I am nowhere near informed enough to offer any intelligent commentary on economic policy, but I am pretty good at political analysis.  And so instead of focusing on the economic part of Bruce Bartlett’s argument against cutting payroll taxes, I want to focus on the political implications of what Bartlett says in defense of the payroll tax:

But the biggest problem with cutting the payroll tax is that it isn’t really a tax at all. A tax, by definition, is a compulsory payment for which no specific benefit is received in return. This is not true of Social Security. The vast bulk of workers get back all the money they put into Social Security in the form of a cash benefit in retirement and most get a substantial return. (See this Congressional Budget Office study.) That’s why Franklin D. Roosevelt always insisted that the money withheld from workers’ paychecks for Social Security was not a tax but a “contribution.”

And I think this – along with the fact that people like to get money – is directly related to why Social Security is an enduring, incredibly popular program.  Among many other things, part of the problem liberals face with expanding the welfare state is that it is incredibly easy to inveigh against tax increases.  And part of the reason why it’s incredibly easy to inveigh against tax increases is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a logical connection between what you pay into the system and what you get out of it.  Especially when – by and large – what you do get out of it is a little abstract; as we’re seeing in the Virginia gubernatorial race, it’s very difficult to defend proposed tax increases with cries of “what about the infrastructure!”  Very few people  make the connection between paying their income taxes and having decent roads, and even fewer people make the connection between paying their income taxes, and having clean water or clean air or a reasonably competent regulatory state.

Of course, barring some collective awakening of political consciousness among the voting public (think Childhood’s End except less telekinesis and more subscriptions to the New York Times), we’re going to be stuck with a political culture in which it is incredibly easy to drum up anti-taxation sentiment.  That said, if the Obama administration is actually cognizant of our long-term fiscal challenges (and I think that it very much is), then it will eventually have to sell a tax increase to the American public.  I think the best way to do that is to propose a tax which – like the payroll tax – has a direct relationship to benefits received.  Ideally, we would have seen something like this with health care reform: you pay a flat rate to the federal government, and in return, you are guaranteed health insurance and some level of subsidies to pay for it.

A payroll tax-style arrangement is not only simpler and less intrusive than the alternatives, but it would also help lessen the vulnerability of these reforms to demagoguery, as each voter can see the tangible impact the legislation – and the tax – has on their lives.

Does anyone else find this deeply and bitterly hilarious: [Read more →]

Reihan doesn’t think that we should dismiss Republican intransigence as irrational or nihilistic (via Andrew Sullivan):

Among Democrats and liberals, there is a belief that Republican opposition to the various Democratic proposals represents a kind of “nihilism,” and that because Baucuscare resembles proposals offered by liberal and moderate Republicans in the 1990s, today’s opposition is obviously unprincipled if not insane. My sense is that we’ve learned a great deal about health reform over the intervening period, and that, as Christensen, Grossman, and Hwang have argued, it is disruptive competition that promises substantial improvement in the cost and quality of medical services over time. I’m increasingly convinced that the only way to move in this direction is to create a system of universal catastrophic coverage and universal health savings accounts, as proposed by Martin Feldstein and a number of others. The emerging consensus among congressional Democrats moves us in a very different direction, towards a highly centralized, highly regulated system that will give entrepreneurs very little room to dramatically improve care. With that in mind, I don’t think opposition is “nihlistic”; rather, I think it’s responsible.

As I was thinking of a response to this, Nicholas Beaudrot (of Donkeylicious) posted something on the fact that policy making doesn’t occur in a vacuum, and it’s worth quoting here:

Lately I seem to be having conversations with wonkish right-of-center types who have this-or-that idea about how to design a simpler, more efficient, and more effective policy to deal with taxation, climate change, health care, whatever. But it always stops there. No one talks about managing the transition. No one talks about convincing Mitch McConnell to back these ideas. No one talks about sixty votes. No one talks about the interest group dynamics in Washington. No one even talks about working for a decade to elect members of Congress who might be more amenable to these sorts of policies. It’s just policy in a vacuum. Which is an interesting intellectual exercise, but not a legitimate substitute for governance, an ultimately messy endeavor.

