Rise of the City-State-I
So here begins a series of musings about the fate of the reform movement and my essential belief that it must begin from the bottom-up, i.e. at the level of the city and county government that provide most of the services we think of as “the public good” (Schools, police, fire,hospitals, road repair, water, power, etc.).
Let’s start with first principles–Money. Finland’s extraordinary universal public education system (K-College) works because teachers are well paid and every student gets an equal opportunity to learn well. So Finnish companies like Nokia have an ample supply of highly trained graduates for their labs and highly skilled craftsmen for their factories. As you can see, the U.S. is a low tax country compared to most of the rest of the West. But what’s unique about the U.S. is that a large part of those taxes get sent to the Federal Treasury, where they are wasted by vast bureaucracies in Washington, the military industrial complex and bloated staffs for individual congressmen and their committees.
Somehow, we need to begin to shrink Federal tax collections so that we can raise local tax collections to pay for schools, roads, efficient alternative energy. My guess is that we need to shrink Federal income tax rates (which discourage savings) and raise a Value Added Tax (which encourages saving) that would flow directly to the County in the same way that Property taxes flow to the county.If we set this County -collected VAT at 10% across the country (so businesses would not try to relocate to low tax regions) it would work like this.
With a 10% VAT:
- The manufacturer pays $1.10 ($1 + $1×10%) for the raw materials, and the seller of the raw materials pays the government $0.10.
- The manufacturer charges the retailer $1.32 ($1.20 + $1.20×10%) and pays the government $0.02 ($0.12 minus $0.10), leaving the same profit of $0.20.
- The retailer charges the consumer $1.65 ($1.50 + $1.50×10%) and pays the government $0.03 ($0.15 minus $0.12), leaving the profit of $0.30 (1.65-1.32-.03).
So the consumer has paid 10% ($0.15) extra, compared to the no taxation scheme, and the government has collected this amount in taxation. The businesses have not lost anything directly to the tax. They do not need to request certifications from purchasers who are not end users, but they do have the extra accounting to do so that they correctly pass on to the government the difference between what they collect in VAT (output VAT, an 11th of their income) and what they spend in VAT (input VAT, an 11th of their expenditure).
Note that in each case the VAT paid is equal to 10% of the profit, or ‘value added’.
The advantage of the VAT system over the sales tax system is that businesses cannot hide consumption (such as wasted materials) by certifying it is not a consumer.
If a county like Los Angeles (with 10 million people and 4000 square miles of land) could retain this money (instead of letting Sacramento leach off a good bit of it), our worries about infrastructure would end. At the end of the last U.S. census (2002) LA County had $198 billion in wholesale trade sales and $92 Billion in retail sales which would yield about $23 billion in VAT Revenue even before you count the property taxes. Obviously both wholesale and retail sales have grown, so the yield would be higher, but more than enough to provide for a vital Los Angeles City State public sector. Teachers could be paid well, parks would stay open, our local fire station wouldn’t be closed, and community policing could be paid for.
A couple of weeks ago, I visited my old friend David Freeman, who runs the LA Department of Water and Power, which I believe is the largest municipal utility in the country. Dave was the one guy in California who never got suckered by the Enron, electrical deregulation crowd and so our electrical rates never went up, because he always had access to his own power. Now he is planning an amazing solar farm that could be a transformational event in the nation’s energy future. And because it’s happening in Los Angeles and not Washington DC, it’s going to get done.
Look, this is just the beginning of a series of posts on this subject. I’m still working the ideas out in my own head, but as always, this community can be a source of great help in pondering the future.
I agree with localizing governance and taxation. This is the right direction, Jon, and I think the liberal-tarian alliance can find plenty of common ground here.
The centralized governments, at the state and federal level, are full-blown parasitic organizations that must be cut down to size so that smaller, more responsive units of governance can take their proper role.
Let’s turn the USA into a big free trade zone without all the rest of this warfare/welfare wasteland.
Fear not, though. Because in the meantime of all this talk of reform, the lives of the poorest Americans have been steadily and markedly improving over the past 30 years.
http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2009/11/the-economic-condition-of-poor-americans-and-the-rest-of-us-continues-to-improve.html
I agree with localizing governance and taxation. This is the right direction, Jon, and I think the liberal-tarian alliance can find plenty of common ground here.
The centralized governments, at the state and federal level, are full-blown parasitic organizations that must be cut down to size so that smaller, more responsive units of governance can take their proper role.
Let’s turn the USA into a big free trade zone without all the rest of this warfare/welfare wasteland.
Fear not, though. Because in the meantime of all this talk of reform, the lives of the poorest Americans have been steadily and markedly improving over the past 30 years.
http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2009/11/the-economic-condition-of-poor-americans-and-the-rest-of-us-continues-to-improve.html
The problems we face are entirely man-made, which means there are certainly man-made solutions – it’s not like we’re trying to change the course of a hurricane or stop a volcano from erupting. But decades of corruption and abuse of power have left our national institutions, well, largely useless. It reminds me of the medieval kings who could manage only two things – collect taxes and wage war – and literally nothing else. But try telling one of them that they need to reduce their power so the peasants can survive and lead better lives… like John Perry Barlow said on another subject: “The small furry things may win out against the large scaly things, but if you’re small and furry but locked in a closet with a dying dinosaur, you will be the worse for it.”
I think the first task is to figure out how to either get out of the closet or finish off the dinosaur before it can do any more harm. The dinosaur ain’t gonna go along with any scheme that reduces the amount of tribute it collects, and anyone we send to DC with a mandate for change will just get sucked in to the status quo (Versailles-on-the-Potomac is very good at that). My fear is that it will take a strong, popular governor or mayor of a major city telling the feds to get lost to start any sort of positive cascade. But first there will be blood.
Or maybe I’m just cranky this morning.
The problems we face are entirely man-made, which means there are certainly man-made solutions – it’s not like we’re trying to change the course of a hurricane or stop a volcano from erupting. But decades of corruption and abuse of power have left our national institutions, well, largely useless. It reminds me of the medieval kings who could manage only two things – collect taxes and wage war – and literally nothing else. But try telling one of them that they need to reduce their power so the peasants can survive and lead better lives… like John Perry Barlow said on another subject: “The small furry things may win out against the large scaly things, but if you’re small and furry but locked in a closet with a dying dinosaur, you will be the worse for it.”
I think the first task is to figure out how to either get out of the closet or finish off the dinosaur before it can do any more harm. The dinosaur ain’t gonna go along with any scheme that reduces the amount of tribute it collects, and anyone we send to DC with a mandate for change will just get sucked in to the status quo (Versailles-on-the-Potomac is very good at that). My fear is that it will take a strong, popular governor or mayor of a major city telling the feds to get lost to start any sort of positive cascade. But first there will be blood.
Or maybe I’m just cranky this morning.
It works well in Europe and you cannot dodge this kind of tax because it is your consumption that is being taxed. A strong and popular figure should be able to pull it, as long as the people understand it and are willing.
It works well in Europe and you cannot dodge this kind of tax because it is your consumption that is being taxed. A strong and popular figure should be able to pull it, as long as the people understand it and are willing.
It works well in Europe and you cannot dodge this kind of tax because it is your consumption that is being taxed. A strong and popular figure should be able to pull it, as long as the people understand it and are willing.
What does one get back for taxes? That’s a big one, and all of the countries on that list except for the US get universal health care and a lot of support of the arts. Not saying it couldn’t work a lot better, but the elephants in the room are health care and stupid wars.
What does one get back for taxes? That’s a big one, and all of the countries on that list except for the US get universal health care and a lot of support of the arts. Not saying it couldn’t work a lot better, but the elephants in the room are health care and stupid wars.
What does one get back for taxes? That’s a big one, and all of the countries on that list except for the US get universal health care and a lot of support of the arts. Not saying it couldn’t work a lot better, but the elephants in the room are health care and stupid wars.
Here in South Korea we have a 10% VAT which is even extended to virtual economies. Income tax is relatively straightforward and those of us who are wage earners do not file tax returns. The tax burden seems to be the heaviest on businesses but it hasn’t slowed the economy. A VAT encourages savings, something the US could use more of. Even in the poorest county in the country where I live, I see lots of local infrastructure projects being actively worked on – roads are being paved or upgraded, modern sewer systems are being installed and we have one of the highest broadband penetration rates in the world. As I understand it, local government is very powerful and they get things done fairly efficiently.
Here in South Korea we have a 10% VAT which is even extended to virtual economies. Income tax is relatively straightforward and those of us who are wage earners do not file tax returns. The tax burden seems to be the heaviest on businesses but it hasn’t slowed the economy. A VAT encourages savings, something the US could use more of. Even in the poorest county in the country where I live, I see lots of local infrastructure projects being actively worked on – roads are being paved or upgraded, modern sewer systems are being installed and we have one of the highest broadband penetration rates in the world. As I understand it, local government is very powerful and they get things done fairly efficiently.
