SUBSCRIBE NOW WELCOME BACK. Do you want to continue reading where you left off? New Republic subscribers can pick up where they left off no matter which device they were previously using. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Go Home How George Will Misunderstands Both Elizabeth Warren and...

POLITICS OCTOBER 8, 2011

How George Will Misunderstands Both Elizabeth Warren and Liberalism

BY WILLIAM GALSTON

George Will and I have something in common: We were both trained in the close reading of political texts. Will recently applied his interpretive skills to a statement by Elizabeth Warren, who is running for the Democratic senatorial nomination in Massachusetts. Here is what Warren said: 

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. … You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless, keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is [that] you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. 

After applying to Warren’s words William F. Buckley’s description of John Kenneth Galbraith—a pyromaniac in a field of straw men, refuting propositions no one asserts—Will moves to the gravamen of his argument: Warren’s vision entails a collectivist political agenda. He tartly and uncharitably described that agenda as follows:

[Its] premise is that individual is a chimera, that any individual’s achievements should be considered entirely derivative from society, so that the achievements need not be treated as belonging to the individual. Society is entitled to socialize—i.e., conscript—whatever portion it considers its share. It may, as an optional act of grace, allow the individual the remainder of what is misleadingly called the individual’s possession.

I have never met Warren. For all I know she may privately embrace the premise Will sketches. But even a cursory inspection of her public words reveals that she is saying nothing of the sort. Rather, she is making a straightforward argument. Without the enabling framework that only government can create, individuals cannot securely enjoy the fruits of their endeavors. Every return on investment, then, is actually a return on two sources of investment, one reflecting individual choice, the other public decisions. Taxation is not theft; nor is it, as the late philosopher Robert Nozick once put it, “on a par with forced labor.” Rather, it reflects the return on the public investment to which nearly everyone contributes. It does not rest on the claim that all resources are collective and that individuals receive what is theirs as an act of grace, but rather on the more modest claim that we all owe something in return for the collective goods without which our individual striving cannot succeed.

And Warren is saying something else as well—that (to quote a thinker with whom Will has more than a passing acquaintance), “Society is indeed a contract … a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” Warren’s homely phrase, “pay forward,” captures the moral bond that connects this generation with the next. If we don’t adequately provide for their future, we are breaking that bond. A decent political community has the right—indeed the obligation—to honor that bond—if necessary, by compelling individuals who refuse to look beyond their own immediate concerns to contribute their share to the common future.

To be sure, these general arguments don’t come close to settling the question of who should pay how much in taxes. That’s what elections and political contestation are about. But they do establish a sturdy foundation for the idea that individual choice does not create all our obligations and there is nothing in principle objectionable when society presents its bill to each of us. I hope that is one of the straw men that Will (unlike some of his less tutored conservative brethren) never intended to deny.

Not content to accuse Warren of collectivism, he proceeds to accuse her of determinism, or at least to tar her of that sin by guilty association. Warren’s statement, he contends, is a “footnote to modern liberalism’s more comprehensive disparagement of individualism and the reality of individual autonomy. A particular liberalism, partly incubated at Harvard, intimates the impossibility, for most people, of self-government—of the ability to govern oneself.” This premise—public incompetence—is said to warrant a “tutelary government” that owes “minimal deference to people’s preferences.” 

As Will might say, Well. Let us set aside Galbraith, John Rawls, and the bedraggled remnant band of Marxists clinging to the doctrine of false consciousness, none of whose views can be fairly be imputed to Elizabeth Warren. As I understand it, her case for reasonable regulation does not ignore, but rather reflects, people’s preferences. We don’t want to be misled or cheated, but the complexity of modern contractual arrangements can baffle even the most educated among us. So we collectively opt for a framework that protects us against those who have more time and expertise to devise deceptions than we do to ferret them out. No, government shouldn’t make our choices for us, and we shouldn’t ask it to. But it does have a legitimate role in ensuring that the information relevant to those choices is accurate and intelligible.

Again, we can argue about the details. No doubt the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that Warren conceived and hoped to lead is imperfect in some respects, as is every human creation. If so, experience will expose its flaws, and the political process can improve it. But the claim that it rests on a necessary presupposition of individual incompetence—and worse, the denial of individual autonomy—is unfounded. And so is Will’s root-and-branch dismissal of modern liberalism.

William Galston is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor for The New Republic.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

Show all 166 comments

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

166 comments

One fallacy in Ms. Warren's statement is that not only "the rest of us" paid for the roads and schools. The so-called "rich" paid for them to a greater extent than the rest of us. Ms. Warren is a demagogue trying to win votes by appealing to some of people's basest instincts: covetousness, envy, and jealousy of other people's success. Of course the "rich" should pay their fair share in taxes. They already do. But as in the fable, if you squeeze the goose too hard she stops laying golden eggs. The data below concern the federal income tax, but of course the "rich" pay more in state income taxes and property taxes as well. Here's a look at individual tax rates and shares by income in 2007, the most recent data available from the Internal Revenue Service: The top 1 percent: Americans who earned an adjusted gross income of $410,096 or more accounted for 22.8 percent of all wages. But they paid 40.4 percent of total reported income taxes, an increase from 39.9 percent in 2006, according to the IRS. The top 5 percent: Americans who earned $160,041 or more accounted for 37.4 percent of all wages in 2007. But they paid 60.6 percent of the country's total reported income taxes, up from 60.1 percent a year earlier. The top 10 percent: Americans who earned at least $113,018 paid 71.2 percent of the nation's income taxes, up from 70.8 percent a year earlier. The top 25 percent: Americans who earned at least $66,532 paid 86.6 percent of the nation's income taxes, up from 86.3 percent a year earlier. The top 50 percent: Americans who earned at least $32,879 paid 97.1 percent of the nation's income taxes, up from 97 percent a year earlier. The bottom 50 percent: Americans who earned less than $32,879 paid 2.9 percent of the nation's income taxes, down from 3 percent a year earlier.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 12:52am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Great article, Mr. Galston. Both incisive and comprehensive, beautifully putting together all the salient points. And, Bulbman, you're distorting the picture by including only the figures for the federal income tax, the most progressive part of all the US tax code. There are many other taxes which middle and working class people pay in abundance. Overall, the US tax system is barely progressive at all, as has been covered in this magazine and elsewhere. Folks like you keep picking on the income tax because, by focusing on a small part of the overall picture, you can make it look like you want. Oh, the poor, poor put upon rich people. Please. And, incidentally, the reason the rich's share of income tax keeps going up is...because their share of INCOME has risen in an unprecedented manner. Think about that.

- Curran1

October 8, 2011 at 1:21am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Curran, keep in mind that the government GUARANTEES everyone a $120K education. A family with two kids has extracted a quarter million dollars in benefits from the government. That's a lot of taxes you have to pay to overcome that. Social security and medicare are also net gains. You get back farm more than you pay in in most cases. In fact, when you consider all taxes and all benefits, state and local, you need to make around $60K to break even with the state/local government. In other words, if you earn less than that, then you get more than $1 of benefit for every dollar you pay. These are the freeloaders. Maybe that word is offensive. But it is absolutely true: They have not paid a dime to move society forward. They have only taken from others. So, Bulbman is absolutely right: Someone earning $50K has paid ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help the success of the someone like Jobs. They have not paid for roads. They have not paid for police. They have not paid a damn thing. They have only taken. Someone earning $80K is indeed paying something. For every dollar in taxes they pay, they receive about $0.80 in benefits. But my guess is that most earning $70 or $80K are probably working for someone like Steve Jobs, and they want to keep working for that company because the recognize who butters their bread.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 2:37am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"the so-called "rich" paid for them to a greater extent than the rest of us." What do the term "so-called" and the scare quotes mean, bulbman? That the rich aren't really rich? That they should be even richer than they are for the adjective to have any meaning? That if they were really rich then they should pay for things to a greater extent? That if they were really rich they shouldn't pay for things to a greater extent? That if the rich pay a little for for the support services that protect their richness, they aren't as rich as they would like to be? I'm confused.

- ironyroad

October 8, 2011 at 2:43am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I hadn't seen seattle's post before I commented on bulbman's, but I'm relieved in a kind of a way to know that those citizens who earn $50,000 or less are the enemies of America.

- ironyroad

October 8, 2011 at 2:46am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Of course the bottom 50% of Americans pay less taxes. They make less money! Myself, I'd like to see a flat income tax, but a majority of Americans, including the lower 50%, would find ways to lie about their income. And, of course, the rich would lie bigger and better. If there were no deductions, accountants would be bribed to fix the books, as many are now. A new term would spring up: “Wall Streeting” it. Back in the Fifties and Sixties rich people had a tax rate (before deductions) of 90%, which was very unfair. But the rich were happy to pay it! They wanted a solvent government. When JFK proposed a tax cut for the rich (maybe he was thinking of his daddy), Republicans in Congress voted it down! Of course, today Republicans like Grover Norquist want to shrink the U.S. government and drown it in a bathtub (Lenin had similar fantasies). Republicans don’t realize that, if the government crashes from lack of revenue, so does America. Every time I hear Sinatra sing Paul Anka’s “I Did It My Way” I think, No, you didn’t. You did it partly your way. Thousands of people helped you. We live in society. Even if you don’t want to give any more money to the government, you could at least admit that you’re not a universe unto yourself. The individual is not a god. Without society he or she would die in infancy. And government is part of society. Back in the Sixties I remember a bumper sticker on police cars in Detroit: Next Time You're in Trouble Call a Hippie. I would change that to fit today's government haters: Next Time You're in Trouble Call a Republican.

- magboy47.

October 8, 2011 at 2:59am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Ironyroad, the term "rich" deserves scare quotes because its definition depends on which demagogic scoundrel of a politician is using the term and which way he thinks the political wind is blowing on the day he is spewing his garbage in the face of the electorate. To the demagogue's intended audience the term means somebody who make more than I do and whose money I want to steal. The good news is that the majority of Americans have too dignity, too much self-respect, too much decency to listen to the demagogues.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 3:39am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

So the defense of Warren is that she just spoke a meaningless truism, that seemed to have political substance, but was only a means of eliciting the support of the resentful and idealistic against the successful and effective? And George Will treated this demagoguery as if it had actual meaning. But Galston, clever fellow, has the training to realize that it's only content was mindless rabble rousing. Thanks for the clarification.

- homeros

October 8, 2011 at 4:08am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Think of the results of the "down with the rich" philosophy throughout the twentieth century. Well over a a hundred million innocent people were murdered in cold blood by regimes seeking "social justice". Class hatred led to tyranny, cruelty, famine, and mass murder to the point of genocide. And yet leftist intellectuals apologized for the regimes committing those atrocities.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 4:13am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Human history provides many variations on the theme that life is not fair. As bulbman correctly points out, many of the efforts to make life more fair created horrors, and many people on the left were reluctant to admit this. At the same time, as others point out in this thread, we are all in this together, and many who benefit the most give themselves way too much credit for what is often good luck at the expense of others. It is an immensely challenging task to organize society in way that is both fair, compassionate, and effective.

- skahn

October 8, 2011 at 4:30am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

magboy47 writes: "Even if you don’t want to give any more money to the government, you could at least admit that you’re not a universe unto yourself." I dont' think anyone believes that. But the success of, say Apple, does not come from the government. It comes from convincing consumers to part with their cash to buy your stuff. Elizabeth Warren's government sounds like the Mafia, where they show up at a successful business, and decide you owe them a bit more for creating a safe environment for you to thrive. No thanks.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 4:44am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

irony writes: "I hadn't seen seattle's post before I commented on bulbman's, but I'm relieved in a kind of a way to know that those citizens who earn $50,000 or less are the enemies of America." Who said they were the enemies? Not me. I just noted they are the net takers, not net contributors. But, that is what you wanted, right? You want those earning less than a certain amount to get more out of government than they pay in. Right? I mean, that is success to you. Isn't it? Why are you bothered when you see the words written in black and white? It means redistribution is alive and well in the good ol' USA

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 4:51am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

skahn writes: " At the same time, as others point out in this thread, we are all in this together, and many who benefit the most give themselves way too much credit for what is often good luck at the expense of others." But, assume for a moment that it was NOT at the expense of others. When facebook created their wealth, the didn't take it from anyone. They created new wealth. Same with Apple. These cases we should celebrate. This is the free market at work. If I make a better mousetrap, I can make more money. Now, indeed in some cases wealth was taken from some (homeowners taking cash out loans, seconds, etc) and shifted to others (bankers) due to broken inducements from the government. The free market would have done a much better job here, because it wouldn't have loaned to the marginal borrower in teh first place.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 4:58am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

You are a piece of work, dimbulbman. Yeah sure, Stalin was the avatar of social justice. And Elizabeth Warren reads Stalin every night in bed before turning out the lights, right? What is a reactionary crank like you doing at a venerable liberal publication? You too, seattle. We live in the same burg but I hope at opposite ends. So no thanks, huh? Well, you can go live at Walden pond, but even Thoreau in the wild was plugged into civilization. God knows, the liberal commentary out here is often bad enough, but nowhere near as egregious as that of the reactionaries on this thread.

- liberalref

October 8, 2011 at 7:39am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I read Will's column as I often do, and was quite disappointed for most of the reasons Galston cites. You may not agree with him, but Will is usually a model of consistent intellectual honesty. The piece in question is far below his usual standards in that regard. I think we'd all do a lot better without the straw men. Obviously Warren isn't advocating socialism in anything she said, just the same sort of social responsibility written about by Burke, Adam Smith, and Hayek. None of these champions of liberty (REAL liberals, as opposed to the sneaky misappropriation of that title by leftists attempting to disguise themselves) have ever advocated doing away with government. They just believe as I do that we should try to grant the most practical scope for individual liberty, and the least practical scope for The State.

- Robert Powell

October 8, 2011 at 8:11am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

seattleeng: It is excellent when people create new wealth by their talent, hard work, initiative and imagination. However, it is quite difficult to create wealth in a society that does not function, that does not have roads and hospitals and schools and police. The Ayn Rand super person who strikes like a titan above all the lazy parasitic proles is a comic book fantasy. Try to create wealth; for that matter, try to function, in a "Mad Max" society without infrastructure or order. For a society to function involves a lot of boring, plant the crops, pick up the garbage, teach the children, immunize the population, administer the speed limits, inter-related community functioning.

- skahn

October 8, 2011 at 8:14am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I would argue that Will has his argument exactly backwards. The fault with the left is that it has too often viewed society as made up of too many individuals, the individuals who make up parts of the society, rather than the collective of all of us. Indeed, that has been Will's (and others on the right) most frequent (and accurate in my view) criiticism of the left. Now the left is, I hope, beginning to make the turn, the turn toward the collective of all of us, whatever color, sex, age, national origin, all Americans, most of whom have one thing in common: they are middle class or aspire to be middle class. And it's America's large and prosperous middle class that has distinguished America from all other nations, a middle class that runs our factories, teaches our children, fights our wars, breaks new ground in science and medicine, and invents new and life-changing products. A large and prosperous middle class that didn't just happen because of the benevolence of the rational and productive few, but the efforts of a cohesive society seeking a better America for all Americans. What's particularly rich about Will's criticism of Warren is that only last week he criticised her as a Harvard elitist who cannot understand the concerns of the middle class. Now she's leading the proletariat in a revolution. It can't be both. What Will and others on the right fear most is that Americans will begin to see their reflection in other Americans, that our similarities are far greater than our differences. From the tea party to occupy Wall Street.

- rayward

October 8, 2011 at 8:51am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Intellectual honesty? Pure partisan lies and bullshit. Misunderstanding or intentionally misrepresenting for partisan advantage? Geez, at least let us not delude ourselves about who Will is. Our libertarian friends should go live in a place without taxation. No one compels them to be here taking advantage of the things created by our society. The deal is, you want our playing field, you pay rent. You don't want to pay rent, don't play. Perfect freedom. As long as the tax structure is the outcome of democratic politics, one person one vote, not corrupted by money paid currently or forward as de facto bribes to politicians, there is nothing in principle to complain of from an honest libertarian perspective. Pure bargain for exchange between the free agent and society. Of the libertarians who believe in taxation at all, they tend to like perfectly flat taxes, or even regressive taxes. There is no economic growth justification for this. All of the evidence that exists is that this results in slow growth, fragile demand, and hence busts. When confronted with the evidence, they go into their denial mode simply asserting that the obvious facts are not the obvious facts or constructing incredibly bizarre and convoluted explanations for why reality does not conform to their theoretical construct. When the phony economic arguments hit a wall, they invariably shift to a justice argument, that anything other than flat taxes, or even regressive head taxes, is unjust. Other than the appearance of equality (why is income tax rate the only attribute of human beings that ought to be equal?), I cannot even think of an a priori argument that says taxation based on an equal percentage of what turns out to be a limited subset of income (favoring the rich of course) is inherently just. They never speak to that issue, because they cannot. They simply assume that flat taxes are just taxes, that the contribution to society is exactly in proportion to market income and that benefits from society are exactly in proportion to market income. This is objective nonsense, the very mother's milk of libertarianism.