And honestly, that’s what I think Reihan’s defense amounts to, an interesting intellectual exercise.  It is true that the ideological commitments of most Democratic legislators lead them in the direction of greater regulation as opposed to greater market intervention.  But it is also true that the emerging congressional Democratic consensus didn’t happen in a vacuum – it didn’t happen in the face of intelligent Republican criticism, and it certainly didn’t happen in the face of decentralized or market-oriented Republican counter-proposals.  Given that Democrats – and Max Baucus specifically – invested a lot of time and political capital into addressing Republican complaints and roping Republican support, it’s not much of a stretch to say that had Republicans been prepared to work constructively, we would have seen a bill that is a bit closer to what Reihan would have preferred.

Indeed (assuming you have a decent imagination or have seen Sliders), you can easily imagine a parallel Earth where everything about the legislative process is exactly the same, and the only difference is that the GOP is a mature, intellectually honest party with a clear interest in governing* and a robust set of conservative policy tools.  In this alternate, wildly unrealistic universe, Republicans responded to Democratic health care proposals with constructive, intelligent criticisms, and Democratic legislators – eager to craft a bipartisan bill – used those conservative insights to craft a more radical bill (it will actually upset the status quo) with a more market-oriented, individual-centered approach.

Of course, here on Earth-Prime, we are stuck with a Republican Party that hears “intelligent criticism” and thinks “death panels” and “Soviet-style gulags.”  What’s more, we’re stuck with a Republican Party that refuses to even acknowledge the necessity of health care reform.  Pace Reihan, this is not responsible behavior.  Indeed, as it stands, if Democrats were to propose a dream package of market-based solutions to various health care related problems, I’m nearly 100 percent certain that they would be attacked and denounced as Orwellian fascists out to impose IngSoc on a nation of fire-breathing freedom lovers.

When Democrats and liberals call Republicans nihilistic, it’s not because we interpret all opposition as inherently nihilistic, it’s because this particular bit of opposition is actually nihilistic.  Republicans have not acknowledged the problem, have not offered any real critiques, and spent a fair amount of time poisoning the well with dangerously inflammatory rhetoric.  And in my book, that is a signal that we shouldn’t take Republicans seriously at all.

At the risk of ruffling the feathers of a few of my blogging comrades, I think that Kevin Drum is basically correct when he asks LGBT activists to chill out a little:

Still, even putting that aside, there’s a big segment of the gay community that’s pretty pissed off at Obama right now.  In one sense, I understand: they supported him, his record on gay issues is pretty modest so far, and the only way they’re going to get what they want is by keeping the pressure on him.

At the same time, some of the criticism is way over the top.  Obama doesn’t suddenly become a different person whenever he’s dealing with whatever your particular hot button issue is.  He’s the same guy all the time: cautious, tactical, organized, and prone to prioritizing things pretty carefully.  For better or worse, he’s also sensitive about learning lessons from the Clinton administration, and Clinton obviously failed miserably when he tried to force the Pentagon to accept gays early in his administration.

The gay community has every right to be a little miffed with Obama, and it’s good that they are channeling that frustration into activism.  Even if it takes a little while, sustained pressure will encourage the administration to pick up the pace, and direct more time and energy towards changing the status quo.

That said, I think it’s also important for activists to understand that Obama is on their side, even if he is slow-walking reform.  Jeremy Levine (who blogs at the outstanding Social Science Lite) criticized President Obama’s Friday address as “an empty speech, void of action, conviction, or credibility.”  I’ll agree that Obama’s speech was “void of action,” but to say that it lacked conviction or credibility is more than a little unfair.  In fact, I think it betrays a lack of perspective.  Say what you will about Obama’s speech, the fact that the President of the United States declared his unconditional support for gay rights is kind of a big deal.  In fact, it’s a huge deal, especially when you consider that we aren’t even a year removed from an administration that refined anti-gay hostility and elevated it to a national pastime.

