elected after Nixon’s disgraceful presidency. And Ford’s. And Carter’s. Ever since OPEC formed and constricted the supply of oil, the economy of the West had fallen into a prolonged slump. And Reagan followed suit: the economy suffered during his first few years; Reagan was an object of ridicule (Recall “There He Goes Again: Ronald Reagan’s Reign of Error”?); Republicans lost in a landslide during the midterm elections.
Then, it happened: the OPEC countries fell to squabbling among themselves. They broke up the cartel, began pumping more oil than was their quota, and the price of oil fell. With the supply shock gone, the world’s economy BOOMED. And suddenly Reagan was canonized; his philosophy of governance (including tax cuts and deficit spending) became the Republican religion.
And came the Prophesy – that one day, a charismatic Democratic president would do the same damn thing. He’d arise in the midst of economic collapse. Many would deride him during these times of trial; he would be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Yet through perseverance – or perhaps through the fortuitous passage of time – he would be at the reins when the economy began to recover! People would rally to him! And the Power of Reagan (symbolized, ironically, by the No New Taxes Pledge) would be broken at last!
So it was foretold. And lo, be ye all witnesses: for the prophecy has come to pass in our times! The Tax Pledge lies shattered on the field, and the forces of recalcitrance have been chastened. So I rejoice and am exceeding glad! For we have dwelt in darkness, and now we see a great light.
Or a darned good light, anyway; don’t get greedy.
It’s just the light from the refrigerator. Put the beer back, it’s much too early to start drinking.
Sorry, I don’t believe in an unchanging Magic Percentage of GDP that is correct. Belief in a Magic Percentage is a GOP thing, not a liberal thing.
I believe that a wealthy first-world nation should pay for its responsibilities, including a floor guaranteeing reasonable medical care, and sparse-but-livable food and housing for everyone who can’t afford to provide these things for themselves. I believe that a wealthy first-world nation should provide for security for those who are old enough to retire. I believe that a first-world nation should pay what it has to for a first-world infrastructure. Etc.
There is no single percentage of GDP that is always the correct percentage. When the elderly are a larger proportion of the population, for instance, then of course spending on the elderly will rise.
The next step is for you to say “oh, that’s total government spending, I only meant federal spending,” after which I’ll post this graph showing federal spending:
By the way, Robert, Jon Stewart has tore into Obama more than once, most recently over the administration’s confused response to Benghazi.
And the press went wild on Obama more than once when he was running for President – we got weeks of round-the-clock Jeremiah Wright coverage during his first run, for instance, and of “Obama blew that first debate worst than anyone has ever blown anything before’ coverage during the most recent election. If Romney had won, it would have only been because of the enormous press pile-on on Obama after the first debate.
I agree that Obama didn’t have an impressive record before running for President, but he’s hardly the first major party candidate (or winner) of whom that can be said. As recently as 2008, the GOP seemed to believe that Sarah Palin was prepared to take the presidency if necessary.
The fact is, experience is not a requirement for the job. You wouldn’t vote for a more experienced liberal over a conservative with little experience – you’d vote for the one whose policies you believe will be good for the country. And you’d be right to do so.
Similarly, in the primaries, voters tend to support those who they think can win the presidential race, and that’s not unreasonable. It’s what Republicans did when they chose Romney. Obama beat Clinton in the 2008 primary mainly because Obama’s team showed a much better understanding of electoral strategy. Since the most important goal of Democrats in the 2008 race was beating McCain, I don’t think a process that favors the candidate who is the best at getting elected is wrong. (Although in hindsight, it’s obvious that Clinton would have been able to beat McCain, too.)
Finally, it’s simply not true that liberals in general brand all conservative criticism of Obama as racist. There are zillions of asinine right-wing critiques of Obama which most liberals just make fun of for being asinine; watch the “Daily Show” almost any week to see what I mean.
No, I’d have accepted the first chart; total government spending seems like the right metric. It doesn’t matter who’s paying for the roads bill or the food stamps or whatever, for purposes of “is government doing X”. But since you’ve kindly provided more detailed information, I’ll go ahead and reference it.
With the exception of the huge spike for WWII (every broad statement like the one I made gets one Nazi-fighting exception…bank yours if you don’t need it this time, they’re handy) and a related “crash” for a year or two afterward as our hugely-buffed GDP suddenly didn’t need to fight Nazis anymore, we have a bumpy but more or less steady 20 to 25% of GDP going to the Federal government, and 30 to 40% going to government at all levels. There’s a definite upward slope, but it isn’t steep.
I don’t fetishize the statistic, in particular (OK I am lying I have sex with the statistic constantly and we spend the nights yearning for one another but that’s our private business, leave us alone in our forbidden love), it’s just a handy yardstick for common-sense comparisons of rough quantities. If crazed libertarians say “Obama has tripled the size of the Federal government just since last Tuesday” we can look at the chart and say “going from 24 to 25 percent is not a tripling”; if welfare-addled leftists say “since 2000 we’ve totally gutted the state and all that’s left is corporations and Dick Cheney” we can look at the chart and say “going from 33 to 39 percent is not gutting”. Then the libertarians and leftists will join forces against us and make us sleep in the garage for our crime of being able to do math; they’re such dicks about that.
Now that I’ve lured you into complacency with sex jokes and high-minded bipartisan examples, I think your definition of “first world” – while a useful definition of “the government Amp would like to see” is kind of misleading. America in 1941 was “first-world” by just about every definition, as was England, France, etc. – and while some Eurostates came close to your ideal now and again, it was far from universal and far from secure. There are probably people who would argue with you now about “reasonable”; not me, though, I just do sex jokes.
My point being, sure, OK, you can totally legitimately say that the % of GDP, or the raw cost, is going to go up and/or down (though seemingly never down…) in order to meet your requirements, but tagging them as “first world government” is counterfactual and will cause historians of the future to become confused. Those people have time-travel-death-ray-lasers, man, don’t piss them off.
Edit isn’t working: I meant to add “since WWII, which was the timeframe I had in mind when I said ‘a long time'” to the discussion of % of GDP.
I don’t watch the Daily Show these days so I will take you at your word that they’re ripping Obama more – good. My comments were meant to be specific to 2003 and 2004, however. He was not getting ripped then.
I disagree about experience. If the Democrat candidate had been Sam Nunn backstopped by Tip O’Neil, and the Republican presidential nominee had been Sarah Palin backstopped by Glenn Beck…then people should have voted for Sam and Tip, no matter how neato-keen they found Palin-Beck. There is a point where experience (and competence) trumps affiliation. Obama-Biden vs. McCain-Palin does not quite tip that balance in my mind – but, say, Obama-Palin vs. McCain-Biden (in some alternate, Palin (D-AK)/Biden (R-RI) reality) would.
Amp:
And thus the difference in philosophies are clear. I think a first-world nation should ensure that the basic rights and liberties of the people are protected against encroachment from government and private actors both. I think that rights and liberties are inputs – freedom of speech, religion, the keeping and bearing of arms, freedom from racial discrimination, etc. I do not think they are outputs – housing, healthcare, etc. A first-world government makes sure that no one can interfere with you in obtaining through your own efforts what you yourself think best makes you happy. It does not make sure that you have things that the government thinks makes you happy whether you have worked for them or not.
Some things needed to keep us all happy are beyond individual competence. Roads, bridges, national defense, police as examples. They should be created and kept in good repair. These also are part of a first-world nation.
