Go to: http://www.urban.org…
Download the ENTIRE study if you wish.
There appear to be two views on taxation:
1. The “no new taxes” view: “What is mine, is mine. If you don’t have enough to meet your needs, I don’t care. It is your own fault; I believe in survival of the fittest.”
2. We will be judged as a society by how the strong care for the weak. My religion says: [take your pick: 1) Christianiy: “What you do for the least of these, you do for ME”; 2) Buddhism “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you”; 3: Judiasm, “The more I have, the higher my duty to care for my brother”; 4) Zoroastrianism: “Life is a battle between the dark and the light. Whenever I give of my substance, or assist the less fortunate, I serve the light”…I could go on. Take your pick.
A very conservative judge, who also fought in the Civil War, and was wounded several times, after seeing the absolute best and worst humanity had to offer, stated that [and I paraphrase] taxes are how a society pays for civilization . Thank you Judge Oliver Wendel Holmes. And, I assure you, Wendel Holmes was no “leftie” and an upstanding supporter of capitalism.
Some capitalists were also philanthropists and believed that the more they acquired and acheived, the more they owed to society – others robber barons who practiced unbridled conspicuous consumption.
Again, take your pick.
Sorry! Not sure how to edit and fix that headline. If one of you knows how to, could you send me an e-mail at Amberpaw@aol.com and tell me?
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This conversation & occasional typos, this post helps explaint why calling our state “taxachusetts” is as inaccurate as it is mean-spirited.
on the left hand side of the screen. When you go the post you want to make edits to “edit diary” will be below the date when you made the post. Click on that and you can make your edits.
That was really helpful. I am appreciative of how everyone has helped and is helping me learn the technicalities.
I think more appropriate portrayal is “I know better what to do with my money then some bureaucrat.”
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As you have gone on to say, “some capitalists were also philanthropists.” Many conservatives believe in helping others, they just disagree with liberals about the mechanism of that help. We believe in personal contributions to charities not charitable deeds through taxation. And not just to get tax brakes. My wife and I, both conservatives, participate in things like Habitat for Humanity, local environmental cleanup efforts, Toys for Tots, local humane society, etc. If taxes were reduced we would be able to more of these things. I am by no means saying that if we got a 50% reduction in our taxes we would give it all to charity, but a large portion would go there. And we don’t do these things just to get the tax break, many of the things we do aren’t tax deductible.
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I am not saying everyone thinks this way but they would unknowingly act in ways that would help others. Other additional money received from a tax break would be spent on services, such as going out to dinner, home improvements, etc. and on products, such as plasma TVs, PS3, etc. This would also be good for people at lower income levels because it would create jobs. This is essentially the theory behind supply-side economics.
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I would say the “survival of the fittest” part of your characterization is mostly correct. Just as people have the right to succeed based on the merits of their own actions, they have the right to fail. Sure we should have some safety nets, but, IMHO, today’s society has way to many that can go on way to long. That is why some people have started calling these programs “entitlements” rather than welfare, safety net, etc. This goes back to the old adage, “If you give a man a fish they will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish they can eat for a life time.” That’s why conservatives will generally support career retraining programs, job skill development programs, and student loans and subsides over things like welfare. I don’t want to give a person a check to stay home; I want to give them the ability to earn a pay check for working.
I agree with JK wholeheartedly.
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I’ve been giving to charities out of my personal paycheck since I was 16. What JK says isn’t just opinion, it’s statistical fact.
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My mom has been sponsoring an African kid for years now. Last year his mom died giving birth, he has no father…sounds to me like my mom is making more of a difference with her 25 cents a day or whatever it is than all the red tape her income taxes pay for.
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This post should be “#2 per capita income, #[] donating to charity” and the post should critical of why we aren’t #1. Being #1 of taxing income is nothing to be proud of, but if we voluntarily give more than the rest of the country, that would speak choruses of the quality of people we have here.
to feed the poor, care for the sick & elderly, and try to eradicate poverty? I believe that private philanthropy and NGOs absolutely have a role, but I also believe the government has a role. It’s possible to support both.