Excuse me if I’m being silly, this is my first comment here, but surely Los Angeles is not the best example to use here. It’s one of the largest cities in the US and levying an additional 10% tax on its business is obviously going to generate a huge amount of money, particularly as VAT is very effective at generating revenue. The problem is going to be the poorer, less dense counties, where a more distributed population means that costs for public services are higher per-capita. A traditionally centralised government would in effect use some of the tax from the denser, more efficient areas to subsidise providing services to the less dense areas. Obviously, with a more federal model this can’t be done: do you still think this idea would be effective in say (non-USian pulling a name out of thin air), Nebraska?
Excuse me if I’m being silly, this is my first comment here, but surely Los Angeles is not the best example to use here. It’s one of the largest cities in the US and levying an additional 10% tax on its business is obviously going to generate a huge amount of money, particularly as VAT is very effective at generating revenue. The problem is going to be the poorer, less dense counties, where a more distributed population means that costs for public services are higher per-capita. A traditionally centralised government would in effect use some of the tax from the denser, more efficient areas to subsidise providing services to the less dense areas. Obviously, with a more federal model this can’t be done: do you still think this idea would be effective in say (non-USian pulling a name out of thin air), Nebraska?
Come now Jon, we all know from the many sources assuring us that it is so, therefore it must be v. v. true, that reduced taxes will solve everything.
Goodness, haven’t you read any NYT non-fiction (sic) best sellers lately?
Come now Jon, we all know from the many sources assuring us that it is so, therefore it must be v. v. true, that reduced taxes will solve everything.
Goodness, haven’t you read any NYT non-fiction (sic) best sellers lately?
Come now Jon, we all know from the many sources assuring us that it is so, therefore it must be v. v. true, that reduced taxes will solve everything.
Goodness, haven’t you read any NYT non-fiction (sic) best sellers lately?
To inject a counterpoint, EconomicPopulist points out that when “all state and local income, sales, excise and property taxes are added up, nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy or from business”.
Most criticism of a VAT worry that income exemption limits will be too low and too cumbersome. Others worry that raw materials and supply lines are merely ‘forwarding’ their tax burden onto the individual , where the VAT becomes an efficient but cruel restraint on consumption.
No doubt tax and fee and penalty revenue has become a burdensome mess, but I’m not sure we have a solution on the table.
To inject a counterpoint, EconomicPopulist points out that when “all state and local income, sales, excise and property taxes are added up, nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy or from business”.
Most criticism of a VAT worry that income exemption limits will be too low and too cumbersome. Others worry that raw materials and supply lines are merely ‘forwarding’ their tax burden onto the individual , where the VAT becomes an efficient but cruel restraint on consumption.
No doubt tax and fee and penalty revenue has become a burdensome mess, but I’m not sure we have a solution on the table.
To inject a counterpoint, EconomicPopulist points out that when “all state and local income, sales, excise and property taxes are added up, nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy or from business”.
Most criticism of a VAT worry that income exemption limits will be too low and too cumbersome. Others worry that raw materials and supply lines are merely ‘forwarding’ their tax burden onto the individual , where the VAT becomes an efficient but cruel restraint on consumption.
No doubt tax and fee and penalty revenue has become a burdensome mess, but I’m not sure we have a solution on the table.
John-What good is a refrigerator if you can’t afford good food?
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1791809/study_half_of_us_kids_to_need_food_stamps/
John-What good is a refrigerator if you can’t afford good food?
http://www.redorbit.com/news/health/1791809/study_half_of_us_kids_to_need_food_stamps/
I think it’s important to not underestimate the value of cultural cohesion in many of the countries with which we’re tempted to compare ourselves.
That cohesion is, typically, derived from centuries of tribal warfare and religious dominance that have – eventually – resolved into a homogeneous group secure in its territory, and unified by the cultural values that come from near-universal linguistic and spiritual traditions.
In places like this (i.e. most developed countries) a more Socialist implementation of democracy does not carry with it an undertone of internal oppression or subordination, since heritage and nationality are synonymous – or, at least synonymous enough for the number and strength of marginalized groups to be safely and permanently restricted (e.g. the Gypsies).
For better and worse, the United States simply does not share this profile. To the contrary, the most salient remark here comes from Tonto in his well put question “what do you mean we, white man?”
In this context Socialism (which is simply common sense in less complicated places), becomes a fancy word for “we”, which can actually be one of the least common identifiers going.
This isn’t likley to change anytime soon. Even as once-sharp ethnic differences start to soften around the edges as they resolve into established communities, they do so in a way the leads to the emergence of distinct regional identities – all of which become progenitors of markedly different cultures within one country.
Given the sheer scale of America, and the broad range of environmental differences it contains, these cultures continue to derive a character from their geography that is not easily erased by the more common elements of pro sports, mallpop, and ubiquitous drive-through chains. Sure, things change everywhere, but not at the same rate, or towards the same ends.
From the Federal perspective, these continually evolving regional distinctions are further complicated by the presence of 50 semi-autonomous state governments, some of which play host to one or more major cities and / or industrial powers, many of which compete furiously (e.g. emergent Sunbelt auto makers challenging Detroit’s claim to represent the American auto industry).
When you consider the country from this perspective, it becomes clear that governance at the Federal level is simply not capable (by law or nature) of playing the same role that it does in, say, Sweden. Which is not to say that we can’t look to other countries for ideas – only that we must properly account for the profound differences that exist between America and nearly every other place when attempting to translate. Typically this means making sure that Federal power isn’t being used as tool of parochial warfare (which seems to be the very definition of a ‘special interest’, and the only thing most current DC business is concerned with).
Meanwhile, as JT points out, most of ‘the common good’ (i.e. services and resources that really do function better and more cheaply when removed from private management) remains stubbornly tied to the local level. As a result, much of the corruption from which we suffer results from our undue dependence on Congressmen who, in addition to their concern with national and international politics, go to Washington on behalf of purely local interests – usually with total disregard for the bigger picture that their choices affect.
For smaller states (often the redder ones, ironically enough) this is pure taking. For economically larger states, it’s a matter of clawing back revenue. In both cases, the practice of funding the local by way of the Federal creates the need for a class of people whose own power is inversely related to that of their constituents. Needless to say, the ‘Gentlemen’ from whichever states they represent do not, typically, want to see less reliance by their own states on payments from the Federal government.
This is a major – and perhaps primary – impediment for those seeking a more direct relation with their local common good.
I’m wondering if a basic litmus test for worthwhile representatives at the national level might be their commitment to the local level, as demonstrated by their willingness to punish those at the State and Federal level who encroach to an undue degree?
It’s separate from the demand for legislators who support the institution of publicly financed elections and the end of gerrymandering. But given the passage of these two reforms, it seems like one that could (finally) be made.
I think it’s important to not underestimate the value of cultural cohesion in many of the countries with which we’re tempted to compare ourselves.
That cohesion is, typically, derived from centuries of tribal warfare and religious dominance that have – eventually – resolved into a homogeneous group secure in its territory, and unified by the cultural values that come from near-universal linguistic and spiritual traditions.
In places like this (i.e. most developed countries) a more Socialist implementation of democracy does not carry with it an undertone of internal oppression or subordination, since heritage and nationality are synonymous – or, at least synonymous enough for the number and strength of marginalized groups to be safely and permanently restricted (e.g. the Gypsies).
For better and worse, the United States simply does not share this profile. To the contrary, the most salient remark here comes from Tonto in his well put question “what do you mean we, white man?”
In this context Socialism (which is simply common sense in less complicated places), becomes a fancy word for “we”, which can actually be one of the least common identifiers going.
This isn’t likley to change anytime soon. Even as once-sharp ethnic differences start to soften around the edges as they resolve into established communities, they do so in a way the leads to the emergence of distinct regional identities – all of which become progenitors of markedly different cultures within one country.
Given the sheer scale of America, and the broad range of environmental differences it contains, these cultures continue to derive a character from their geography that is not easily erased by the more common elements of pro sports, mallpop, and ubiquitous drive-through chains. Sure, things change everywhere, but not at the same rate, or towards the same ends.
From the Federal perspective, these continually evolving regional distinctions are further complicated by the presence of 50 semi-autonomous state governments, some of which play host to one or more major cities and / or industrial powers, many of which compete furiously (e.g. emergent Sunbelt auto makers challenging Detroit’s claim to represent the American auto industry).
When you consider the country from this perspective, it becomes clear that governance at the Federal level is simply not capable (by law or nature) of playing the same role that it does in, say, Sweden. Which is not to say that we can’t look to other countries for ideas – only that we must properly account for the profound differences that exist between America and nearly every other place when attempting to translate. Typically this means making sure that Federal power isn’t being used as tool of parochial warfare (which seems to be the very definition of a ‘special interest’, and the only thing most current DC business is concerned with).