President Bush, if you remember, supported a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, and was generally supportive of state-based efforts to strip gay Americans of their rights.  Indeed, stoking fear and hostility towards gay Americans was part of the Bush administration’s reelection effort.  I mean, to just sort of underscore the degree to which it was open season on gay Americans, the White House consistently opposed the extension of hate crimes legislation to gays, even as the country saw a sharp rise in the number of hate crimes targeted at gays.  Activists are well within their rights to criticize Obama’s speech as “just words,” but in doing so, they miss an important fact about presidential rhetoric: it makes a difference.  It further brings gay concerns into the mainstream and gives them a sense of urgency.

This is certainly not to say that the gay community should ignore the fact that Obama has yet to really move on gay rights, but on the whole, I that it’s far more productive to at least acknowledge that Barack Obama is an ally, and – slow-walking notwithstanding – is openly supportive of gay rights.  Tearing him down politically – as opposed to lobbying and pressuring – only makes his job that much harder.

Even if Rasmussen’s poll is accurate and only 14 percent of African-Americans say that American society “is generally fair and decent” (down from 55 percent from February), this – from Powerline’s John Hinderaker – is still pretty stupid:

It’s interesting that Latinos and Asians evidently have a higher opinion of the decency of American society than whites. But the main point here, obviously, is the dramatic shift among African-Americans. What could have caused it?

The only possible answer is that many Americans have opposed President Obama’s policies. But why would that cause African-Americans to think that our society is “discriminatory” rather than “decent”? No mystery there: in a well-coordinated campaign, the Democratic Party has relentlessly portrayed all disagreement with the Obama administration’s policies as “racist.” That contemptible and divisive tactic had seemed to produce no results, but we now see that it had one consequence: alienating African-Americans from their country.

I wonder what would cause African-Americans to think that our society is discriminatory rather than decent?  The institutional racism and massive economic inequalities notwithstanding, I’m inclined to think that it has something to do with the indiscriminate killing of black people by police, or the thinly-veiled racist outrage surrounding Sonia Sotomayor, or the GOP’s race-baiting spokesmen, or the fact that Republican congressmen refer to the president as “boy” and ask him to “show some humility.”  And then there’s the whole “tea party” thing.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that has something to do with it.

The whiff of tokenism notwithstanding, I’m actually glad to see that there are credible black Republicans angling for high-level political office.  I’ve long argued that it would be good for black people, and great for the country, if Republicans took the African-American community seriously.  For starters, greater black representation within the GOP would probably force our political culture to actually acknowledge the huge amount of ideological diversity within the black community, and increase the likelihood that those views would find substantive representation in the halls of power. I know I’m not speaking alone here when I say that I am regularly annoyed/driven to a blind murderous rage by the fact that our political culture treats black people as this liberal, ideological monolith, which – despite our heavy support for the Democratic Party – is really not the case.

That said, there is a definite aura of tokenism surrounding these guys.  After all, they aren’t just the lone black faces in a lily white party (indeed, a party that takes “lily white” to its Platonic heights) – they are the lone black faces in a party that routinely and casually exploits racial fear and paranoia for political gain, and whose most prominent representatives in the media are race-baiting demagogues.  More importantly, and as Adam recently pointed out, the GOP has yet to really grapple with its ugly racial history, and in fact, hardly acknowledges it (Ken Mehlman’s brief words in 2005 don’t really count).  By contrast, Democrats – from the  Civil Rights Act onwards – have devoted a hell of a lot of political capital to atoning for their ugly racial history.  Indeed, the 1960s are something of an inflection point in that regard: at the moment that Democrats committed themselves to racial liberalism, Republicans embraced the disaffected white southerners left behind in the march towards greater political equality.

Tokenism, as I see it, has less to do with numbers and everything to do with self-respect.  And insofar that any of these guys are tokens, it’s in their willingness to be used as props for a party desperate for cheap grace, and eager to absolve itself of its sins without doing the hard work of atoning for them.  That said, and assuming they want to reform the GOP from the inside, I wish them the best of luck.  They’re going to need it.

Update: Edited for clarity, among other things.

Will is right to say that I didn’t fully address one of Douthat’s core points, which he summarizes (quite well, I should add) in the post below:

The point of redistributive taxation isn’t to soak the rich – raising taxes, after all, imposes economic penalties. The larger goal is to improve the lot of poor and middle class citizens through redistributive programs. If the effectiveness of those programs is compromised by the Democratic Party’s core constituencies – teacher unions, the pro-immigration lobby – then perhaps it’s time to reconsider the scope of the Left’s political ambitions.