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The month of Hurricane Katrina, for instance, massive amounts of charitable contributions that normally went to local efforts might instead go to help those people. Helping those people is a very good thing, but then what happens to the folks at the local food bank where the need is the same but contributions have plummeted because so many local people want to send their donations elsewhere? What do we do about people and issues that need help but may not attract private donations?
Q. How many libertarians does it take to stop a Nazi invasion?
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A. None. Market forces will take care of it.
…really is.
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Fascism (which included the Nazis) was combination of corporatism/capitalism and government run amok, with more than a bit of Jew-bashing in there. The German (and not so German) industrialists probably thought that they could control Hitler, but eventually it got to a point at which they couldn’t. There was an interesting long monograph on appeasement (Hitler vs. others) which was an interesting read; I’ll try find the link to it if anyone is interested.
Libertarianism is actually utopian in its instincts. We could imagine a parody of a Libertarian argument showing that after the Nazi invasion, the inefficiencies of Nazism would eventually pull it down due to plain economic force. Sure, this would take decades and unnecessary deaths, but the libertarian view seems to be happiest in the limit, as time goes to infinity.
Or perhaps dystopian, depending on one’s point of view.
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Including socialism, (American) liberalism, or progressivism.
Unlike liberalism (FDR) or conservativism (RR), Libertarians haven’t ever been popular enough anywhere as far as I know to win control of a government. It’s a little like Trotskyism’s demand for total world revolution.
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We can at least debate Social Security. It exists.
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I had Mr. Bueller in mind when I clicked “Post,” and was wondering if he had a soapy mohawk in that scene (I think no).
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Another movie that KBusch must see.
America’s only true political philosopher.
First off, al libertarians that I’ve ever heard of believe in military as a legitimate function of government. Libertarians are not anarchists, you know.
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Secondly, Nazis were Nationalist Socialists.
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Have a nice day.
…with completely contradictory philosophies that I have determined that libertarianism is whatever anyone wants it to be.
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I was once accused of being a left libertarian by Justin Raimondo, yes, he of antiwar.com and the von Mises Institute, because I spoke positively about a policy espoused by the Libertarian Party. It was from Raimondo that I learned that there are right libertarians who followed the libertarianism of Murray Rothbard, natural law libertarians. It made no sense to me, but Raimondo (this was in a discussion of same-sex marriage) wrote that gays should not be permitted to marry because it was not in their nature (hence “natural law”) to marry. I’m sorry, but that is stupid.
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Oh, and that was only shortly after a self-styled libertarian wrote on another web site that cities and towns should not maintain road systems, but that drivers should be required to negotiate with the abutters (who would own and maintain the roads) for the right to drive on them.
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A number of years ago, I opined that, instead of having municipal fire departments, people should contract with their insurance companies to provide fire extinguishing services. That struck me as being very libertarian–no government involved, just private individuals contracting for their own services. Little did I know–and I found this out later–but that had been the case in more than a few American cities. The problem arose that, when more than a couple of buildings were aflame, the various fire squads dispatched by the various insurance companies would arrive on the scene, and then argue among themselves as to who was responsible to put out what. The buildings would burn instead of the fires being put out. And that’s why we have municipal fire departments.
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I’m sorry, but libertarianism might be nice in theory–except that nobody can agree on what the theory is. Some of it has been tried, and been shown to pretty much fail. And those are two reasons why I have little use for libertarians.
…Secondly, Nazis were Nationalist Socialists.
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Don’t give too much credence to the name. The Nazi party was started before Hitler joined, and before he joined, they actually did have a 25 point mainly socialist platform. After Hitler joined and took over the party–keeping the name for public relations purposes–he quickly jettisoned the 25 point socialist platform The Nazi party was definitely not socialist under Hitler.
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Remember Niemoeller’s Rede: first they came for the trade unionists…. That is definitely not socialist.
Socialists In Name Only? 😉
I’m reminded of how animal rights people are very concerned about cute animals (bunny rabbits, doggies, kitty cats, etc.) but worms, snakes, molluscs, and moles don’t often make their list.
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Similarly, the Katrina example. There are “innocent” victims and victims who are being “punished”. The latter do not attract sympathy or charity. Someone who is wrecked by abusing his credit card we can let starve; someone washed out unexpectedly by a hurricane appears on a poster.