Charity towards those who cannot fend for themselves is a moral duty under my moral system, anyway. But the best way to ensure that it is directed towards those who cannot fend for themselves vs. those who will not and to help those on the cusp to cross from “cannot” to “can” is to keep the funding and control of it close to home, instead of having it run by a distant leviathan. And let’s not confuse “charity” for “entitlement”. That’s not a first-world nation, that’s a nation headed for disaster.
Hm. Comment editor not functioning as expected. So, as an addendum
When a state has more people in it dependent on the government in some fashion, either through productive employment or through dependent grants, you no longer have a 1st world nation. I strongly suspect my home State of Illinois has passed this threshold. I strongly suspect that the present Administration would not flinch to have the whole nation pass that threshold.
Gah!
“more people in it dependent on the state than not …”
How scary is that threshold really? Which would you prefer: A world in which people are hyper-productive, such that we can produce all the food, water, shelter, cars, books, etc., that society needs while excusing the great majority of people from the labor force, freeing them to pursue leisure, arts, and self-actualization? Or a world that is vastly less productive, such that survival requires pressing the majority of people into a life of toiling to produce food, water, shelter, etc.
In short, what if we transcend scarcity? To put it another way, how much do you fetishize laboring for labor’s sake, rather than laboring to meet consumer demand?
If we transcend scarcity, we might have less “employment.” People would still find stuff to do – but their activities might be driven by internal, intrinsic motivations rather than extrinsic ones. Rather than training to be maximally useful to your fellow man, you might train to become maximally attuned to understanding and appreciating your own internal motivations – the hidden rewards that only you are able to mine.
Society would still produce more than adequate supplies of food. But we might not be able to rely on a market mechanism to distribute it. We might, instead, have government-provided bread and circuses.
Yup, it’s a pretty alien notion. All those things that we’d perceive as virtues (productivity, etc.) might marginally useful in such a world, and attribute we might regard as vices (self-awareness and self-absorption) might come to be regarded as virtues.
Would this be such a bad life to live? Perhaps so – even if causes no material shortcomings.
Libertarianism, with its You-go-your-way, I-go-mine attitude, arguably undermines the social cohesion needed to maintain any group (including a libertarian one). Arguably societies need some common structures to rally around: nationalism, religion, tribalism, etc.
To a large extent, labor (the “Protestant Work Ethic”) represents a tool of social cohesion today. Even beyond the ability to produce or get a paycheck, participation in the labor market is the mark of the grownup. It provides a sense of identify that creates relationships to others, a sense of belonging. People lose all of this when they lose their job. People who are in the labor force express disdain for those who aren’t. They ask that people benefiting from the social safety net at least ape some of the rituals of working, even if very little productivity results.
So even if we’re in a world without scarcity, the fact that most people are getting food doled out to them without any effort may be detrimental to social cohesion and sense of identify. Or maybe not; maybe we’d transcend the need for work as a source of identify and substitute other things. Who knows?
People have an underlying need for purpose. I think Maslow identified this, that old hippie sweetheart.
As it happens, work-for-pay does a pretty good job of filling in for purpose, in a scarcity economy. (It does not really make sense to speak of a non-scarcity economy; if there is no scarcity, it isn’t an economy which by definition is about the allocation of scarce goods. There are still economics in the Star Trek universe; they’re about things like starships and planetary databanks that are still scarce because their vast material cost temporarily strains even the hyperfecund productivity of the society. Food, housing, college education, the service of lawyers…these things have become the YouTube download of the 25th century, available without cost because they are of no market value.)
In a post-scarcity society – and although I think the concept is quite appealing I think we are a looooong way from it – people will have to find other ways to satisfy that need to be purposeful. We will; we found ways to satisfy it just fine in the caveman days, in fact, probably evolved to favor those with a purpose-drive because caveman living was very easy, when times were good. But I don’t think it’s an imminent problem of social adjustment.
It’s not imminent because, while some forms of output have become non-scarce – some kinds of food are cheap to the point where you pay for the packaging and the shipping, not the food itself – the inputs that produce those outputs are still scarce. Wheat may be too cheap to meter, but the waiter at LeBreaderie expects her $5.00 an hour plus significantly more than that in tips, if you don’t want a Loogieloaf.
I don’t want the non-working welfare recipient (to the degree that there are such people in our society) to ape the empty rituals of work; I want them to work. “Person who is willing to lend a hand to whatever toil needs toiling” is a purpose. It’s a pretty good one, in fact. We could do worse than having some kind of social register where unemployed or underemployed people could punch in their skillset, have it evaluated, and then be basically universally available for grunt jobs to any comers. Keep the welfare or food stamp or retirement benefit or whatever coming from the state, but have the casual employer kick in some bucks to the state to borrow their ward for a few hours. You know HTML, great, I have a glitchy web page, I’ll throw $20 to SSI and you’ll spend your afternoon peering at my code and laughing at what the last guy did. You’re a skilled litigator, great, I have a field full of horse manure that needs to be turned over. Or whatever.
(Two lawyer slams in one post. It must be a good day.)
What relation does that have to the quote you made of my post?
He thinks that people in Chicago don’t go to work because they’re part of a wonderful transformative post-economy where their labor isn’t directly needed, so they can study to become the Kwisatz Haderach or serve as the wise mentor for their neighborhood, or something.
You think they don’t go to work because they’re lazy sacks of shit.
There is not going to be a meeting of the minds on this one, I don’t think. ;)
Robert, Robert, Robert — why employ ten words to make your point when you could just as easily employ a thousand?
I’m considering a nation with more people dependent on government than not for their source of material goods. It’s a topic I’ve given some thought to. And since you’ve asked….
Yeah, my hypothetical seems a little far out, but it’s inspired by contemporary dynamics: We are experiencing declining labor force participation rates and stagnating (or falling) real wages for many segments of society. Yet at the same time we’re experiencing booming productivity – with almost all the benefits accruing to the top of the income scale. Thus, we observe that conventional notions of “full employment” don’t seem to be needed to achieve pretty much full production. That is, we’re not a poor, lazy society. We’re a fabulously productive society with incomes our parents could only have dreamed about – but the bulk of those incomes flow into a small percentage of the pockets.
So if we care about productivity, hey, we’re doing great. If we care about labor – independent of our concerns for productivity – we’re not doing so great.
But this prompts the question: Why do we care about labor independent of our concern for productivity? After all, if Chrysler can build a car with less steel, we think that’s great. If Chrysler builds a car with less labor, isn’t that great, too?
Seems great to me. But there are some drawbacks. One drawback I noted is that we’ve come to regard labor a virtue unto itself – indeed, as one of our defining social virtues around which we build social cohesion. If fewer people work, does society dissolve into Romney’s warring camps of “makers and takers”?
But I suspect this is not the drawback that comes to mind first. Arguably the most urgent drawback for most people is the idea that we rely on the market not merely to produce stuff, but to distribute the benefits of production. What happens when an ever smaller share of people are needed in the marketplace? It’s not a huge problem, assuming we can structure society so that everyone can continue to benefit from society’s productivity. Translation: wealth redistribution outside the context of market forces.
Cue libertarian freak-out.
But wouldn’t this kind of redistribution reduce incentives for productivity by the most affluent members of society – those few people who are associated with all the gains in GDP? I offer the following proposal:
Pick a time when people seemed to have adequate incentive to be productive. Wow, the end of the Reagan era was great, eh? People sure seemed motivated to produce! So let’s look at the per capita after-tax income of the top X% of people in that era. That would seem to be sufficient income to motivate the top X% to be productive.