Meanwhile, as JT points out, most of ‘the common good’ (i.e. services and resources that really do function better and more cheaply when removed from private management) remains stubbornly tied to the local level. As a result, much of the corruption from which we suffer results from our undue dependence on Congressmen who, in addition to their concern with national and international politics, go to Washington on behalf of purely local interests – usually with total disregard for the bigger picture that their choices affect.
For smaller states (often the redder ones, ironically enough) this is pure taking. For economically larger states, it’s a matter of clawing back revenue. In both cases, the practice of funding the local by way of the Federal creates the need for a class of people whose own power is inversely related to that of their constituents. Needless to say, the ‘Gentlemen’ from whichever states they represent do not, typically, want to see less reliance by their own states on payments from the Federal government.
This is a major – and perhaps primary – impediment for those seeking a more direct relation with their local common good.
I’m wondering if a basic litmus test for worthwhile representatives at the national level might be their commitment to the local level, as demonstrated by their willingness to punish those at the State and Federal level who encroach to an undue degree?
It’s separate from the demand for legislators who support the institution of publicly financed elections and the end of gerrymandering. But given the passage of these two reforms, it seems like one that could (finally) be made.
I think it’s important to not underestimate the value of cultural cohesion in many of the countries with which we’re tempted to compare ourselves.
That cohesion is, typically, derived from centuries of tribal warfare and religious dominance that have – eventually – resolved into a homogeneous group secure in its territory, and unified by the cultural values that come from near-universal linguistic and spiritual traditions.
In places like this (i.e. most developed countries) a more Socialist implementation of democracy does not carry with it an undertone of internal oppression or subordination, since heritage and nationality are synonymous – or, at least synonymous enough for the number and strength of marginalized groups to be safely and permanently restricted (e.g. the Gypsies).
For better and worse, the United States simply does not share this profile. To the contrary, the most salient remark here comes from Tonto in his well put question “what do you mean we, white man?”
In this context Socialism (which is simply common sense in less complicated places), becomes a fancy word for “we”, which can actually be one of the least common identifiers going.
This isn’t likley to change anytime soon. Even as once-sharp ethnic differences start to soften around the edges as they resolve into established communities, they do so in a way the leads to the emergence of distinct regional identities – all of which become progenitors of markedly different cultures within one country.
Given the sheer scale of America, and the broad range of environmental differences it contains, these cultures continue to derive a character from their geography that is not easily erased by the more common elements of pro sports, mallpop, and ubiquitous drive-through chains. Sure, things change everywhere, but not at the same rate, or towards the same ends.
From the Federal perspective, these continually evolving regional distinctions are further complicated by the presence of 50 semi-autonomous state governments, some of which play host to one or more major cities and / or industrial powers, many of which compete furiously (e.g. emergent Sunbelt auto makers challenging Detroit’s claim to represent the American auto industry).
When you consider the country from this perspective, it becomes clear that governance at the Federal level is simply not capable (by law or nature) of playing the same role that it does in, say, Sweden. Which is not to say that we can’t look to other countries for ideas – only that we must properly account for the profound differences that exist between America and nearly every other place when attempting to translate. Typically this means making sure that Federal power isn’t being used as tool of parochial warfare (which seems to be the very definition of a ‘special interest’, and the only thing most current DC business is concerned with).
Meanwhile, as JT points out, most of ‘the common good’ (i.e. services and resources that really do function better and more cheaply when removed from private management) remains stubbornly tied to the local level. As a result, much of the corruption from which we suffer results from our undue dependence on Congressmen who, in addition to their concern with national and international politics, go to Washington on behalf of purely local interests – usually with total disregard for the bigger picture that their choices affect.
For smaller states (often the redder ones, ironically enough) this is pure taking. For economically larger states, it’s a matter of clawing back revenue. In both cases, the practice of funding the local by way of the Federal creates the need for a class of people whose own power is inversely related to that of their constituents. Needless to say, the ‘Gentlemen’ from whichever states they represent do not, typically, want to see less reliance by their own states on payments from the Federal government.
This is a major – and perhaps primary – impediment for those seeking a more direct relation with their local common good.
I’m wondering if a basic litmus test for worthwhile representatives at the national level might be their commitment to the local level, as demonstrated by their willingness to punish those at the State and Federal level who encroach to an undue degree?
It’s separate from the demand for legislators who support the institution of publicly financed elections and the end of gerrymandering. But given the passage of these two reforms, it seems like one that could (finally) be made.
New Zealand implemented a consumption tax (called GST here) in the mid-1980′s, and the smartest thing about it’s implementation was NO exceptions to a single rate.
In the U.K they use multiple rates for different goods and different purposes (i.e luxury foods vs staples) which is a rediculous situation that creates arguments about definitions and a burden on businesses for accounting.
Keeping it simple, to a single amount on all (non-financial transactions in NZ) makes it easy to apply, hard to avoid and simple to account for.
Accounting simply requires you know how much you purchased and how much you sold – bascially your cash flow records.
And any business that complains they can’t do that accounting ought thank the government for forcing them to perform the simplest of financial monitoring.
A companies GST (VAT) records are a good approximation of their operating profitability as a reflection of their cash flow.
People often complain that it’s regressive (as a single rate it falls more heavily on the poorest with the least disposable income) and community orgainsations consistently call for relief from GST on things like staple foods.
But the simplicity of the tax is of great value – it makes it easy to police so it applies widely and minimises avoidance. That is very valuable, and it’s always possible to use other tax metholodgies to help the poorest.
I’ve noticed suggestions of a flat tax rate with tax credits for the poor – which is essentially the same thing but as a income tax rather than consumption.
I’m not a big fan of flat income taxes because they deny the logic that everyone (even people who usually think they don’t) supports of progessive taxation (represented by the tax credits even supporters of flat tax rates admit would be neccesary).
I greatly appreciate having a simple tax structure in NZ – there’s about three tiers of income tax, and one single consumption tax.
The average Jo doesn’t have to fill out any returns – their income tax is handled by their employer (for whom it’s no real burden) and GST is virtually invisible.
It magaes to be invisible because of another smart move hen it was introduced – prices ma not be advertised or displayed without their GST component to avoid bait and switches.
It was a good move, which I suspect was motivated by a desire not to have anget at bait ‘n switch tactics being directed at GST instead of the seller.
And when GST was introduced it didn’t push prices up as much as expected – partially because it was accompanied with a removal of all import duties and businesses being quick to adapt to new pressures.
And as it was accompanied by a substantial reduction in income tax the shock was minimal.
New Zealand implemented a consumption tax (called GST here) in the mid-1980′s, and the smartest thing about it’s implementation was NO exceptions to a single rate.
In the U.K they use multiple rates for different goods and different purposes (i.e luxury foods vs staples) which is a rediculous situation that creates arguments about definitions and a burden on businesses for accounting.
Keeping it simple, to a single amount on all (non-financial transactions in NZ) makes it easy to apply, hard to avoid and simple to account for.
Accounting simply requires you know how much you purchased and how much you sold – bascially your cash flow records.
And any business that complains they can’t do that accounting ought thank the government for forcing them to perform the simplest of financial monitoring.
A companies GST (VAT) records are a good approximation of their operating profitability as a reflection of their cash flow.
People often complain that it’s regressive (as a single rate it falls more heavily on the poorest with the least disposable income) and community orgainsations consistently call for relief from GST on things like staple foods.
But the simplicity of the tax is of great value – it makes it easy to police so it applies widely and minimises avoidance. That is very valuable, and it’s always possible to use other tax metholodgies to help the poorest.
I’ve noticed suggestions of a flat tax rate with tax credits for the poor – which is essentially the same thing but as a income tax rather than consumption.
I’m not a big fan of flat income taxes because they deny the logic that everyone (even people who usually think they don’t) supports of progessive taxation (represented by the tax credits even supporters of flat tax rates admit would be neccesary).
I greatly appreciate having a simple tax structure in NZ – there’s about three tiers of income tax, and one single consumption tax.
The average Jo doesn’t have to fill out any returns – their income tax is handled by their employer (for whom it’s no real burden) and GST is virtually invisible.
It magaes to be invisible because of another smart move hen it was introduced – prices ma not be advertised or displayed without their GST component to avoid bait and switches.
It was a good move, which I suspect was motivated by a desire not to have anget at bait ‘n switch tactics being directed at GST instead of the seller.
And when GST was introduced it didn’t push prices up as much as expected – partially because it was accompanied with a removal of all import duties and businesses being quick to adapt to new pressures.
And as it was accompanied by a substantial reduction in income tax the shock was minimal.