I agree that the point of redistributive taxation is to improve the lot of poor and middle class citizens and not, as I sometimes suggest, to soak the rich (though to be honest, I would really enjoy to see the rich soaked, if only to satisfy my class resentment*).  Insofar that I disagree with Will’s post – and Douthat’s column more generally – it’s in the idea that “the effectiveness of those problems is compromised by the Democratic Party’s core constituencies.”  That is, I’m not convinced that core constituencies qua core constituencies have that much influence over the policy-making process.

Or in other words, insofar that constituent groups or interest groups can compromise the passage of legislation – and particularly very big legislation – it’s because they can take advantage of the various veto points in the legislative process.  The stimulus, to use one of Will’s examples, was so incredibly pork laden in part because – in the absence of overwhelming legislative support – the only way to get the bill through was to fatten it up with goodies and sweeteners.  The same will be true of the final health care bill: it’s not so much that any one group can exert so much influence that they override the preferences of the legislators and water down the bill considerably, as it is that legislators have to essentially buy votes by paying off whichever parochial interests happens to want something because there isn’t enough consensus to override said interests (Kevin Drum made this point really well not too long ago).

As it stands, our institutions give interest groups the room to have a ton of influence, and give legislators plenty of incentive to give into that influence.  So, to get back to Will’s post, the Left (and the Right for that matter) does need to reconsider the scope of its political ambitions.  I happen to think that both sides need to widen that scope, and aim not just for passing good policy, but for reforming the institutions of governance**.

*Most of which is a product of my time at UVA.

**It’s worth adding that I might be completely wrong about this entire post.

(cross-posted from my humble blog)

To sort of second Neil’s observation about the power of anti-bullying/anti-prejudice norms to “have a broad and beneficial societal impact,” I’m pretty convinced that you can apply the “broken windows” theory of crime to overt prejudice and the treatment of minority groups.  That is, and as I’m sure you all know, the “broken windows” approach holds that urban crime is facilitated when small problems are left to fester.  When broken windows are left unfixed, streets unswept and minor crimes unpunished, criminality – the theory goes – is encouraged.

It’s easy to see how this applies to the treatment of minorities: when governments give official – or even unofficial – sanction to discrimination against minorities, it creates a very real sense that “those people” are fundamentally other, and as such when dealing with them, overt prejudice or violence is socially acceptable.  By contrast, with governments explicitly protect minorities and enforce anti-discrimination laws, that explicit stance of anti-discrimination on part of the government can, over time, transform into a more general anti-discrimination and pro-tolerance norm among the population at large (as we’ve seen in real-time beginning with the civil rights legislation of the 1960s).

I’m embarrassed to say that I once had a little bit of respect for Bobby Jindal.  I mean, his retrograde social views notwithstanding, he seemed to be exactly what I was looking for in a Republican: intelligent, articulate and comfortable with public policy.  Granted, I would never vote for him, but it is critically important for the country that the GOP take governing seriously, and here was a guy who – I thought – did exactly that. [Read more →]

Reading Ross Douthat’s (terrible) column this morning, I really only have three thoughts:

1) Someone should tell him to shy away from writing policy columns; not only is he not very good at them, but he has this very strange aversion to, you know, facts.

2) On that note, if Douthat had taken a little bit of time to research, he would have quickly found that despite having a progressive federal income tax, the average tax rate for the richest 400 Americans is 17.2 percent.  What’s more, the effective tax rate for the richest 1 percent of Americans is about 31 percent, which is quite low in historical terms.  Contra Douthat then, the tax code isn’t even really that progressive on the margins, in a variety of ways, it offers a whole host of breaks and deductions for the wealthiest Americans, at the expense of services for everyone else.