- roidubouloi

October 8, 2011 at 9:37am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

For those who want to explore further Warren's concept of societal contributions to innovation, there is a very excellent book on the subject: "Unjust Deserts: How the Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance" by Gar Alperovitz, which I highly recommend. He fleshes out the concept with numerous examples that render Will's distortions painfully obvious.

- JackR

October 8, 2011 at 9:37am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"In fact, when you consider all taxes and all benefits, state and local, you need to make around $60K to break even with the state/local government. In other words, if you earn less than that, then you get more than $1 of benefit for every dollar you pay. These are the freeloaders. Maybe that word is offensive. But it is absolutely true: They have not paid a dime to move society forward. They have only taken from others. So, Bulbman is absolutely right: Someone earning $50K has paid ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to help the success of the someone like Jobs. They have not paid for roads. They have not paid for police. They have not paid a damn thing. They have only taken." I love in a perverse sort of fashion the circular ignorance in arguments like this one. It goes like this: money measures value with absolute fidelity; if you don't have money, therefore, it's because you contributed nothing of value, if you do have money, it's because you earned it through your virtuous contributions to society. Since virtue makes you wealthy, money is the ideal measure of virtue." Voila, back where we started. I really don't want to live in a society where the only thing that measure human value is money. I'd like to think the value of hard work (even it is as prosaic as hard work in a factory or on a hospital floor) also matters. I want notions of human dignity, fundamental human equality, and human rights (other than just money rights) to play a roll in our society. And I loathe the Randian Right for wanting to take all that away. But, what I want probably doesn't matter, so let's get back to the recently departed Mr. Jobs, and look at how much of his contribution was based on his own brilliance (and he certainly was brilliant). The success of the Apple II - very (VERY) largely on the backs of public money, since by far Apple's largest consumers were school districts. The graphical user interface that made the Mac the leader in ideas about how computers and people interact - invented by someone else and basically nabbed for free by Mr. Jobs. The operating system in the resurgent Macs after Jobs returned to Apple - Unix - invented by someone else, and a direct outgrowth of government funded work at MIT. The internet, without which, the iPad would be an undersized glass serving tray, invented and nurtured by government, both directly and indirectly. Apple's contribution to anything other than exploitation of the internet wouldn't overflow a teaspoon. Apples patents and trademark designs: protected by the US government. And finally - and here's the kicker - the people who build the Apple machines that made Jobs famous and rich are almost entirely on the other side of the Pacific, so that Apple can avoid paying a living wage to the Americans to whom Apple wants to sell a large fraction of their production. Now, read this very carefully: Apple would still be profitable if it manufactured in this country, paying a decent middle class wage to its employees. Not as fantastically profitable as it is, but not bankrupt either. Those jobs are overseas simply to fatten already wealthy wallets. Yes, Jobs was brilliant - in recognizing important technologies, recognizing opportunities, and coupling opportunity to stunning design, and using the combination to succeed wildly. He right deserves to have been rewarded for this brilliance. But he's be a pauper if left truly on his own. So explain to me, how in the hell, Apple, whose stock appreciation primarily benefits the all ready well off, is not a transfer of wealth from those "freeloaders" seattle loathes to the investment class. No, it's not a tax. But it's a direct exploitation (as I show above) of things made possible by taxes, and as the enormous increase in wealth of the top $ accumulators in our society in the last 2 decades proves, it, when repeated over and over again by multiple business, is a hell of a lot more effective a wealth transfer than the meager tax benefit differential seattle uses to call working people freeloaders. I don't object to those who laud Jobs, or to Apple's success. But Warren's argument is spot on. That success depends on the less fortunate, and in multiple ways: it depends on the infrastructure and stability that their taxes build, and it depends on having them as consumers. And most importantly, if more subtly, it depends on the stability that comes from having successful working and middle classes with enough money and confidence in the system in order to have a market - a stability and degree of wealth that is seriously imperiled by the relentless transfer of wealth to the rich I outline above, and relentless demonization of government and taxation led by the Republican Party. God Bless Elizabeth Warren.

- IowaBeauty

October 8, 2011 at 10:03am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Excellent article, Mr. Galston. This tendency of the right to erect false dichotomies in order to come to draconian conclusions needs to be countered. We're in the middle of the Great Recession, brought on by deregulation, predicated on the idea that "the Free Market will regulate itself". Clearly that's been proven wrong. And the same logic is being used here by Will to characterize the moderate position of Warren as extremist. You're making a much better argument against that than I can.

- AllanL5

October 8, 2011 at 10:19am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

IowaBeauty: Bravo, and thank you for your response to Seattleeng.

- joquilavab

October 8, 2011 at 11:52am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

skahn writes: "seattleeng: It is excellent when people create new wealth by their talent, hard work, initiative and imagination. However, it is quite difficult to create wealth in a society that does not function, that does not have roads and hospitals and schools and police. " But skahn, these costs are all a very, very small part of our taxes. Nationally, just 3% of our gov spending is education, 3% is transportation, 1% is general government. Locally, public safety is just 13% of the city budget. Defense? Sure, we could add that in. But we don't need nearly the defense we have today for Apple to thrive. My point is this: The level of taxation required to create a society in which innovative companies can thrive is very, very small. Claiming that government must keep growing so that Apple can innovate and sell their wares is just wrong.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 12:08pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Even if this were true, innovative companies are hardly the only purpose or function of society. They are but a means to an end. If the society must exist in economic savagery for innovative companies to thrive, then innovative companies would be the very enemy or our well-being.

- roidubouloi

October 8, 2011 at 12:22pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Iowa writes: "I love in a perverse sort of fashion the circular ignorance in arguments like this one. It goes like this: money measures value with absolute fidelity; if you don't have money, therefore, it's because you contributed nothing of value, if you do have money, it's because you earned it through your virtuous contributions to society. Since virtue makes you wealthy, money is the ideal measure of virtue." Voila, back where we started." There was an article on the HuffPo recently where an artist in her early 30's had realized she wasn't making nearly enough money to do what she wanted to do. And that she'd be putting designer jeans, nice dinners, etc, on credit cards to keep up with her friends. And, she realized when it came time to find a new apartment, that she couldn't afford anything except a small roach infested room. She was upset that money was required to get the nice things in life. She was upset that she didn't earn enough. But what she didn't' understand (or articulate) was that her friends that HAD money opted to buy an iPad instead of her art. They opted to buy nice trips for themselves instead of buy her art. Think about that: She couldn't' even convince her own inner circle that her art was more valuable than an iPad. They all picked iPads, nice cars, etc, over her art. And so what...she wants the person working 9-5 at some crap job to work even harder so she can enjoy her bohemian lifestyle with no set hours and a schedule that only requires her to work when the mood strikes? No thanks. Money isn't a perfect measure. But the rules of the game have been written. And until we hear otherwise from management, money is the focus of the game. If you want to do something that is fun but not valuable, then be my guest. But let's not bitch when we don't have enough. It makes you look envious. Hint: Even if you dislike money, pick something that lets you earn a lot of money, do that until you are 50 and THEN throttle back and focus on making the world a better place. You will be much more effective. PS. I really dont' like going to work much anymore. Getting on an airplane for a trip to go see come vendor is something I dread for days in advance.. There are definitely some days I want to quit because I am tired of fighting the battles. But I keep working because it's better than the alternative.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 12:25pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"Money isn't a perfect measure. But the rules of the game have been written. And until we hear otherwise from management, money is the focus of the game. " WE write the rules of the game, other than the laws of nature. WE are management. That is precisely what this argument is about - what rules are we going to set for those who merely labor, and those who benefit wildly from success. As I said, I want those rules to reflect some values other than lassaiz faire, zero-tax capitalism.

- IowaBeauty

October 8, 2011 at 1:22pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

There is nothing more socialist than taxpayers being forced to bail out Wall Street. For two of the the main work sectors in this country, finance and health care, the system we have in place in no way represents lassaiz fair anything. Both are pure plutocracy.

- WandreyCer

October 8, 2011 at 2:03pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Seattleeng is kind of an idiot. Consumption is about 70% of the economy. If you put 90% of the people into a murderous debt loop and they can no longer spend to keep that consumption, you have just tanked the economy. Does this sound familiar?

- chaitless

October 8, 2011 at 2:19pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Iowa is spot on. We write the rules of the game. Hence, we have to decide what rules we want. The claims of libertarianism are first that total wealth, and wealth for the bottom, is greatest when relative wealth is allowed to be whatever the market delivers. This is empirically incorrect. Our greatest growth is associated with our greatest, and most stable income equality from about 1940 until about 1980. Then wealth started to become less equal and growth both slowed and become punctuated by severe downturns. Then they claim that without the ability to make unlimited profits, capitalists will not invest and inventors will not innovate. This is also empirically untrue. Our greatest gains in labor productivity (the way in which we become wealthier) are associated with low unemployment and high wages, because it is wage pressure that drives most innovation, the competitive need to reduce costs by substituting capital for labor. Because this is the objective reality, libertarians prefer to turn our attention away from the bulk of the economy to focus on product innovations, such as Apple (to the extent that it was an innovation rather than just the successful marketing of the work of others, but never mind). The claim is that without unlimited ability to generate profits from innovation, the Steve Jobs of the world will sit home. There is no objective evidence for this whatsoever. We are supposed to believe that if the garage genius thinks he might only make $1 billion rather than $10 billion, he will just play video games. The outcome of product innovation is actually the worst possible example for the libertarian claims about incentives as, in that case, the incentives are overwhelmingly larger than necessary and would be under any tax scheme. Okay, since there is no real objective argument that progressive taxation is inimical to growth or innovation, and since such evidence as exists is exactly to the contrary, we then shift or attention from the garage genius, Madonna, and Michael Jordan (all of whom supposedly would do nothing if they could not make and keep whatever the market will give them in the first instance) to the "bohemian artist" who will not get a real job and resents not being able to go to fine restaurants by selling her art. What on earth does this have to do with the millions of Americans who cannot find employment because we have idiots who follow libertarian economic policies of austerity in a downturn? Most of the libertarian narrative is objectively incorrect. The rest focuses on what are essentially freak cases, Michael Jordan, bohemian artists, to make claims about millions who need only ordinary work and for whom we can afford to provide a decent standard of living, including education, healthcare, and a decent pension, for their ordinary work doing the myriad things we need done, from packing boxes to managing businesses. We can provide this without impairing either our economic growth, indeed stimulating it through increased demand and high wages, or reducing innovation that depends on the availability of a flourishing market for its success, not on a particular tax structure. Why then should we not write rules that achieve just that? The only reason is the libertarian notion of justice, one that I, along with Iowa, find so morally impoverished as to be beneath consideration. Among other things, it ignores all the multitude of serendipitous factors that produce economic outcomes and fetishizes the market distribution of gains and losses as if divinely ordained. We can have vibrant, orderly, useful markets with suitable regulation and a progressive tax structure to distribute gains throughout society. There is no reason why we don't other than greed, the idol of libertarianism.

- roidubouloi

October 8, 2011 at 2:20pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

People who make less than 50k are not the target of my criticism. The majority of them are hard working upstanding citizens. And the majority of them don't hate the rich. Most of them would like to become rich, and many of them do. Most of my criticism is reserved for demagogues like Elizabeth Warren, who for their own advantage seek to stir up class hatred. I am by no means opposed to all government income transfers. It was Ronald Reagan who introduced the Earned Income Tax Credit, where people who earn by work less than a certain amount get a tax refund without having paid income tax. It's a good program because it rewards work and alleviates poverty. But if the program were to be extended to the "middle class" as some are proposing it would have extremely negative consequences. Too much of a good thing is a bad thing. We need a government safety net: a reformed Social Security program, unemployment insurance, and educational and medical vouchers. What we don't need is a welfare state. The welfare state may work in a small mono-ethnic country like Sweden. It is not all suitable for the USA. When it was tried here in the sixties it resulted in disaster. We need a social safety net, but we need to recognize that it is people like seattleeng and the millions of others who work hard for a living who pay for it. We also need to recognize that no society without business corporations has ever enabled to majority of its members to escape grinding poverty. My model Americans are the immigrants who work for me and with whom I do business. They work hard, take care of their families and are grateful for the opportunity to live in a country, which provides them with so much opportunity to improve their standard of living. What a contrast between them and the overgrown spoiled brats demonstrating on Wall Street demanding a perpetual free lunch.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 2:21pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

bulbman1066 Either you believe government plays a role in the economy or you do not. If you do, then Warren's position is sustainable. If you do not, then things like the government fostered technology that we all use, like the internet from which you read this, or GPS. or many other things, are inexplicable. The role of government in the economy has a cost and the most efficient way to pay that cost is with progressive taxes. Under our current tax structure $345 billion dollars are owed by taxpayers who don't have it. And that means the excercise of government power to collect it.

- Nusholtz

October 8, 2011 at 2:45pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"This is empirically incorrect. Our greatest growth is associated with our greatest, and most stable income equality from about 1940 until about 1980. Then wealth started to become less equal and growth both slowed and become punctuated by severe downturns." Roi, you have your history bass ackwards. The seventies brought us the huge recession of 1974 followed by hyperinflation. Ronald Reagan turned that around and we had twenty years of growth and prosperity. In the latter half of the nineties we had growth in real wages and a steep decline in poverty. One moral of the story is that if you want prosperity elect a conservative Republican like Reagan or a very moderate Democrat like Bill Clinton, and if you elect a moderate Democrat be sure to elect a Republican Congress.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 2:51pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nussholz, nobody doubts that the government plays a role in the economy. The debate is over how large a role it should play. What makes you think progressive income taxes are the most efficient way to pay for government? There is a lot to be said for a consumption based tax with a rebate for everybody so that low income people aren't hurt. One problem with the income tax is that it's hard to collect. Another is that special interests end up getting breaks not available to the rest of us

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 3:08pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

A principle behind government policy should be to avoid shielding people from the consequences of their behavior. Doing so creates what economists call a "moral hazard". An example is the way that some of the very people on Wall Street who were responsible for the crisis got bailed out by the taxpayer. Contrary to what the Tea Party folks say, the bailout was necessary, but we've got to figure out a way to put an end to this business of "too big to fail". Another example is government flood insurance, which encourages people to build in flood plains. Another is extended welfare payments for able bodied people. That encourages idleness and is unfair to those who work.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 3:24pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

And another is the government encouraging cash-out loans. The saddest thing in the world is the government standing by and permitting negative amortization loans. If there was ever an example of somethign the government should have shut down, it was that. That was nothing but a legal swindle. And this is what we see over and over: The government fails at their simplest of tasks. And yet you give them a pass on that, and then expect them to solve extremely difficult things. this entire housing mess was the result of good government intentions gone awry. And Nutz, the government didn't invent these technologies you listed. Everything you listed was done under a grant to the military. Our massive military spending brought these technologies. But even then, it wasn't the government that invented these. It was companies that were PAID by the government to invent these. They would have come anyway, just perhaps a decade later. If you are arguing to increase military spending to speed up innovation, you might have me agreeing in a normal decade. In this decade, after these wars, probably not.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 4:00pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "We can have vibrant, orderly, useful markets with suitable regulation and a progressive tax structure to distribute gains throughout society. There is no reason why we don't other than greed, the idol of libertarianism." Actually, for those working full time, the compensation system is incredibly fair. A PhD makes roughly twice that (a little more) than a high school graduate. What is unfair about that? Sure, there are people that make a lot more. But not very many. There are perhaps just 50 CEOs that make more than NBA players. There's just not enough to be worry about. Of course, pointing out 500 billionaires and telling everyone if it weren't for them, they'd all be living high on the hog is the primary tool of progressivism. And yet, anyone with a calculator knows that isn't true.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 4:05pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

George Will is court philosopher for the oligarchy. His act got old decades ago.