…Katrina’s damage to New Orleans in many was a man-made disaster. I’m not just referring to the aftermath, but the primary problems were multi-faceted. One, of course, the dikes around Lake Pontchartrain, which were insufficient to hold back the water from the lake.
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Two, the sections of the city that were flooded were sinking, largely because of environmental mismanagement all up and down the Mississippi River–the channalization of the River and the pumping out of the acquifers. Something like Venice writ large.
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Three, the developments on what used to be the watershed next to the coastline, which might have sheltered the city from some of the impact of the storm.
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It may have been that Katrina might have caused significant damage anyway. (Remember Hurricane Camille in 1969?) But maybe not the flooding that it did cause in the city.
The correct process is a combination of both, private philanthropy and government assistance programs, IMHO. The problem is which programs to fund.
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Do you try to eradicate poverty by giving someone a place to live rent free and food or do you teach them a marketable skill while giving them temporary assistance for food and shelter?
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The problem with your Katrina example is a very real one and I don’t have any easy solutions for that. My wife and I recognized this and gave our contributions to local charities and the Red Cross instead of the Katrina relief funds. One of the local animal shelters we work with had a big problem with this. A lot of animal lovers were giving money to the various funds for homeless pets from Katrina. They had a real hard time for about 3 months following Katrina.
Odd logic here: Absolutely not followed by a commented with IMHO appended.
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Are you absolutely sure or not?
The phrase “Absolutely not” was in response to sharonmg’s question,
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I then went on to further describe my position with this line,
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Hope that is clear enough for you.
“In my humble opinion” is generally only used to imply uncertainty. The term implies a high level of subjectivity.
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The phrase “absolutely not” implies a complete lack of certainty. So you made an assertion, one for which I might — in your style — demand proof, that is absolutely true but only “in your humble opinion.”
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I am completely frustrated in responding to you because nothing I write has any effect on your response. Your thinking here, and in other responses, is completely dismissive.
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Even if you disagreed with me, a less dismissive approach might begin with “Oh! I see how you could have read it that way, but I meant this: [fill in blank]”
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Might I add that the latter skill is an essential component for a healthy marriage?
I have looked back at this thread and I have been unneededly dismissive, short and rude with you. I have let our previous disagreements taint my responses on this and some of other subjects. To this I apologize.
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All I can offer as an explanation for this action is that as one of the few conservatives who try and have meaningful conversations on this blog (and not just be bomb throwers like some others) I often feel that I am being attacked from all sides. Sometimes this frustrates me and I lash out. Again, I apologize and will try harder to avoid this in the future.
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So, let me take a more earnest approach at clarifying my previous point.
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I do not think that free market capitalism only can provide for the social welfare that our society should provide. I will leave for a different day the discussion of what those programs should be.
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I used the term “absolutely not” in the title to strongly convey that opinion in response to a question from another poster. In this case, and in others in our previous discussions, I used “IMHO” as a way to try and convey some modesty that this is based on my personal opinions and beliefs. Perhaps I have been over using this and will try and reduce its’ use in the future.
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As far as the last part of your post regarding marriage, nagh, my wife long ago learned this was one of faults and has learned to love it. Or so she says at least.
is downright upright.
How about a view like this:
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As an individual I should be charitable and therefore I am; however I dont have the right to force other people into my view of charity, nor do I have the right to take their money away to do my charitable bidding.
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Interesting that you base your support of #2 on religion, I wouldn’t think that would be very popular around these parts…
…is that these religious entities are recognizing a choice a person makes to help someone. Taxes aren’t really a choice. Jumping in front of someone to take a bullet for them is a lot different than someone shoving me in front of them to take a bullet. Sure, the same end was met, but were the means correct? Thus, the base of every tax argument is once again unearthed hahahaha.