Now let’s adjust it for inflation. And now let’s structure society so that the top X% continue to have that level of income. So everyone’s motivated to be productive now, right? We can tax away the rest, and people still have the same incentives to be productive that have proven motivating to humans in the past, right?
I suspect this structure would greatly increase government revenues. That’s because the top X% today tend to be VASTLY richer than during the Reagan era. YET THEY KEEP WHINING ABOUT MARGINAL TAX RATES.
In essence, they seem to argue that people are motivated NOT by after-tax income, but by the percentage of their productivity that they get to keep. They seem to be arguing that they’d rather produce $10 and keep $9 than to produce $100 and keep $50. That’s inconsistent with the economic models of my acquaintance. But it’s all the rage on the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Or consider another hypothetical: Who has proven to be more productive during his lifetime to date: J.S. Bach – or Justin Beiber? I haven’t done the math, but I strongly suspect that Beiber has amassed a higher inflation-adjusted GDP. Is this because he’s vastly more talented than Bach? More motivated? Better incentivized? Or is it because Beiber happens to have been born into a context in which he has been able to exploit his talents and work-effort – a context that he did almost nothing to create?
In short, productivity is not merely a function of an individual. It’s HUGELY a function of a society. I’m thrilled we have structured society to facilitate heretofore unimagined levels of productivity. I hope we can do even more of that. But we also need to structure society to spread the benefits from that productivity. For people who ignore the role society plays in promoting productivity, this looks like theft. For everyone else, this looks like humanity.
If free market forces can achieve that outcome, great. If not, too bad for market forces. For me, the market is a powerful tool – not a religion. Recall that the US has been tampering with the economy to produce socially-desired outcomes since its founding. We’ve contrived various policies – the Homestead Act, labor laws, Social Security, Medicare, the GI Bill, graduated income taxes – to shift resources down the income scale. (And yes, we have other policies that have tended to produce the opposite effect.) So if we need ever more such policies – and perhaps ever more direct policies – then let’s get on with it.
Thanks for asking!
“why employ ten words to make your point when you could just as easily employ a thousand?”
Because the client pays by the word, and if we’re over-budget, we’ll find that there is no longer a scarcity of our labor and we’ll have to dig ditches for a living.
Also, “You think they don’t go to work because they’re lazy sacks of shit.” is 13 words, not 10. Granted, the last 3 words SEEM redundant, but trust me as a professional, they add value.
Also, send the market forces away at your peril. The things you think replace them albeit at a fraction of the productivity, only pull that fraction when the market forces are there somewhere. There are ALWAYS market forces. In Star Trek, there is a natural monopoly of Kirkness (and thank the God-like entity at the center of the galaxy for that) and a limited supply of Spock; though McCoy is much more common, being accessible anywhere a heart bleeds or a brain softens, the highly skilled in any culture are rewarded commensurate to their contributions to the society, or they bag this stuffy Starfleet gig and start running whores and thionite around the quadrant in their private hedonism cruiser.
(Oh my GOD that would make such a good TV show.)
You’re not wrong about the need for a flatter distribution, but – marketing tip from someone who has to sell product instead of using soldiers to gin up my salary from the peasantry at gunpoint, like some people I could name – don’t frame it in terms of fairness and having to do it for social justice or any of that rot. Compensation doesn’t ALWAYS follow contribution, but left to its own devices it tends to; those people who aren’t working aren’t working because they have little of value to contribute, and the people collecting all the rewards are collecting all the rewards because they’re making everything happen. Nothing is going to piss off the guy who’s single-handedly keeping the company afloat while the Derp Posse roams from water cooler to water cooler more, or quicker, than being told that he better pony up so that the sleep-till-noon fucktard who wakes him up at 3 AM every night with loud, futile attempts at ordering delivery pizza can have a new XBox. Tell him that at 3 AM, and he’ll spend his next productivity cycle figuring out ways to use the indigent as biofuel.
No, make it about chivalry and patronage. You’re much smarter than these dolts, and so naturally society is better off if you work and they stay out of your genius way. And of course, oh enlightened force which causes the very sun to move through the sky, the lion’s share of the income from this amazing productivity goes to you, along with a very attractive tax structure and a free yacht. But, prince of my dreams, if the non-working slugs who are, let us be fair, having the grace and decency to shrink away from your celestial presence and thus earning nothing, eventually they will run out of promo codes for delivery pizza and free Ramen noodles, and they will die, and the stench of their passing will mar the air of our apartment complex. Perhaps, purely in the interest of our divinely-formed nostrils not having to engage such putrefaction, we should throw the occasional copper trinket from our Excess Wealth To Be Melted Pile over to them, so that they can have an occasional meal with a named food in it. Naturally, they will be required to sing hymns of praise to your sexual prowess and grandeur while awaiting the cooking of the meal, and will write – but not send, for that would be a presumptuous waste of your time – appreciative poems on the subject of your generosity at the conclusion of the meal.
That might be slightly overselling it; being a perfect divine being, I am naturally without ego and thus not EXACTLY attuned to what these folks will want to hear. But something on these lines, I think.
Charleston Heston: “Soylent Green [Energy] – is people!”
Countess Violet, Downton Abbey, Season 3, Episode 1: “It’s our job to provide employment. An aristocrat with no servants is as much use to the county as a glass hammer.”
Hey, noblesse oblige works for me.
You don’t seriously think it’s this simple, do you?
It doesn’t even work in a straight trading economy (think, “monopoly problem”)
But when you start talking about humans it quickly becomes obvious that value and compensation are only broadly correlated. For example, you can be very good at a worthless or even society-negative skill–“getting the person above you fired” or perhaps “leaning how to game tests”–and thereby gain extreme rewards.
To use a more concrete example: you can do well in a competitive field by one of two general strategies:
1) Increase your abilities and production above those of your competitors, and retain them at a competitive level irrespective of new entries to the field; and/or
2) Deter people from entering the field.
It’s much simpler to form a Wax Artists Guild and persuade the king to forbid new entrants, than it is to stay the best wax artist in a rapidly growing economy.
You’re not horribly off base, G&W, but wealth does not accrue in individuals for passing tests or more skillfully gaming employment hierarchies. It accrues in classes, to some extent, when there’s lots of individuals doing the gaming or the test-passing.
But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about the guy who invents Widgets Mark 2 (“they run in software – no more gaskets!”), putting 10,000 test-passers and blame-shifters out of work although they might walk around collecting paychecks for a while, and gets a billion dollars.
You’re correct that test-passers and blame-shifters end up with an unfairly better shot at the $139,000 a year job with the corner cubicle and the annual laptop allowance, than do the hard-working widget gasket grinder resealant techs who are bad at tests and never pass blame and would actually do a better job in the $139k job.
But all those people are out of work, effective February 1, testers, grinders, and buck-passers alike.
Robert:
“those people who aren’t working aren’t working because they have little of value to contribute,”
Or have standards low enough that the amount of added goods and services their labor would bring over and above their State-guaranteed goods and services are not – to them – worth the level of effort it would take to contribute enough to pay for them. I.e., they’re slovenly and lazy sacks of shit.
Whereat do you think we “fetishize” labor for labor’s sake?
We’re not going to transcend scarcity until we can build fusion reactors that power sufficient matter transmorgifers to make anything we want with almost 0 cost.