- nunziobal

October 8, 2011 at 4:12pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Even if this were true, innovative companies are hardly the only purpose or function of society." The purpose of society is to move ahead. What provides the desire to move ahead? Something must motivate people to get out of bed each day and go to a job they only moderately like or even hate. A hundred years ago it was the will to live. If you failed to find enough firewood, you would die. But today??? Everything I see people clamoring for are innovative things. That is what drives us forward. That is why people keep going to jobs they dont' like very much. They do it so that in return they can get something that gives them a sliver of joy. Maybe it's a new book. A pottery wheel. A musical instrument. Or something for the garden. But usually it's an electronic gadget. When I look at what the anti-wallstreet rubes at the Occupy Wall Street bring with them to these events it is usually a hackeysack and a drum (not very innovative, but required), and a cellphone, tablet or PC, or a digital camera These are the primary SYMBOLS of innovation. These are what 10's of thousands of engineers sweat over each night. The capital to build these things CAME from wall street. The seed of desire to own these products came from marketers who poured over pounds of data to find out how to make your neurons beg for this device. You guys claim it's not about the money. Or at least shoudln't be. And then when your mindset is thrust onto the world stage, you foolishly show the world that indeed, it is all about money, consumerism and getting more stuff.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 4:23pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

As an environmental activist I sometimes find myself on the opposite side on the table from business. But that doesn't keep me from understanding that without the enormous wealth produced by the free enterprise system the environment doesn't stand a chance. Clean air, clean water, and protection of the natural world all cost money, lots of it.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 4:49pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Bulb, you are an ignoramus and proud of it. The period of highest growth in per capita GDP in the US was 1940 to 1980, coinciding with the lowest, and stable, income share for the top 10%. In 1980 that share began to climb again and GDP growth declined, and has remained lower, as has employment, even if you ignore the current recession. What do you care? You are impervious to facts because you have your libertarian god. If the facts and what you think must be the case according to your libertarian religion disagree, the facts go straight overboard. Same with seattle who MUST insist that the income share of the wealthiest has no material bearing on current economic circumstances. Otherwise his libertarian narrative also collapses. But, to hell with reality says he. Reality is that the income share of the top 10% has increased by 17% since 1980. That represents $2.5 trillion in today's economy, enough to increase the income of every household in the bottom 90% by nearly $25K per year. Considering that our median income is about $50,000, that is huge. No matter. Seattle will go on pretending that income distribution is inconsequential and that the share of the wealthy, if redistributed, would have no material impact. I don't think we need to redistribute it all, but if they paid just their growth in income share, that $2.5 trillion, in Federal income taxes, no one else would have to pay a dime. And they would still be far better off than in 1980.

- roidubouloi

October 8, 2011 at 5:33pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Innovation is important, but if the price were huge income disparity, as seattle claims, we could live without the i-pad. In fact, seattle's argument is ridiculous. We do not need huge income inequality to sustain innovation. Not at all.

- roidubouloi

October 8, 2011 at 5:34pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

The most innovative market in America is the financial one, where they invent ways to make money without working for it and then feed at the government trough after they blow everything up. And they steal pension funds with very innovative accounting techniques. That was on the news again last week. Rich people would do well to join the occupiers of Wall Street. Many of them are going down in the next crash, too. But some hard-working middle-class people are already going down in flames, along with their retirement funds. Speaking of flames, I lived in Detroit during the 1967 riots, and I learned to appreciate the function of government and the taxes that support it. If not for the tanks in the streets and the government marksmen, the whole city would have burned down. Those who defend the rich are often out of sync with actual wealthy people. The latter know the benefits of a solvent government. In fact, most rich people agree, at least privately, that they should pay more taxes. They know the value of government "firefighters." The people lighting the fires may be "stealing" from them, but only the government can deal with anarchy in the streets. This holds true for the financial markets, too. The arsonists working on Wall Street torched the housing market, but Wall Street couldn't save itself--the government had to step in and do the dirty work. I love free-market capitalism, and I want to see everyone in America, including the rich, flourish under it. But it ain't working right now. Corporate America has been making all-time record profits since the "socialist" Obama became president. They have over $2 trillion in the bank--partly because of the corporate welfare (untold billions in subsidies) they get from the government. And they refuse to create new jobs and hire hard-working, highly productive Americans. And they don't want to pay taxes. As much as 50% of them don't pay any income tax--see Senator Carl Levin's study from several years ago. Any suggestions on how to get America back to work, Seattleeng? By the way, you and I and Liberalref live in the same "burg," as the latter phrases it. I don't think our city is a burg. Innovation flourishes here. I love the place.

- magboy47.

October 8, 2011 at 5:52pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

It seems to me that a prosperous middle class, rather than a third-world oligarchic economy skewed to suit the rich, is the most important thing for a stable country. It's noticeable that the greatest gains for the American middle class were made between roughly 1940 and 1980, exactly the period when there were those punitive tax rates that everyone is so horrified by. The following period, 1980 until the present, has been marked by stagnation for the middle class and a regular hoovering up of the wealth by the top few per cent of the population. Coincidence? I'd be inclined to say the evidence suggests otherwise.

- ironyroad

October 8, 2011 at 6:15pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Ironyroad, on what moonbat web site did you find that fantasy?

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 7:24pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

bulbman: You don't improve your credibility as an economic historian with claims like "Ronald Reagan introduced the Earned Income Credit." That was Richard Nixon, most of a decade before. It was indeed increased under Reagan, but as they say, facts are facts. This, though, is an even bigger groaner: "The seventies brought us the huge recession of 1974 followed by hyperinflation. Ronald Reagan turned that around and we had twenty years of growth and prosperity." First, yes the 70s had recessions, inflation, and stagnation. Hyperinflation though? Inflation very briefly peaked below 15% in the 70s. Prices were just short of doubling over the entire decade. That was certainly not good, but no one with any historical sense would call that hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is what happened in Argentina where in 20 years the peso collapsed by a factor of over 10 billion. Second, Reagan did not kill the 70s inflation. The Fed under Paul Volcker's leadership did. Volcker was appointed by Carter, and strangled inflation by strangling the money supply. Again, Reagan may have supported Volcker, but he was not the prime mover, and his fiscal policy was in direct contradiction - deficit driven and expansionary - to the tight money policy of the Fed. What Reagan did do is usher in the the biggest peacetime deficit spending in US history to that point - becoming the first President since WWII to increase the national debt as a percentage of GDP, and the first to see a net US trade deficit since way before that. Growth was decent under Reagan and Bush I, but it was decidedly deficit driven (amazing that Keynesian stuff, isn't it). Under Clinton, on the other hand, we had comparable growth, and declining deficits and even the odd surplus.

- IowaBeauty

October 8, 2011 at 8:42pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Well, to be fair, the EIC was enacted after Nixon left office, but it was a result of his pushing for a negative income tax for earned income. It's just that his other agendas caught up with him before Congress got around to passing it.

- IowaBeauty

October 8, 2011 at 8:48pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

OK, Nixon started the EITC. But Reagan and Clinton deserve credit for following through on it. Nixon did some good things, but he also introduced price controls. As any professional economist from Paul Krugman to Martin Feldstein will tell you, price controls are always counterproductive. Yes, we had price controls during World War II because we had a Soviet style command economy. All of society's resources were commandeered for the war effort. After the war the controls were lifted, most of the worst of the New Deal was repealed and most of the best kept, and we had prosperity until Lyndon Johnson wrecked everything. Any economist can tell you that price controls are stupid and self-defeating. But Obamacare is predicated on government imposed price controls. For that reason, among many others, it is bound to fail. I don't doubt that most liberals mean well. But their belief that noble sentiments trump the laws of economics, indeed the laws of arithmetic, doesn't deserve the assent of any intelligent adult. From 1968 to 1982 we had much higher inflation than before or since. From 1982 to the present inflation has returned to its normal range. I withdraw the term "hyperinflation", which smacks of Zimbabwe or the early Weimar Republic. My point remains: the economy was in the tank in the Seventies and Reagan turned that around. FDR and Reagan were both great statesmen. They each inherited an economic mess. Reagan succeeded in reviving the economy and FDR failed. Reagan's having better ideas made the difference.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 9:40pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

God! Income share is an idiotic statistic in the absence of context. The apparent divergence in the share of income at the high end is largely the product of lower rates and fewer deductions. Obvious from a casual observation of the data, relative income shares at the high end are a function of the structure of the tax code, not evidence of a an actual change in relative earnings. At lower rates, more income is realized and taxed rather than hidden and untaxed. From 1940 to 1980, high earners used shelters, largely direct business investment in order to avoid confiscatory rates of income taxation. This may have had a salutary effect on domestic private investment and may therefore be desirable, but any link would be exceedingly difficult to prove. The federal income tax still generated the same roughly 8% of GDP we generate today - only chumps paid the high rates, and never for long. Unfortunately we don't have the excellent CBO data prior to 1979 - the same methodology applied to prior years would be very illuminating.

- ds111

October 8, 2011 at 10:03pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Innovation is important, but if the price were huge income disparity, as seattle claims, we could live without the i-pad. In fact, seattle's argument is ridiculous. We do not need huge income inequality to sustain innovation." Roid, first you need to find a study that shows a large post-transfer disparity that also takes into account tax reporting changes in the last 30 years. You cannot. This massive and growing income disparity you imagine does not exist. The top 1% have surely shown growth over the last hundred years. But it's hardly remarkable or dooming.

- seattleeng

October 8, 2011 at 10:10pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Will's essential point, that Warren is a demagogue attacking straw men for political purposes is correct. We all must pay for the benefits of government. Whether Roi's assertion (and that of many on this site) that dramatically progressive taxation is the best method is a different question - one I don't agree with, but a legitimate claim - and one she does not address. No one thinks they should pay no taxes, and all accept the need to pay for government. Warren's argument, though couched in we-are-all-in-this-together terms is really just an attempt to stir up envy, and is despicable.

- ds111

October 8, 2011 at 10:24pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I said it, but seatttleeng and ds111 said it better. What a pleasure it is to encounter sophisticated, well written, and well informed commentary online.

- bulbman1066

October 8, 2011 at 10:41pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"[Its] premise is that individual is a chimera, that any individual’s achievements should be considered entirely derivative from society, so that the achievements need not be treated as belonging to the individual. Society is entitled to socialize—i.e., conscript—whatever portion it considers its share. It may, as an optional act of grace, allow the individual the remainder of what is misleadingly called the individual’s possession." George Will is projecting the obverse of his own simplistic view of the relationship between individual and society. To Will society is merely a simple aggregate of individuals. This monad comes fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. This individual owes nothing to society, not language, not even his inherited qualities. He is self fashioned, self willed just like Mr. Will who is aptly named for this phantom being he has created.

- arnon

October 8, 2011 at 11:06pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Anyway, how would you like to be a "free-loader" or a "lucky ducky"? Sounds like the life o' Reilly, right? Not hard. Come on down to the Central Valley here in California, or a to any number of places in ag-land America, & you can find work in the fields, which will guarantee you an income well below the level which would entail "confiscation" of your hard-earned wealth. (In terms of Federal income taxes, at any rate. When you go to the store to buy necessities for your family, or have to register your vehicle, or do any number of other things which require "user fees", you'll still have to pay like the wealthiest among us.) Then you can kick back & gloat on your ability to let the fat cats do the heavy lifiting!

- Haole45

October 8, 2011 at 11:40pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"A particular liberalism, partly incubated at Harvard, intimates the impossibility, for most people, of self-government—of the ability to govern oneself.” This premise—public incompetence—is said to warrant a “tutelary government” that owes “minimal deference to people’s preferences.”" Like many libertarians who have to defend democracy while retaining the notion of the "superior" man; the entrepreneur, (does anyone believe that Will is talking about l’homme moyen sensuel?), he purposefully confuses men in the plural with man in the singular. He will never say that he is defending inequality because man “is inherently unequal,” but that his opponents want to take freedom away from people in general, i.e. "people’s preferences.”" This is a common rhetorical move by conservative libertarians. We need to re-translate this tricky language into the language libertarians speak among themselves. They have been winning debates because few people have been willing to criticize their real undemocratic premise which is that “some people are superior to the herd,” and hence they question the spirit of the constitution. They present themselves as “true constitutionalists” and their opponents as antidemocratic.

- arnon

October 8, 2011 at 11:45pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Geez what a hypocrite you are ds111. Warren is not stirring up envy, although given the class war being waged by the wealthy on the rest of the society class hatred would be entirely justified. She is stating neither more nor less than the moral and political justification for progressive taxation. So, on the one hand you pay lip service to the idea that argument for progressive taxation is legitimate. But as soon as someone makes that argument in a compelling and articulate way you claim she is doing something else. You are despicable, along with your court jester, seattle, who is of course back in his utterly predictable denial mode. Hundreds of papers are being written in economics journals about rising income disparity and, of course, seattle claims the phenomenon is trivial. You two gentlemen are the perfect demonstration that libertarian economics can only be defended with tendentious lies, about people, about the facts of economic life, about pretty much anything and everything.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 12:10am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

What a contrast between the rationality and clarity of seattleeng and ds111and the meaningless leftioid gibberish of arnon and Haole45. It's not the fault of arnon and Haole45. They are the victims of a failed educational system and of mainstream media that live by lies. Father forgive them for they know not what they do.

- bulbman1066

October 9, 2011 at 12:15am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Took under a minute, seattle, to locate a study that you claim does not exist. Will that put a dent in your denial of reality, your flat-earth ideology? Nah. Not a chance. You are completely impervious to facts and evidence. Most of your claims you just make up. When the evidence is on the table that you are wrong, you simply deny reality. This has to be the umpteenth time. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2098 T"he Congressional Budget Office recently released tables on after-tax income in the United States in 1994. A comparison of these data to data CBO previously had released for 1977 finds that the gains in after-tax income since the late 1970s have gone overwhelmingly to households in the upper parts of the income scale. This analysis finds that average after-tax income climbed 9.5 percent during the 1977-1994 period, after adjustment for inflation. But most income groups did not share in these income gains. The bottom two-fifths of families experienced a decline in their average after-tax income over this period, after adjusting for inflation, while the after-tax income of the middle fifth of families remained essentially unchanged. By contrast, the after-tax incomes of high-income families rose sharply. The average after-tax income of the top 20 percent of families rose 25 percent during this period, after adjusting for inflation. The average after-tax income of the top one percent of households rose 72 percent. As a result, the proportion of after-tax income that different groups of families received changed markedly over this period. In 1977, the top one percent of families received 7.3 percent of the national after-tax income. By 1994, they received 11.4 percent of after-tax income, as much as the bottom 35 percent of the population combined. The top one percent of families received $146 billion more in after-tax income in 1994 than they would have received if their share of national after-tax income had remained the same as in 1977. _________________________ This study was in 1997. It has only gotten worse since then, particularly with the Bush tax cuts. Since your claims about income distribution are false, you will now immediately shift into the mode of claiming that the changes in income distribution are morally justified and necessary because they represent the just rewards of the wealthiest for their unique endeavor. You will as ever cite no evidence in support of this claim. Pure religion, and you think we should structure our economy based on your religious faith. What a farce libertarianism is. A political disease.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 12:22am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

You are now officially one of the morons, bulbman. I don't think there is any excuse. Not the education system, not your upbringing. You are just a moron.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 12:23am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"Ironyroad, on what moonbat web site did you find that fantasy?" Not just one site, bulbman, and I don't believe any serious economic history disputes that basic picture. But if you don't believe me, look at the following charts comparatively. Notice the substantial real income rise after about 1938 or so and the relative flatlining after 1980: http://visualecon.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/avg-income-2006.jpg Then compare that growth in prosperity (not just for the rich) with the graph of the marginal rates of tax over the mid-century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chart_1.png Vairy intererresting, I'd say.

- ironyroad

October 9, 2011 at 12:26am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Exactly. All the evidence is that high growth is associated with progressive tax rates. There is no evidence for the contrary proposition advance by libertarians. And there is a simple explanation for this: Relative income equality produces high and sustained demand and thus high and sustained employment and wage pressure. That in turn stimulates technological change as firms compete to lower costs by substituting capital for labor. Technological change at the very least in the deployment of available technology as well as the invention of new methods of production, is the only means by which per capita output grows. Per capita output does not change unless you change the method of production in some manner. High consumption demand also sustains investment as the only purpose for investment is to meet demand. No one invests just because interest rates are low in the absence of an expectation of a market for the output. A well-regulated market is also a robust market as consumers are not deterred from spending because they risk being gouged.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 12:35am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Compound annual rate of growth in real (constant dollar) GDP from 1940 to 1980: 3.7%. From 1980 to 2009: 1.7% (with an adverse change in income distribution on top of that). From 1970 to 1980, notwithstanding the oil shocks, 2.1%. Still higher than what we have experienced since Reagan. 1980 to 1992, the Reagan Bush years, just under 2%, less than the 70s. 1932 to 1945, the years FDR was president, 7.1%. Clinton 2.6% Bush II 1.2% Does any of this reality stop libertarian nuts from claiming that FDR was a failure and Reagan a huge success or that flattening rates has had a stimulative effect when the reverse is the case? No. Reality is irrelevant to their economic theology.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 1:12am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Bulbman1066 The debate is over how large a role it should play. What makes you think progressive income taxes are the most efficient way to pay for government? Assuming government costs "X" and the choice is between a flat rate (or a 9,9,9 regressive rate) and a progressive rate. A progressive rate is the one tied to ability to pay. With a flat tax, people at the bottom half will struggle to pay while people at the top will pay without a struggle. That means, more government power is required to collect from people in the lower half. At any revenue level, raising the top rates and lowering the bottom rates will make taxes easier to collect.