Since you have the option to campaign on behlaf of, donate to, and vote for Club-for-Growth backed, Cato endorsed, anti-tax candidates, can you say that paying taxes isn’t a choice? Locke had the idea that if you were displeased with the social contract, simply leaving was a viable option; ignoring whether this was the case even in his time, the fact is that save for international waters, there is no place on earth where you wouldn’t be within the jurisdiction of some government/society; I’m not going to make the argument that freedom of movement renders your paying taxes a living choice. I think it would be unfair, and somewhat dishonest, to try to argue that because you havn’t fled to the Atlantic or a failed state like Somalia, that you’ve chosen to fund the government. However, WE, as a society, have decided that individuals have a right to free speech, political participation, freedom of assembly, and, given certain criteria, a right to vote, as well as an obligation to pay certain taxes. Given your ample tools to rectify perceived injustice, to influence conventional wisdom and government policy, are you really able to say you don’t choose to pay taxes? This argument is likely incited more by umbrage at those who compare the imposition of the IRS to slavery than by anything yet said here.
In that case…no…no, I do not have a choice. I am forced to pay taxes.
isn’t the same thing as not having one.
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Still, as a fellow American, I invite you to stay here and work for the change you’d like to see in America. The “you don’t like it, you can leave” types on all sides ain’t cool.
I thought I was very clear in saying “If you don’t like it, leave” was NOT an honest argument. Apparently I’m even less articulate than I thought. I was simply saying since you have the ability to affect change, can you say you are not responsible for the status quo? If you decide to stay in the US to affect change, aren’t you choosing to endure the current regime to maintain your right to change it? You can argue the means available to you, in this time and place, are inadequate to affect your desired ends; you still have chosen to experiment with the available means despite the inherent costs.
As I write this three Republicans (!) and no Democrats or progressives have commented. I think that represents our current political moment as much as anything:
Just to follow up on Judge Holmes: We hardly ever hear of anyone connecting their patriotism to their paying taxes. We hear people connecting their patriotism to all sorts of things — some of them not very patriotic. (Demonizing fellow citizens for example is not exactly patriotic.)
do not classify me as a Republican.
in the Not Republican Party. Some seem to prefer callings DINOs, but I prefer NRP.
the limited appeal of a blog dedicated to holding progressives down so conservative passers-by can more easily screw them.
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I mean, this is something even Judy and Mickey never thought of:
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“I know! We’ll start a blog where conservatives can post totally unsubstantiated talking points and completely random bloviations overheard at Good Times Emporium in Somerville. Then, progressive can have the burden of responding to each one with twenty links and hours of painstaking research!”
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“Great idea! My dad has a server we can use!”
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“OK, I’ll start! I’ll just write that the earth is flat! Then you can scour the relevant academic literature!”
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It’ll be big, I tell ya.
that I enjoy your comments more than just about anyone’s on this site. Half the time I find myself thinking yeah, what he said and having only to type a “6” and click. At any rate, keep on keepin’ on.
your appreciation.
Please spare us the self-righteous victimization theme. If you have a reasoned argument to make — which you certainly are capable of — please make it. Otherwise, with respect, it just comes off as feeble whining.
I used to have a really old great aunt who used to pretend not to understand what people were saying, when she didn’t want to understand what they were saying.
Republicans want to spend money (mostly on themselves) that they don’t have (or won’t tax themselves for), and leave the bill to their children and grandchildren and your’s (not mine, since I don’t have any*).
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One, perhaps the reason that Democrats are not weighing in here is that they have heard it all before from the anti-taxers. I certainly have. After a while, it becomes boring. Tax policy is a complicated matter, a mix of a myriad variety of taxes (income, excise, property, sales, import duties, this, that, and the other) and fees for this, that and the other. The institutes that you’ve mentioned (yes, I’ve heard of the Institute for Policy Studies, and a myriad number of other institutes for this, that, and the other) have become little more than advertisers for policies for this, that, and the other. Sometimes you get a gem of a report from them, but rarely. The bottom line is that Republicans want to spend money, that they don’t have, on themselves, and send the bill to their grandchildren. Fine with me. Buy Euros, learn a foreign language, and emigrate. We have done the first two, and we’re preparing to do the last. The American Empire is foundering on the shores of Iraq. And Afghanistan. It’s spending money that it doesn’t have, supplied by the Chinese.