I get the concept that because we have some very wealthy people in the world some people think that simply taking that money away from them and giving it to people who don’t have it will eliminate scarcity. Well, first, I’d like to see it demonstrated that the rich people have enough money to do that. Secondly, I’d like to see what happens if you actually take all that money away. My guess is that the rich people will say “Fuck it” – also known in some circles, I believe, as “going Galt” – and stop being so productive. Wealth is not finite, it’s produced or not. If someone becomes hyper-productive so as to become wealthy and then finds that due to confiscatory tax rates they cannot get wealthy by such means, it seems to me that they are likely to stop being hyper-productive and nobody’s got nuttin’.
I can guarantee that the people who own the company I work for are not the most productive employees of that company. I work pretty closely with them and I certainly am aware of people who are a lot more productive.
Also, if the super wealthy go Galt, I assure you that there are multitudes waiting to step in to take their place.
Your latter point is usually true, and should be kept more closely in mind by those inspired to action by Ayn Rand’s ultrarealistic teenager techno-tantrum; most of the time there are no special snowflakes in play and our labor and capital contributions are fungible. Even in the cases where there isn’t another billionaire standing by with a warehouse full of investment money, there’s usually a few millionaires standing by with a replacement-good warehouse full of low-wage manual labor, or loyal reliable Japanese robots. Unfortunately, as should be kept more closely in mind by those inspired to eye-rolling irritation by Ms. Rand, sometimes there ARE special snowflakes and all you get from your warehouse full of replacement goods is “que?”
Nobody was going to replace Lovelace and Babbage; Galt them and we might be wondering what a “transistor” was.
Your first point is probably not true. They are not the most HARD-WORKING people in the company. Hard-workingness is a virtue; productivity is a measurement. If I endow Lazy Slattern Amp Clone with a million dollars worth of computer-assisted drawing tools in a high-tech productivity machine of a studio, and you endow Studiously Virtuous Toiling Amp Clone with a piece of charcoal and a slate, your Amp will be the one that works harder; mine will be the one that produces the most.
So to compare you and Company Founder Joe, as the latter lolls in the executive washroom and demands that the boy bring him more bacon, he is famished, is somewhat misleading. OK, your labor contributes 1000 units of output to the firm, while his labor contributes -20 units (mostly due to inefficiencies from bacon overproduction). But his capital contributes 100,000 units, while your capital doesn’t exist. Joe’s kicking your ass in the productivity department, despite his unattractive relationship with the concept of hard work.
Thing is, in most of the places I’ve worked the owners are not the founders. The owners are children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of founders or capital investment firms or people who bought the company from the founders or their children, grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
True, but so? Just as you did not invent the human capital (mathematical skills, for one) that you bring to the job, but rather inherited it via process mostly entailing massive amounts of work by other people and a bit of labor on your end turning up for class, the heirs to whatever material capital funds your company got it via grandma’s work, plus a bit of their own contribution in terms of remembering to send birthday cards and to not get arrested for bestiality at grandpa’s retirement dinner.
It doesn’t matter where it came from; what matters is who has it now and what they’re doing with it. Your founders’ grandkids could liquidate and put it all into heroin futures and it wouldn’t matter a whit that grandpa and grandma would be apoplectic. (“This is no time for a move to commodity crops! Think, you fools!”)
Robert:
Do I detect another 2DGoggles fan?
Ada Lovelace does not prove your point; being the daughter of a baron and famous poet, and receiving strong maternal support in her studies, she was both wealthy and educated far beyond most people even in her social class. I’m not seeing a lot of monetary motivation, but rather, exactly the sort of person nobody.really is talking about when supposing what people could do when freed from the necessity of obtaining daily necessities.
As for Babbage, his family was so wealthy that he was educated mainly by private tutors, sometimes in parallel and sometimes merely in series. Once again, he had no need to concern himself with petty trivia like how to pay for, or prepare, his daily consommé, peeled grapes, and truffle-laden brie.
In other words, in nobody.really’s world, yes, we might have had several Lovelaces and several Babbages. Privately-funded geniuses are not the pool you want to draw from. You’re looking for geniuses-in-spite-of-circumstances. You can find some, I’m sure. They’re out there. But, significantly, they’re thinner on the ground…
On the other hand, if Lovelace and Babbage leapt to mind because they are JUST SO COOL as they fight crime through Victorian London, well, I sympathize. Happens to all of us, no doubt.
Grace
I’m more looking at the question of who is and who isn’t irreplaceable, Grace.
Of course not; they’re two-thirds of that famous defensive machine — Lovelace to Babbage to Chance!
Yeah, there’s the Great Man theory of history. Without Babbage and Lovelace, we’d never invent transistors, yadda yadda. There are three rejoinders, however.
First, the discovery/invention of calculus was an act of singular genius, too. Except that at least two geniuses – Newton and Leibniz — seemed to have discovered it in rapid succession. In short, it’s unclear that discoveries are purely the function of genius; circumstance seems to play a pretty big role, too. In the absence of Babbage and Lovelace, would the discovery of transistors been delayed? Seems likely. Delayed forever? Seems unlikely.
Second, it is far from clear that hyper-productive, and especially creative, people want to live in isolation. I hypothesize that many creative people simply cannot help being creative. You can’t stop them. When you read about composers in Nazi concentration camps, composing as they sat in line at the gas chambers, it’s hard to imagine that they’d suddenly be deterred from this activity by an increase in their marginal tax rates.
Finally, beware selection bias. Even if we accept the Great Man theory for the sake of argument, we still confront the question of which society does better: One that minimally burdens its upper classes so as not to impede the activities of Great Men (regardless of gender)? Or one that taxes its upper classes to finance a social safety net so that geniuses from all walks of life can be found and nurtured? After all, infant mortality is oddly high in the US; how many Babbages and Lovelaces die in the cradle? If you count the burdens that a policy places on the existing productive people, but ignore all the potentially productive people who are rescued by this same policy, you distort your analysis of the policy.
Admittedly, this line of argument triggers still more libertarian freak-outs. This suggests that genius (or incapacity) is not purely a manifestation of individual merit (or lack of merit), but a phenomenon that arises by chance in a population! This is collectivist thinking! It’s downright Rawlsian!
To which I say … yup.
The irony of the whole “going Galt” thing is that today, going Galt is a more viable option than ever before; consider Gérard Depardieu. And this is because of all the infrastructure that society has created that permit people to travel and be interconnected and creative from any environment. Infrastructure that Gérard Depardieu did not create, but from which he will accrue benefit – all the while claiming that his wealth is purely a function of his own merits and efforts.
Depardieu did not say he should never pay taxes. He just thinks that the current demands of the French government are unjustified and unjust. After all, let’s look at both sides of this. Yes, there’s infrastructure that he’s taking advantage of that other people built. But he did help pay for it during his lifetime and has been paying for it for many years, most likely (based on the fact that he’s currently a wealthy man) to a much greater extent than most other French citizens. Meanwhile others have had the same infrastructure and have done much less than he has with it. In other words, focusing on the infrastructure and the fact that he didn’t build it is neglects to take proper accounting for the fact that he himself did put a great deal of time and effort and his own money in creating what he has created – and he deserves to have a great deal of advantage from that in turn.
I have no idea why that’s all in italics. I didn’t turn italics on.
Italics fixed.
A society where everyone paid the same tax rate regardless of income or circumstance would be a society of people largely unburdened by resentment to or from classes or individuals, and significantly more willing to discuss collective handling of many questions simply because there would be no assumption of involuntary subsidy. Both of those in turn would contribute to higher incentive to effort across the board; with low income meaning low taxes but also carrying no particular help from the state, any desiring a better standard of living would have no choice but to work; with high income leading to no increase in marginal rate, the rich would have less incentive to slack. The increased societal wealth, in turn, would mean that future generations would get more state for the same tax, or a reduction in tax for the same state, a virtuous cycle the opposite of the one we are inflicting on our own children.