Fiona — Maybe the reason the Bush League wanted to nicely define “Axis of Evil” is that they know how easily we humans can target-fixate on “the enemy” once we’re told authoritatively who it is. Having defined that set, they can sit back and keep on ripping off the rest of the actually productive people, so that we won’t notice that our “democratic” government is looking more and more like places with “Beloved Leaders” and politburos like, say, North Korea… and keep us from thinking about how despite what Papola and the True Believers have to say, even the poorest people here in the US of A, let alone the WhateverHappendToThe Middle Class, are not “better off” and “steadily and markedly improving” their lives. That kind of pitch is part of the distraction that has let the Powers That Be Become What They Are. “Anybody Can Grow up To Be President!” Yeah, and any moose can grow up to play NFL football too. And be the last one on the Island. And become The Next American Idol.
Bush-shit.
Jon, is there any place in the US, like the Confucian academies in Old China, that teaches the arts of governance and administration along those lines? As opposed, say, to modern political science (sic) curricula, that seem to focus more on the “wisdom” and skill sets Machiavelli and Matalin and Carvill and slimy amphibians like Newt “Can’t Take My Hands Off Of Yo-ooo” Gingrich? Having lived my young life in Chicago, under Daley The First and various court jesters and stewards, and now in Florida which is one of the most boughten and impervious-to-electoral-change state governments, in a city run by a Strong Mayor who never met a shady deal or dealer he didn’t like and direct tax dollars to, I am less than salubrious about chances for change. And getting people to come up with agreements that will keep predatory business from continuing their extortionate threats to “leave town for lower tax rates or huge public subsidies in exchange for ‘jobs’,” or whatever other shit they are peddling to foment the endless races to the bottom. The bottom being, for all the City Fathers and County Uncles yapping about “saving the community by destroying it,” the floor of the hole we are digging for our own caskets.
Seems to me that this nation grew on the backs of a number of myths, shared notions of “opportunity” in the form of growth, growth and more growth into seemingly inexhaustibel and unlimited Western horizons. How do you find a set of men and women with power and stature that will knit together the threads of leadership and commonality into a banner that reads “Sustainability And Species Survival”? Bor-ing.
Rick, what we get back for our taxes, as you know, are “really fine aircraft” like the F-22 and F-35 and V-22, and things like the Predator-Reaper-Hellfire triple-play combo, and coming to a Battle Space near you, “autonomous self-repairing battle robots” which golly gee, when first deployed, shot up our own troops. Just a glitch, I’m sure — just need to work on the code and sensors… Go watch the “Terminator” movies if you don’t get what that portends.
What we lack is a common value, that becomes the touchstone for all the decisions that count.
Fiona — Maybe the reason the Bush League wanted to nicely define “Axis of Evil” is that they know how easily we humans can target-fixate on “the enemy” once we’re told authoritatively who it is. Having defined that set, they can sit back and keep on ripping off the rest of the actually productive people, so that we won’t notice that our “democratic” government is looking more and more like places with “Beloved Leaders” and politburos like, say, North Korea… and keep us from thinking about how despite what Papola and the True Believers have to say, even the poorest people here in the US of A, let alone the WhateverHappendToThe Middle Class, are not “better off” and “steadily and markedly improving” their lives. That kind of pitch is part of the distraction that has let the Powers That Be Become What They Are. “Anybody Can Grow up To Be President!” Yeah, and any moose can grow up to play NFL football too. And be the last one on the Island. And become The Next American Idol.
Bush-shit.
Jon, is there any place in the US, like the Confucian academies in Old China, that teaches the arts of governance and administration along those lines? As opposed, say, to modern political science (sic) curricula, that seem to focus more on the “wisdom” and skill sets Machiavelli and Matalin and Carvill and slimy amphibians like Newt “Can’t Take My Hands Off Of Yo-ooo” Gingrich? Having lived my young life in Chicago, under Daley The First and various court jesters and stewards, and now in Florida which is one of the most boughten and impervious-to-electoral-change state governments, in a city run by a Strong Mayor who never met a shady deal or dealer he didn’t like and direct tax dollars to, I am less than salubrious about chances for change. And getting people to come up with agreements that will keep predatory business from continuing their extortionate threats to “leave town for lower tax rates or huge public subsidies in exchange for ‘jobs’,” or whatever other shit they are peddling to foment the endless races to the bottom. The bottom being, for all the City Fathers and County Uncles yapping about “saving the community by destroying it,” the floor of the hole we are digging for our own caskets.
Seems to me that this nation grew on the backs of a number of myths, shared notions of “opportunity” in the form of growth, growth and more growth into seemingly inexhaustibel and unlimited Western horizons. How do you find a set of men and women with power and stature that will knit together the threads of leadership and commonality into a banner that reads “Sustainability And Species Survival”? Bor-ing.
Rick, what we get back for our taxes, as you know, are “really fine aircraft” like the F-22 and F-35 and V-22, and things like the Predator-Reaper-Hellfire triple-play combo, and coming to a Battle Space near you, “autonomous self-repairing battle robots” which golly gee, when first deployed, shot up our own troops. Just a glitch, I’m sure — just need to work on the code and sensors… Go watch the “Terminator” movies if you don’t get what that portends.
What we lack is a common value, that becomes the touchstone for all the decisions that count.
Jon, does that chart include ALL taxes we pay…f0r instance State income taxes, local property taxes, and of course, State sales taxes? Are we looking at a level playing field? Are we comparing apples to apples? And if you took out health care from the non-US examples, what happens?
As Mr. Raines, my high school senior civics teacher drummed into us, “Figures lie and liars figure…” I’ve been ever skeptical since then.
Jon, does that chart include ALL taxes we pay…f0r instance State income taxes, local property taxes, and of course, State sales taxes? Are we looking at a level playing field? Are we comparing apples to apples? And if you took out health care from the non-US examples, what happens?
As Mr. Raines, my high school senior civics teacher drummed into us, “Figures lie and liars figure…” I’ve been ever skeptical since then.
Jon, does that chart include ALL taxes we pay…f0r instance State income taxes, local property taxes, and of course, State sales taxes? Are we looking at a level playing field? Are we comparing apples to apples? And if you took out health care from the non-US examples, what happens?
As Mr. Raines, my high school senior civics teacher drummed into us, “Figures lie and liars figure…” I’ve been ever skeptical since then.
In general–not just here–I have observed a couple of patterns in comments on government and taxes. When we’re talking about federal government, the pattern is, “The federal government is obviously a bloated, vast bureaucracy. We don’t want our money going to it. Tax money should be spent by states, counties and towns.”
(That’s keeping it as apolitical as possible, without throwing in the left talking about federal government invading oil-rich countries or the right talking about government funding abortions, etc.)
When we’re talking about states, counties, or especially local towns, the pattern is, “That ignorant jackass So-and-so wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. All he wants to do is give his shiftless relatives jobs with *my* tax money. And they can’t even plow the streets when it snows!”
I went through an uncharacteristic bout of participation in very local, very small-scale politics in the past year, and I don’t want those ignorant jackasses to get another dollar of tax revenue. I shudder to think what kind of ideas they’ll come up with next.
Then there is our state government, the laughingstock of the country (the world) thanks to Rod “Chinchilla Brain Cozy” Blagojevich, and believe me, he’s just a single small example of a sad and sordid legacy. Illinois state government makes Afghanistan look good in comparison.
I always smile to hear people assert that pushing the money down to the grassroots level will solve problems. Their sunny, cheery optimism, flying in the face of 25,000 years of experience, serves as an inspiration to us all.
In general–not just here–I have observed a couple of patterns in comments on government and taxes. When we’re talking about federal government, the pattern is, “The federal government is obviously a bloated, vast bureaucracy. We don’t want our money going to it. Tax money should be spent by states, counties and towns.”
(That’s keeping it as apolitical as possible, without throwing in the left talking about federal government invading oil-rich countries or the right talking about government funding abortions, etc.)
When we’re talking about states, counties, or especially local towns, the pattern is, “That ignorant jackass So-and-so wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. All he wants to do is give his shiftless relatives jobs with *my* tax money. And they can’t even plow the streets when it snows!”
I went through an uncharacteristic bout of participation in very local, very small-scale politics in the past year, and I don’t want those ignorant jackasses to get another dollar of tax revenue. I shudder to think what kind of ideas they’ll come up with next.
Then there is our state government, the laughingstock of the country (the world) thanks to Rod “Chinchilla Brain Cozy” Blagojevich, and believe me, he’s just a single small example of a sad and sordid legacy. Illinois state government makes Afghanistan look good in comparison.
I always smile to hear people assert that pushing the money down to the grassroots level will solve problems. Their sunny, cheery optimism, flying in the face of 25,000 years of experience, serves as an inspiration to us all.
In general–not just here–I have observed a couple of patterns in comments on government and taxes. When we’re talking about federal government, the pattern is, “The federal government is obviously a bloated, vast bureaucracy. We don’t want our money going to it. Tax money should be spent by states, counties and towns.”
(That’s keeping it as apolitical as possible, without throwing in the left talking about federal government invading oil-rich countries or the right talking about government funding abortions, etc.)
