Tax Policy Fantasyland
Greg Mankiw sings the praises of the Value Added Tax, offering affection for the efficiency of its flat- and consumption-oriented nature:
My bottom line: If I could replace our current tax system (including the personal income tax, corporate income tax, payroll tax, and estate tax) with a VAT, I would gladly do it.
As long as we’re talking about hypothetical scenarios, I would join him if we’re allowed to throw state and local taxes into the mix as well. The thing of it is that once you consider state and local taxes, the US tax code is barely progressive at all:
In theory, I think the tradeoff between tax efficiency and tax progressivity could be quite the difficult dilemma. But what we’ve got, when considered overall, is a system with lots of inefficiency and almost no progressive impact. That, I think, makes the tradeoff easy. The VAT-only system wouldn’t be my first choice tax system by any means, but the case that it would be an improvement over the status quo seems very strong to me.
94 Responses to “Tax Policy Fantasyland”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
October 14th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Except that this analysis disregards the progressive effect of spending, which seems to be a necessary part of the equation.
October 14th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Let’s see, the top 20% pay 50% of the total taxes. the bottom 20% pay nearly zero taxes and this isn’t progressive ENOUGH? WTF?
Also, you who love SSAN but somehow don’t like FICA taxes, they were designed as “contributions” because what was contributed to SS was related to what was paid as a pension at retirement. There is supposed to be a relationship there, it is not welfare.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
2: I’m pretty sure you’re not even worth having a discussion with, but the alternative for that top 20% is pitchforks. I think the example of Louis XVI highlights that point nicely. Their wealth is dependent on everybody else agreeing to abide the system. If you want to advocate that a balanced tax is a poll tax, be my guest, but good luck sustaining a society that way.
That aside, how is a VAT not going to be actually regressive and thus manifestly worse than the status quo?
October 14th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
But VAT taxes are significatively REGRESSIVE, not “neutral”. It’s not uncommon for households in the top decile to pay in VAT taxes 33% less than a household in the bottom decile… even if you exempt items like food and public transport. At least in my country, where the VAT accounts for most of tax revenue, that’s what happens.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I think the thoery would be that a 20% VAT would come with a 10k EITC for those making less than X amount.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
“Let’s see, the top 20% pay 50% of the total taxes.”
Yeah, but they earn well over 90% of the income. So, no, it’s not progressive enough. If we had a flat tax, they’d pay well over 90% of the taxes as well. That’s why I do support the flat tax. And it’s why the rich no longer support it.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
I agree with the point about how it’s ridiculous to point out that the top 20% are paying a large share of the taxes when they earn the lion’s share of income in this country, but I disagree about the “flat tax” point. How would a flat tax lead to them paying a high rate like that.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
I think the thoery would be that a 20% VAT would come with a 10k EITC for those making less than X amount.
Fail. VAT’s are collected at point of sale, where no one’s checking EITC balance. I suppose in theory you could issue a VAT rebate, but you’re either putting the burden on the taxpayer to keep all of their VAT receipts for the year in addition to their proofs of income, or you’re adding an electronic ID card and database to the VAT system.
Nice enough idea in theory if you have to use a VAT and want to mitigate its regressive effects on the very poor (instead hitting it squarely on the middle class), but it’s entirely impractical in reality.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Is MikeK’s laughable stupidity feigned or real? Inquiring minds want to know.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
You’d almost think that Mankiw was a rich fucker who wasn’t spending most of his monthly income to make ends meet. (Did he mention capital gains and dividend taxation there? Hm.)
So: graphing quintile distributions is somewhat deceptive here, since the top 20% starts at around $88,000 household while the top 5% starts at $150k-ish. And let’s not forget the amount of VAT fiddling that the rich (and their accountants) would engage in when buying those high-ticket goods and services.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
@8: Why don’t you just add the EITC to each paycheck, the way income and payroll taxes are deducted from each paycheck now? If the credit amount isn’t connected to VAT paid, there’s no reason to keep track of VAT paid, let alone to introduce extra time delays.
The whole point behind VAT is that no matter where the money goes, it will run into the VAT sooner or later.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
dob: In Canada, low-income people get a rebate of our VAT (the GST). You don’t have to keep receipts, you just get refund checks based on your tax info. It’s not that complicated.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
The VAT-only system wouldn’t be my first choice tax system by any means, but the case that it would be an improvement over the status quo seems very strong to me.
Wouldn’t be my first choice either, but I’d consider a shift to far more reliance on consumption taxation in conjunction with a far more efficient tax code that boosted growth AND an increase in the robustness of the safety net. Still, VAT-only seems unjust any way you slice it.
I remember somebody a few years back suggesting a “back to the future” tax code reform — ie., implement a VAT, but combine it with a income tax targeting the rich (to get us “back” to the way we used to do federal taxation circa 1920). I could live with such an arrangement, again, combined with a robust safety net, although, as ever, the devil’s in the details.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
In Canada, low-income people get a rebate of our VAT (the GST). You don’t have to keep receipts, you just get refund checks based on your tax info.
I’ve heard they also get free healthcare at the point of delivery, and in some of the provinces (or is it all of them?) the government actually sends monthly checks to, get this, families with children!