3) I find it very strange that Douthat would write an entire column criticizing Democrats for having yet to deliver on promises to reduce income inequality without once mentioning that said inequality has been stoked by conservative enthusiasm for massive tax cuts/giveaways for wealthy Americans.  Or, to put it more succinctly, hidebound teachers unions and illegal immigration certainly doesn’t help us tackle the root causes of inequality, but it’s extremely disingenuous for Douthat to argue that the tax code is basically irrelevant to this discussion.  It’s not.  The incomes of high earners rose dramatically in large part because we stopped taxing them.  So again, pace Douthat, the single best thing we can do to reduce income inequality – in the short-term at least – is to simply tax the rich more, either by raising marginal tax rates, reinstating the tax on capital gains, or – better yet – instituting a continuous marginal tax (which I discussed briefly here).

4) And finally, I wonder how Douthat explains away northern Europe’s high economic growth rates and robust welfare state?

Justin, a Friend of the Blog, isn’t terribly happy with the language Rep. Grayson (infamously?) used to describe the Republican health care alternative:

There is no sense in which the Republicans want people to die.  Nothing even approximately close.  Republicans have their reasons for disagreeing with health care reform, many of which I think are bad (slavish devotion to an ideal of the free market, distorted ideas of what will happen).  Many legislators have worse reasons (pandering, insurance industry donations).  But the idea that they want people to die explains nothing.  It’s not hyperbole, it’s pure rhetoric, and it doesn’t appeal to any rational consideration, but pure fear.

As a purely substantive matter, I kind of disagree.  Republicans know – or have some idea – that upwards of forty-five thousand Americans die annually because they lack health insurance.  And Republicans know – or at least have some inkling – that thousands more Americans die because their insurers refused to cover a treatment or a procedure or even a medication.  Republicans might not want people to die, but they are fighting very hard to maintain a system that needlessly claims lives and livelihoods as a matter of course.  So, at the very least, Republicans seem to have a complete and total disregard for the human cost of our health care “system.”  Which, honestly, isn’t much better than wanting people to die.

That said, Justin is right to say that Rep. Grayson’s bit of hyperbole was a direct appeal to fear.  But it wasn’t solely an appeal to fear; no, it was also an attempt to inject some needed moral urgency into this debate.  Since I’m, one of the most powerful verses in “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five (which is a pretty powerful song altogether) is towards the end, where Melle Mel details the bleak life of a young stick-up kid.  Melle Mel tells us that in prison, the kid is “used and abused and served like hell,” and I bring that up because it is also pretty much how our health care system treats millions of Americans.  For those not fortunate enough to have good employer-provided health care – and even for those that do – our system regularly under-serves, bankrupts and kills.  Everyone knows this.  And the fact that we don’t actively talk about it is completely ridiculous.

Yesterday, Matt Yglesias correctly pointed out that – by the conventions of American politics – liberals simply aren’t permitted to bring any notion of morality or justice to bear on our opposition.  To be taken “seriously” at all requires us to sheath our swords and turn to the bloodless language of bureaucracy.  Which is all good and well, except that we become so bogged down in bureaucratese that we forget acknowledge that there are real lives at stake.  Yes, Rep. Grayson shouldn’t have called the status quo a “holocaust,” but if his hyperbole can create the space for liberals to make a moral argument, and freely point out the human costs of Republican obstinacy, then I’m inclined to defend his speech as a good and necessary corrective to the monstrous abstraction which has consumed this debate.

I’ve been sort of absent from the League this week – a bad cold + writers block = no blogging – and I have been fairly derelict with my Friday Genius Ten’s.  So, you can of this week’s entry as a way for me to get back into blogging and remind everyone that I’m still alive.  As always, if you want to share what you’re listening to, feel free to do so in the comments.  Enjoy!

Original Song: “Lysergic Bliss” — Of Montreal

1. “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby” — Islands
2. “It’s a Curse” — Wolf Parade
3. “We Are the Sleepyheads” — Belle & Sebastian
4. “Handjobs for the Holidays” — Broken Social Scene
5. “The Infanta” — The Decemberists
6. “Capturing Moods” — Rilo Kiley
7. “Paper Tiger” — Spoon
8. “Wait for the Summer” — Yeasayer
9. “Turn a Square” – The Shins
10. “Convenient Parking” – Modest Mouse

Videos below the fold:

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