When we’re talking about states, counties, or especially local towns, the pattern is, “That ignorant jackass So-and-so wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. All he wants to do is give his shiftless relatives jobs with *my* tax money. And they can’t even plow the streets when it snows!”
I went through an uncharacteristic bout of participation in very local, very small-scale politics in the past year, and I don’t want those ignorant jackasses to get another dollar of tax revenue. I shudder to think what kind of ideas they’ll come up with next.
Then there is our state government, the laughingstock of the country (the world) thanks to Rod “Chinchilla Brain Cozy” Blagojevich, and believe me, he’s just a single small example of a sad and sordid legacy. Illinois state government makes Afghanistan look good in comparison.
I always smile to hear people assert that pushing the money down to the grassroots level will solve problems. Their sunny, cheery optimism, flying in the face of 25,000 years of experience, serves as an inspiration to us all.
Loved the “states rights” crowd in the 1950s and ’60s…
Axe handles, lynchings, the KKK, and the South Will Rise Again. And it wasn’t much better in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Seems it took Federal law to break the back of institutionalized segregation…
Where do you draw the line with the New Federalism?
And I agree…locals can spend money just as poorly as DC insiders. We had the Taj Mahal of school district offices here in Santa Cruz until the were shamed…and sold to the lower bidder!
Loved the “states rights” crowd in the 1950s and ’60s…
Axe handles, lynchings, the KKK, and the South Will Rise Again. And it wasn’t much better in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Seems it took Federal law to break the back of institutionalized segregation…
Where do you draw the line with the New Federalism?
And I agree…locals can spend money just as poorly as DC insiders. We had the Taj Mahal of school district offices here in Santa Cruz until the were shamed…and sold to the lower bidder!
Tose numbers look like the OECD’s list of countries ta burdens which is calculated as the total proportion of a countries GDP that is taken as tax.
And as such is meant to encompass all taxation.
I’ve no idea how accurate it is, I suspect it is somewhat as nearly all countries contrive to obsfucate how much tax they take from their citizens.
Tose numbers look like the OECD’s list of countries ta burdens which is calculated as the total proportion of a countries GDP that is taken as tax.
And as such is meant to encompass all taxation.
I’ve no idea how accurate it is, I suspect it is somewhat as nearly all countries contrive to obsfucate how much tax they take from their citizens.
Tose numbers look like the OECD’s list of countries ta burdens which is calculated as the total proportion of a countries GDP that is taken as tax.
And as such is meant to encompass all taxation.
I’ve no idea how accurate it is, I suspect it is somewhat as nearly all countries contrive to obsfucate how much tax they take from their citizens.
I wonder how much it costs to hire an editor?
I meant to say I suspect the figures are probably somewhat inaccurate as nearly all governments obsfucate their accounts somewhat.
I wonder how much it costs to hire an editor?
I meant to say I suspect the figures are probably somewhat inaccurate as nearly all governments obsfucate their accounts somewhat.
I wonder how much it costs to hire an editor?
I meant to say I suspect the figures are probably somewhat inaccurate as nearly all governments obsfucate their accounts somewhat.
Rick, just curious — was the sale to the lower bidder a favor to some campaign contributor or crony, or just a “Fuck you then!” from the school district to the public?
Missing in action: an organizing principle and guide to conduct and set of beliefs and/or myths that will always nudge the behavior of the individual and of groups that manage to accumulate power and wealth back to the center, and keep the center in the middle of the sustainable range.
“Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.” Says Thornton Wilder. Following an earlier pronouncement, by one Francis Bacon: “Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.” And even one of our more rapacious robber barons, J. Paul Getty: “Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.” Of course, Getty may have meant the aphorism a little differently, like in the area of influence-buying…
Anybody read “Diet For A Small Planet” recently?
Rick, just curious — was the sale to the lower bidder a favor to some campaign contributor or crony, or just a “Fuck you then!” from the school district to the public?
Missing in action: an organizing principle and guide to conduct and set of beliefs and/or myths that will always nudge the behavior of the individual and of groups that manage to accumulate power and wealth back to the center, and keep the center in the middle of the sustainable range.
“Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.” Says Thornton Wilder. Following an earlier pronouncement, by one Francis Bacon: “Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.” And even one of our more rapacious robber barons, J. Paul Getty: “Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.” Of course, Getty may have meant the aphorism a little differently, like in the area of influence-buying…
Anybody read “Diet For A Small Planet” recently?
Rick, just curious — was the sale to the lower bidder a favor to some campaign contributor or crony, or just a “Fuck you then!” from the school district to the public?
Missing in action: an organizing principle and guide to conduct and set of beliefs and/or myths that will always nudge the behavior of the individual and of groups that manage to accumulate power and wealth back to the center, and keep the center in the middle of the sustainable range.
“Money is like manure; it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.” Says Thornton Wilder. Following an earlier pronouncement, by one Francis Bacon: “Money is like manure, of very little use except it be spread.” And even one of our more rapacious robber barons, J. Paul Getty: “Money is like manure. You have to spread it around or it smells.” Of course, Getty may have meant the aphorism a little differently, like in the area of influence-buying…
Anybody read “Diet For A Small Planet” recently?
Wow. That was a pretty cogent and interesting take. Thanks for posting that.
- Zhirem
Wow. That was a pretty cogent and interesting take. Thanks for posting that.
- Zhirem
Wow. That was a pretty cogent and interesting take. Thanks for posting that.
- Zhirem
I graduated from university and May on my own started to read “Democracy in America” when have the opportunity, it’s definitely a kind of page turner. Jon’s idea is not far off of the observations made by Alexis de Tocqueville on the early years of American democracy. He felt and proved, through his sources, that the town/vilage/municipality was where the responsibility for providing for the commonweal actually laid, not the federal government.
The fact that it seems radical to some might only be because of the statistics Jon used to represent what is the foundation of which the colonies were set.
I graduated from university and May on my own started to read “Democracy in America” when have the opportunity, it’s definitely a kind of page turner. Jon’s idea is not far off of the observations made by Alexis de Tocqueville on the early years of American democracy. He felt and proved, through his sources, that the town/vilage/municipality was where the responsibility for providing for the commonweal actually laid, not the federal government.
The fact that it seems radical to some might only be because of the statistics Jon used to represent what is the foundation of which the colonies were set.
I graduated from university and May on my own started to read “Democracy in America” when have the opportunity, it’s definitely a kind of page turner. Jon’s idea is not far off of the observations made by Alexis de Tocqueville on the early years of American democracy. He felt and proved, through his sources, that the town/vilage/municipality was where the responsibility for providing for the commonweal actually laid, not the federal government.
The fact that it seems radical to some might only be because of the statistics Jon used to represent what is the foundation of which the colonies were set.
I’m afraid that the low bid acceptance was through incompetence maybe overlaid with embarrassment. The school board was living large in the boom days of the Internet bubble. Speaking of which, might that not have been a warning?
I’m afraid that the low bid acceptance was through incompetence maybe overlaid with embarrassment. The school board was living large in the boom days of the Internet bubble. Speaking of which, might that not have been a warning?
I think this series you’re writing could be a seminal work. I’m sad to say that much of U.S. government, at all levels, is dysfunctional, for myriad reasons.
At the national level, the U.S. Senate is unable to function and also is downright undemocratic.
At the local level, I don’t know how you solve the problem of jurisdictional boundaries, especially the inability of most cities to annex more property.
I think a number of the smaller states are the right size to govern effectively, but they’re starved for revenue. Gambling casinos are the most creative new form of taxation in recent decades, and of course that is not the answer.
I’ll be following every post in this series.
I think this series you’re writing could be a seminal work. I’m sad to say that much of U.S. government, at all levels, is dysfunctional, for myriad reasons.
At the national level, the U.S. Senate is unable to function and also is downright undemocratic.
At the local level, I don’t know how you solve the problem of jurisdictional boundaries, especially the inability of most cities to annex more property.
I think a number of the smaller states are the right size to govern effectively, but they’re starved for revenue. Gambling casinos are the most creative new form of taxation in recent decades, and of course that is not the answer.
I’ll be following every post in this series.
I think this series you’re writing could be a seminal work. I’m sad to say that much of U.S. government, at all levels, is dysfunctional, for myriad reasons.
At the national level, the U.S. Senate is unable to function and also is downright undemocratic.
At the local level, I don’t know how you solve the problem of jurisdictional boundaries, especially the inability of most cities to annex more property.
I think a number of the smaller states are the right size to govern effectively, but they’re starved for revenue. Gambling casinos are the most creative new form of taxation in recent decades, and of course that is not the answer.
I’ll be following every post in this series.
I’m no fan of bloated bureaucratic federal government but 1) we tried confederate government back in the beginning and the result was nearly-continuous rebellion and 2) the world has changed just a wee bit since then.
However I’ve never read the book. It’s good to see a recent college grad who recognizes that the journey has only begun.