October 14th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Fostert,
where are you getting your numbers? The numbers I have show the. Top 25% earn 67% of the income but pay 85% of the taxes.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Why does it have to be either or? I think the income tax should stay with more baskets and progressive rates. However, the same could be supplemented with a broad-based national VAT set at a relatively low rate (3-4% range). We could make it less regressive by allowing rebates (like Canada) for the poor and including exemptions for essentials (medicine, raw food, etc.)
October 14th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
We could also have more brackets at the top so that the really rich (pay more–say add 3% over $500,000 AGI, another 3% over $1 mil and another 5% over $10 mil for a top rate of46%. And do away with the preferential rate on dividends and cap high-income deductions. Those two simple things would make things more progressive without really hurting the wealthy. And freeze the estate tax at a $2 mill exclusion per person. That is plenty to shield from tax.
October 14th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
“How would a flat tax lead to them paying a high rate like that.”
Two ways. First you eliminate deductions and loopholes, which significantly lower the effective tax rate. Then, you tax capital gains at the same rate. When you look at the top 1% in this country, most of their income is capital gains, which is taxed at 15%. That’s why Warren Buffett has an effective tax rate of only 17%, while those of us in the middle class pay closer to 40%.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
It seems like any of the proposals in the post and comments could be improved by the addition of delivery of a pony to each taxpayer.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Looking at the top quintile’s contributions, I’d say they actually got their pony a long time ago…
October 14th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
As for income numbers, those refer to earned income, which makes up a tiny fraction of total income for the very wealthy. Warren Buffet’s “income” is only about $200K a year, the rest is capital gains, which aren’t counted in income statistics. Admittedly, 90% is a guess for the top quintile, But it’s a lot better a guess than what you get from the Heritage Foundation, which deliberately ignores the primary source of income for the rich: capital gains. And this is something Republicans won’t admit. They want to eliminate all taxes on capital gains. This would create tax-free aristocracy in America, and that’s actually what they want. It’s good to be the king, isn’t it?
October 14th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Fostert, I’m confused. You claimed the top 20% earn over 90% of the income. But the chart shows that they earn just over 50%. (And if memory serves, the tax foundation’s methodology for allocating corporate income to individual taxpayers is, if anything, pretty biased towards assigning it to high-income taxpayers.) What gives?
More broadly, when you think about progressive-ness, I think the most intuitive measure is the ratio of high income tax payers’ tax rates to low income tax payers’ rates. Yglesias’s chart obscures that. Using the numbers that this chart is based on, the top quintile’s total (state + federal) tax rate is 34.5%, while the bottom quintile’s rate is 13%. A tax rate ratio of about 2.6:1 may not be progressive enough, but it’s not “barely progressive at all.”
October 14th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
matthew’s table is a little confusing because it carries the percentage of total taxes paid element: the question is what is the rate that people are paying when you consider all taxes.
and the rate is quite flat as the table does show: it just so happens that because income is skewed tremendously upward that even a relatively flat-tax system such as we already have in aggregate still ends up with the high-income earners paying a high percentage of the tax revenues and then allowing apologists for those high-income earners to make remarks about how much tax the poor souls are paying.
but i digress: i really wanted to talk about greg mankiw and whey he doesn’t deserve our attention. greg mankiw isn’t just some obnoxious right-wing economist: he’s an obnoxious right-wing economist who was bush 43’s chairman of the council of economic advisers. he was working for the most conservative president ever, and a VAT tax is a long-time conservative wet dream. and even so, he couldn’t even convince bush and cheney to pursue this.
so in fact, greg mankiw can’t have his way, his way was obviously rejected, and his simple passive voicing is a way of avoiding the recognition that he is living in some fantasy land where we’re supposed to be impressed by his theoretical fancy for an impossible outcome. what a jerk.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Fostert, you posted a comment while I was typing that addressed my question. I think you’re mistaken about these numbers, though. The Tax Foundation (not the Heritage Foundation) is where this chart comes from, and it uses a very comprehensive measure of income. The source of the chart is here:
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/wp1.pdf
If you look at pages 16-17, and Appendix B (starting at p. 100), you’ll see that the chart’s numbers are based on a very broad measure of income, which certainly includes capital gains. If you think this measure is massively understating the wealthy’s share of income, I’d like to hear why.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:36 pm
So then, Matt, you’ll be endorsing Huckabee and his “Fair Tax” this next election?
October 14th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Fostert,
Do you have any other data to support your claim that the top 20% earn 90% of the income? I’m not aware of any possible methodology that would lead to such a figure.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
I’m surprised Matt didn’t mention the PROGRESSIVE consumption tax that Robert H Frank’s talks about.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
A VAT tax – or a flat tax, the American concept of a VAT tax – is a horrible, stupid idea and all who propose it should be burned at a stake or impaled. Sorry to be so dramatic, but this is simple regressive idiocy. The poor face a massive tax increase, retailers and manufacturers are punished – and all so the very well off can say ‘life is fair.’
Rich people enjoy the freedom to become and stay wealthy in America and always have. In exchange for this and the fact that they are a small, small fraction of the population, they pay proportionately more in taxes. That’s the way it’s been for a long time and its worked. Rich people need to stop complaining about their problems, suck it up and pay. When there’s a crime in their neighborhood, they don’t have to wait for the police to show up.
MY and other lefty liberals who just got back from Europe need to get over their jet lag. America ain’t Europe. Thank god for that.