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Two, perhaps liberals generally spend too much time trying to understand what other people believe (not think, believe, there is a difference) is that liberals actually think (well, sometimes, at least), and Republico-conservatives believe. There’s a difference.
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Three, I will remind you of what the definition of “patriot.”
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PATRIOT, n.
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One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors
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Parse it very carefully. It is very concise, yet very succinct. And, sadly, very true.
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It was from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Copies of it are all over the Internet–it dates from 1906 or so. It’s very funny, yet quite revealing.
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*As I said, I don’t have any children, and won’t have any grandchildren. So I don’t really particularly care that they are doing what I have described in the paragraph above. As far as I’m concerned, party on!. I guess I’m a perfect conservative, revelling in the present and not particularly caring about the future. /sarcasm.
(That’s Mr.)
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I readily agree that arguing with the anti-taxers becomes extremely boring. What’s worse, it’s counter-productive.
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Do you have a Field Guide to Liberal Tax Policy Institutes?
P.S. Hey! I read Ambrose Bierce’s dictionary when I was a teenager; hopefully I’m less cynical.
P.P.S. As for foreign languages, I suppose if I moved into a literary classic, I could live in Germany or Austria; if I moved into an opera, I could live in Italy; if the French were to restrict their interests to mathematics, I could live there. Alas, I’m stuck!
HEBREW, n.
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A male Jew, as distinguished from the Shebrew, an altogether superior creation.
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I picked myself up the floor, after having rolled there laughing. And I’m not even Jewish. It was funny as heck.
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No, I’m not familiar with the field guide that you mentioned.
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I’m not particularly interested in matters regarding the minutiae of current “revenue enhancement” policy, largely because it will be what it will be, and there isn’t a lot to be learned from it. Economics isn’t a science, and, for every economist that you can find who says up is down, you can find another who says that down is up. Or sideways. They’re little more than spokespeople for the people who pay them to speak on their behalf.
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What I am interested in is takes on historical matters. As I mentioned elsewhere here, there was an interesting monograph published regarding appeasement of Hitler prior to WWII and the differences between those events and containing Saddam Hussein, that was really very intereting. It is matters like that (as well as my favorite, physics and chemistry) that I’m more interested in.
He saw death, war, devastation, mountains of amputated limbs…and was wounded many times.
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There is a reason that he wrote that Devils Dictionary. Recent scholarship indicates that his stories are set in and on the battlefields where he experienced live fire.
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That all being said, I repeated, taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. Oliver Wendel Holmes knew that and he was a capitalist to the core. Inadequate attention to infrastructure after a while will mean no profits, and this country falling further and further behind.
gave Mike Huckabee’s governorship a D overall because of his tax policy.
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Why?
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He raised five taxes over his decade in power……………………………..and lowered 95.
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I don’t like the Cato Institute.
but the number of taxes raised and lowered isn’t relevant. The total value and who bears the burden of those tax changes is relevant.
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Address the merits of their arguments first. There is always time to oversimplify, label and demonize.
I am fond of using the standard terminology that is used for ideology. As you admit downthread, your definition of liberal differs from mine. I’d go farther: say it is a completely non-standard definition which denies the existence of close-minded liberals and open-minded conservatives. (Peter Porcupine beware!)
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There has been a developing narrative since the 2000 election about what it means to be liberal, what constitutes a liberal world view, and what liberals need to do to win. There’s a lot of material there, and, in my comments, I assume most other folks reading this web log are familiar with it.
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If these terms don’t mean anything to you, then you obviously have missed all that history. It must have passed you by as a noisy meaningless haze and Daily Kos must indeed seem like a viper’s nest of lunatics to you.
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That would explain your aversion to it and other sites.
It passed a lot of other people as well.
I also linked and published a bit of Abraham Maslow’s work on my page as part of what I understand liberalism to mean.
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That is, to promote health by promoting security.
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The “hierarchy of needs” and the study of healthy people provide real direction and a way to look at current and future programs and monetary choices from a perspective of abundance, hope, and progress, as opposed to what, to me, has become thinly disguised social darwinism on the right.