- Nusholtz

October 9, 2011 at 8:54am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

ds111 "Warren's argument, though couched in we-are-all-in-this-together terms is really just an attempt to stir up envy, and is despicable."Warren's point is that government benefits successful business and for this it is not unreasonable to expect successful people to pay more in taxes. Warren's point is not limited manufacturing. The stock market is government regulated for safety, without which investment therein would diminsh to a trickle. An individual who makes money in the stock market pays less in taxes for this government benefit than the worker whose protection is considered by some to be a nuisance. George Will distorts to make his point.

- Nusholtz

October 9, 2011 at 9:54am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

bulbman1066 "What a contrast between the rationality and clarity of seattleeng and ds111and the meaningless leftioid gibberish of arnon and Haole45." I am so glad that bulbman has me in his sight's. His calling my post meaningless without offering a clear rebuttal is a sign of his inability to reason clearly. It's often the case that when right wing libertarians fight to keep their material wealth and privileges, the expose the poverty of their intellect.

- arnon

October 9, 2011 at 9:59am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

seatleeng"This massive and growing income disparity you imagine does not exist. The top 1% have surely shown growth over the last hundred years. But it's hardly remarkable or dooming.: Your belief that the growing income disparity does not exist that and a weak bottom of the economy is not a concern explains the impact Republican policies have had on our current economy.

- Nusholtz

October 9, 2011 at 10:09am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Took under a minute, seattle, to locate a study that you claim does not exist. Will that put a dent in your denial of reality, your flat-earth ideology" And this data you provide, does it include transfers-in on the lower earners? No it does not. Thus, we could give the bottom 90% all the money from the top 10%, and this study would still show doom, doom and more doom. Next, I will ask you to find a study that correct for the number of hours worked. In other words, if the top 10% increases their hours worked by 10%, and the bottom 90% does not, then of course we'd expect to find the top 10% showing gains. Remember, our bottom 90% will include more retirees every year. You'd not expect them to be working more, thus the hours worked by the bottom 90% will be actually DROPPING. Of course, I'd not expect you to find any studies with these corrections that you would approve of....because there isn't enough doom.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 10:37am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Irony writes: "Then compare that growth in prosperity (not just for the rich) with the graph of the marginal rates of tax over the mid-century:" But Irony, marginal rates have NOTHING to do with what was actually paid. Additionally, the wealthy are able to morph their income between stocks (incentive stock options or non-qualifying stock options), capital gains and normal income, depending on the current tax code. At the end of the day, the compensation of the top few % will tend to track the markets. When the markets are doing well, the top 1% will do well. As we've previously seen, Clinton slashed cap gains taxes, and then CEO compensation peaked in 1999 and 2000, even though marginal rates went up. In fact, one area economists study is the "taxable income elasticity", which notes the amount of income reported as a function of tax rates. As tax rates increase, reported income drops, and vice versa. This isn't due to any cheating, but instead it shows just how much latitude the high earners have to morph the income from one type to another.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 10:48am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nuts writes: "Your belief that the growing income disparity does not exist that and a weak bottom of the economy is not a concern explains the impact Republican policies have had on our current economy." Uh, no. Our current problems are due to the government encouraging those that were on the brink to give up all their home equity for a fancy loan that few could understand. And then to take that money and spend it on stuff they didn't need. But I suspect you will not admit how damaging the dem policy towards home ownership has been to the middle class.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 10:51am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nuts writes: "Warren's point is that government benefits successful business and for this it is not unreasonable to expect successful people to pay more in taxes." But she failed to make a case why government deserves funds BEYOND the expenses she spouted about roads and infrastructure. The wealthy already pay far more than their share for those things. The fact it, she cannot make a case for the wealthy to pay more. What she (and Obama) are indirectly making a case for is more good-ol-fashioned re-distribution. Obama likes to talk that he only want to restore Clinton tax rates. But in fact, his desired tax policies speak otherwise. He doesn't just want to put Clinton's rates back. If he gets his way, he will cut the effective tax rate on the on the bottom 99% by 2%, and raise the effective tax rate on the top 1% by 2%. That is, no matter how you slice it, "spreading the wealth around." Full stop. And he's told us that. Remember Joe the Plumber? Remember, our taxes are nothing like EU taxes. While they tax the crap out of their working poor, we GIVE our working poor money. Where we are headed just isn't right if we want a government in which all participate. More than half the country sees the government as a big ATM machine. I'd respect Warren a lot more if she just came out and said this. But instead we get this nonsense about roads. www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=3211&DocTypeID=2 Don't eat the link. Don't eat the link.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 11:01am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Bulbman sententiously pronounceth "...the meaningless leftioid gibberish of arnon and Haole45.." Which is not exactly a rational arguement, only name-calling. Elementary school yard stuff. Anyway, Bulb, how's abut you & your latte-sipping friend from Seattle come on down, & do an honest day's work for minimum wage? I promise you, you will feel great knowing you are stickin' it to the Man by just scrapping by & avoiding federal income taxes. How can you resist?

- Haole45

October 9, 2011 at 11:50am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Well, seattle, the CBO tax analysis, that you always tout as the final arbiter of all such questions DOES include negative taxes. So, you are wrong AGAIN. I understand. I know you just crib your comments from libertarian websites, don't actually read anything you refer to, and don't understand it if you chance to make the attempt. You don't believe the CBO when it says that after tax income for the bottom 40% fell in the period? Of course you don't. You are impervious to evidence believing that your ridiculous libertarian description of the world is better than reality. The distribution of wealth in society is no less the proper subject of democratic governance than anything else. There is no reason whatsoever why a democratic society should not use it's tax structure to manage the outcome of market distribution to achieve whatever outcome the majority deems just. The claims of libertarians that progressive taxation hurts growth are demonstrably the opposite of reality. Faced with the fact that their macro claim is a lie the then retreat to the micro claim that market income distribution is efficient, matching individual output with rewards. This is objectively nonsense. Our markets are far from perfect and riven with rents by which people who control some limited resource extract more than the efficient income. In gross cases, we regulate, antitrust law for example. But trying to regulate all of the rents out of the market would be a sisyphean task. If we want the benefits of markets, the sensible solution is to leave them largely alone, let them make the initial distribution, recognize that high incomes include a large share of rent, and then use progressive taxation to recapture the rents for society as a whole and achieve more equal outcomes. On democratic principles of social governance, pragmatic concerns about growth and oial stability, and both macro and micro economic efficiency, progressive taxes are entirely justified. One might add human decency to that list, but it isn't even necessary. Libertarian economic claims are based entirely on lies and the bald-faced denial of reality. There is no principled defense of such claims. They are quite on a par with belief the earth is flat, creationism, and climate change denial. Fit only for religiou nuts.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 12:19pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

No, Roid, it does not. The link you write even notes this although they try to say it's small and ignore it. They write: "The standard Census data on income and the CBO data analyzed here do not include the value of in-kind benefits. Since low- and moderate-income households receive more assistance from government in-kind benefits than high-income households do, these benefits moderate income disparities somewhat. The effect, however, is relatively modest." But with the country doling out $1T in welfare to some 50M families, this $20K per family is not insignificant. Tell you what. How about we go at this from another angle. Can you find a country in which the last 50 years have shown things are much better for the middle class? This isn't a loaded question at all as I really don't know the answer. I've looked France before. Their GDP/capita growth was similar to US, which might help make the case. But if we can see that another country has done substantially better for their middle class over the last 50 years then it's an interesting data point that might sway me. Absent that, the data to me says this isn't nearly as bad a problem as you and others make it out to be.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 12:40pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

PS. What I am getting at with the data from another country is this: If their middle class has substantially more (in constant dollars) today versus 50 years ago compared to our middle class, then that is interesting. I"ll spend a few minutes looking at this too.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 12:42pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Statistical charts aren't going to change anyone's mind and people don't vote on statistics. This is a political not an economic argument. The "aristocratic" values libertarians represent (without being aristocrats) and the values democrats (small d) represent. The libertarians pretend to appeal to democracy, but it's clear that they don't. They represent passes for the values of the "self made man." This is what we need to make clear to people.

- arnon

October 9, 2011 at 1:01pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Bulbman, So the Top 10% of income earners paid 60.6% of the income tax revenue provided to the US Government. That statement has zero to do with your "fairness" claim. The fairness issue centers around the question: "What percentage of your income/wealth received in a given tax year was paid in taxes back to the US Treasury?" If Warren Buffett and other billionaires pay most of the taxes at the capital gains rate of 15% and only a small fraction of their income at the top income tax rate on wages, their overall tax liability is often less than 20% of their annual income. Whereas their administrative staff earning under $100K a year are paying at the higher rate on their wages because they do not get any capital gains wealth as part of their compensation. So Buffet and his class are often paying about 18% of their annual income in income taxes and their less advantaged middle and working class brethren are paying sometimes 20-25% of income in federal and state income taxes. That may strike you as "fair," but it does not strike most of us as fair -- even some of us earners in the Top 10%. We "Top Ten Percenters," even after taxes, have a lot more disposable income to take home than folks below us in the income distribution. So we benefit disproportionately from services and goods the federal, state and local government provide -- clean water, good schools, safe streets, low crime, high quality health care, and financial security in case of loss of job or other misfortunes. The lower income earners such as Buffet's secretary pay a higher percentage of their yearly income for these shared public goods/government services than top income earners -- that sounds less equitable (i.e., less "fair") to them than to your top earners. In addition, paying taxes is hardly the biggest sacrifice any American makes to live in our great country. Larger sacrifices are borne by Americans in dangerous jobs like soldier, US Marshall, ATF agent, and other law enforcement folks who encounter deadly force in their jobs. When they make the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom and safety, that sounds like a much higher contribution to the greater good than a few extra bucks in tax contributions. Are your high earners and their trust fund kids signing up regularly for these dirty jobs to protect us? The statistics say, "no." It is much more likely these dirty jobs to protect all of us are populated by folks from the middle and working classes. Funny how that is. So your "fairness" and "we already pay too much" arguments sound selective, disingenuous and hollow. Since I have heard your arguments ad nauseum from the the GOP/Wall St Journal "change the subject" script writers for two plus years, I know they are not original arguments from your brain. You commandeered them from others and trot them out to distract from the deeper truth. It is quite sad and a little pathetic.

- mdoyle

October 9, 2011 at 1:35pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

seatleeng writes "Uh, no. Our current problems are due to the government encouraging those that were on the brink to give up all their home equity for a fancy loan that few could understand." Are you under the impression that the subprime mortgages were not traded and insured, which was how they spread throughout the economy, after which the failure of those mortgage pools dragged down the economy? More importantly, your statement looking backward confirms my assertion that the Republican fix to our problems includes only ignoring the impact of a dwindling middle class on our consumption based economy.

- Nusholtz

October 9, 2011 at 1:36pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

seatleeng writes "Uh, no. Our current problems are due to the government encouraging those that were on the brink to give up all their home equity for a fancy loan that few could understand." Are you under the impression that the subprime mortgages were not traded and insured, which was how they spread throughout the economy, after which the failure of those mortgage pools dragged down the economy? More importantly, your statement looking backward confirms my assertion that the Republican fix to our problems includes only ignoring the impact of a dwindling middle class on our consumption based economy.

- Nusholtz

October 9, 2011 at 1:36pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

It's unlikely you'll be making anything "clear" without at least a bit of familiarity with the advocates of liberty whom you so casually, and inaccurately, dismiss arnon. You will read Hayek, Adam Smith, et al without finding a shred of evidence to support your "aristocratic values" hunch, and you should do so. Hayek and Smith make the same point Warren did, if substantially better. Everyone should be able to grasp the fact that a modern economy, especially a healthy one, is far too complex to be planned or even regulated comprehensively, which is all folks asking for smaller, cheaper, more focused government are saying. Makes sense, as roi says, to let the markets do most of the sorting, and use the tax code to keep things moving within the banks. On the other hand, making simplistic use of charts that show growth when we were fighting WWII and subsequently selling our stuff to a world we had helped to relieve of serious competitors isn't particularly helpful. Ditto the implication that there's some magic in the Clinton marginal rates that caused the growth of the 90's.

- Robert Powell

October 9, 2011 at 1:50pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Seattleeng writes "But she failed to make a case why government deserves funds BEYOND the expenses she spouted about roads and infrastructure. The wealthy already pay far more than their share for those things." I see hypocrisy in stating that a capitalist may charge whatever the market will bear, but when the government creates a public resource it can only charge it's actual pro rata cost to the user. Why should we be so limited? Moreover, when you suggest that the wealthy have paid the cost of public resources, I ask if you are requiring them to pay an appropriate pro rata share of the cost of public resources relative to the benefit to them from their use?

- Nusholtz

October 9, 2011 at 1:51pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

A great deal of our prosperity in the WWII and post era was due to government spending. And it needs to be a rising share because a modern industrial economy cannot generate sufficient sustainable demand on it's own. If one wants to argue that economic outcomes have complex roots and cannot be attributed simply to highly progressive taxes, that is a legitimate discussion within the bounds of reasonable economic debate. But if you want to claim, as libertarians do, the flattening rates has been good for growth when all such evidence as exists is to the contrary, then you should be forced to sit in the cornerbwith creationists and the rest of the nuts. That is notba rational argument in the face of available evidence. Regulation is far more complicated than taxes and pricing. But such evidence as we have at this time strongly suggests that the economy, particularly the financial sector, is under-regulated and careening out of control. Generalizations about regulation should not be permitted to blind us to current reality. Yes, seattle, there is no study anywhere that quantifies non-monetary benefits of government, whether to the poorest or the wealthiest. There

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 2:17pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Is no reason at all to think the wealthy are not overwhelmingly the greatest beneficiaries of the society and government built by and sustained by millions other than themselves. Let them move to deserted islands and demonstrate there their unique ability to generate wealth due to their own remarkable efforts . Hush is quite right libertarian principles are perfectly consistent with the union of all charging whatever rent or entry fee it wants forbuse of the playing field. The true gripe of libertarians is that they abhor democracy and hence any democratically determined outcome. But government bought and paid for bt the wealthy doesn't trouble them at all. It is thinly disguised fascism n practice, whatever it's philosophical pretensions, the very mirror of communism.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 2:25pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nuts writes: "I see hypocrisy in stating that a capitalist may charge whatever the market will bear, but when the government creates a public resource it can only charge it's actual pro rata cost to the user. Why should we be so limited? " Are you kidding? I have a choice in buying an Ipad. I don't have a choice in paying taxes.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 3:39pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Is no reason at all to think the wealthy are not overwhelmingly the greatest beneficiaries of the society and government built by and sustained by millions other than themselves." The ant is also a greater beneficiary than the grasshopper. What is your point? At the extreme, you seem to be arguing that those that plan carefully, save the most and work the hardest pay all the bills. And those that live for the day, don't plan, don't save and don't want to work should have a right to the gains earned by the first group. Tell me: What should the outcome be for the person in society that doesn't finish high school, fathers many children out of wedlock and decides not to work more than 20 or 30 hours per week, in spite of employment being available?

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 3:43pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nuts writes: "Are you under the impression that the subprime mortgages were not traded and insured, which was how they spread throughout the economy, after which the failure of those mortgage pools dragged down the economy? " Yes, there were traded and insured as AAA, which is all most needed to know. Pensions gladly bought AAA based on the name alone. And thankfully, Fan and Fred had ensured that these were backed by the full faith and credit of the US government. I've written before about the ratings agencies culpability in all this. But to be sure, the ratings agencies would NOT have handed out AAA if it were anyone but Fan/Fred that were selling these instruments.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 3:46pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Seattleeng writes:"Are you kidding? I have a choice in buying an Ipad. I don't have a choice in paying taxes." I assume that you have decided to go with an irrelevant response to confuse me. But since we are talking about choices, have you looked at the debt lately? The Bush tax cuts cost us 2.1 trillion dollars even before we get to the unfunded wars and the prescription drug benefit. We are talking about the imperative of raising revenue. I don't see why you think your choice to buy an ipod is going to fix this problem.