October 14th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Arg. Delete that last apostrophe.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
“you’ll see that the chart’s numbers are based on a very broad measure of income, which certainly includes capital gains.”
Well, I’d like to see them define “market income.” That sounds like capital gains, but without a definition of the term, who knows? And without the words “capital gains” showing up, I tend to think they’re playing games with linguistics. What I do know is what the top 1% really looks like, and they make their money off of stock option agreements. Salary is irrelevant. And that money is taxed as capital gains at 15%. There is simply no way a guy who pays 15% on the majority of his income is paying the 40% I pay. Granted, I’m in the 95 percentile range in income when I work. But it’s all salary and wages, which are taxed at a much higher rate. So I pay the highest taxes possible. If I were richer, my tax burden would go down substantially on a percentage basis. Because if I were richer, I’d get those sweetheart stock option deals.
Can I produce the capital gains numbers? Given a week, I can use math to tease them out. But nobody has these numbers. Including the Tax Foundation, or they’d be willing to use the term “capital gains,” instead of the undefined “market income.” They are an organization that promotes the rights of rich people, and if they want to play linguistic games, they obviously are hiding something. Capital gains is a clearly defined concept, that they avoid the term is troubling, to say the least.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Fostert,
So, you’re saying the top 20% earn 90% of the income and none of the left of center advocacy groups have ever mentioned it. I mean, if it’s true, I sure someone would have mentioned it.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
What we really have is a progressive/regressive system that pretty much balances out, except above the 95th percentile. Then it becomes radically regressive. When you add in the state and local taxes, it’s basically a flat tax. But in the top 1%, they pay taxes at much lower rates than the middle class.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
We don’t have ENOUGH types of taxes in this country.
We need to have a national VAT
We need to have a national real property tax.
We need to have a national personal property tax.
We need to have a national carbon tax or a tax on gasoline.
I worked in tax avoidance for most of the last 20 years. I was paid big bucks to help reduce a corporations effective tax rate from 35% to 20%.
The point is that we could reduce our personal income tax, corporate income tax and social security tax if we had other sources of revenue.
People like me can figure out ways to eliminate certain types of ‘taxable income’ but it is not a very efficient method.
For example, If the corporate tax rate were 15% then it would probably not be worthwhile to spend a ton of money to avoid paying the tax. If you could only deduct 15% of our expenses then you wouldn’t be as concerned whether something was deductible or not.
If you didn’t have a high payroll tax and income tax then it wouldn’t be as important to try and work off the books.
All of these tax cuts would have to be replaced by something. I am suggesting that we have a lot of little taxes that are easy to collect. The incentive to cheat on one type of tax would not be very high and we would collect most of the money because it would be hard to evade them all.
The system could collect the same amount of money and it would be far easier to collect because the incentives to cheat would be greatly reduced.
We need
October 14th, 2009 at 7:35 pm
A VAT tax – or a flat tax, the American concept of a VAT tax – is a horrible, stupid idea and all who propose it should be burned at a stake or impaled. Sorry to be so dramatic, but this is simple regressive idiocy.
Such a statement — apparently from a liberal’s perspective — is inevitably made in any discussion about a VAT. But is there a single country with a robust safety net and truly progressive portfolio of progressive domestic polices that fails to employ a broad-based consumption tax? I think it’s frankly not feasible. The types of programs many liberals (such as myself) would like to see implemented in the US cost money. And VAT taxes raise gobs of the stuff.
There’s just no getting around the need for robust tax revenues if you want the country to do more of what they’re doing in Denmark. And as much as I’m a fan of the idea of highly progressive income taxation, there simply are limits — one of them being the fact that the rich tend to experience substantial income volatility. Sure, a VAT used to fatten the profits of General Dynamics or Haliburton would be regressive, and a bad idea. But a VAT as part of total package of measures designed to increase economic security and living standards for non-rich Americans? I can’t see the harm.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
And freeze the estate tax at a $2 mill exclusion per person. That is plenty to shield from tax.
How about getting rid of the estate tax altogether, and instead treating inheritances as regular, taxable income to the recipient?
October 14th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Rich people enjoy the freedom to become and stay wealthy in America and always have. In exchange for this and the fact that they are a small, small fraction of the population, they pay proportionately more in taxes. That’s the way it’s been for a long time and its worked.
N: No, it hasn’t been that way “for a long time” and the system you describe hasn’t “worked” very much at all from the perspective of the non-rich (because income inequality has exploded in the US).
As others have pointed out, if you take the entire tax code as a whole (all levels of government) in the US, the tax code tends to be pretty flat. An American millionaire often pays no higher a percentage of his/her income than somebody pulling in 30K a year.
Those countries that employ the VAT tax you apparently despise so much ALSO tend to tax the incomes (and spending) of the wealthy more heavily than the US does, and spend much more of total tax revenue supporting the living standards, health, and economic security of working families. The point is, it is possible to have in place a VAT tax AND a set of progressive domestic policies. Indeed, the two tend to go together, as the one country that tends to be an outlier in terms of VAT taxes (the US) also maintains a pretty weak and ineffective safety net.