To liberal Christians, the notion of the strong caring for the weak has tremendous appeal. This is not a universal view, however. The conservative view often includes a notion that competition is bracing and promotes virtue. Strength, to them, often has a moral dimension. Further, conservatives tend not to think that helping the weak is a government function. I have read more than one survey that shows, for example, that conservatives tend to make more contributions to charity than liberals.
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However, I think there are liberals who do not view the government as a sort of gigantic Soup Kitchen funded by taxes. (Alas, we do need some gigantic soup kitchens.) In addition to making us safe against foreign enemies, government is also supposed to
We might even say that just as we don’t want to share a border with a failed state, we individually do not want to live next door to failed lives.
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We also need our own treasury of anecdotes. Did you hear or see Al Franken’s video announcement that he is running against the vile Norm Coleman? He has an extended anecdote about how government programs enabled his wife’s family to survive the death of what would have been his father-in-law. We rarely, if ever, hear anecdotes like that. People do not connect the highway system, the sewage system, or the drug safety system with taxes. Obviously, there are stories to be told here and, if we are going to wrest back the national dialog from the conservative terrain onto which it has drifted, we need to find them and tell them.
that government programs have a time and a place. I just think that the scale of the programs can get out of hand and breed a culture that is so aware of the safety net that they do not fear failure because there will be something there to catch them. I work hard because I’m afraid of failure. I’m afraid that someday I’ll have kids and I’ll be up at night worrying about how I’m going to feed them, so I work hard to make sure my future is one that allows me to never worry about that.
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I know that if I am in such a position and disaster struck, the government would help, but we should never allow a program that would allow the young and other people who are finding their place in society to become decadent to the prospect of failure. If the safety net is too strong, too big, you run the chance of spawning another class, below the middle class, barely above the lower class. This is not something we want.
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Have good programs to help people who need help, but let people keep their money and do what they will with it. Don’t breed a generation that’s pissed about paying taxes; breed a generation that’s proud to donate to charities.
These are properly built, maintained, monitored, staffed – collectively. Collective responsibility once ensured a solid infrastructure – today we are surrounded by decaying roads, crumbling dams, and ancient and delapidated schools and courts – think about it. If we all keep as much as possible, rather than seeking to collectively care for our Commonwealth, we will all be poorer, and our parks, dams, roads, & schools will decay. Our children will not thank us when what they inherit is a broken Commonwealth of empty hulks that were once schools, closed and abandoned parks, and flooded towns where dams, embankments, and levees all failed for lack of attention.
But I think it’s no question the people who are responsible for infrastructure sometimes put our tax money in a big hole and then defecate into the hole. Yes, I am referring to over a decade of Republican leadership in the corner office and democratic legislature funding it.
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Nobody wants to pay for another big dig, but the government isn’t giving me a lot of cause to suggest they wouldn’t do it again.
Of course bridges and roads and other vital infrastructure are in poor repair. The problem is that many don’t have any particular confidence that if the tax bill doubles or triples, that roads and bridges will be in any better shape at all.
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Instead, we suspect that some legislator’s brother in law will get a nice raise, and the bridges will decay anyway.
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I have personally never been against taxes, or new taxes, per se. I do think that the one proposing the taxes has the responsibility to cane the beauracracy in order to reduce as much as possible the gross inefficiency that is necessarily a part of government spending, before one has the credibility to ask for more. Clinton did this, and I wish Patrick would have too.
Punishment, direct or indirect, is what keeps you movitvated as in your statement I work hard because I’m afraid of failure. Liberal values are pretty different: we want people to be self-motivated and, not just to succeed, but to excel.
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Note though that Maslow’s work, as quoted by AmberPaw, suggests that there’s a lot to the liberal view.
the long lines in in supermarkets and liquor stores on “check day” every 3rd of the month.
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Don’t see a lot of programs working to get many of those people “self-motivated” other than to go figure out the next program they can take advantage of.
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Sure, there are some who need it.. but I could show you many who are living “on the dole” (this also includes government hack jobs)… and while I continue to see that, I’m going to continue to fight any tax increase I hear of.
As I said elsewhere on this thread, government programs are by their nature big and inefficient. There are some things that are so worth doing that it is worth accepting the inefficiency.