Of course, these are well-worn arguments in public finance. I humbly suggest that if to goal is to minimize resentment, this won’t achieve the goal.
After all, even a “flat tax” causes people who earn more to pay more taxes. Why shouldn’t they feel resentment about that? After all, do they consume more government services than others? Perhaps, but certainly not more than the guy who is in a coma, or who is disabled through mental illness or chemical addition.
So maybe we should have a head tax instead — that is, a tax in which everyone pays the same amount. That’s the way club memberships are supposed to work.
But even a head tax wouldn’t escape the problem of involuntary subsidy. Basically, ALL taxes are involuntary. And so long as some people receive a disproportionate share of government services – say, they guy in the coma, or disabled through mental illness or chemical dependency – people will claim, with some justification, to be subsidizing others.
So maybe we need a voluntary, fee-for-service model. Ambulance services for those who can pay for it, etc. Finally, we’ve eliminated the whole resentment thing! Or so said Marie Antoinette, just before opinion on letting people eat cake.
Of course, all this talk of resentment rests on the theory that people own themselves and owe nothing to the circumstances from which they arose. This is the theory that underpins the idea of “going Galt.” This is a widely-promoted idea in some circles:
Rather than a resentment-based perspective, I favor a portfolio perspective. As far as I can tell, people have varying qualities. I imagine that the magnitude of these qualities fall along a bell curve. Some people are quite productive. Some are in comas. We need the productivity of society in aggregate to cover the costs of society in aggregate. To expect that each individual in this bell curve will be able to pull his own weight is to expect that every stock in a portfolio will recover its own cost. That’s not how portfolios work. Some stocks out-perform the average; some under-perform; we need the results of the high-performers to offset the results of the low performers. This isn’t simply a “nice” thing to do; it’s an intrinsic part of portfolio theory. If the high-performing stocks decide to extract themselves from the average, the entire portfolio can become unsustainable.
(Ok, ok, hopefully the portfolio is so productive that there are enough returns to cover all costs AND earn a profit. And sure, we can record these excess profits as the result of the especially productive stocks. This practice deviates from portfolio theory, but the deviation seems harmless.)
Alternatively, we could consider a market perspective: How much more should I pay for government services than the guy in the coma, or the guy incapacitated by mental illness or chemical dependency, or even the guy who is simply unmotivated? Well, how much I would be willing to pay to avoid changing places with any of these people? After all, if I envy the status of these lucky ducks, I should be willing to trade places with them. And if I’m not willing to trade places, how much would I be willing to pay to avoid that fate? If I want to minimize that figure, I should strive to raise up the circumstances of the least of these, my brothers.
No choice but to work? Prior to 2008, unemployment was low. Today unemployment is high(er). What accounts for the difference? One theory holds that there’s been a huge increase in people’s laziness. Another theory holds that the economy has crashed, and the growth in unemployment reflects systemic problems that correlate only weakly with the volitional behavior of specific individuals. I guess we can each draw our own conclusions.
Yup, there are sound theoretical reasons to think that a low marginal tax rate reduces the disincentive for productive behavior. But there are also reasons to doubt that the consequences of this reduced disincentive will produce endless advantages.
See, rich people consume more of all (superior) goods – including leisure. After some point, even when you pay people a handsome hourly rate, they conclude that they’re sufficiently rich that they want to consume more leisure – and that crowds out their incentive to work. This phenomenon is known as the backward-bending labor curve. If you Google the term “backward-bending” you will find an appalling lack of graphic images, unless you’re thinking in terms of economic graphs being explained by fully-clothed, not-especially nubile people. A pity, really. Talk about a market niche that needs to be address….
Anyway, the moral of the backward-bending labor curve is that people can be induced to work MORE by taxing them MORE. Counter-intuitive, but well documented.
Of course, ANY analysis involving cutting government spending will look good if you assume that government spending produces no benefit. Heck, cut it all! But to do any kind of serious analysis, you need to compare the value of reduced government spending with the loss of government services. Unless and until you do that, you’re just talking out of your armpit.
I wasn’t inviting a serious discussion of the proposal, although I thank you for providing one; I was intending a parallel to your unseen-costs-of-policy point, and my underlying point, you made very nicely – all the things which in theory flow directly, observably and attributably to policy X in fact happen in a big mish-mash with Nobel-level geniuses arguing ferociously over which paradigm of the coefficient of countervalence should be bipolar and *(single, despairing shot rings out)*.
Personally I do not object in principle to the idea that to whom is given much, etc. – but I must note that it seems the advocates of that principle seem rarely to want to adopt it broadly, or to allow the principle to work as a safety-valve that permits individual adaptation. For example, people who go to college are way more indebted to society for some heavy capital goods than are people who get a job at 16 – yet it is the 16-year-old who becomes a millionaire owing to his chain of metal shops who is asked to pay heavy taxes later in life, while the guy who gets a degree in classical literature and goes on the public payroll for a life of cushy, if relatively ill-paying work in the ivy halls pays little.
Yet the 16-year old asked the minimum of the educational system; no billion dollar super-colliders, no tenured faculties murmuring wisdom, no naked brunch. He just worked and employed people and made things which other people, quite unforced by the state legislature, chose to buy on their own. Surely his work product should, under the theory of society’s contributions to one’s success, be taxed less than that of the classicist; the classicist has been taking the public dollar for a 60-year term.
In other words, if society’s role in our success is a rational justification for differential taxation, why limit it to people who make a lot of money? People:
* use the military in the short run to get free training or education
* go to college
* use public roads to variable degrees
* ditto the public parks
* ditto the public infrastructure
* ditto public health facilities
* choose careers which burden or benefit the public purse – not usually for that end, but almost always with that effect. If I choose to be a metal worker, I will rarely use public benefits or fail to be able to pay my taxes. If I choose to be a novelist, I may be on the suck for 30 years, then write “Harry Potter and the Vaguely Sexual-Sounding Boy’s Name” and be a kajillionaire. The metal worker spent 30 years busting ass and paid 16% a year; I cost the state millions over the same period and now will move my income through a Dutch Irish sandwich or whatever they call it and pay 15%. What? Why?
And so on. Now arguably many of these things may be dubious in their impact…but “you have to pay because the state set you up for success” is an argument that rings true for a whole lot of people who don’t happen to make a great ton of money, but who have (thanks to the state) very easy lives, or who at least used the services of the state to TRY to do that.
Let’s all pay taxes according to that framework, if some of us are going to.
Robert said:
To which RonF replied:
Ron, the reason it actually is understandable ties in to your confusion in the NRA thread about what the term ‘dog-whistle’ means.
A ‘dog-whistle,’ in politics, is “political messaging employing coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has an additional, different or more specific resonance for a targeted subgroup.”
It’s a way to say racist (or sexist, etc) things in a way that will not appear openly racist (or etc). Racists will know what you mean, and generally your targets will know what you mean, but you preserve deniability: “I don’t know why everyone’s calling me racist! I’m anti-crime! I just think that we need to have fewer of those young men in baggy pants and hooded sweatshirts infesting our streets listening to their rap music. I never said it’s because they’re black.”
A number of conservatives I know, like you, have a problem with the idea that the subtext of these dog-whistles ought to be addressed, rather than just addressing the explicit statement itself. They (and you, I think …. correct me if I’m wrong) view it as a way to smear a statement or argument as racist unfairly.