October 14th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Larry M
Please explain yourself and why you disagree with my analysis, you ignorant idiot. Obviously, you believe, like so many here, that those that EARN more than you are deserving of a mugging by the likes of Pelosi
October 14th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Any combination of taxes that takes down the Great American fortunes seems right. We should aim at a system where there isn’t a single after tax billionaire. Obviously, those with incomes in the millions per annum are not going to be hurt in terms of their lifestyle by paying a greatly increased share of their income – they are going to be hurt in terms of their ability to exert private power. It is a good aim to hurt them as much as possible in this way. American democracy, a feeble joke at the moment, might actually come out of its coma if the oligarchs actually didn’t have that expanded power.
But it is certainly not going to happen under an administration that has stuffed the public option in the garbage can, increased the number of troops in Afghanistan, and extended olive branches to such as Joe Lieberman in Congress. We’ve ended up with a Democratic president who is more conservative than Bill Clinton, amazingly enough.
So I imagine that the Obama tax policy will follow the Bush tax policy in the end, as it has followed the Bush foreign policy and the Bush Tarp policy. With, of course, the Bush results – increased poverty, stagnant or falling median household income, and an increase in unemployment that will sooner or later be dubbed, happily, the “new norm”.
October 14th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
“that those that EARN more than you are deserving of a mugging by the likes of Pelosi”
And they really earned that money? Really? Ride the upside of the roller coaster and you’re some kind of genius? We do reward people for their luck, but talent should really be the basis. But educate the poor, and the rich have much to fear.
October 14th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Roger
So the next time you go into a store, the salesman asks, “how much do you earn, sir?” You answer, then he sets the price of what you buy. Is that it?
October 14th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
Mike, how fucking stupid are you? Do you work at it? The government isn’t a business. And even if it were, those who are on the right hand side of that chart aren’t getting an equal share of governance – they are getting far more than 50% of the benefits.
What a jackass you are.
October 14th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
So how much wealth did you create today Mike K?
October 14th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
But educate the poor, and the rich have much to fear
Then how do you explain the high degree of anti-intellectualism among the poor?
October 14th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Not as stupid as Will Allen Says @ 41
Well, yes you are that stupid. Those on the right “consume” considerably LESS government than those on the left side; those on the left use Medicaid, subsidized public transport, public schools; all services that I and others toward the right side, who don’t use any on them, PAY FOR! Government is a service like any other one–it provides security, national defense, policing, justice system, etc.
October 14th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
So the next time you go into a store, the salesman asks, “how much do you earn, sir?” You answer, then he sets the price of what you buy. Is that it?
That’s how a lot of sales work in specialized goods and services. Heck, you can license software for a percentage of your revenues for as long as you use it.
October 14th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Zero,
I don’t know, but my investments are up a good bit this year, so I have produced wealth that can be invested by entrepreneurs to buy capital goods and hire workers. At work, I produced sales that are valued in 10 figures, so I think I’m doing pretty good.
How about yourself?
October 14th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
Those on the right “consume” considerably LESS government than those on the left sid
Property is a “government service.” Rerun your analysis, this time taking into account the world where Warren Buffet has to be a warlord to maintain any claim to his assets.
October 14th, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Property is a “government service.”
And the vast majority of those services are provided at the state and local level and paid for with state income, sales, and local property taxes.
October 14th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
And the vast majority of those services are provided at the state and local level and paid for with state income, sales, and local property taxes.
Bill Gates is definitely not a random upper middle nobody today because of local government. Are you playing three-card monte for some reason?
October 14th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
Bill Gates is definitely not a random upper middle nobody today because of local government.
I said vast majority. The patent and copyright protection provided by the US Federal Government is a tiny, nearly infinitesimal, portion of total federal spending. Indeed, with a budget of $1.956 billion the US Patent and Trademark Office total 2008 budget represented 0.06% of all federal spending.
October 14th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Actually, Mike K, that is exactly the framework used by libertarian economists to claim that inequality isn’t increasing. Touche – that is ridiculous.
And of course the tax system is nothing like a store. It is a political devise. One of the great things about it is that it can destroy the oligarch’s accumulation of wealth, which I can confidently say they did not earn in any way shape or form. When the Exxon CEO makes, what, 400 million dollars over his term of office, it is easy to see that you could have put a robot in his place, fed it a few business texts, and pretty much the same results for the company would have happened – in fact, that is what the business cycle shows in general. Management makes a bit of a difference, but not to much, and should be paid accordingly – as per the sixties, when the highest salaries of the upper management in Fortune 500 companies were around 19 times what the lowest salaries were.
Seizing the bandit’s goods would be a social benefit. Making a tax system that would penalize incomes at pre-Reagan rates would create disincentives for upper management to aim at short term gains, which of course they pocket – and would be much better for the economy. There is not a downside to smashing the oligarchs. Among the upsides, too, would be ending the suckup culture of the servile right, with their kiss ass attitude to the wealthy. That would be an aesthetic gain as well – watching people with your opinions crawl on their bellies before the imbecile rich is a rather sickening sight.
October 14th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Property is not a government service, it is a natural right, as in “certain unalienable rights”. Your physical and mental being are your property and are yours to use to better your life as are the fruits of your labor using those abilities. The government, no more gave me my life than it gave me my house. If government gives you property, I guess they can take it away.
The moment you think property is a “government service” is the moment you have become nothing but a subject of bureaucrats. Government DOES protect your natural right, which is why governments are formed by the consent of the governed. Please re-read the Declaration of Independence.
No arguments, so far, as to local property taxes, I use the roads and they plow them in winter.