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Note, too, how unevenly this rule is applied: Iraqi War proponents, many of them fiscal conservatives, have raised never a peep — and their Congress, never an investigation — into the huge inefficiencies of the Iraq War and reconstruction. These inefficiencies dwarf the extra school administrators in, say, Randolph, MA.
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The solution to this problem is better administration of public programs, more sunlight, more citizen involvement. Our society does not run well when its running and maintenance is the responsibility of Other People.
What percentage of people who receive aid are “on the dole”, in a negative sense? Can you estimate it for me?
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If the number is 50%, then I agree with you, we have a problem. But I suspect that the number is probably a lot smaller. Ideally, it should be zero, but a small percentage of people abusing the system is not reason alone to eliminate the system entirely. If that was the case then we should close the roads because people speed.
….but I could show you many who are living “on the dole”
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Please show me. Because in my direct experience having worked with people who were living on Govt. assistance is that the greedy and lazy welfare lifers who are pleased as punch to live off the govt. rather than work for a better living in mostly a myth. Sure there were the exceptions (and they were ususally substance abusers) but for the very large part people were thrilled not to need that check anymore.
Where are you getting that from, I’m just wondering. The Republican and Democratic parties are so sprawling, there doesn’t seem any core of values that either party holds. So my question is: who exactly are these “liberals” you claim to speak for, and on what basis do you personally speak for them.
Thank you KBusch for jumping in.
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I think the very fact that those two choices are put forward as the range of possibility gives way too much credence to the right-wing way of looking at things.
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Taxes are not about “being nice to life’s losers”, so to speak. They’re about creating an environment in which a decent standard of living is possible for the vast majority of people. Good old Invisible Hand doesn’t actually solve all problems for everyone. Certainly not, given the interdependent economic system we all live under these days.
While JK is correct that there are more than two views on taxation and that the “no new taxes” formulation doesn’t apply to all conservatives, I do think there is one underlying difference between left- and right-wing views of taxation and the welfare state that I’ve noticed.
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Liberals tend to emphasize that people are in the social/economic position that they are in mainly because of luck (i.e. being born in a poor family rather than a rich one), and less because of their own “hard work”. Conservatives place more emphasis on the “hard work” thesis and less on luck.
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Obviously now I think the luck idea is more accurate, but back when I was a conservative/libertarian I had the opposite view. Anyway, this is what I think gets to the main difference between liberal and conservative economic policy.
I always think of the Netherlands when I think about this — liberal, prosperous, and hard-working.
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Liberal programs, well-run, should aim at maximizing everyone’s contribution to society. Unfortunately, to achieve that, a lot of times lots of people need help. State intervention is less like a delicate surgical tool than like a big sloppy mop: it can clean some stuff up, but it’s not too efficient and it’s easily misused.
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Using the tired fish analogy, it is of course not enough just to give Pat a fish; it is not even enough to teach Pat how to fish. Pat won’t even pay attention in fishing class if Pat feels fishing is futile and won’t take it up later. Or if Pat hears voices in the head or has an abusive spouse, Pat is not going to be catching lots of trout.
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The conservative approach to all this is to punish Pat — directly or indirectly to elicit fishing, i.e., Pat won’t eat until Pat fishes, or Pat will be fined or won’t get an income tax deduction for not fishing. These are not always successful. (To conservatives, that doesn’t always matter provided it’s “moral”. Witness the counter-effective abstinence programs.)
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The liberal approach is to try to convince Pat that fishing will work, to cure the voices in the head, to provide protection from the abusive spouse, and most of all to make sure that the river is a safe place for trout. Doing all that stuff through government is work and it is inefficient work.
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Civic engagement could make it better.
Abraham Maslow studied a culture that involved both fishing and farming. He noted greater resilience among the fisher-folk, and ultimately wrote a ground breaking book, Toward a Psychology of being:
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http://www.panarchy….
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In this book, and his subsequent work, he choose to study the healtiest and most functional folk he could find. He developed what is called “a hierarchy of need”.