Gambling casinos are the Native Americans’ revenge and a sure indication that old white folks have too much money and not enough soul.
I thought Lady Gaga was all the proof needed.
There’s nothing wrong with the Federal government that a constitutional revolution can’t fix.
If, for example, representation in congress were based on metropolitan areas then the Federal government actually could serve the interests of the 80% of the population that lives in metropolitan areas.
As it is, we have a totally anachronistic patchwork of state “sovereignties” based on long-outdated economic and demographic realities with boundaries deriving from 17th century colonial charters, 18th century imperial conflicts, and 19th century congressional logrolling.
Maybe it’s time to think about rescuing the country’s urban areas from the idiocy of American rural life, now delivered over to meth labs, tea scrotums and Conagra. If Jefferson were alive today, he’d be laughing his head off at the notion of applying the term “sturdy yeomen” to our contemporary contado.
I need hardly add that the governmental changes would have to be extensive. The Senate would have to be abolished, a move which in itself would require an entirely new constitution. The number of states would have to be reduced by more than than half (one Dakota would do just fine–we hardly need two of them). But at least we would wind up with a central government capable of meeting the needs of the great majority of Americans.
Which is, after all, what democracies are supposed to do.
Here’s a counter-quip: where am I going to get the money for good food when I’ve wasted it on swank clothing I can’t afford and an iPhone?
There are people with real need in this country. There are also a tremendous amount of people who have been so destroyed by the welfare state mentality that they get a government check and blow it on baubles.
Suffern’,
Your plan is in the exact WRONG direction. You’re plotting larger, more centralized governance at the exact time when the world is moving to more and more decentralized centers of activity and interaction. The internet age has unlocked the power of decentralized individuals collaborating in voluntary collective activity.
You think that our problem is a government that can’t move fast enough with its wicked so-called “reforms”. I see a world that need less top-down command and more bottom-up control.
Read Elinor Ostrom. Go work at a mega corporation and see how relevant the corporate HQ decisions are compared to your own division’s workflow.
Centralized planning and command is the outdated, anarchistic concept. Emergent order and organization is the way of the world moving forward. Emergence is society, just as in nature, is the heart of true progress. Trial and error. Discovery. Competition. Centralized, unbounded government power is incompatible with all of what’s good.
Sufferin,
Let me remind you as well that democracies can and have destroyed themselves through the election of populist tyrants and parasites making promises of a free lunch.
America’s greatness was that it bound and ganged democracy in a constitutional legal framework built on the principles of the enlightenment, natural law rights, the rule of law above the rule of men and negative liberties (freedom FROM oppression).
These foundations were (and appear to remain) despised by the progressive movement which sees unbridled technocratic power guided by nothing more than majority rule as the key to social progress. This is a complete repudiation of Jefferson and Madison and the American experiment. It’s little more than tyranny of the majority. If 60% can run roughshod over 40%, you can call it democracy, but you can’t call it justice. It’s just a mob.
Got any anecdotes, even, to go with your assertion? And gee, does the “welfare state” include free-market decisions to respond to all that advertising that so very powerfully and subtly sells a “vision” of “the good life” that includes bling and lease-repo of your Infiniti with the 20″ spinners? Or is that in another carefully delineated and marshalled category?
‘Round here, we got a number of folks who are too proud to even accept a “government check,” too ill to stand up and greet at Walmart, too ornery or not sophisticated enough to understand that they qualify for “disability,” who get their food supplements out of the dumpsters behind McDonalds and Checkers and Publix.
“a tremendous amount of people who have been so destroyed by the welfare state mentality.” Huh, does that include the Bonus Babies at AIG or the people that “manage” the MIC? I’m sure you got a link to some place that shines a free-market spotlight on those “tremendous numbers…”
JT,
You know full well that I’m more angry about the AIG and Goldman Sachs parasites then the recipients of welfare. I very rarely bring up these kinds of issues because they are low on my list. I’d fully tolerate a reasonable degree of subsidization of the poor through market-neutral systems if we could eradicate corporate welfare (especially farm and oil subsidies). I want our military to come home 100% and shut down the global empire. So lets be honest about the positions held here.
As for an anecdote, I’ll have to introduce you to our former part-time nanny from Peru who lives in Newark in a hotel packed with people that she claims “do nothing but collect checks from the government, get drunk and buy things they can’t afford”.
Incentives matter. Private altruism and charity is real. Many people are in need of help. Some people are beyond help. None of this is a strong argument for socialism or socialism-lite (especially when history shows that the more socialist you get, the worse off the poor become, like Venezuela).
John P., and Jon T., with more local control, how do you deal with things like institutionalized racism, vast inequalities in educational opportunities, homelessness (which I see as a national problem with the homeless migrating to warm climates, etc.), etc.?
I’m not against keeping the money local, I’m just wary of city states being a bit too repressive in their own ways. And locals can be just as bad at spending as the Feds…unfortunately. And where does it stop? Gated communities with armed guards and their own law? (oh, we have that already…) City states at war as in 14th and 15th Century Italy? Does it become gang warfare for turf? (ditto, Oh we have that already…)
Rick,
Visit North Philly, Newark NJ or Detroit. For the most disenfranchised people in this country, gang warfare for turf is already a way of life.
I see very little evidence that the federal government has done anything to make their situation better, unless of course people in those communities can get a job with the feds, at which point they’ll make more money than the private sector workers whose tax dollars they consume within a bubble of job protection and unaccountability.
The Feds have largely reigned down terror on the poor through their so-called “war on drugs”. They’ve done nothing to improve schooling for the poor, which is awful even in NJ where the Abbot system has dumped DOUBLE the funding into low-income districts (18K/student in Newark vs. 10-12K nationwide).
I’m not saying we should dissolve the federal government, which is what you seem to be implying.
What I’m saying is that the powers needed by the Feds to do the kinds of things you want them to do also enable them to do the things they ACTUALLY do: steal from us all to give to their cronies and send our kids off to nonsensical wars.
The feds have lied to us at every step for the past century. They lied about the impact of the income tax. They lied about the cost and use of social security (that it would never be used for ID). They lied through their teeth about the cost of Medicare and Medicaid. They’ve terrorized us with their murderous war on drugs (aka the war on the poor and the brown). Worst of all, they’ve spent trillions and killed thousands of us in unconstitutional, undeclared wars that have had NOTHING to do with protection our national sovereignty from direct threat.
The Federal Government is a failure. They’re a bankrupt, dishonest, corrupt, parasitic, single-party, warmongering keynesian corporatist failure.
Sure local governance can be just as bad, but that provides no rational argument for empowering more distant authorities whose ability to access the knowledge need to actually solve problems (let alone the incentive to do so) is even MORE impaired than local government. At least I can go to my mayor’s house be heard.
People are not destined for a Hobbsian society if they’re given more power over their own lives. We are social beings. We need each other. We take care each other. That’s why we’re still standing despite the above. Ask any hardcore drug addict where they get sent when public services give up: the local church.
If people are so wicked that we need distant overlords to rule us with paternalistic rules by force… from what group shall we find the benevolent dictators we need? More likely, people who are decent enough to be governed, are decent enough to largely govern themselves.
We need smaller governance. We need more competition between modes of governance and the freedom to choice which governance we wish to live under.
Again, read or listen to some Elinor Ostrom. The empirical evidence is on the side of local, mostly voluntary collective action to solve collective problems. Even the “tragedy of the commons” has been proven to be solvable by local people working together.
Indeed, history is littered with private lighthouses.
Get on out into Keokuk, and Des Moines, and East St. Louis, and Kansas City, either one, and any number of small and smaller polities across our great nation, and you will find the same thing everywhere. Meth, crack, franchised gang activity, corrupt political structures, cops on the take or on the vigilante trail. Local bosses on the take and willing to kill the future for Growth Now that they can skim their Living Large and comfy retirements off of.
“The commons” worked well for centuries, until stuff like ‘enclosure’ came along, which it always will do as every society develops its aristocracy and the sources of Real Wealth get gobbled by those with economic/political/armed power. The commons works when you have people who share some notions and emotions that our individualized and fractured and now disjointed-by-computer population has just either never had or thoroughly lost, and who are kept by a variety of structures and forces, including shame and empathy and face-to-face confrontation and family and village and tribal relations, at something close to economic and political parity. You rail against big government as if it were a hulking single entity. You pitch unceasingly for all these grand vibes like “Emergent order and organization is the way of the world moving forward. Emergence is society, just as in nature, is the heart of true progress. Trial and error. Discovery. Competition.” Just conjure those up, and everything would be beautiful, and all your betes noir, “bankrupt, dishonest, corrupt, parasitic, single-party, warmongering keynesian corporatist failures,” will vanish like the morning mists. You never did opine about how you would institute a somehow limited “government” made up of people, I guess educated in the libertarian camps, who would constrain themselves to “suing the pants off” anyone who committed the only apparent sins in your cosmology — “coercion and fraud” — which as far as I can tell are about as well defined as the inchoate postulates of the Tea Baggers. And not by the invariable process of accretion that has existed anywhere you have competing people keeping score whether by number of toys, number of dollars, number of titles, land area and other humans dominated and controlled, tithes and taxes and any of the other markers in the real, actual game of life. Nor did I hear any response to my poke about that group you say you belong to and hold up as an exemplar of the “goodness” of humanity, as to how you folks might have achieved a parity of persons, no primus inter pares, no aristocracy or hierarchy, order being kept by ‘detection of fraud’ and some kind of what, enforcement-based disincentive to ‘coercion’? Yes, we are social beings, and yes, on some levels and at some scales we take care of each other. But there are always the miscreants, the sociopaths, the “marginal personalities,” the Iagos and Cassius’s and Neros and Hitlers and Bucheneyrovers, who will want and by manipulation or power be able to take “more.”