October 14th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Management makes a bit of a difference, but not to much, and should be paid accordingly
Then why haven’t you started a business? If what you say is true, with the money you save on executive salaries you could undercut any competitor you went up against, you would own any segment you entered.
Oh, that’s right… you’re an idiot, what you say is bull shit and you have no idea how the world works.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:00 am
fostert,
Thanks for your reply.
I don’t know if you’ll see this, but I wanna make a couple of points: (1) just because the individuals you know only pay 15%, doesn’t mean their tax rate is 15%; and (2) the Tax Foundation’s income measure includes most capital gains.
For (1): If an individual earns money by selling stock in a large corporation (i.e., a C Corp), the individual might only pay 15% federal tax. But the individual’s capital gains ultimately depend on the corporation’s present or future earnings (remember, corporations don’t get the 15% preferential rate for capital gains). The corporation’s earnings will have been separately subject to the corporate-level tax, which can be as high as 35%. So the total tax rate on the individuals is much higher than 15%.
For (2): See the bottom of p. 104 of the Tax Foundation .pdf I linked to earlier. Briefly, they start with “Gross Domestic Product, less the annual amount of capital depreciation that the economy as a whole must set aside to maintain its current capital stock”; they allocate this among taxpayers. This measure includes corporations’ retained earnings and, accordingly, individuals’ unrealized capital gains in their corporate stock holdings.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:13 am
I said vast majority
And I said you were playing three-card monte. Whether in the distribution of the number of employees, statutes, or people directly influenced, or any other useless metric by which one wishes to determine the “majority” of property-related services the exercise is worthless. The recipients of the bulk of the service of property belongs to those that are its major beneficiaries. The partitions of government are completely unimportant. Bill Gates is wealthy because of international intellectual property rights, created and imposed by governments the world over with a variety of means.
Property is not a government service, it is a natural right, as in “certain unalienable rights”.
Are “natural rights” vector gauge bosons? Maybe you should graduate from the 18th century.
Please re-read the Declaration of Independence.
Go to college.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:16 am
In some, but not all traditions, those starting from some, but not all, sets of basic premises, sometimes, but not all the time, and even when so considered, weighed higher or lower than other ‘natural’ rights, yes.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:22 am
The recipients of the bulk of the service of property belongs to those that are its major beneficiaries.
Yes, but the “service of property” represents only a small portion of government spending.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Yes, but the “service of property” represents only a small portion of government spending.
Yes, the entire military and law enforcement apparatus, the welfare state to pacify the masses, and the entirety of international diplomacy must account for some trivial proportion of overall government spending. Practically free, I imagine.
The actual allocations don’t interest me here, only the bulk of the benefit. I’d be more interested in the specifics of the distribution of spending if it were obvious that the allocation of resources didn’t really ‘work’ for the benefit of anyone or had the lure for my comment required something less banal to deal with.
October 15th, 2009 at 12:58 am
The actual allocations don’t interest me here, only the bulk of the benefit.
I’m not sure what you mean. I would think that as long as the benefits are extended to all, the fact that some chose not to take advantage of said benefits isn’t really an issue.
October 15th, 2009 at 2:06 am
Those on the right “consume” considerably LESS government than those on the left side
Bullshit. They consume all the government necessary to allow them to maintain their wealth, which is, quite frankly, a metric fucktonne. It’s just that they’re too fucking stupid and greedy to see it. The people on welfare are pikers by comparison, and what they primarily lack is the subtlety of the rich.
Property is not a government service, it is a natural right, as in “certain unalienable rights”.
Natural property rights are a useful political fiction, just as they were the day John fucking Locke decided to mythologise them in the service of his fellow Whigs, you Randroid twit.
October 15th, 2009 at 2:30 am
I’m not sure what you mean. I would think that as long as the benefits are extended to all, the fact that some chose not to take advantage of said benefits isn’t really an issue.
This isn’t some moral argument. The question is one of who consumes the bulk of government services. The entire notion and practice of property is a byproduct of social organization. It’s probably the biggest service of government, and the one basically all of the others exist to enable, nurture, or preserve. It’s one that people like Mike K take for granted, because it doesn’t appear as a specific expense on their budget, and probably because they want to prescribe nature. So when they want to look at the services of government, they look at which of the inner city poor happen to receive the largest allotment of government cheese, who personally drives the most on a road, or whatever. That outlook is about as useful as if I simply took whiteout to the budget and ceased accounting for government cheese. Alice Walton isn’t going to trade places with someone whose wordly belongings consist of some clothing and six boxes of cereal made from surplus wheat. His survival prospects and those of his offspring are way, way lower than Bill Gates’s. This is pretty trivial, and it isn’t a matter of whether everyone ultimately benefits or not from the existence of property. Some benefit more than others, for a variety of reasons, and whether you feel this is justified or not, they wouldn’t benefit for long without anyone to backstop their claims. The distribution of ownership to resources happens to be quite disproportionate, and thus the largest claimants are the biggest beneficiaries. Now you could try to make a qualitative argument around the utility of money that being Alice Walton isn’t really that much better than being Matt Yglesias or Mike K, or follow Friedman down the path of constructing a narrative of the poor as the biggest beneficiaries of property if you want. I’m sure that could be interesting.