- Nusholtz

October 9, 2011 at 3:48pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Seattleeng wrote: "But to be sure, the ratings agencies would NOT have handed out AAA if it were anyone but Fan/Fred that were selling these instruments." I don't know where you get your information, but the instruments were not sold by what you call Fan/Fred and according the Michael Lewis, the rating agencies gave out AAA ratings because they did not understand the investments and assumed that large pools of investments were safe without looking further. According to Congressional hearings, the rating agencies needed to get out of bed with the proponents of the investments that they were rating.

- Nusholtz

October 9, 2011 at 3:56pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Mdoyle writes: " If Warren Buffett and other billionaires pay most of the taxes at the capital gains rate of 15% and only a small fraction of their income at the top income tax rate on wages, their overall tax liability is often less than 20% of their annual income." You forget that Buffet already PAID taxes on the money he invested. He paid the full tax rate on that too. He had a choice to keep his post-tax investments under a mattress, or or to invest it AGAIN. Our society, and every modern society, decided it is better to invest it. That is why every society, yes, including the EU, charges lower tax rates on cap gains. And not only that, the corporation he invested in paid taxes on profits BEFORE it went to shareholders. Likely at a rate around 30%. Shareholders got what was left. And, don't forget, Buffett will pay 45% of everything he has left to the government when he dies. To claim that Buffett won't have paid "his share" is laughable.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 3:56pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Elizabeth Warren is a conservative's worst nightmare: An articulate college professor who has made it her life's work to stand up for the little guy against powerful institutions, whether in government or Wall Street. She is a real populist and therefore must be destroyed by portraying her as an out of touch liberal elitist snob -- a Harvard academic lost in her Ivory Tower. Hence George Will's dishonest attack last week in which he set fire to a few straw men of his own. Senate Republicans were so intimidated by the diminutive Warren's ability to so effectively advocate on behalf of average Americans who've been defrauded by Big Banks that they informed President Obama in no uncertain terms that under no conditions would they allow the President to appoint Warren to lead the consumer protection bureau which they failed to block when financial reform was signed into law last year. Likewise, right wing intellectuals like George Will are so desperate to discredit Warren's powerful statement of our interconnectedness as one people, they are willing to repudiate even their own long-held conservative principles if it means dishonestly turning voters against liberals like Warren whose views voters share. Rather than see Warren's statement about how we all depend on one another as a powerful statement of the American social contract, Will calls Warren's remarks a clarification of "the liberal project" which Will asserts is to "dilute the concept of individualism" and thereby refute "respect for the individual's zone of sovereignty." This is truly priceless. If I had nickel for every time George Will guffawed at the impertinence of those who believe the Constitution gives to women a "right to privacy" - or, as Will puts it, a "zone of sovereignty" - to control their own reproductive lives without interference from intrusive sex police or meddling televangelist Bible-thumping preachers, I'd be a rich man. But having declared himself to be on the side of the individual against society, Will then imputes a cartoonish mischaracterization of liberalism onto Warren when he says Warren believes "that individualism is a chimera," that individual achievements "should be considered entirely derivative from society" and that society is entitled to "socialize -- i.e., conscript" -- whatever fruits of an individual's labor society considers its fair share. Will calls this "collectivist agenda" antithetical to America's fundamental premise, which is: That government and its products, including such public goods as roads, schools and police, are instituted to facilitate individual striving, but that such "collective choices" designed to "facilitate" individual striving "does not compel the conclusion that the collectivity is entitled to take as much as it pleases of the results of the striving." Equally astonishing is Will's belief that Warren's "emphatic assertion" of the connection between individual destinies and "cooperative behaviors" is both "unremarkable" and misses the point, which he says is: That society is a "marvel of spontaneous order among individuals in voluntary cooperation," where hundreds of millions of people make billions of decisions every day, and it is the job of government to facilitate this marvelous mayhem and then get out of the way. That would come as news to the George Will of 1983, the one who wrote that liberal democratic societies were "ill-founded" precisely because they were based on materialism and the maximization of self-interest at the expense of those grander and more noble virtues such as generosity, modesty, humility, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, and justice, which Will exalts in his most extensive exposition on the nature and purpose of political society, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does. Going further, Will writes in his introduction to the re-release of professor Clinton Rossiter's classic history, Conservatism in America, that the incoherence in American conservatism is attributable to its too close association with free market capitalism. How could, asks Will, a political belief system based on law and order and the primacy of the community over the individual possibly subscribe to an economic theory like laissez-faire that is lawless at its core? "The severely individualistic values and the atomizing social dynamism of a capitalist society conflict with the traditional and principled conservative concern with traditions, among other things," write Will. "Those other things include the life of a society in its gentling corporate existence - in communities, churches and other institutions that derive their usefulness and dignity from the ability to summon individuals up from individualism to concerns larger and longer-lasting than their self-interestedness." Now that was the George Will I admired so much so long ago, who taught me to think and who made me proud to call myself a conservative way back when. But like Brent Scowcroft remarking about Dick Cheney, I don't recognize the George Will I see today. The sad reality, of course, is that like so many other right wing conservatives, George Will is not aiming for intellectual consistency or integrity with his take-down of Elizabeth Warren and her so-called "collectivist" ideas of an American social contract. Rather, what Will seeks is a strategic victory for the vested interests he serves should he succeed, with all his talk of collectivism and freedoms denied, in scaring away average, everyday voters from the very people, like Warren, who're looking out for their well-being.

- TedFrier

October 9, 2011 at 3:57pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Elizabeth Warren is the conservative movement's worst nightmare. The Tea Party only pretends to be populist. Professor Warren is the real deal, an articulate professor who has made it her life's work to stand up for the little guy against powerful interests, whether in government or Wall Street. The right knows it cannot defeat her on her own merits so it must destroy her by stereotyping her as a freedom-hating liberal elitist snob -- a Harvard academic lost in her ivory tower. Hence George Will's dishonest column that sets fire to a few straw men of his own. Senate Republicans were so intimidated by the diminutive Warren's ability to so effectively advocate on behalf of average Americans who've been defrauded by Big Banks that they informed President Obama in no uncertain terms that under no conditions would they allow the President to appoint Warren to lead the consumer protection bureau which they failed to block when financial reform was signed into law last year. Likewise, right wing intellectuals like George Will are so desperate to discredit Warren's powerful statement of our interconnectedness as one people, they are willing to repudiate their own long-held conservative principles if it means dishonestly turning voters against liberals like Warren whose views voters share. Rather than see Warren's remarks as a powerful statement of the American social contract, Will calls Warren's remarks a clarification of "the liberal project" which Will asserts is to "dilute the concept of individualism" and thereby refute "respect for the individual's zone of sovereignty." This is truly priceless. If I had nickel for every time George Will guffawed at the impertinence of those who believe the Constitution gives to women a "right to privacy" - or, as Will puts it, a "zone of sovereignty" - to control their own reproductive lives without interference from intrusive sex police or meddling televangelist Bible-thumping preachers, I'd be a rich man. Equally astonishing is Will's belief that Warren's "emphatic assertion" of the connection between individual destinies and "cooperative behaviors" is both "unremarkable" and misses the point, which he says is: That society is a "marvel of spontaneous order among individuals in voluntary cooperation," where hundreds of millions of people make billions of decisions every day, and it is the job of government to facilitate this marvelous mayhem and then get out of the way. That would come as news to the George Will of 1983, the one who wrote that liberal democratic societies were "ill-founded" precisely because they were based on materialism and the maximization of self-interest at the expense of those grander and more noble virtues such as generosity, modesty, humility, self-sacrifice, disinterestedness, and justice, which Will exalts in his most extensive exposition on the nature and purpose of political society, Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does. Going further, Will writes in his introduction to the re-release of professor Clinton Rossiter's classic history, Conservatism in America, that the incoherence in American conservatism is attributable to its too close association with free market capitalism. How could, asks Will, a political belief system based on law and order and the primacy of the community over the individual possibly subscribe to an economic theory like laissez-faire that is lawless at its core? "The severely individualistic values and the atomizing social dynamism of a capitalist society conflict with the traditional and principled conservative concern with traditions, among other things," write Will. "Those other things include the life of a society in its gentling corporate existence - in communities, churches and other institutions that derive their usefulness and dignity from the ability to summon individuals up from individualism to concerns larger and longer-lasting than their self-interestedness." Now that was the George Will I admired so much so long ago, who taught me to think and who made me proud to call myself a conservative way back when. But like Brent Scowcroft remarking about Dick Cheney, I don't recognize the George Will I see today. The sad reality, of course, is that like so many other right wing conservatives, George Will is not aiming for intellectual consistency or integrity with his take-down of Elizabeth Warren and her so-called "collectivist" ideas of an American social contract. Rather, what Will seeks is a strategic victory for the vested interests he serves should he succeed, with all his talk of collectivism and freedoms denied, in scaring away average, everyday voters from the very people, like Warren, who're looking out for their well-being.

- TedFrier

October 9, 2011 at 4:07pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

seattleeng: "But Irony, marginal rates have NOTHING to do with what was actually paid." Who said they did? I merely provided two graphs, one of the relative increase in average incomes over a period and the other of the changes in marginal rates of taxation over a similar period. Together they provide a circumstantial base for the proposition that middle class prosperity (that is, the income/assets etc of the largest number of Americans) increased consistently and substantially during a period of high marginal tax rates on the rich, roughly in the three or four decades from the end of the Depression to the post-Vietnam era. Btw, why does your counter-argument so often consist of refuting a point that nobody made? I'm just curious, because it's so obvious and I sometimes think that you think that nobody notices.

- ironyroad

October 9, 2011 at 4:49pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Why seattle, you have perfect legal freedom to refrain from earning market income and pay no income tax. Doesn't sharecropping and growing all your own food, making your own clothing, etc. appeal to you? Or have you, the arch libertarian, belatedly discovered that power and powerlessness are not simply a matter of legal restraint but have a great deal to do with the opportunities made available by society and that those are not equally available to all? In either case, it is perfectly consistent with democratic governance for the society to decide how much people should earn for doing particular things. You don't think that society owes it to a bohemian artist to give her a living doing what she wants to do. How does it come to pass that you are entitled to be paid what you want to do what you want? Does not the owner of the building in which you earn your living have the right to demand rent from you? If you cannot find any building that will have you without your paying rent, you are not forced to pay rent. You can simply not participate. So too the society that makes available the field on which you earn your living has the perfect right to demand that you pay rent, that you contribute to the cost, of sustaining the society as a whole, not just the road you travel on, the police officer that you run to, or the ambulance that you ride in, but the society as a whole. Do you tell your landlord what he is to allowed to do with the money you pay him to use his building? Of course not. Then on what basis do you complain that the rent for a place in American society is too high? You don't like it, move to Somalia. How then should we decide the allocation of income for performing different tasks? Democratically, that's how. It is fair when two people in the same circumstances pay the same taxes. There is no sense to treating people in different circumstances alike and there is nothing other than obsessive-compulsiveness in insisting that taxes must be proportional to income. You don't even believe in that. You think capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate or not at all. You have no problem with sales taxes that extract a higher percentage of income from those further down the scale. It would be inefficient and not to our advantage to fix the price of everything. We take advantage of what markets can offer in price inefficiency and then re-allocate income after the fact. Best of both worlds. Half of the libertarian argument is meant to persuade us that we cannot have the benefit of markets if we do this. That's what the claim about growth being tied to flat taxes is all about. Trying to persuade as that if we use democratic governance to put boundaries on people's opportunities in order to spread them around we will kill the goose. But that is a lie. Our own history shows that this is the very reverse of the case. When income is flatter and opportunities more generally available, the whole society, not just the wealthiest, prospers. That is what the historical record shows. You have no animating principle, seattle, other than the worship of the wealthy. Whatever is best for the wealthy, you or for it. Whatever might be to their immediate disadvantage in favor of any other aspect of society that it wishes to nurture, you are against it. All of the fantastic denial of reality, the incredible convoluted descriptions of an economy that exists only in your mind, all of the absurd examples that are supposed to dictate how we order society, as if our people consists of nothing but Michael Jordans on the one hand and a bunch of slackers smoking crack and popping out babies, are nothing. They are empty and arid, weird, tortured, twisted apologetics, completely divorced from economic reality and the lives of working people, in the service of your self-abnegation in the face of the wealthy. As for how this society is doing, last time you raised this question, I pointed you at the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index. If this country were not infested with right-wing nuts, we should be far and away first on the list of countries. We are 12th, down from 8th. That's how we are doing. And the more we lean toward libertarian economic policies, the worse off we are.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 5:00pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Two of the most strenuously preached precepts of contemporary conservatism are (1) to ensure fiscal responsibility, government must be reduced to a size capable of little more than maintaining military superiority and (2) once acquired, ownership of private property is sacrosanct. Therefore government may not tax owners without their approval and definitely not at a higher rate than citizens with millions of less wealth and earnings. The efficacy of this is illustrated in a simple story: A “son of the pioneers” came down the stairs of his magnificent house one morning and found six Cherokees sprawled comfortably in his richly furnished living room. “What are you doing here?!!” “We’re going to live here,” replied the chief. “You can’t do that!” “Why not?” “I own this house. In fact, this whole ranch!” “How did you get it?” “My father gave it to me.” “How did he get it?” “His father gave it to him.” “And how did he get it?” “His father fought for it!” the son of the pioneers boasted. “All right,” the chief said, and his companions rose. “We’ll fight you for it.” “I’ll call the sheriff!!!” The chief laughed. “He was fired in your governor’s last budget cut.”

- Weston

October 9, 2011 at 5:05pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Where do you come up with $20K of welfare benefits per recipient household? Care to back that up?

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 5:05pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Robert Powell “It's unlikely you'll be making anything "clear" without at least a bit of familiarity with the advocates of liberty whom you so casually, and inaccurately, dismiss arnon. You will read Hayek, Adam Smith, et al without finding a shred of evidence to support your "aristocratic values" hunch, and you should do so. Hayek and Smith make the same point Warren did, if substantially better.” Well, Robert Powell, New Gingrich is not Adam Smith and George Will is not Hayek. As for your claim to liberty the liberty many right wing libertarian is the liberty to make money. This in itself is not problematic, what is problematic is the equation of liberty with power and wealth. The right wing Republicans show us daily, in North Carolina for example, that their aim to restrict voting rights by making it more difficult for working people to get to the polls and vote. They would also like us to believe that democracy is bad for economic growth. What is that if not another attempt to curtail democracy; to delegitimize democratic societies?

- arnon

October 9, 2011 at 5:20pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I'm stunned that Bill Galston uses the puerile and vulgar phrase "wingnut mojo". I'll be donating my well-worn copies of Liberal Purposes and Liberal Pluralism to the Salvation Army bookstore. What a disappointment.

- westendorf

October 9, 2011 at 6:36pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nuts writes: " The Bush tax cuts cost us 2.1 trillion dollars even before we get to the unfunded wars and the prescription drug benefit. " Oh please. Repealed taxes don't continue to accrue to the government as if they are owed. Do you really think a deduction you took in 1985 should be looked at as "lost revenue" with interest and everything else considered? You'd think I was ridiculous if I went around talking about how much Clinton still owed me--including interest--from when he jacked up my taxes. Similarly, I think your argument is just as ridiculous. That you would actually believe this money is still owed to the government shows just how stilted your thinking is in this matter.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 6:43pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

My sincere apologies to Galston. The notification email that I received from TNR mistakenly prints Ed Kilgore's Oct. 7 piece about Rick Perry, including the "wingnut mojo" phrase, under Galston's byline. Now it makes perfect sense. Everything that Kilgore writes is puerile and vulgar, but nothing that Galston writes is. A big relief.

- westendorf

October 9, 2011 at 6:45pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Our greatest growth is associated with our greatest, and most stable income equality from about 1940 until about 1980... because it is wage pressure that drives most innovation, the competitive need to reduce costs by substituting capital for labor. The post WW-II period was indeed one in which labor was relatively scarce relative to capital. The US was humming, but I have to believe much of that was a result of our having bombed to bits many of our major industrial competitors. The others had been bled badly and run their capital ragged. If the Left wishes to prescribe this "fix" today, I'll have to reject their solution.

- karlwk

October 9, 2011 at 6:48pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Irony writes: "Who said they did? I merely provided two graphs, one of the relative increase in average incomes over a period and the other of the changes in marginal rates of taxation over a similar period." Your implication, as I read it, was that when tax rates were high, prosperity was high. But as I noted, effective tax rates have little bearing on what is actually collected. Irony writes: "Btw, why does your counter-argument so often consist of refuting a point that nobody made?" Well, then, what point were you making in showing the historic tax rates over time? Were you just linking to it for the heck of it??