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blockquote>So far as motivational status is concerned, healthy people have sufficiently gratified their basic needs for safety, belongingness, love, respect and self-esteem so that they are motivated primarily by trends to self-actualization (defined as ongoing actualization of potentials, capacities and talents, as fulfillment of mission (or call, fate, destiny, or vocation), as a fuller knowledge of, and acceptance of, the person’s own intrinsic nature, as an unceasing trend toward unity, integration or synergy within the person). These healthy people are there defined by describing their clinically observed characteristics. These are:
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Anotherwards, those who live in fear, are starving, and have stable communities are more productive.
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The basic functions of government should be safety, which includes not just police but safe roads, dams, bridges, schools; production and provision of sufficient food for all, no matter what; and stable communities for the nurturance of children and care of the ill. Taxes are how we do that, and I remember very well how proud my parents always were to pay their fair share.
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The inherent streak of meanness that says the unfortunate deserve misfortune, let them suffer, and the fortunate deserve good fortune, put them on a pedestal is inherently mistaken.
I did not do the block quote right, and there are a number of errors in that post of 20:13:59 above. How do I edit a reply post? AAArgh. Anyway, I got it written right in the Maslow post on my page.
here. as far as i know it is not possible to edit a post once it is posted. 🙁
it’s not possible to edit comments.
Sorry about that.
allows Shell Corporations that allows thousands of rich Americans (and brits too!) to dodge paying their taxes. That’s hundreds of millions of dollars that could go to social programs.
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It’s also easier to buy shrooms and LSD off the street than it is to buy some weed in America.
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That joint isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I’m saying that liberal policies aren’t inconsistent with prosperity or hard work. They foster prosperity and hard work.
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The depredations of multi-nationals is, of course, a problem. I like the fact that the Netherlands will test even illegal drugs. Their drug laws seem to be based more upon outcomes than upon doing what the majority of Southern Baptists regard as “moral”.
…every country allows for shell corporations.
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Apparently, you really don’t understand that all corporations are shells. They are nothing more than vessels into which people pour money, which money is then disbursed for presumably profitable purposes. The corporate mantel innoculates the people who pour money into the vessel from the reponsibility for that which the vessel does.
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Don’t you understand it? I would be amazed if you didn’t.
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All corporations are shells.
Netherland has the kasgeld vennootschap. I have no idea how that translates, but basically, the dodge…er scheme, er…tax planning technique is that European Corp. transfers an operating business into the Dutch shell (the kasgel vennootshap). The shell then sells the assets leaving only cash in the shell, avoiding income tax on the gain in the country of origin.
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Ah, good times.
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Try that in the USA and Subpart F of the Internal revenue code would bring the income into the US.
“Open to consideration of a variety of solutions.” It is a process position, to dredge up an earlier discussion. “Conservative,” by contrast, means “Set on one position.” That may be one reason you and I often seem to talk past each other KBusch.
Both sides seem united in their support of sanitary, transportation, and other infrastructure elements of government. This is because they are quantifiable. If the sewers back up, you know about it and there is a finite way in which to fix it (police details aside). So, the tangible side of government is supported by both sides.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes did indeed characterize taxes as the price we pay for society, but it should be noted that he did so at a time when social service programs were almost the exclusive purview of religion and philanthropy. It is safe to assume that he was speaking of tangible government, not social government.
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It seems to be on the social service side of government that the two views diverge. Both sides use anecdotes unrelentingly because…well… the success and failure of such programs are largely conveyed by anecdotes, since hard data is amorphous and shifing, married to opinion and preconcieved ideas.
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I lean towrds the maximization of private philanthropy, religion based or not, as I have been on the receiving end of government help programs. They were less effective at their best, and actually degrading at their worst. That said, I do not deny the need for their existance – I merely think that a shiny new social service program is not the best default answer for every social program, but should be started when private charity has failed to deal with it.
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KBusch reminded me that G.B. Shaw dealt with this almost a hundred years ago – “I’m a member of the undeserving poor. I am underseving, and I mean to go on being undeserving because I likes it. But my needs is as great as those of some widder as gets six diffrent bounties in the same week for the death of the same husband, as I eats as much as she does, and I DRINKS a good deal more!” – Mr. Doolittle in Pygmalion. So, we needs always be aware of the undeserving poor, and a bureaucrat may not be the very best servant for this population.