October 15th, 2009 at 3:34 am
Property is not a government service, it is a natural right, as in “certain unalienable rights”. Your physical and mental being are your property and are yours to use to better your life as are the fruits of your labor using those abilities. The government, no more gave me my life than it gave me my house. If government gives you property, I guess they can take it away.
You know what else is a natural right? GOOOOOOOLLLLLDDDDD!!!!!
So, so dumb.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:12 am
“just because the individuals you know only pay 15%, doesn’t mean their tax rate is 15%;”
Correct, it’s a little under 20%, which is still way lower than the 40% I pay. If I could get a chance to pay to the low rates of the rich, I’d pay those rates in a second. They pay a little above 15% because they actually do have some real income. That makes their tax rates higher. Even Warren Buffet pays more than 15%. But not much more. Man, I’d love to be screwed liked the rich. Soft and gentle. Unlike the violent ass reaming I get every year. So tell me why I don’t deserve a 17% tax. I’m a good guy, but apparently, I’m just not rich enough. Why should an upper middle class guy like me pay radically higher taxes than those that make ten times more than me? My only hope on taxes is actually pretty easy. Either make more or less. Just don’t make what you do now. Taxes go down either way, and it’s clear what to do. Even with what I make, I couldn’t afford the medical care I need. So I sell the business and take a regular job that offers medical insurance. The Baucus Plan says I need to pay $50K for insurance a year or go to jail. But let’s face it, jail has better medical coverage than anything the Baucus Plan has to offer. So see me in jail. When I get sick, I’ll get myself arrested. And if it’s not good enough to keep me in jail, I’ll just commit bigger crimes until you keep me there. Because it’s the only place where I can get treatment. My death sentence has already been written by the insurance companies. Getting a real one would keep me alive longer. Ten years on Death Row is still longer than I have now. So who do you want me to kill? At least on death Row they give you medical care. I can’t get that now. And that’s really fucked up. The fact that violent crime is my only chance at getting medical coverage is pretty damn sick. But what other choice do I have? So really, I should take someone out, and who do you want it to be? It’s a freebbie for me, so it doesn’t matter. So who do you want taken out? I really need to get on Death Row to make my life last longer.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:18 am
And you may think I’m a sick fuck,and you’d be right. But you know who the real sick fucks are? The guys that deny coverage and kill 45,000 people every year. They make Osama bin Laden look like a pussy.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:52 am
And if you get leukemia and are denied treatment, you’ll be lucky to live a year. If you are sentenced to death by a court, you’ll probably live seven years. But if you get your ass arrested, they have to give you treatment. And they do. But they kick you out as soon as they have a hospital for you.
October 15th, 2009 at 7:37 am
Anwar Shaikh has nice research on “who pays for the state”–i.e., the “social wage”…http://homepage.newschool.edu/~AShaikh/welfare_state.pdf
October 15th, 2009 at 8:51 am
fosters,
is there some law I’m not aware of that prevents you from starting your own business and reinvesting your earning into the business and eventually taking those earnings in the form of capital gains?
October 15th, 2009 at 10:26 am
@67: The fact that he wasn’t smart enough to inherit that first few million? Or maybe just the enormous risk of starting a business? (Of course, I’m sure the tiny percentage that succeed totally earned it, and the huge number that lose their shirts were all just lazy or dumb. What other explanation is even conceivable? What could deter anyone looking at small business failure rates from plowing ahead anyway, other than a lack of intelligence?)
Currently, the primary effect of government is to reward the already lucky. Lucky enough to be born into rich families, lucky enough to be pretty and well-liked, lucky enough to win in the small-business casino, lucky enough to win in the investment casino, etc.
Hard work without luck makes you the most productive janitor on the block. When was the last time *they* got a billion-dollar bonus?
October 15th, 2009 at 10:49 am
chris,
Lucky enough to be born into rich families, lucky enough to be pretty and well-liked, lucky enough to win in the small-business casino, lucky enough to win in the investment casino, etc.
So, long story short, you’re bitter because you’re ugly, lazy, stupid and no one likes you?
October 15th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Oh, and your parents were losers and you’re all resentful.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:52 am
How that was a lot of wasted pixels.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:18 am
So, long story short, you’re bitter because you’re ugly, lazy, stupid and no one likes you?
America really does have the stupidest, most brutal rich people outside of, say, Haiti.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:43 am
Some of you here, I’m thinking m, Anthony, fostert, are walking, breathing examples of how low American education has sunk and how decadent American political thought has become. Each one of you are fit only to live as dogs in totalitarian “society” where government provides and you sit around consuming the food and shelter provided by others.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
government provides and you sit around consuming the food and shelter provided by others.
Of course, based on his description of himself, this is exactly the life Mike K leads. He’s just too stupid to understand it.
The upside is that people like Mike K are so hate-filled and personally unpleasant that it’s very hard for them to gain political power without finding really talented front men, who only come along very rarely.
October 15th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Yul
Well, you could not be more wrong. I am a pilot who spends about half the month traveling the world, I have been a military officer, a civil servant (GS-15), a airline pilot, an ALPA MEC representative, hold two degrees amongst other accomplishments.
Basing judgements on such evidence and condemning independent thinking that is out of your liberal bias is only display on YOUR IGNORANCE!
I pay about $30,000 per year to Uncle Sugar and see very little in return. I assume you contribute something or go back down to your basement.