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 6:53pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Why seattle, you have perfect legal freedom to refrain from earning market income and pay no income tax. " While you are right about income tax, I don't have the ability to avoid all taxes. Without income, I'd eventually lose the ability to pay my property taxes and I'd lose my property. And if Obama's health care survives the supreme court, then I'd lose my ability to pay for health car and be put in jail. But no matter what, nobody can compel me to buy an ipad2, or ANY product I don't want to buy.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 6:56pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

TedFrier writes: "Elizabeth Warren is the conservative movement's worst nightmare. The Tea Party only pretends to be populist. " Oh please. She is another ivory tower limousine liberal. They are a dime a dozen. She is no more a nightmare than any other of the "do as I say, not as I do" types out there. When the camera is on, she claims to be for the little person. When the camera is off, she's on private jets and taking favors and vacationing in places we'll never get to see.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 6:58pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Where do you come up with $20K of welfare benefits per recipient household? Care to back that up?" Sure. As of 2005, there are 85 welfare programs in the government Green Book. These total $620B. There are a welfare components to SS (about $100B), Medicare (about $115B), public schools (about $105B) and uncompensated medical care (about $40B). All up, this is about $1T we transfer to the needy through various programs Recently, an article ran that noted almost half of households received some benefit from the government. Therefore, that is about 50M households, give or take. $1T/50M = $20,000 per household. Of course, this also highlights the massive government inefficiency at work here. If we just gave this welfare to the people in the bottom 20% (about 60M people), this would be almost $18,000 per person. A family of 4 would have a salary of more than $72,000.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 7:09pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"But as I noted, effective tax rates have little bearing on what is actually collected." It's the relevance of what you noted that escapes me, seattle. The point I was making with the two graphs was that, contrary to rightwing arguments today that assert vehemently that high tax rates (whether "effective" or not) lead to capital flight which in turn leads to negative job creation and unemployment, the actual historical evidence suggests, if not the polar opposite, then at least a reality quite different from the position that you represent. What was "actually" collected is a completely separate argument about the enforcement capacity of the tax system at any given moment.

- ironyroad

October 9, 2011 at 7:12pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"When the camera is off, she's on private jets and taking favors and vacationing in places we'll never get to see." Any evidence for this?

- ironyroad

October 9, 2011 at 7:12pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "How does it come to pass that you are entitled to be paid what you want to do what you want? Does not the owner of the building in which you earn your living have the right to demand rent from you? If you cannot find any building that will have you without your paying rent, you are not forced to pay rent. You can simply not participate." I am not entitled to be paid anything. I do my best to be a good engineer, and hopefully attract an employer who will pay me a wage I find reasonable. If I don't like the wage, I can leave. If they don't like my contribution, they can fire me. Of course the building owner has the right to demand rent. And if I don't like it, I have the right to look elsewhere. If it's too expensive, I move further from the city. Roid writes: "As for how this society is doing, last time you raised this question, I pointed you at the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index. If this country were not infested with right-wing nuts, we should be far and away first on the list of countries. We are 12th, down from 8th. That's how we are doing." I laughed at the HDI then, and I'll do it here again. The summary of the HDI is this: "It freaking rocks to be middle class in the US. More than just about any place else in the world. You have a richer middlec class than middle class people everywhere else. You live longer, and you get more schooling. Therefore we rank the US #4 on the HDI. However, it would be better if the top earners in the US shared even more money with their already super-wealthy middle class. And when we consider the US middle class might be even more wealthy, we must drop the US down to #12". The HDI is a joke. And still, it ranks us as kicking absolute ass. I'm surprised you see it as critical. You guys are aware that the top 1% in this world earn just $45,000. That puts our middle class in the top 1% world wide. Think about that: A median earner in the US is in the top 1% world wide. And nope, Sweden, France, etc, can't make that claim.

- seattleeng

October 9, 2011 at 7:40pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Seattleeng “Oh please. She is another ivory tower limousine liberal…..When the camera is on, she claims to be for the little person. When the camera is off, she's on private jets and taking favors and vacationing in places we'll never get to see.” Our engineer from Seattle must be clairvoyant on top of everything else: he can tell what she doing when the “camera id off.” Bickering over tax charts and pontificating on their meaning is one thing, seeing behind closed doors and walls is something else.

- arnon

October 9, 2011 at 8:04pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I forget to mention, seattle, that the libertarian claim that marginal tax rates don't affect tax collections is another one of those completely nutjob claims right up there with climate change denial. The stuff of wackos. It is just another version of the Laffer curve, the lunacy that was the justification for the Reagan tax cuts. Remember how tax rates were going down but tax collections were supposed to go up? Didn't happen. Of course, tax collections went down and through us into the very first post-war structural deficit in which debt as a percentage of GDP went up. Bill Clinton reversed course and then the wackos sold the country the same snake oil again under Bush II. Waddya know, tax collections went down again and through us into only the second post-war period in which debt rose as a percentage of GDP. Seattle says: "I am not entitled to be paid anything. I do my best to be a good engineer, and hopefully attract an employer who will pay me a wage I find reasonable. If I don't like the wage, I can leave. If they don't like my contribution, they can fire me. Of course the building owner has the right to demand rent. And if I don't like it, I have the right to look elsewhere. If it's too expensive, I move further from the city." Then quit whining about taxes, seattle. If you don't like your after-tax wage, leave. If you don't like paying the cost of living in America and being a member of American society, move away. Personally, I would be happy with any democratically determined tax structure. That's what it means to be a member of society. I am not happy with a tax structure set by politicians who are bought and paid for by the wealthy. That is an undemocratic outcome, and that is the core problem. If our society wants to elect representatives not corrupted either by campaign contributions or promises of future gain who then want flat or regressive taxation, that's more money in my pocket. But when people are tired of having their labor plundered by the wealthy and want to change that structure, they should not fact a wall of corrupt politicians. Whatever some semblance of real democracy determines, I can live with. I shall turn my attention to tracking down seattle's claims about "welfare." As he has an unbroken record of either falsifying or misunderstanding and misrepresenting data, Bayes theorem suggest we should expect more of the same. But we shall see. As for being wealthy in America, it kicks as, doesn't it? So why should the wealthy complain if we raise their tax rates? According to seattle, it won't even cost them anything more in taxes.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 10:59pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"The Myth of Voter Fraud" Round up of the aristocratic libertarian attempt to keep the hoi polloi from the polls: "It has been a record year for new legislation designed to make it harder for Democrats to vote — 19 laws and two executive actions in 14 states dominated by Republicans, according to a new study by the Brennan Center for Justice. As a result, more than five million eligible voters will have a harder time participating in the 2012 election." http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/the-myth-of-voter-fraud.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

- arnon

October 9, 2011 at 11:32pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

And here it comes: Let’s start dissecting seattle’s claim about half of American families receiving an average of $20K per year of welfare. This anti-government spending website: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2011USbn_12bs1n_404947_609#usgs302 lists only $700 billion of state and federal spending in 2011 that it classifies as welfare. But when you look below the top line, you find that they include $190 billion of unemployment insurance. I wouldn’t consider that welfare. It is just what it purports to be, unemployment insurance and it is funded with payroll taxes. They also list $20 billion of workers comp. That is also insurance also funded with payroll taxes. Scratch $210 billion from the $700 billion. If 50% of households participate in the net “welfare” spending, we are already at about $8.600 per household, a much more plausible figure than seattles’. But wait. Another $68 billion is low income tax credits in excess of tax, already accounted for in the CBO study that considers “negative taxes” and finds that net income for the bottom 40% declined. Let’s not double count and consider that as in-kind benefits to the poor to which seattle is referring. Then there is another $93 billion that isn’t welfare at all. It is things like spending on airports, fire departments, veterans’ benefits. All things that are part of “general welfare” but are not what seattle or anyone else means by “welfare” or in-kind benefits to the working poor and lower middle class. This takes us down to $329 billion. Again, if 50% of households participate, that’s about $5,800 per household. But wait, $53 billion of “supplemental income security” goes to a handful who are “blind, aged or disabled” and have little or no income to provide for basic food, clothing and shelter. Not at all money going to the working or permanently unemployed poor an lower middle class. So, what is the “welfare” going to the bottom half? Housing support, food support, etc., money that makes the working poor less poor? $276 billion or $4,850 per household on average. But, what the heck, let’s add back the $68 billion of low income tax credits. That gets us up to $6,000 per low-income working household. Gosh it must be fun to be in the lower half of American workers and receive this tremendous boon. As usual, seattle has cribbed some bullshit lies from rightwing websites, probably from the Heritage Foundation, and shared them with us. As I said above, libertarianism can only be defended with lies.

- roidubouloi

October 9, 2011 at 11:36pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roidubouloi believes that private property may be confiscated by the government and arbitrarily transferred to other as long as this has the sanction of “democratic governance”. He further asserts that the “the true gripe of libertarians is that they abhor democracy and hence any democratically determined outcome”. Roidubouloi either does not understand the libertarian viewpoint or has chosen to misrepresent it for rhetorical reasons. Libertarians have long held two principles. First, there are fundamental liberties that are off limits to proscription regardless of what form government takes. For example, few would abide by laws imposing slavery regardless of whether they were decreed by an autocrat or enacted by a democratic state. The fundamental right in question here is the right to property – the right of every citizen to keep the proceeds of their risks and labors. Abridgment of this right by the state effectively condemns the individual to indentured service for the benefit of others. Second, libertarians understand that democracy may be the best form of government currently available, but it is far from perfect. Thus, democratic outcomes cannot be given carte blanche over national policy. I assume that the limitations of democracy are well known to all and I will not tire the readership with supporting details. One only needs to look at recent history; Adolf Hitler first came to power by democratic means. Libertarians do not “abhor democracy” as Roidubouloi groundlessly suggests. They simply understand its moral and practical limitations. Democracy deserves some moral privilege and is appropriate for narrow range of policy; however, it cannot be used as banner to deprive citizens of their elemental freedoms. Simply put no known form of government has the practical wisdom or moral authority to deprive the citizenry of certain fundamental rights.

- Nicomachus

October 10, 2011 at 12:42am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

What elemental freedoms are being abrogated here? This is nonsense. We are talking about the constitutionally based right of elected governments to assess various taxes for purposes of local, state, and national policy. There can be even seriously substantial differences over amounts, classes, structure, and so on, but if someone starts pitting "elemental freedoms" against the principle that people should pay according to their means rather than people with less paying more in order that basic operations of a large and complex society be carried out effectively, then the discussion has become close to absurd.

- ironyroad

October 10, 2011 at 1:13am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

To put it more succintly, private property and the freedoms it brings with it can only exist if an organized polity is able to defend its stability and survival. To do that, private property must participate in public service, financially or otherwise.

- ironyroad

October 10, 2011 at 1:17am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

irony, I think I spelled out exactly the fundamental right in question is. What you seem to be in favor of is a government policy where a person’s need entitles them to other people’s wealth. Where one is forced to labor not for the benefit of oneself, but for the benefit of others. In short, you advocate Mark's infamous phrase “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Not only has history invalidated this approach on practical grounds, but more importantly I believe this to be a fundamental violation of our rights. If that is "nonsense" or "absurd" in your book, then we have difference of values and opinion.

- Nicomachus

October 10, 2011 at 2:03am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

irony, I agree on the surface with your 2nd statement "private property and the freedoms it brings with it can only exist if an organized polity is able to defend its stability and survival".. but only on the surface. It should be the primary duty of government to defend the fundamental rights of its citizens. These rights are life, liberty, and property. However, some want to go well beyond these fundamental protections. They have invented artificial entitlements such as social security, health care, day care, night care, pet care, and whatever other addictive dependencies politicians have thought of. These entitlements benefit select groups at the expense of other groups. This is what I find objectionable. This has nothing to do with the orderly function of government or society.. quite the opposite, these entitlements have brought us to the brink of financial and moral disaster.

- Nicomachus

October 10, 2011 at 2:26am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

arnon--we can certainly agree that Gingrich and Will are not Smith and Hayek. If you are really interested in understanding libertarian thought, I highly recommend the latter over the former. Re: Nicomachus, who appears to have done the reading-- Hayek explicitly shows that government is on the wrong track when it privileges one group over another, whether by democratic or dictatorial means. See "dictatorship of the proletariat". Re: various posters-- tax rates' relationship to the overall health of an economy is over-rated by both Repubs who claim lowering taxes always produces growth, and Dems who point to various boom periods that also had higher than current marginal rates. This is typical political flim-flammery that attempts to push a simplistic causal relationship between a few factors in a VERY complicated subject.

- Robert Powell

October 10, 2011 at 9:03am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nichomachus, Robert Powell, You haven't read enough history. The main reason we have entitlement programs is so the unwashed masses won't burn the country down, not because some air-headed liberal forced the "wealth creators" to give up some of their often not-so-hard-earned loot. Notice that the Republicans when they're in power do absolutely nothing about getting rid of entitlements. They prefer paying off po' folks to anarchy in the streets. The French and Russian peasants were not paid off and look what happened in those countries. The heads of the "wealth creators" rolled. Po' folks in this country now have access to machine guns. Which would you prefer--paying off "lazy good-for-nothings" or dodging bullets on the way to the store? What is in operation here is simple pragmatism. I thought libertarians and Republicans were supposed to be hard-headed. Eventually anarchy in the streets leads to a police state, and I think you'd prefer enriching the thieving masses a bit to that, too. You're right. It is a very complicated subject.

- magboy47.

October 10, 2011 at 11:08am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Is it really necessary to point out that private property could not exist without the state? For what is property after all but a series of legally established rights for one individual or group of individuals to make use of certain assets to the exclusion of all others and to have those "rights" protected and enforced at community expense. Laissez faire conservatives like to pretend that "the state" exists in one sphere and "property" in a separate sphere called "freedom." But without the state and the contributions that all of us make for its upkeep we would merely have the law of the jungle where only the strong survive. Elizabeth Warren has frightened conservatives by pointing out this elemental fact of our interconnectedness in an economy that is profitable because of its division of labor and specialization. And so conservatives must destroy her as a freedom-hating extremist no matter how dishonest their attacks, because she completely undermines their rationalization for putting their own approved elites in charge -- whether in the military, the ministry or big business -- instead of a democratic government whose legitimacy derives from the consent of a governed that might not like the way the benefits of all this government-protected property is being distributed.

- TedFrier

October 10, 2011 at 11:21am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Excellent post, TedFrier. Righties are in La-La Land, when it comes to economics. They've read too much Ayn Rand, history's greatest dreamer. We not only need the state to protect our property--we can't even acquire property or wealth without it. Can you imagine two or more property owners deciding who gets what between them by themselves? I think that's called the Mafia.

- magboy47.

October 10, 2011 at 11:35am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"They have invented artificial entitlements such as social security, health care, day care, night care, pet care, and whatever other addictive dependencies politicians have thought of." If this comment is the core of your argument then I'm not sure how to respond, Nicomachus. It's nothing to do with a difference in values, unless a random mix of rightwing polemic and logical non-sequiturs represents a value. Look, social security is not an entitlement, it is an insurance system that people pay into. Health care is the sign of a society that values the shape its citizens are in, and currently most of it in this country is on a private insurance basis. If by "daycare" you mean provision for looking after children while their parents work, then it is, among other things, a mechanism whereby corporations attract talented women who also have kids into their ranks. Pet care is, above all, a small-niche capitalist business that flourishes in prosperous locations. But I'm glad to know that trying to ensure that people don't rot away from illness due to lack of disposable income is, for you, an "addictive dependency." Might it be worth considering, however, that good health care can increase the general quality of life and workforce reliability in a society, and that quality of life is one of the things that enables business, commerce, wealth-making, and capitalism in general to actually take place?

- ironyroad

October 10, 2011 at 12:38pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

TedFrier, magboy, you are suggesting a false dichotomy and refuting an argument no one is asserting. Obviously the state must exist to protect our freedom. Our freedoms are violated when an individual, a group, or the state itself initiates force against us - direct force like armed robbery or indirect force like fraud. It is a primary responsibility of government to safeguard our rights and protect us from those that would use force to deprive us of our freedom. I see no inconsistency here. The fact that the state is required to protect private property does not mean that we must cede all private property rights to the state. In fact, the opposite is true. The state cannot be allowed to become the agent of force that dispossesses us of our property and liberties.

- Nicomachus

October 10, 2011 at 12:43pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Irony writes: "It's the relevance of what you noted that escapes me, seattle. The point I was making with the two graphs was that, contrary to rightwing arguments today that assert vehemently that high tax rates (whether "effective" or not) lead to capital flight which in turn leads to negative job creation and unemployment, the actual historical evidence suggests, if not the polar opposite, then at least a reality quite different from the position that you represent. " Well, in that case, the relevance is 100%. Just because we had high marginal tax rates does NOT mean a lot of taxes were collected....And vice versa. Or you could have cited cap gains, and it would have shown the OPPOSITE since they moved to a historic low under Clinton.