What strikes me about your Beatific conviction about the virtues of the “free man in a free market” is that structurally, logically, it’s like what goes with the “global fraudulent thing called the war on terror.” There are these problems, all the epithets you hurl at The Hated Government, especially the imperial adventurism, but the prescription for the cure, if it has any virtue at all, is for an entirely different disease than the one that is diagnosed.
The lying sons of bitches (and let me refer you to chapters 25 and 26, a few short pages, of Jon Krakauer’s “Where Men Win Glory” about the fratricidal death of Pat Tillman and the propaganda shit that they buried him in, these chapters briefly and lucidly distilling a load of stuff that I have read elsewhere about how we the people were and are conned into undeclared wars — remember Gen. Smedley Butler, “War is a racket”? There’s a nice end of life quote from Hermann Goering about how easily the proles are sucked into these things just by being told they are in danger of being attacked.) in the military/political/industrial con game do all that stuff you rail against. O. bin Laden’s playmates hit the mark with their second shot at the World Trade Center. Our leaders tell us the only way, their “prescription for what ails us,” to prevent another WTC incident is to take off our shoes and now maybe our pants, bend over and spread ‘em, send hundreds of thousands of young warriors who biologically just itch for a chance to go to war anyway to a far away place, and do all the corrupt and corrupting things that anyone paying attention can’t help but know about. Instead of acknowledging we the people have a “security” problem that is and has been most effectively addressed by plain old police work.
The “libertarian” prescription is to somehow do away with institutionalized behaviors that profit billions of us, viscerally satisfy our base tribal urges to violence against an “enemy,” and then somehow institute a limited “constitutionalruleoflaw” government that isn’t big but is somehow central and big enough to enforce a code that by definition and observation will have to be a changing, “emerging” thing with apparently no core values to it except leaving people alone and free to contract, as if that is the only kind of commerce between humans.
I think the disconnects between the illness and the prescribed remedy are as enormous, in all the various definitions of that word, in either case. Most folks here agree on some stuff, like the Obvious Badness of sneaky accretion of huge taxing power and “control of the money supply” being turned into a time machine to rob wealth from the future, the whole military-adventurism schtick and the diversion of nearly half the nation’s real current emerging wealth into the MPIC’s maw, the unbridled greed and fraud (in the wider sense, not just your Libertarian corner of it) and abuses of power by groups and individuals at all levels, the corruption, and maybe even the unbridled greed and self-serving and self-pleasing that is a drive in all of us and is more or less expressed depending on nurture and social controls. And if we were brave, we would be meeting to discuss ways to bring about actual real change, which is a step that comes both way before and way after the tit-for-tat, hayekeynesohobbsasmithian arguments about what shape the New World Order that will lead us back to Eden ought to take.
You rabble-rouse and clarion-call with your excoriation of “the feds,” using the same framing as the Reds use to excoriate their self-created totemic “enemy,” the hated “Liberal,” as if that is a unitary tribe or class that all marches to the same drummer. Yep, there are people who ascend into positions of power in “the government,” following Machiavelli and such luminaries. There are also folks who work damn hard at places like the EPA and DOT and in Medicare offices and the VA to do a humane job and administer justice. I doubt very much that in a nation of 308 million and a world population going on 7 billion in a few years, your prescription has any value as a medicine for the melancholy that we humans are maybe just being on the edge of starting to see hat we are about to slide down into. And your optimism or whatever it is, about how “we” can suddenly free ourselves of probably hard-wired and culturally amplified impulses to dominate, seems refreshingly seductive. But no more likely than any of the many other Utopian notions and dreams that have gone before to make any substantive change in the old Nick that lurks in the swamps labeled “human nature.”
“If people are so wicked that we need distant overlords to rule us with paternalistic rules by force… from what group shall we find the benevolent dictators we need? More likely, people who are decent enough to be governed, are decent enough to largely govern themselves.” I see precious little large-sample evidence to support the second statement, and inadvertent wisdom in the first, and an echo of my question about how you envision the establishment of that Good Government that somehow magically limits its reach to “suing the hell out of” people who “coerce or commit fraud,” no defintion I can see being offered for those two wrongs other than maybe your vision as Philosopher King that you will know them when you see them. What group, indeed? Are you volunteering to be Proconsul?
But hey, if you are shrewd and ambitious and charismatic enough, maybe you can become the head of the Libertaralibrian Party, and take your own turn as one of the Great Leaders that get enshrined in the history books written, as always, by the Winners. Go for it! I have no interest in the position myself.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the founding of America and it’s rise in the late 1800s and early 1900’s to the richest most prosperous country in the world… considering it was built on a small, constrained constitutional governance built on libertarian principles of liberty, property and rule of law. That singular success seems to stand right up in your face and say LOOKIE HERE, JT.
Lets talk about reality and morality. How much money is being spent on illegal dope in California.
Legalize it and fucking tax it. Big taxes . Money to be invested in Education, Health care… ( not in wars or weird international shit).
I
Agreed. The social devastation that the so-called “war on drugs” has caused is among the State’s most hideous crimes. It was actually this issue that kicked off my interest in classical liberal thought and study. The sheer insanity. The obvious inequality of the application. The fascist paramilitary swat teams operating within our borders. It is horrifying. But it is the face of government.
It is your face. The government is all our faces \( in a Democracy), so if you want changes, you bring forth changes. That is the big advantage of a democracy compared with a Dictatorship.
Real changes are the ones that we all need, the only ones we can believe in. The capacity of adaptation is a key element of real democracy.
Status quo is a key element of a dictatorship
@bernard,
It’s always a bit dicey to have heavy tax imposed on anything with negative social consequence unless the revenues from that tax are dedicated to mitigating damage associated with the thing being taxed.
Basically, you want to sharply limit the State’s incentive to become a promoter of a social problem, instead of filling its more appropriate role as a non-commercial problem manager.
I think it’s genuinely creepy that lottery proceeds go into education. I mean, the idea that the state has such a hard time making a case for (and acquiring) adequate funding for schools that they have to resort to being bookies is a terrible indictment.
When vice (or really, anything with negative social or environmental consequence) is viewed as a source of general revenue, we’re in trouble. Why? Because you’re going to see the State starting to push it. Just imagine what would happen to the addiction rate if the legalization of heroin were justified on the grounds that we could now repair our water mains.
I’d be far happier seeing 100% of the State’s lottery earnings going into a broad range of programs for problem gamblers. Instead, you see bright shiny signs in the rougher parts of town, and think “wow, Sacramento is truly screwing the ghetto here.”
And because the customer base for lottery tickets is disproportionately distributed, even the most even-handed redistribution of education money (ha!) means a net loss to the communities in which the most tickets are sold. In other words, you’re extracting money from the poorest and least educated quarters to pay for education delivered to families who are fundamentally better-off. Creepy? Ghoulish is more like it.
And what happens when the money flows in the opposite direction – via, say, a mugging, or a drug deal made with a suburbanite? Well, now, that’s a crime.
First, we ain’t starting from scratch today, with an entire continent to rape. Or with a small population from which malcontents and bad guys and immigrants yearning to be free could move west, young man, to new places to do their slash-and-burn, hydraulic-mining, cut-the-prairie-grass-and-make-a-Dustbowl frontier gig. “Government” on the edges was definitely small, because the polity was small, and if you ever read up on the “Regulators” you will see that every time the frontier seekers sent out a pseudopod, ahead of the institutions of government, the courts and of course sheriffs and posses and all that, you had a group of “upstanding citizens” who set up their own government, which usually became a more or less Cosa Nostra kind of thing until the actual government with legitimacy got established. Rule of law? I was a lawyer for 26 years, government and private. Do not dare to preach to me about how we have had a “rule of law” in this country, or that it is or ever will be possible to establish the kind of sanctified “ruleoflaw” you say that if it just would be observed, all would be peaceful and beautiful and free from fraud and coercion. That is not not not how humans operate.