Yes, the “hate-filled” among us voted in conservatives, some we didn’t like for most of the last 44 years, so embrace your fellow Americans,
October 15th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
You really stink of someone that believes that you can change nature by pretending really hard. Since you probably deal in delusions that may have certain professional benefits for you, but you should abide the creed of drug dealers everywhere and not use your own product. It’s better to be Deepak Chopra than to believe him. As it is, it is difficult to see that your worldview is more sophisticated than that defecting from collective delusions is dangerous, which makes you one of the credulous cowards in the tale of the emperor without clothes.
It is entertaining to see your writing drip with disdain for yourself as some juvenile exercise in projection, but it’s not very interesting.
If there is any shame in education–if I can muster the conceit to speak so broadly–it is not that there is a dearth of mindless adherence to rubric or a degradation of the utility of our models, but that so few opt to partake with any earnestness.
October 15th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I am a pilot who spends about half the month traveling the world, I have been a military officer, a civil servant (GS-15), a airline pilot, an ALPA MEC representative, hold two degrees amongst other accomplishments.
Yup…exactly as I said — you live a life of complete dependency on the government. That’s generally the norm with people with your ideology. It’s also the norm that you’re absolutely blind to the reality of your life.
But as I say, it’s okay. Keep on shrieking at other Americans about what what ignorant lazy idiots they are. I’m sure you and your cause will go far.
October 15th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Since when is being taxed $35,000+ per annum at all levels “dependency” on the government? In any conventional sense, government (and those receiving its largess) is dependent on me and my fellow taxpayers. Another obvious stupidity brought to us by the lazy idiots of MY.
October 15th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
In the future you should probably invent a life story that doesn’t entail living off of the government teat, and a work history in an industry that doesn’t depend on government services and subsidies, and when you’re done with all of that you should probably tell everyone that you have lived for your entire life in Antarctica. Readers would probably still think you were a moron, but you would look slightly less crazy.
October 15th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
If I was inventing one, is that the one I would invent? I work in private industry, what about you? Oh, maybe you work flipping burgers in a Mickey D’s, earning EITC.
October 16th, 2009 at 12:06 am
Yes, yes, you work in private industry, just like those bold individualists at Lockheed and Goldman Sachs. Why can’t all those lazy stupid liberals make a stand like you in the free marketplace?!?!
I just thank god you haven’t Gone Galt, Mike K. Whatever would we parasites do without you?
October 16th, 2009 at 12:49 am
You do not appear to read for comprehension. I wrote that you should invent a life story, so that you wouldn’t look so crazy when you reach for that history of government subsidy in the middle of your routine of how dependent the government is on you.
Any claims that you make about yourself are unverifiable by me, and outside of your cognitive dissonance I couldn’t care less. Your ideas are the only thing of value that you could bring, and they’re infantile and you defend them poorly. You’re just some scarecrow bellyaching about LIBRULS. Where does that pass for intellectual content?
October 16th, 2009 at 8:16 am
Infantile? You leftists looking for something for nothing from Uncle Sam are the infantile ones.
Yul
WORKING for the government is NOT sucking on government; that should be well understood by those of you who love Uncle Sam. Somehow the phrase “on the government teat” shouldn’t be used by people who primary political goal is to INCREASE those on the government dole.
Yes, I want less government, a LOT less!!
October 16th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Well, I certainly accept you enjoy fantasizing about less government, a LOT less!!
Of course, you and your ideological comrades would enjoy the reality much less, since it would involve most of you starving in the street. But go ahead and keep dreaming, and those of us who live in the real world will keep doing our best to prevent you from ever gaining the power to ruin your own lives.
October 16th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
Yes, working for the government is sucking on the government teat. Where, pray-tell, do you think those resources came from that equipped you, trained you, and least of all fed you and clothed you? They were coerced from the labors of others by a bunch of gun-wielding militants. So too is working for an industry that exists as a result of massive government subsidies. Your life is so amusingly opposed to your ideology that you should self-destruct. You are a looter. You’ll have to revise your history or continue to expose yourself as immoral by your own standards. No one else’s standards are relevant to why you’re a dumbass.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
M
So much for reasoned argument and diversity of thought within the liberal left. Do the letters F.O. mean anything.
If you are so interested in government providing health care, climate control, increased powers, how come you are so opposed to government employees? How come government work get NO respect from you, you idiot?
I worked, risked my life including one accident, for your freedom to be stupid F**K , don’t be stupid.
The “gun-wielding idiots” would love to oppose idiots like yourself. As we said in the military, patriots wearing uniforms were conservative Rupublicans, traitors who sucked at the government tit wore civilian clothes and voted Democrat.
October 16th, 2009 at 11:43 pm
On further thought, you have realized that life for you has been one meaningless array of worthless unproductive time-filling jobs without futures and are so envious that you can converse with one so erudite, that insult is the only relief from the boredom of your four walls.
October 17th, 2009 at 12:55 am
On further thought, you have realized that life for you has been one meaningless array of worthless unproductive time-filling jobs without futures and are so envious that you can converse with one so erudite, that insult is the only relief from the boredom of your four walls.
I predict success for Mike and his political cause is just around the corner!