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 1:00pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

irony writes (in my response to asserting EW is limo lib): "Any evidence for this? Not yet. But give it time. She has all the other traits already in place: Never made anything, fat 6 figure salary, cushy pension. Full of ivory tower ideas on how things shoudl be run. But almost zero real world experience.

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 1:08pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Then quit whining about taxes, seattle. If you don't like your after-tax wage, leave. If you don't like paying the cost of living in America and being a member of American society, move away." Or, I coudl stay here and exercise my right to try and change the course of events. I think I'll do that instead.

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 1:11pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Irony, you made a lot of unjustified statements, lets focus on the most egregious: "social security is not an entitlement, it is an insurance system" This is a popular fraudulent argument by the left. First, taxes collected for social security is not invested in order to generate future benefits, but in reality used to make payouts to current beneficiaries. If a private insurance company operated in this manner, it would be bankrupt and its executives indicted. However, this is not the worse fallacy encapsulated in this statement. The most important different is that participation in this so called “insurance policy” is compelled by government force. In a free society, participation in insurance is a rational choice by individuals who believe that they stand to benefit. In a “government knows best” entitlement society, the state forces the individual into what it has determined to be the “correct” program. Furthermore, like all entitlements, social security creates national dependency on bloated and inefficient government programs as rational individuals are forced to calculate it into their retirement plans. Thus, despite the fact that entitlement spending is growing out of control and national debt is skyrocketing, once enacted, entitlements are almost never revoked.. much to the gratification of politicians who pander them to the electorate.

- Nicomachus

October 10, 2011 at 1:32pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Let’s start dissecting seattle’s claim about half of American families receiving an average of $20K per year of welfare." You can start by using the correct document. As I noted, the per-decade (?) Green Book is the source, and the Congressional Research Service publishes a more digestible document called that "Cash and Noncash Benefits for Persons with Limited Income" linked below. Table I is what you want to refute. It is from 2004... assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL33340_20060327.pdf Fire away...

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 1:37pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

"Just because we had high marginal tax rates does NOT mean a lot of taxes were collected....And vice versa." Very possibly. But again, I never said it did. Rather, I posted graphs allowing one to compare marginal rates of tax and middle class real income growth -- a very different issue. As far as I can see from Warren's bio, she has authored or co-authored around 100 journal articles and six academic books, and a couple of successful books aimed at a more general audience. Having only written one myself (and a few articles), I would say that (a) that is some sweat equity and (b) envy of other people's salaries can leave a bad taste.

- ironyroad

October 10, 2011 at 1:42pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

seattleeng, Shareholders get a company performing in an economy performing under US law instead of Russian or Nigerian or Zimbabwe law for their (alleged -- based unavailability of industry-specific loopholes and credits, etc) 30% rate. They also get access to the largest market in the world. They aslo get to use the US infrastructure. None of those goods are low value. Stop crying about corporate taxation -- if you want to see government blackmail, bribery and confiscation, try some of those other countries above. Secondly, Buffett already said he pays too little compared to what other folks who have much less are paying for what they receive. So you might wan to back off making claims that you are Zeus on high and have determined once and for all that the tax rates on the super wealthy are too high. You have your subject point of view and I have mine, and yours appeals to people who worship the rich and think more money is the only thing that brings piece of mind. Every man for himself, the devil take the hindermost social darwinism was tried in this country in the late 19th and early 20th century -- it turned out not to be too popular when voters got an up close look at it. But you keep believing your point of view is unassailable and wildly popular.

- mdoyle

October 10, 2011 at 2:09pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nicomachus writes: "In a free society, participation in insurance is a rational choice by individuals who believe that they stand to benefit. In a “government knows best” entitlement society, the state forces the individual into what it has determined to be the “correct” program." Very well said. The sadder part of SS is that while it is a forced investment, the same forced investment could readily deliver a much healthier return for a modest $50K (or any) earner. Almost double what the government pays. Here, we have a clear cut example of libs depriving a person of substantial income SOLELY for the fact so that this program can be administered for the government. Libs tend to get wrapped up in the wrongness of $5/month bank fees, but completely ignore the almost $500K that a $50K worker is deprived of due to the horrid effective rate of return the worker sees on his government "investment" that is SS. In my interactions with various folks on TNR, you get the feeling in the end that they don't care HOW poorly the government performs its task. Still, the beast much be shoveled more money. And anyone that doesn't believe this, they figure is against all government. Which could not be further from the truth. As noted above in the thread, the greatest risk with government is favortism. The government has the ability to completely short-circuit markets and play favorites. We saw this when Obama stuck unions to the front of the line in dealing with bankrupt lawmakers (completely trampling the rights of investors who were previously at the front of the line), we see this in decisions such as Kelo. We see this in Occupy Wall Street folks who have collectively decided that all debts should be forgiven. What are we? Venezuela? Where one day the government decides they need to take the oil fields as their own property? It doesn't take too much of this for those with money to just decide they are going to hold onto it. Build higher walls, perhaps hire their own security force. And absent that freely invested capital, innovation grinds to a halt. Growth stops. Entitlements become the only thing the workers are interested in, and the path to Athens (or worse) becomes clear.

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 2:11pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

MDoyle writes: "Secondly, Buffett already said he pays too little compared to what other folks who have much less are paying for what they receive. So you might wan to back off making claims that you are Zeus on high and have determined once and for all that the tax rates on the super wealthy are too high." I've never said tax rates on the top 0.01% are too high. My focus as been the mythical case of the husband fireman and wife school teacher that are 15 years into their working life. And it's not that the taxes are too high, it's that the taxes are too high for the return this couple gets. They themselves will get nothing more from government for more taxes. It will clearly just be handed to those at the bottom. Obama and Buffett are disconnected. Buffett has since clarified that he's talking about the top 0.5%. Obama, on the other hand, is decided that the top 5% need their taxes increased. Again, for no extra services. Simply to have their sweat handed to someone else. Now, if you think it's reasonable, I'll ask you the qeustion I ask everyone else. A person making $45K is in the top 1% of earners world wide. How do you feel about taking $15K from this person, and just giving it to a person in Africa that doesn't have any clean water? Would you be FOR this? If this is reasonable to you, then at least you are consistent. If not, then why?

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 2:23pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

MDOyle writes: "Shareholders get a company performing in an economy performing under US law instead of Russian or Nigerian or Zimbabwe law for their (alleged -- based unavailability of industry-specific loopholes and credits, etc) 30% rate. They also get access to the largest market in the world. They aslo get to use the US infrastructure. None of those goods are low value. Stop crying about corporate taxation -- if you want to see government blackmail, bribery and confiscation, try some of those other countries above." So, if a mafia guy and his henchmen show up to my shop and tell me I'm lucky they are allowing me to be in "their" neighborhood and I should just pay up the protection fee, I should just do it? Our government has not created the things you list. OUr private industry created these things. Yes, with help from the government. But that help came primarily in the form of lower taxes (which permitted reward for innovation) and the freedom to keep what you made and purchased. As I noted, if the additional government taxes I will pay get me some additional services, then by all means, let's talk. But nobody is saying they will. They are clearly telling me the additional taxes will just be given to someone else AFTER the gov has skimmed their bit off the top. And add to this, we now have wealthy kids running through the streets demanding the same, and promising even more riots and violence if they don't' get what they are asking for. Tell me again, how does this NOT sound like the mafia, just on a larger scale?

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 2:30pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Private property is a means, not an end, unless you are a libertarian. In that case, using property to buy legislators is fine, because rights are an attribute of property, not of people. Leave aside that property is itself a construct of society having no existence but for law. Somehow or other the society is obliged, according to libertarians, society cannot democratically determine where property stands amongst its interests. It MUST give individual property rights priority whether the interests of society are served or not. Pure religious nuttery. Might as well worship statues of bulls. One wonders how a libertarian would refute a religious insistence that a particular religious practice trumps all else as that is indistinguishable from the claim that property rights are a priory sacred rather than a legal and social construct. For rational people not possessed by religious mania, property is but one tool amongst many for achieving human well-being, to be shaped, limited, and constrained to serve social ends. Social ends are not subordinate to property but the only justification for it. In any case, it does not take anyone's property to charge an entry fee for participation in the market that is another socially constructed tool. The entry fee is called taxes. If you don't want to pay taxes, you can refrain from participating in the market and you will have no market income tom tax

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 3:30pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

How does seattle know that the fireman's taxes go to people on the bottom? In any case, progressive taxes do not take anything. They set the boundaries of what one can take from the market. The focus on taxes is just libertarian misdirection. They object fundamentally to a collective, democratic determination of who can take how much from the market in trade. They want financial power exercised by individuals without limit to control and dominate every aspect of society. In essence, they want money to vote, as if money is the measure of share in the social order rather than being a human being. All their blather about liberty is just that. The head of Cato wrote me that libertarians have no principled objection to people selling themselves into slavery. None of any libertarian's business how society uses its cut of market income, including throwing out of airplanes. It is not yours, it is ours. Nothing is yours but that society defines it as yours and defends it for you. You don't want to pay society, then pay the mafia or defend yourself against whatever force comes to take what you think is yours. Unless you buy into society, you are on your own. There are places in the world where you can achieve just that.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 3:50pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

You can stay Seattle, but you only get one vote. If you are outvoted, tough. Quit whining. None of your human rights are violated by paying taxes. That is so obvious that you have to make up phony stories about economics ton defend your claims, most notably demonstrably false claims about the relationship between taxation and prosperity. The falsehoods foul the public square. Pure pollution.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 3:56pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

The claim that social security provides a low return is another rightwing lie. It is not ban investment. Current workers pay in to support current retorted in exchange for the promise that they will be supported in turn. It is expensive for current workers only because the same rightwing insists that only labor support retirees. We could have whatever nominal investment yield we wanted if we also taxed income from capital to support retirees. And if we tried to invest all of net social security taxes, as rightwingnuts claim towny, we would have no place to put it. Rightwingnuts are hopelessly and rather pathetically befuddled by the concept of legal title. It is as if they learned law by watching Law and Order. Come to think of it, they did. They read Ayn Rand and then think they know something about law and economics. She didn't, hence they don't.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 4:16pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Powell is right that the relation between taxes and prosperity is complex. But that does not mean that any hypothesis can be maintained. The rightwing claim that highly progressive rates are inimical tp growth is plainly wrong as we have had our highest growth with our highest rates. Similarly the claim that flattening rates spurs growth. Hasn't worked. What we get when rates on top tier income get too low are asset bubbles because there is too much money chasing too few investments. Do the facts matter to libertarians? All such evidence as exists refutes their claims even if not by itself sufficient to prove the contrary.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 4:24pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Current workers pay in to support current retirees in exchange for the promise that they will be supported in turn.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 4:28pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

The nominally invested portion of social security earns the market risk free rate of return just like anyone buying treasuries. But most social security taxes, all today, go to support retirees and always have.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 4:32pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: " It MUST give individual property rights priority whether the interests of society are served or not. Pure religious nuttery." I take it you aren't a big believer in the 5th amendment? It was a fairly innovative concept at the time. I guess you don't think so. Roid writes: "How does seattle know that the fireman's taxes go to people on the bottom?" The fireman (or anyone making more than about $65K) gets less back from government than they pay in. Unless, of course, you ascribe some magical quality to roads, as does Elizabeth Warren. In that case, you believe that the very act of building a road creates infinite value, and thus you are entitled to a chunk of everything. Just like the mafia that knocks on your door on Monday morning. But I digress... Now, if a person making $65K gets less from government than he puts in, then where is the rest of the money going? There is a portion that is purely redistributive. As you have not yet refuted the $1T welfare argument, I'll go with that number again. Welfare is about 25% of our total gov budget. The $65K earner is paying an effective individual tax rate of about 4-5%, or about $3200. If 25% of our gov is welfare, then he's paying about $800 to welfare. Now, if the welfare goes to a person who is 53 years old, broke and on dialysis, then we all agree this is a good thing. Especially because the higher earners will pay even more to help this person. But if the welfare recipient is 3rd generation, pregnant (again), able bodied (as usual), a high school dropout and not really sure who fathered the first 2 kids, then I have a serious problem asking the $65K earner to pay $800 to help the able-bodied person who has made a long list of bad choices. PS. You certainly won't like the source, but if you wonder where the $65K figure comes from, the tax foundation takes a look at the common benefit we all get from gov (schools, roads, defense, etc) and determines the cost of each, and then comes up with a figure of how much benefit each group gets for a dollar of tax paid. You certainly won't like the study, but it's an interesting concept to understand. www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/2286.html Dont' eat the linkDont' eat the linkDont' eat the linkDont' eat the linkDont' eat the linkDont' eat the linkDont' eat the link

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 4:44pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "The claim that social security provides a low return is another rightwing lie." Well, if it's a lie, then it's a government lie. The SS office itself calculates an effective rate of return on SS. Not great at all. www.ssa.gov/OACT/NOTES/ran5/an2004-5.html For a two couple earner born in 2004, they will see a lifetime rate of return from SS of about 2.5% (subtract inflation from that). That, frankly, sucks. Especially when you consider for a $50K earner, this is their major retirement investment. Think about that: Their biggest retirement investment, and the government gives them a super crappy rate of return. Heritage does some interesting analysis and shows that for some low-income minorities (with shorter expected life times) they will see negative rate of return. www.heritage.org/research/reports/1998/01/social-securitys-rate-of-return But, again, SS is exactly what you expect from government. A forced program that delivers horrid performance for all involved.

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 4:56pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Powell is right that the relation between taxes and prosperity is complex. But that does not mean that any hypothesis can be maintained. The rightwing claim that highly progressive rates are inimical tp growth is plainly wrong as we have had our highest growth with our highest rates. Similarly the claim that flattening rates spurs growth. Hasn't worked. What we get when rates on top tier income get too low are asset bubbles because there is too much money chasing too few investments." Of course it is complex. And what I particularly like is how you also note it's complex, and then you revert to the normal talking points while ignoring the complexities. I'll point out again: Clinton dropped cap gains to historic lows. And I'll point out again, for the top few %, they have no problem moving income between normal tax rates and cap gains. The can almost convert it at will. And I'll make the final point again: The wealthy do NOT care about higher taxes when the economy is humming. Get the economy humming and they will gladly pay more. And then we'll all be happy. But this crap where Obama et al think they will punish the rich and we'll all enjoy life is just crazy. Nobody is happy right now. And the rich are content to sit and wait. They can outwait us all. Make the rich happy, and we'll all be happy. I know that is a repulsive concept to small, envious men. But it's true.

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 5:01pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nichomachus, I swear, the only source of "information" of you Righties is Fox News. Social Security is a trust fund that takes the surplus from current payers into the system, after retirees are paid, and invests it in U.S. Treasury bonds. The fund is solvent right now, so the government can leave the surplus in bonds that keep drawing interest. So the fund is not only solvent, but drawing interest as we speak. Google it. Of course, I'm sure you won't trust any source other than Fox News. I used to half-trust Fox News until I saw two different people on it (Rudy Giuliani was one of them) claim that there were no terrorist attacks while G.W. Bush was president. The second guy was on a panel with four other commentators, and not one of them disputed his claim. I no longer watch Fox News.

- magboy47.

October 10, 2011 at 5:08pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Nichomachus: "The most important different is that participation in this so called “insurance policy” is compelled by government force. In a free society, participation in insurance is a rational choice by individuals who believe that they stand to benefit." This is nonsense. Firstly, participation in SS is not compelled by government force. It is compelled, in the first instance, by law, enacted by the United States Congress. And a society in which the decision whether or not to obey the law is entirely a matter of personal taste and inclination is not a free society but a dangerous and instable one. Somalia, in other words. It can and should be said, of course, that there always remains the option of declaring a law to be so beyond the boundaries of ethical acceptability that it simply cannot be obeyed in good conscience. The Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850s was one such law. However, that position needs to be something other than a purely individual act of selfishness, and I doubt very much that refusing to pay social security contributions will easily achieve the moral imperative of refusing to return escaped slaves to their owners.