So LOOKIE HERE yourself, JP — If you get your history from movies like “Birth of a Nation” and “How The West Was Won” and “High Noon” and stuff, why that’s just wonderful! because that might fit so comfortably with your own notion of how you have come by any “success” you have accumulated. I forget, which one of the Robber Barons said, and meant, that “God gave me my money!”? My professors were sadly into trying to produce a more complete and integrated view of where the now 308 million of us came from and all the good and bad we did along the way, and the institutions and ideas that served well or served badly. And the ups and downs of notions like American Exceptionalism and manifest destiny and the inherent goodness of capitalism. Of course history is just a bunch of selected bits of “what happened” or “what I think happened as a Big Picture thing since I’m not God and can’t catch every sparrow’s fall,” so it’s all about what you claim to see and the facs or factoids you can marshall into a persuasive narrative to support your contentions. I don’t see any “singular success,” in the grand sweep of How We Got To Wherre We Are Tdoay, I see a lot of fortuity and fuck-ups and stuff that just goes along with what I derive of the nature of humanity as economic and political and spiritual animals, from what I observe and read. You of course have your own take, the selection of stuff you want to hold up as proof of the construct that goes along with whatever worldview is comfortable to you and supports your persona. And I’m sure we both think the other is full of crap, which is how wars get started and the Third Baptist Church schisms off from the Second Baptist Church.
You make noises about waving hands and broad brushing, but from what I retain from my education and reading and life experience and observe with my own two little eyes, you are busily sweeping with a mile-wide broom to move under the carpet of Pollyanna rosy-colored tunnel vision, oh, Robber Barons of all sorts, slavery, civil war, all sorts of stuff that all came about out of “free market economic determinism” and a bunch of other intellectual bandaids, and out of the ineluctable nature of humans. And the wonderful “history” you contend for, and the notion that if people would just open their eyes and adhere to the Hayekian maxims about how humans are supposed to interact, everything would be just beautiful, is to this observational cynic just “bunk.”
And just saying over and over again that the US was built on “libertarian principles” and that our “small constrained government” was all about protecting property and liberty does not make it factually so (gee, slaves and women were property, way back when, no?), though of course things take on a patina of “truthiness” from repetition, as in Big Lies, now don’t they?
Maybe you be like Roberto Clemente, who noted “Baseball has been very very good to me,” maybe “America has been very, very good to you,” maybe the niches available in our political ecology have let a few live in large splendor while the many get to eat cake, or maybe it’s like Jon Stewart says: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uFyEFlLFi0
Don’t tear your rotator cuff reaching around to pat yourself on the back for what a wonderful life you personally have been able to extract from the place that’s called America, unless you got really good health insurance and access to really good ortho surgeons — Oh, I forget, you live in New York, don’t you? Lots of good docs migrate to the opportunities presented by concentrations of wealth there. Even if they have to “Go East, young man!”
Florida lottery money goes to “education?” NOT.
http://m.tampabays10.com/news.jsp?key=170651
But I’m gonna invest $2 in my weekly Lotto QuickPik, ‘cuz, if you don’t play, you can’t win! And for a lot of my fellow Floridians, “Winning the Lottery” is just ahead of “winning a big jusgment in a personal injury lawsuit” as a retirement plan. Go to a QuikStop gas and grease establishment, and listen to the happy souls with no teeth and a brown bag with a 40-ouncer in it, talking gleefully about what they’re gonna do with their winnings when their numbers come in…
Hey, Papola, that’s part of your beautiful LOOKIE HERE too.
bernard, you give democracy too much credit for it’s ability to translate individual preferences into collective “social” preference. It doesn’t. Just take a little time to read up on Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem. It’s not just pie in the sky theory. It’s real.
So is public choice studies.
The government isn’t “us”. It’s them. We elect them. But they act in their own self interest (obviously). That they get elected based on promising a free lunch (and lying) only makes the democratic process that much less reflective of the real “us”.
These people don’t represent me. They aren’t a proxy for me or my values.
I agree with you Alex. Indeed the reason governments tax vices has nothing to do with some pro-social end. It’s not some theory of taxing externalities. They tax beer and cigarettes and operate the lottery precisely because these things are so unresponsive to price changes (price inelastic). They can rape the addicted and they’ll keep coming back because they are addicted.
It’s government as pusher.
This is the nature of government, Alex. They break your legs, then steal your money in return for crappy crutches.
I see little difference between the government and the mob.
Here the news says that the narco-terrorism of Colombia and Mexico happens because of the US consumption problems. That is why I reacted proposing the legalization of it just as a tool to curb or eliminate the violence it generates. What is the solution then ?
JT, you’re an interesting fellow. You sure love poetry. You sure fail to offer even the hint of where you want things to go or how they could work in any practical sense. You sure seem to view the world through the zero-sum Malthusian framework of exploitation. Your sure like to come down on my life and context in a way that’s not constructive, as if I’m incapable of empathy because I live in New Jersey and indeed live a privileged life of relative peace and middle class prosperity. I find that approach to be intellectually bankrupt and fairly insulting, but that’s okay. I’m a big boy. I can handle it.
It is clear that America’s founders were radical libertarians (for the most part. Hamilton, not so much). Even the federalists would be considered near anarchic radicals by today’s statist American mainstream. If you think that my repetition of this fact, the fact of our constitution being a document expressly built on small, limited government, is somehow akin to delusion, I’m afraid we’re at an impasse looking through two different prisms on this world.
I don’t see much in your rants from which to draw anything but disgruntled rage and self-aggrandizingly overwrought eloquence. I often appreciate parts of your sentiments. But they are rolled up in a ball of anti-something/everything that is impossible for me to unpack. Maybe it’s a limitation on my end. Could be. I would love to have coffee with you some day and engage in a real human experience where we might find some better connection. I’m a nice guy. A family man. A loving person. I bet you are too.
“Prohibitions” exist because people have to have governments, and big groupings of people have never been able to exist without big governments, and legislators then get to use their accumulated clout to write what goes into the “rule of law,” and the courts and cops and prosecutors and jailers who enforce the Prohibitions make careers and profits off them.
JP doesn’t like government, believe it or not I don’t either, I just recognize that the thing is inevitable. And here’s a good example of what’s wrong with the species: just market forces at work in distributing stuff that tickles the pleasure centers and excites the neurons and it’s running up against that hypocritical Puritanism that says nobody but the rulemakers get to get their rocks off. Works for our homegrown rectitudinal politicians and evangelical preachers with their toe-tapping, wide-stance feet of clay, and if you do some reading, even for the “Taliban” mullahs and warlords over there in Notagainistan, who not only have some odd preferences for little boys and little girls and any maiden that catches their eye, but gee, they have our very own CIA cowboys riding the Range Rovers to give them buckets of Viagra in exchange for their oh-so-temporary “loyalty.”
If you don’t appreciate the sardonic and cynical, don’t bother to visit this link.
The only “solution,” I think, would be to go back in time and not go down the path we have followed. I think there is too much invested in things the way they are, to the point that the people that run the cartels can sort of dictate by force or financial persuasion to the guys who write and enforce the laws, to keep the game going and the drug money flowing. Places that have legalized recreational chemicals look to be too small to have much effect on the bottom lines of these entities, so the horse head-in-the-bed business model hasn’t needed to be applied. We are junkies in America, for oil, and drugs, and for our jingoistic militarism. Just makes us sheeple easier to Judas-Goat up the ramp to the slaughterhouse.
Hey, if all the prohibitions went away, my bet is that there would be no need to tax the stuff, because all the drains on the culture that go with pretending to enforce the Prohibition and the costs of cleaning up the miseries and messes that illegalizing drugs have caused us would go away, and it would be better than a wash transaction.
But good luck, Charlie. We as a species do not have the moral and spiritual and intellectual tools to think and act our way out of the crack we are in.
JT,
I’m not prepared to encourage anarchy. I think we live in a broadly amazing time and society. I have enough respect for the evolutionary process and the limits of my own knowledge to not wish the destruction of all our long-standing institutions.
But don’t tell me that rule of law include breaking the laws routinely. Sure the political structure makes the laws. okay. But it’s the BREAKING of the clear laws and due process that gets me going.
It’s Bush’s unconstitutional attacks on our civil liberties. Obama’s too. It’s TARP. It’s using TARP for things that it’s clearly not legally allowed to do. It’s the Fed bailing out firms and intervening in markets it has no legal authority to support.
It’s points a gun at the head of every american and demanding that they buy insurance because if they don’t and get sick, that gun will then be pointed at other people to force the subsidization of their care.
THAT’s not rule of law.
That’s just tyrannical rule of men.
You and I could have a very interesting time finding our common ground, I think. I’m a fan of that discovery process.
One last thing… what other path do you think “we” could have gone down? Why do you believe that “we” have gone down only ONE path? It would seem that each of us explores our own path. I don’t see the means for you aggregate each of us into all of us.