October 17th, 2009 at 4:57 am
It is a little amusing that you dance around your own ethical standards by simply choosing to erect straw men, but do you know any other tricks? I have not so much as expressed a single preference about the structure of society, because I have had no need to do so within this discussion. All that you do is lean upon your assertions about how you want the world to operate and conflate that with how it does operate. It is an unrecoverable failing that dooms your “cause,” such as it is, because your model has no particular explanatory power and its only value is as a loyalty test. It is conceivable that you are in fact too stupid to realize that you are, according to the philosophy that you espouse, a worthless hypocrite that sucks on the tit of the same government you hold in such contempt. It is far more likely that you are simply too dishonest to acknowledge it, because it has been clearly explained to you in a language you should be able to call your own.
Your worldview fails simple empirical and reductive exercises, but do you bother to reassess it? No, you can both not be the beneficiary of government services, and receive the resources that it takes from others. No one donated them to the government and no one offers those subsidies to your industry today; it is taken from them under the threat of incarceration and death–should they resist, and given to you one way or another. Oh, but we should feel for you, because you don’t feel like you get anything in exchange for your tax burden? Feel free to do a rough estimate of how long you think you would have to work simply to pay for the costs of your public sector make work program.
Then of course we have “natural rights” that are not the result of our little social organization, but of course your illiterate self is supposed to be some kind of “patriot” that protected others’ freedom? What, couldn’t you just read the Declaration of Independence aloud and enlighten away the Canadian army? Or were you really just an eager enabler of that malignant government that today sinisterly confiscates your precious earnings to redistribute as it sees fit and to recklessly embroil others in violent conflicts, denying them their “natural rights?” I don’t know, Mike K, what do you think should be your punishment for such treasonous behavior?
I know you have been eager to compare yourself to me throughout this little exchange. I have thus far considered it a distraction and awaited for one instance where you would support your initial positions in a way that didn’t make you look even crazier. I never actually expected that, because you give every outward sign of taking pride in your mental illness and I have seen so many people that could be substituted for you with no loss of generality. For you it is always libruls this and moral outrage that, and how meaningless my work must be, because I expect some manner of rigor from your ideas and tease you for being such a hypocritical lout. Mister, I acquired my first post-secondary credentials at about the age when you were discovering that your penis had more than one function. You appear to be too dense to recognize hyperbole and to process sarcasm. I hope you never bothered to frame that diploma from Liberty University, because it was a printing error. I do not belong to the Democratic Party, so by all means feel free to defecate on them as much as you feel is necessary to appear completely rational.
October 17th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Obviously, m, you are a bit out of joint on this one. I quite disagree a few points:
The Profession of Arms, that I voluntarily joined, is not “government tit sucking”, but rather an honorable that has, in the case of US soldiers, given freedom, liberty and a future to millions in Europe, Asia and elsewhere. Just ask a Frenchman who lives free of German militarism or a Pole who no longer lives under Soviet tyranny or a slave descendant who is no longer plantation property who gave him or her freedom–an American soldier. That I worked in, risked life and limb for, is not government dependance or “tit-sucking”. Government has some decided and important functions, defense of the nation is number ONE. Others include domestic order, a judiciary to resolve disputes, provide elementary infrastructure and currency. Then, it starts getting off the rails. If you think this makes me a hypocrite only shows the shallowness of American history.
The industry I live in does not depend, in the least, on government subsidy. Yes, ATC is, in some nations, a government service, but sibsidies, no. You don’t know otherwise.
What does the US Declaration of Independence have to do with the Canadian army?
You may not be a Democrat, but your hatred of liberty and American freedoms, your desire for ever-increasing government in daily life is, at least, an example of an infantile desire for “cradle to grave” care from an overweening and controlling government. The difference between that and the Obama Democrats is hard to find.
My philosophy is rather simple-let individuals have more, not less, control over their money, their lives and futures. Government should merely get out of the way–to ask what libertarians have to offer is to miss the point. We offer nothing, it is up to the citizens to decide for themselves in their daily decisions.
You maybe older than I, but so what? It wasn’t Liberty University, btw, much too religious for me
October 17th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
You are making some assumptions that are not warranted by facts. I am younger than you (about 65% of being wrong based on the populace) and where in aviation I work (not airliners or military, two of the areas most often thought of being subsidized).
You also believe I hate government, I do not. Government has a fundamental purpose to lay the foundation of civil society, to wit:
Governments are formed by men to secure and guarantee rights given to them by their Creator. Governments serve not to protect our finances, our health, provide homes, governments merely protect our rights. They are the police, not the damned nannies and parents.
As Grover Cleveland, the last Democrat to stand for our liberty said in his veto of the Texas Seed Act:
That is the proper relationship between citizens and their government.
Yes, the US military provided me with training for which I provided skills, judgment and services far beyond those under an employment agreement. That I benefited is unquestioned, but that is true of any training and education provided by an employer, including yours.
October 17th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Ah, Mike K. Funnier than ever! Don’t worry — the adults in America will make sure you never get enough power to hurt yourself.
October 18th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Yui
Not to worry, I have loads of power, about 30,000 pounds of CO2 emitting thrust, to hurt myself and others–never used it, would make bad headlines world-wide. Aircraft accidents have a way of being well known. 16,000 hours accident-free!
October 19th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Yes, Mike K — the adults let you play with toys to distract you and keep you away from genuine power. If it keeps you happy and out of trouble, it’s a small price to pay.