- ironyroad

October 10, 2011 at 5:45pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

You have no idea what the Fifth Amendment means. It is well settled law that general taxes are not a taking within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. A taking must fall peculiarly on an individual. Likewise, All general rules and regulations, such as environmental protection laws, defining the limits of property are not takings under the Fifth Amendment. We also have a subsequent amendment to permit federal income taxes. Any inconsistency is resolved in favor of the latter. It also eludes that it is in no sense the purpose of taxes to give to each individual exactly what he pays in. Hence, it is hardly surprising that that is not the outcome. The benefits of government over all are not capable of being allocated to individuals by any rational scheme.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 5:47pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

You talk to the air, Seattle. No matter the complexities, SOME aspects are simple and undeniable. There is no case to be made that high marginal rates frustrate high growth as we had our highest, sustained growth with our highest marginal rates. That suffices to refute the claim. And such evidence as we have is that lowering marginal rates does not stimulate growth. Attempted by both Reagan and Bush and in both cases growth fell. Did lowering rates cause the decline in growth? Unproven. But you cannot claim that lowering rates stimulates growth when it in fact declined. To no surprise, you don't understand the nature of evidence or the logical relationships amongst facts, evidence and claims. Perhaps that is why you have no problem repeatedly making outlandish claims that are contradicted by all evidence. We also have some evidence of the contrary proposition. Clinton raised marginal rates and growth increased. You say it is because he lowered cap gains rates. But Bush kept those rates and lowered marginal ordinary rates and growth declined. At the very least, the evidence suggests we should have gotten rid of the Bush tax cuts. Is it really true that someone making $65k pays $800 more in taxes than he receives in direct benefits? Oh My God! The horror! Leaving aside completely the question whether he could earn the $65k without government spending to sustain demand. It is not punishing the rich to expect the 10% who have 50% of national income to pay most PF the cost of government.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 6:07pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "There is no case to be made that high marginal rates frustrate high growth as we had our highest, sustained growth with our highest marginal rates. " Of course there is: Europe. There is no reason that Europe's growth should be any lower than ours over the last 50 years. They have comparable schools. A comparable starting point. A long history of discovery and innovation. But their growth has been much slower than ours. Can you find a modern country with a tax rate higher than the US that has shown better or comparable growth compared to the US over long periods of time? You cannot. And until you do, drop this lie. There isn't an economist out there that would argue EU style taxes are conducive to long term growth. Excerpt below.... Between 1980 and 2004, the United States experienced a growth rate (in inflation-adjusted per capita terms, of course) averaging 2.0 percent. France, Italy, and Germany achieved rates of 1.7, 1.6, and 1.6 percent, respectively. Sweden, the poster child for many egalitarians, also experienced a growth rate of 1.7 percent over this period. It is apparent that even expansive welfare states have not forestalled positive economic growth, but we should remember that small differences of these magnitudes can compound over time to substantial differences in the levels of incomes. To see what these differential growth rates mean for income levels, in 1982 per capita income in France was 84.9 percent of that in the United States; by 2004, the ratio had declined to 74.3 percent. The corresponding relative decline in Italy was from 78.7 percent of the American level to 69.4 percent, and in Germany from 87.9 percent to 71.9 percent. Sweden saw its average income fall from 84.5 percent of America's to 76.4 percent over the period. Edgar K. Browning. Stealing from Each Other: How the Welfare State Robs Americans of Money and Spirit (p. 70)

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 7:37pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "It is not punishing the rich to expect the 10% who have 50% of national income to pay most PF the cost of government." Let's assume that 100% of the government is redistributive. Not a dime is spent on roads, military, etc. Our taxes are paid in, and then the government gives it to poor people. At that point, ANY tax is confiscatory. It is no different than stealing. Next, less assume that 100% of the government goes to the common good. Roads, infrastructure, schools, etc. The perfect definition of government. But assume that the tax rate was 100%, adn the government assigned you a house, provided you a car or train station, gave you your food. While not as bad as slavery, it would be almost as bad as slavery. Finally, let's assume 90% of the government goes towards the common good, 10% is redistributive (welfare), and generally people are happy with the performance and efficiency of the government. In this case, no question, those that make more than the median should pay an increasingly higher %. And no question, I'm happy to contribute here in spades. I'm not anti-government. At all. I am for growing the government as long as the government is doing a better job than private industry. I'm for paying a % that increases as you earn more and that takes share-of-income into account. But there are two degenerate cases (noted above) in which you'll meet broad and fierce opposition. To extrapolate those to "all government" is just kiddie time debate tactics. If you are trying to argue that the government today is doing a good job, a huge majority of the country would laugh in your face. If you are trying to argue that the government today is not wasteful, a huge majority of the country would laugh in your face. If you are trying to argue that the government is more ethical than the private sector, a huge majority of the country would laugh in your face. Don't such so rigid. It makes you look like an ideologue (which, I know you are, but change your spots from time to time to throw off your critics...:) )

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 7:52pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "You have no idea what the Fifth Amendment means. It is well settled law that general taxes are not a taking within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. A taking must fall peculiarly on an individual. Likewise, All general rules and regulations, such as environmental protection laws, defining the limits of property are not takings under the Fifth Amendment. We also have a subsequent amendment to permit federal income taxes. Any inconsistency is resolved in favor of the latter." And I'm not against any of this. I'm against more taxes to an organization that is not executing well. Period. Fix that which is broken with government, and I'm the first to want to pay more.

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 7:54pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid, not going to debate the $1T welfare figure from the proper sources?? assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RL33340_20060327.pdf It's all right there. An official gov doc in all it's glory for you take apart. I am willing to be skooled. Just waiting for the right teacher...

- seattleeng

October 10, 2011 at 7:55pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

That is an abolutely ridiculous argument, Seattle. Worse than usual. When we have perfectly clear evidence from our own economy -highest marginal rates coincident with highest growth, twice we experiment with dropping marginal rates and both times growth falls, it is completely irrelevant what happens elsewher, assuming you could even begin to account for the differences in the economies. The real time experience is the exact opposite of the libertarian claim on each occasion. Therefore it is impossible for the libertarian claim to be true. And last time you made the same claim about Europe, I showed you it is untrue. European countries way behind us 60 years ago reached parity through much higher growth despite much higher taxes. One might even surmise that their higher taxes contributed to their growth. You are completely impervious to evidence. You don't even understand what constitutes evidence. Whenever one claim is disproven, you invent a different one beside the point. Pure nuttery, pure whack-a-mole.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 8:05pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Because libertarian gospel is that government is grossly inefficient, you cannot even wrap your mind around the idea that government spending generates direct output, government goods and services, no less than private spending. You can argue about the utility of the spending, but that is an entirely different question. There is no reason whatsoever that our economy cannot function with considerably higher levels of government spending than at present, and on a balanced budget basis. Since we generate all the output, we necessarily can afford all the output. How it financed is a different matter with different implications than the allocation of real output between public and private consumption. Whether by taxation or borrowing, the same amount of money is withdrawn from the economy. Taxing the high end could well be more efficient than borrowing by taking the funds from the pool where least likely to be spent otherwise. A much more likely culprit than taxes for recent differences in European and US growth rates is the rigidity of European labor policy. The only way in which per capita output grows is through changes in technology, in the employment of previously underutilized methods as well as he invention of new ones. High wages induce technological change as companies compete to cut costs, but only if they can shed labor by substituting capital. If government policy makes it prodigiously expensive to shed labor, then there is no point in introducing methods with a higher capital cost unless there is growth in demand. But demand cannot grow unless costs decline or employment grows. If there is no substitution of capital for labor, costs don't decline. If there are large inhibitions to increasing employment at the micro level, employment does not grow easily at the macro level. How would lower taxation in Europe solve the problem of a too rigid labor market? It wouldn't. Government spending would decline. Private spending might or might not increase sufficiently to compensate. In neither case would there be an incentive to increase capitalization and hence output per capita so long as labor regulation inhibits hiring and firing.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 9:21pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I dunno, seattle. Do you ever bother to read the things that your wacko rightwing websites refer you to? I go to your link, I open up the document, and the very first thing it says is this: "Income-tested benefit programs in FY2004 cost approximately $583 billion: $427 billion in federal funds and $156 billion in state-local funds (Table 1). . . . and 55 cents of every low-income dollar went for medical assistance." Yes indeed, the health care system in the US is completely out of control, way beyond the means of probably half the population if you considered only their take-home pay and they were not either getting benefits from their jobs -- not included in taxable income or some other form of assistance. This has nothing really to do with "welfare" in the way you describe it. Nor do the figures in this report at all match your claims. Same old, same old. It is NEVER the case that sources back your claims. And given the stagnant income on the bottom end of the scale, if some portion of the gross gains of the wealthiest were not cycled back to the bottom, we would have had a violent revolution by now. People will not simply agree to die because your libertarian nonsense says they are unworthy to live.

- roidubouloi

October 10, 2011 at 9:46pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

roi--for heaven's sake, please stop trying to sell a cause-and-effect relationship between high marginal rates and strong growth during a period in which we had reduced to rubble virtually all of our international competitors while sustaining essentially zero damage to our own country. I'm agnostic about marginal rates--I think they are over-rated by Repubs as virtually guaranteeing strong growth, and by Dems who insist that something as complex as our booms of the Fifties and Ninties, for example, were virtually caused by higher marginal rates. You might as well connect strong economic growth to the stages of the moon.

- Robert Powell

October 11, 2011 at 8:37am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

My basic point is that the right-wing libertarian claim that progressive taxation is bad for growth is demonstrably wrong. There is, however, a perfectly reasonable explanation for why, given the assumption of a balanced government budget, progressive taxation is much better for promoting growth than any other alternative. Growth depends on demand. The more equal income, the higher aggregate demand. There are many pieces to consider, but the heart of it is just that simple. By tending to equalize private after-tax income, progressive taxation maximizes private demand for any given level of government spending. High government spending tightens the labor market, generating high wages and the incentive for firms to substitute capital for labor -- the way we get growth in per capita output. The alternate rightwing story is basically a fairy tale; there is no sensible description of how the channels of action are supposed to work. Low taxation simply produces, as if by magic, motivation for the private sector to create marvels of innovation and technological change. No accounting for who is going to have the money to buy the output or the fact that with low personal income there is little motivation to substitute capital for labor. The marvels just happen.

- roidubouloi

October 11, 2011 at 9:17am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

It's not so much that it's not polemical too, RP -- in a strict sense you are correct and nobody wants or should want to repeat WW2 in order to boost U.S. growth figures -- but in replying to these ludicrous claims about how tax cuts for the wealthy are required for bringing back prosperity for the broad middle class that come from the Right, it seems legitimate to note with some emphasis that that proposition is an historical fantasy.

- ironyroad

October 11, 2011 at 9:57am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Whereas most American conservatives come off as incoherent and paranoid, Will does not: His paranoia is coherent, even eloquent. But it is no less wrong. There may be people out there who really do want to kill the individual in favor of collectivism, but I don't think Warren is one of them. And it's not like it's an either/or proposition anyway. Hell, Will was already willing to concede "....roads, schools, police, etc" ....add basic healthcare, public transportation, a few other things and we might have a deal! I thought it was ironic that he brought up Buckley's description of pyromaniac in a field of straw men, since that seems to be exactly what he is doing; putting words into Warren's mouth... And that last bit about "hundreds of millions of people making billions of decisions daily". I've heard that mantra for at least 25 years. It's a lazy cliche and it stinks of ideological gout. Will is an example of what ideological ossification can do to an intelligent mind.

- gzenone

October 11, 2011 at 10:05am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

I don't disagree with your basic point roi and irony (I think it's essentially the same one), just that serious libertarians don't try to make that point about taxation out of context. In general, lower taxes are a Good Thing. But you're confusing the bastardization of good quality academic political economics by nitwit politicians with the genuine article. Hayek is not responsible for Rick Santorum and Co., and the best arguments against their crap are found in the respectable libertarian literature. Which, I insist, exists.

- Robert Powell

October 11, 2011 at 10:57am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Many wiser than me have said it, but I'll say it again: Republicans whine and Republicans bitch The rich are too poor and the poor are too rich.

- miceelf

October 11, 2011 at 11:01am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "My basic point is that the right-wing libertarian claim that progressive taxation is bad for growth is demonstrably wrong." I dont' think I've read a single comment here that higher taxes will kill the economy no matter what. I've said before, if the economy is humming, nobody minds paying Clinton rates at all.

- seattleeng

October 11, 2011 at 11:09am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: ""Income-tested benefit programs in FY2004 cost approximately $583 billion: $427 billion in federal funds and $156 billion in state-local funds (Table 1). . . . and 55 cents of every low-income dollar went for medical assistance." OK, so now you arent' goign to refute the $1T figure, instead you are agreeing with it but you are saying much of it is medical therefore, it's not really welfare? Is that your argument?

- seattleeng

October 11, 2011 at 11:10am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "You are completely impervious to evidence. You don't even understand what constitutes evidence. Whenever one claim is disproven, you invent a different one beside the point. Pure nuttery, pure whack-a-mole." You didn't refute this previously. You decided to reject the PPP method in favor of the Atlas method. Which is strange, because PPP is a better measure of the standard of living, which is exactly what we are talking about. www.tnr.com/article/trb/magazine/88562/taxes-moderately-wealthy-obama-ryan?page=1 Feel free to read the thread and see for yourself: Crickets.

- seattleeng

October 11, 2011 at 11:22am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: " Low taxation simply produces, as if by magic, motivation for the private sector to create marvels of innovation and technological change. No accounting for who is going to have the money to buy the output or the fact that with low personal income there is little motivation to substitute capital for labor. The marvels just happen." This is where you go off the rails. Companies would prefer NOT to be taxed, only to have those taxes buy there stuff. In other words, if I sell $1B worth of computers to the world, and make $300M in profit, and then the government taxes me $100M on that, and then they turn around and buy $2M of my in computers with that $100M, then it's STOOPID for your to argue I am screwed if they aren't there to buy that $2M in computers. The company would rather NOT pay the $100M, and lose the $2M in computer sales. You and Krugman have this strange fantasy that miracles happen when governments spend money. They do not.

- seattleeng

October 11, 2011 at 11:28am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Seattle, I opened your document it says nothing that you claim it says. That's enough. I cannot spend my life chasing around your falsehoods. I would do nothing else. Do you know the difference between $583 billion and $1 trillion? The fact that healthcare is out of control because libertarian and free-market radicals like you are buffoons who don't know what they are doing, and that providing care for a poor family therefore costs a zillion, has nothing to do with the disposable income of a family at the bottom end of the scale. The entire healthcare economy stands apart from the rest of the economy. It IS a tax. Just take 17% of output off the table, and start from there.

- roidubouloi

October 12, 2011 at 8:05am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Lower taxes are not necessarily a good thing. The question is whether the things we spend money on are a good enough thing to spend it on, in which case the taxes to pay for them are better than not spending. If the things we are spending on are better than not spending, then they should in normal circumstances be paid for with taxes, not borrowing. And the efficient and equitable way to tax, doing the least collateral damage to the economy, is progressive taxation. Further, we should pay for what we spend, with progressive taxes, whether the spending is good spending or not. Even if I think the military is wasteful, the answer to that is to cut the waste, not run a deficit. So, the proper focus of discussion is whether particular spending is justified or not. That simply cannot be addressed with sweeping and ultimately meaningless claims such as "low taxes are good" or "we cannot afford government." Those are the stock in trade of libertarianism, on its better days. On its bad days, it is a nightmare.

- roidubouloi

October 12, 2011 at 8:10am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

seattle, the desire of people, including businesses, not to be taxed is really of no relevance to anything. They would like to have all the things they buy for free too. So what? Recognizing that no one will volunteer to pay taxes, we have democratic government that decides for the society as a whole how taxes should be assessed. Conversely, the notion that "no one minds paying taxes" if things are going well is also quite untrue. Libertarians and Republicans object to all taxes, except apparently regressive taxes, no matter how the economy is performing. It is the anti-tax mania that got us into the mess we are in.

- roidubouloi

October 12, 2011 at 11:24am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

And no, neither Keynes, nor Krugman, nor I thinks or thought that government spending produces magical results. What it produces is output, and it puts idle productive resources to work. With output rising sufficiently, no matter who is doing the spending, the private sector begins to spend more freely. That generates more output. The process at becomes postively reinforcing. That is how you generate a recovery out of a deep slump. No magic required.

- roidubouloi

October 12, 2011 at 11:26am

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

Roid writes: "Do you know the difference between $583 billion and $1 trillion? " As I noted in the first post on the topic, the actual welfare programs themselves are the tip of the iceberg. There are welfare components to SS and medicare and other gov programs that are not part of welfare proper. When those get added in, it takes us to the $1T welfare state. And no, nobody rejects all taxes. Everyone understands that some taxes are needed. The disagreement comes on how much, and whether or not the taxes are being well spent.

- seattleeng

October 13, 2011 at 2:46pm

You must be a subscriber to post comments. Subscribe today.

SHARE HIGHLIGHT

0 CHARACTERS SELECTED

TWEET THIS

POST TO TUMBLR

SHARE ON FACEBOOK

Close