The problem is that we have an actual recording of Lee Atwater, a top Republican strategist, saying, in effect, “Hey, you know what would be a great way to propose racist policies and not get dinged for it? Let’s hide them behind a wall of plausible deniability.”
Additionally, even well before that, the voting restrictions of the post-reconstruction south didn’t generally make reference to race … it was stuff like a ‘literacy test,’ you had to pass, but that you could be exempted from if your grandfather was a citizen … which, of course your grandfather wouldn’t be, if he was a slave.
So we’re in the situation where there’s:
1) A strong and undeniable historic use of taking rhetoric and policies that are facially non-racist and putting them to racist ends.
2) A broad perception among racial minorities that Republican rhetoric and policies have a strong racial element.
3) An actual recording of a top Republican strategist saying “Hey, this is what we’re doing, and what we have been doing.”
In that situation, why on earth wouldn’t it be understandable to suspect facially non-racist critiques of having a racist subtext? In order to do that, we’d have to ignore common sense, history, and the words of an actual Republican political strategist giving us the ‘inside view’.
I think it’s unreasonable to ask anyone to do that.
—Myca
It’s entirely understandable (fascinating Atwater quote!) But:
Lee has many positions which are facially neutral and which are actually motivated by racism.
Lee also has Position X which is facially neutral and which is not motivated by racism.
You make a good point: just because Lee says “it’s not racist!” doesn’t make it true, by any means.
But what of the other side? If you can’t go by the face of it and you go by motivation, then how is Lee supposed to uphold Position X? he can’t say “it’s not racist,” because you don’t believe him. He can’t say “it’s facially neutral” because you will rightfully point out that this doesn’t matter. Then what?
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for hypothetical Lee, but in practice it really does seem to matter. After all, treating Lee differently when he is/isn’t racist is one of the main ways that we can try to control and inhibit Lee’s racism, right? how do you tell which is which?
I think that there are a couple of answers. Some for Republicans and some for everyone else.
One of them has to do with the Republican Party rebuilding the trust of racial minorities by confronting the more obvious and egregious examples of racism within their party. If they gave a tinker’s damn about whether or not they were perceived to be racist, for example, every Republican in America would be jumping up and down and howling about the Virginia electoral vote redistribution scheme which overvalues rural (white) voters and undervalues urban (black) ones … which they passed on MLK day.
Another strategy is to actually stop doing things which disproportionately affect minorities, even if it’s facially neutral. Robert, for example, could probably give up his “we need to make it harder to vote” rhetoric, when mostly it’s harder to vote for poor people, old people, and racial minorities.
For everyone else, I think you just have to evaluate the position yourself. Listen to their arguments. Consider the evidence. Make the call. Sometimes this means that you’ll call things racist that aren’t. Sometimes it means you’ll call things non-racist that are. Nobody’s perfect at evaluating this stuff.
Largely, though, I’d take the opinions of the racial minorities themselves over the opinions of me, you, Ron, or Robert. Skin in the game matters, and being able to make the right call has much more of an effect on their lives than it ever will on mine. That doesn’t mean that you just always take what “the black guy you work with” said as gospel, but it does mean that if there are a whole lot of black people saying “this is some racist stuff right here” and a few white conservatives saying, “no, no, it’s perfectly fine,” then, well, it’s probably some racist stuff.
—Myca
Or, as John Holbo put it:
Indeed.
—Myca
“build a time machine, go back in time and kill Lee Atwater as a child”
I was going to do this, but I was stopped by an unlikely pair: Time Traveling Future Resurrected Martin Luther King, and Time Traveling Future Resurrected Robert E. Lee.
They explained that after the Temporal Racism Wars nearly destroyed the universe, all of the major figures in racial history got together and had a huge conference. There was a lot of drinking, several dozen grudge sports matches where the refs looked the other way when people got too rough, and a list of panels and symposia and classes and imaging circles and awakenings so long and boring that everyone agreed, in the interest of getting out of the third Sunday in a row spent hearing about feelings and marginalizations, to stop being racist altogether. Universal harmony was achieved. It was pretty awesome.
Unfortunately the universe was still nearly destroyed, so they realized they had to undo the Temporal Racism Wars and ensure that each time period dealt with the issues in their own way and at their own pace, without people from different points in the timeline (and from some alternate timelines) coming in and blowing up Fort Sumter or murdering Lincoln or taking out Hitler as a young boy or whatever. They teamed up, usually with formerly-opposed figures in a pairing, and went around shutting down time travelers, like myself, so that the Temporal Racism Wars wouldn’t happen.
Long story short, no murdering when you time travel. Sorry. You don’t want to make MLK and General Lee mad. They will straight up beat your ass.
Eesh. Shit, man, I’m so sorry. Killing baby Lee Atwater was the easy way out. Absent that, if Republicans don’t want to be dismissed as racist shits, they’ll actually need to work to change it.
Trust me, time-traveling baby-murder is a lot easier.
—Myca
It balances out. They had me take a class at the Learning Annex (“it’s not that we don’t trust you to do the reading, it’s just more efficient and there are a lot of us who need the teaching job”), and there were a lot of Democrats bummed about not being able to go back and undo the Japanese internment and the Klan, too.
And yet, the large majority of Asian-Americans and African-American voters, vote for Democrats. It’s almost as if they can tell the difference between actual, current, ongoing, unrepentant racism, and historic racism that really has nothing at all to do with a parties current positions.
Or, more realistically, maybe they’re just choosing the lesser of two racist evils.
Or possibly they haven’t had it drummed into their heads the way Republican=Racist has been. I recall having a vehement argument on the Obielist, maybe ten years ago, in which I had to fight an extremely uphill battle to persuade *extremely educated* people, including at least one historian, that the Democratic party was responsible for Japanese internment. People resisted the notion like they would resist broiling babies for Sunday brunch. “Well, the President was a Democrat but the Congress was mixed.” No, Congress was solidly in the hands of the Democrats. “Well, OK, but the administration had lots of Republicans in it and they were on board.” No, the Republicans (like Hoover, in the one creditable act of his career) were pretty much opposed and fought it to the limited extent that they could. “Well, but the Supreme Court said it was OK and they…” No, they were mostly Democrat-appointed as it happened.
It was like pulling fucking teeth, and it’s one of the best-documented historical events out there. People don’t like to hear about the foulups of their own team, quite naturally, and it doesn’t take much colluding or conspiring to just decide not to talk about That Unpleasant Time.
Myca:
Do you oppose this because of it’s overall methodology or because of the particular way in which Congressional districts are apportioned in Virginia?
Sure. The time agency are jerks. We had to take the hard way and actually work to change it. And we lost the south for a generation. It sucked.
Now it’s your turn. Have fun with that.
—Myca
Myca,
I know this is hard to believe, but LBJ was wrong. Dems did not lose the South for a Generation. They lost it in (a generation and a half). Thats quite a difference.
In 1964 a generation was about 20 years. Below, the 33 Governors and Senators from the 11 former confederate states in 1974…1/2 a generation out.
George Wallace D
John Sparkman D
James Allen D
Dale Bumpers D
John L. McClellan D
J. William Fulbright D
Reubin Askew D
Lawton Chiles D
Richard Stone D
Jimmy Carter D
Sam Nunn D
Herman E. Talmadge D
Edwin W. Edwards D
Bennett Johnston, Jr. D
Russell B. Long D
James E. Holshouser, Jr. R
Jesse Helms R
Sam Ervin D
William Waller D
John C. Stennis D
James Eastland D
Winfield Dunn R
Bill Brock R
Howard Baker R
Dolph Briscoe D
Lloyd Bentsen D
John Tower R
John C. West D
Strom Thurmond R
Ernest Hollings D
Mills E. Godwin, Jr. R
Harry F. Byrd, Jr. I, but caucused with Dems
William L. Scott R
As you can see, Republicans held only 8 of the 33 positions.
Also, just FYI, the same metric but a full generation out (20yrs).
33 Governors and Senators from the 11 former Confederate states in 1984, around the time of the infamous Atwater quote.
[D] George Wallace
[D] Howell Heflin
[R] Jeremiah Denton
[D] Bill Clinton
[D] David H. Pryor
[D] Dale Bumpers
[D] Bob Graham
[D] Lawton Chiles
[R] Paula Hawkins
[D] Joe Frank Harris
[D] Sam Nunn
[R] Mack Mattingly
[D] Edwin W. Edwards
[D] Bennett Johnston, Jr.
[D] Russell B. Long
[D] William Allain
[D] John C. Stennis
[R] Thad Cochran
[D] James B. Hunt, Jr.
[R] Jesse Helms
[D] John P. East
[R] Lamar Alexander
[D] Jim Sasser
[R] Howard Baker
[D] Mark White
[D] Lloyd Bentsen
[R] John Tower
[D] Richard Riley
[R] Strom Thurmond
[D] Fritz Hollings
[D] Chuck Robb
[R] Paul S. Trible, Jr.
[R] John Warner
Only 1/3rd are Republican.
Manju – it’s a possibly apocryphal quote anyhow. Bill Moyers, who he supposedly said it to, reports it as:
—Myca
Robert said:
Or possibly they’re responding to events that postdate WW2. I mean, maybe, just maybe, some things have happened in the intervening 70 years.
Naw, it couldn’t be that. It’s probably spoooooky Democratic mind control rays! We tricked minority voters into thinking y’all are racists! Why, if they would only pay attention to the Republican party platform of 1865 and ignore everything since, they’d see who the real racists are!
That’s totally what I’d go with if I were you.
RonF said:
Both, really.
I think that there is a broad problem in the way congressional representation works in that it overvalues rural districts and the votes of rural voters as opposed to urban votes and voters. This isn’t unique to Virginia, by any means, but I think it’s a problem, and an undemocratic one. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that rural voters tend to be white, and minority voters tend to be urban.
In any case, I believe in one citizen, one vote, one value.
In America, some citizens should not be ‘more equal than others’.
The recent events in Virginia make this problem worse, both through a redistricting whose goal seems to have been specifically to reduce the representation of minorities (even beyond the general under-representation of urban voters) and through allocating electoral votes in presidential elections by those new new districts.
Now, personally, I think the electoral college is shit. I would love to see a national popular vote. One citizen, one vote! Until then, though, it’s unfair, and reasonably seen as a power-grab, to send only blue states or only red states into new electoral-vote-distribution-schemes.
We’re a purple country, and if California distributes its electoral votes 100% to a Democrat while Texas moves to a new scheme where their votes are split up by congressional district, it’s going to be a major handicap for Republicans. Turn it around, keep Texas solid while splitting up California, and it’s a major handicap for Democrats.
Now, luckily for both minority voters and democracy itself, it looks like the scheme may run afoul of the 1965 Voting Rights Act … which might be another way to tell when you’re doing something that people might perceive as racist.
—Myca
Myca, thanks for the quick acknowledgment of the facts. I’ve done this a few times and I don’t always get that.
Regardless of whether or not LBJ actually said it, the idea that Dems lost the South “for a generation” is a widely held belief. This is problematic.
If you take a look at the lists, you will see some of the vilest psychopathic maggots to ever infest the US Senate and Governor’s Mansions still there, long after LBJ expressed whatever he expressed.
Wallace, Heflin, Stennis, Hollings, Fulbright, Thurmond, Helms, etc..
Indeed, 8 (7 D’s and 1 R) who opposed the 1964cra were promoted into the Presidential Line of Succession post-64…and afak none of them had publicly repented for segregation by that time (including Byrd):
1. Richard Russell (D)
2. James Eastland (D)
3. John Stennis (D)
4. Jim Wright (D)
5. Robert Byrd (D)
6. Strom Thurmond (R)
7. Allen J. Ellender (D)
8. Carl Hayden (D)*
The Republican Southern Strategy exists. I don’t deny it. But I cannot see any consistent way to condemn that without acknowledging this. Democrats should stop using the “for a generation” meme not only because it’s false, but because it is racist.
*I add him for the more sophisticated out there. Even though he voted Y on the 64cra, he voted against cloture. (Cloture was more important than the final vote)
Sure. I think that part of the problem is that Every. Single. Time. someone tries to bring up “#racist thing Republicans did yesterday” the response is “#racist thing Democrats did 50 years ago.”
I have no problem acknowledging that the Democratic party has a long and racist history … but also, it’s a history that the party has worked pretty damn hard to make amends for. I don’t see the Republicans even starting that process.
Mid-century, the Democrat were attempting to be both the party of white racists and the party of racial minorities. That was obviously not tenable long-term, and it was that tension, partially, that pushed the Democrats to (haltingly) embrace civil rights. One of the things that worries me about the modern Republican party is that it has no such internal tension.
—Myca
Actually, the Virginia case is a great example of another problem the Republicans face in terms of being perceived as racist.
I think a reasonable argument can be made that the Republican redistricting isn’t motivated by any sort of racial animus, but by a desire to increase their political power, and a recognition that racial minorities vote Democratic.
Thus, if you reduce the power and influence of racial minorities (either through redistricting, through voting restrictions, etc) it’s good for Republicans! And it’s not racist! It has nothing to do with their race at all! They’re just another Democratic constituency that needs sidelining!
No. Stop. That thinking, right-fucking-there, is what’s killing the Republican Party. Nobody buys it, nor should they. If the way you want to win is by making sure that minorities have less political power, even if you’re motivated by a desire to win rather than motivated by hate for brown people, what you’re doing is racist.
Like I said back in Comment #53, Republicans need to “stop doing things which disproportionately affect minorities, even if it’s facially neutral.”
Instead of trying to ‘game the refs,’ or look for loopholes in the rules, or redistrict to minimize minority representation, or change how electoral votes are distributed, just win the damn argument. Tell black people why voting for you and your party makes more sense. Tell them why they’ll do better under Republican policies than Democratic ones.
If you don’t have an plausible argument for that … well, yes, then that’s your first job.
—Myca
Well, if you say something that erases from history the “racist thing Democrats did 50 years ago”, then the response is appropriate.
In this case, you said that Dems lost the South for a generation. You linked to a piece that alludes to it. And its a very popular meme in modern day democratic circles.
But it s false, as the data plainly lays out. We can’t have a meaningful discussion about the Southern Strategy if we are working off false premises.
This sounds like a fair assessment of Barack Obama’s party, but the Atwater quote was from the 1980s, coming off the heals of Reagan’s infamous “States Rights” dogwhistle. So, I think we disagree on the timeline. Here’s one reason why.
During Reagan’s terms, Democrats chose 2 men who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act to be their leaders: House Speaker Jim Wright and Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. I’m quite sure the latter was an unrepentant segregationist at the time of his ascension. I’ve never heard the former repent but that doesn’t mean he didn’t.
I think its safe to say that Republicans welcoming Strom Thurmond with open arms ranks up there, along with Atwater’s quote and Reagan’s Neshoba moment, as the major datapoints in the Republican Southern Strategy. Fair enough.
But while its clear to me why embracing Strom is wrong, its unclear why continuing to embrace virtually all his fellow segregationists in the Senate and House is alright. (And yes, I am accurately claiming that virtually all the Democrats who voted against the 1964 Civil Rights Act remained Democrats…since I know its popular to claim otherwise).
I mean, look, if you want to get into the ‘gotcha’ nonsense on this, then I’ll say that the Democratic party clearly has lost the South for a generation, it’s just that that generation didn’t begin the instant LBJ signed the civil rights act. It began once most of the old Dixiecrats died off, and there was a new generation of racists, beholden only to the Republican party, to take their place.
Say … the mid 90’s? So mid 90’s to mid-2010’s – that’s 20 years. Care to bet it goes on a bit longer, just to make the generation really solid?
More to the point though, this is a stupid game to play. Let’s stop. There’s a topic on the table, and this isn’t it.
—Myca
I think that paying too much attention to personalities here and not much attention to actions is your failure. The Democratic Party that continued to contain southern white racists is also the Democratic party that passed the Civil Rights Act.
This is my last post on the history of it, since:
1) I’ve already acknowledged the Democratic Party’s racist past
2) You’ve already acknowledged that they’ve worked and sacrificed to overcome it.
3) Your continued monomania on this topic is being used as a way not to discuss the current political situation.
4) You seem to have nothing to contribute except sniping at the history of the Democratic Party.
Please prove me wrong on points 3 and 4.
—Myca
Myca:
How so? Here in Illinois we have a mix of a large urban center and some very rural areas. Our Congressional apportionment is run by the State’s legislature (the General Assembly) that is dominated in both houses by Democrats. Great pains have been taken by the map makers to arrange the districts so that the ones anywhere near Chicago encompass a fair number of suburban/rural voters while having a finger stuck into Chicago to pick enough Democratic voters to balance them out and make the whole district Democratic.
Here is an example. Districts 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 9 follow this pattern. There’s also district 4 (at the bottom, out of sequence), the poster child for racial gerrymandering. If the districts had been drawn to concentrate as many urban voters into isolated districts as possible and to concentrate as many suburban and downstate voters into their own districts you’d see a very different Dem:Rep ratio in the Illinois Congressional delegation – which would actually make more sense. If the purpose of a Congressman is to represent their constituents’ common interests – taking District 1 as an example – the farmers in Manhattan, Illinois and the city dwellers on 79th Street next to the Chicago Skyway haven’t got a whole lot of common ground on the issues of the day.
If you think that the people in Elwood think that Rep. Bobby Rush represents – or even knows – their concerns, or if (in District 2) the farmers in Union Hill figure that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. even knows who the heck they are and represents their needs, you don’t know much about Illinois. It would make a lot more sense to combine the two urban segments of those districts into one and the two rural segments of those district into another so that those farmers have someone who will actually represent their concerns, rather than someone who will ignore them and represent only the urban majority of their districts.
I’m certainly not familiar enough with Illinois politics to get into the ins and outs of the way districts are drawn there, and I’m not talking about representatives as much as I am Senators and electoral votes. I will say, though, that 1) of course both parties gerrymander, 2) no I don’t think it’s okay when Democrats do it, and 3) my preferred solution would be permanent bipartisan/nonpartisan commissions, made up of people who don’t worry about being elected, and thus don’t have anything personal to protect, to draw districts.
Anyway, what I was talking about was more nationwide. From a 2004 post by Andrew Gelman:
And in addition to violating ‘one-person, one-vote’ and apportioning electoral votes weirdly, this leads to some outcomes that I think both you and I can agree are sub-optimal … the ethanol subsidy, for example.
—Myca
Everyone, always, has something personal to protect. There are no exceptions. It is far better to have the ‘something’ be obvious, and transparent to the public, and remediable by the public – such as a House seat. Your permanent commission of ethereal saints will be selling its apportionments for seats at the best dinner parties, or sex with the studliest/babeliest lobbyists, or simple plain cash in a brown paper sack, you won’t know about it except on occasion, and you won’t be able to do anything about it the times that you do know.
You can’t route around human nature with process. Dyke it up, hem it in, mitigate it somewhat – sure. Escape it, no. Attempts to do so almost inevitably make the underlying problem – partisan bias, in this case – worse, as well as less fixable, by driving decisions and processes out of sight, underground.
The interstate disparity in electoral college votes is indeed weird, but it’s also by design and two centuries old, for the most part. It’s weird that we elect representatives on a geographical basis instead of by profession or economic class or something else more germane, too, but it isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
The interstate disparity in Senate seats is similarly ancient but not weird at all, or inaccessible in its reasoning to even casual study of American history; one body of the national legislature is more responsive to the public itself, the other body of the national legislature is more responsive to the states. There are European countries that have a facially similar federalist model, but the ‘states’ in those nations are in fact just administrative divisions; our states retain more sovereignty than that. The sovereign countries that made up the 13 colonies demanded, and got, permanent recognition of that independent political existence in the structure of the federal system.
The interstate disparity in allocation of Federal money is easy enough to fix. Get rid of the Federal money. Failing that, equalize the moneys spent in a state and the taxes paid there – but the impact on the social welfare programs that I assume you support will be brutal. And if that bothers you, then why bring the whole question up? If we can rob California to pay Florida on Medicare benefits, then we can surely rob New York to pay Texas for military bases (or whatever, I don’t actually know offhand the winners and losers in the who-can-rob-their-neighbor-best game.)
Sure. I understand perfectly well the history and evolution of this state of affairs, but I think it’s a bad state of affairs, dating from a time when neither women nor racial minorities could vote, and a citizen’s identity as a Virginian was likely to be more personally important than his identity as an American.
Thankfully, I think we’ve grown up a bit as a nation since then.
There isn’t an easy at-hand method of fixing the urban/rural political representation disparity when it comes to Senators. I don’t expect it to change, of course, but I think it’s important to recognize how very, very undemocratic it is. And it is.
As far as electoral votes go, moving to a national popular vote system has a lot to recommend it. One way of doing this is the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which is just about 1/2 way to success.
—Myca
I think it’s a difficult case to make, at best, that the maturity of a nation is tied intimately, or even broadly, to the specific power distribution of a complex federalist state.
There are many bad states of affairs (“bad” being of course a subjective term) that date from periods in time when conditions were different, possibly highly objectionable. That is irrelevant to the question of whether, or how, to remediate the “bad” state of affairs; “what do we do now” must look forward for justification, not backwards to excuse our lack of continuity.
I don’t think it’s a very difficult case to make that the maturity of a democracy is related to both how universal and how equal the franchise is.
—Myca
I misunderstood what you were referencing. NVM.
In any case, the Republican vote-rigging scheme was just killed by the
Virginia Senate Elections Committee.
So what do we have here?
We have the Republican party
1) engaging in an undemocratic power-grab, which
2) unfairly impacted minorities,
3) was probably illegal,
4) because it violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and
5) couldn’t get past the Virginia Senate Elections Committee anyway.
All this did … ALL THIS DID … was to contribute to the view of you guys as racists who will cheat to win when they can’t win fairly. This hurt you some and profited you nothing.
Wouldn’t it just have been easier to spend this same energy on figuring out how to actually appeal to minority voters?
—Myca
BTW, the section of the VRA this would have run afoul of is:
Section 5 is currently being challenged by Republicans, one would assume because they’d like to be able to make voting changes with a retrogressive effect on minority voters.
Which, I mean … guys … come on.
—Myca