It probably also requires something like single-payer health insurance because right now we’re all slaves to our employer-provided healthcare.
I'm not. I quit my job some time back and purchased insurance on the individual market. My premium is under $100 a month. I'm only 30, and I get that it's more for older people or people with pre-existing conditions, but it could go up severalfold and still be a fairly small percentage of my total living expenses. Of course, if I were older, I'd have more money saved up.
The idea that health insurance is the main reason people can't quit their jobs strikes me as silly. The biggest problem with not having a job is that you don't have an income, not that you don't get a health insurance subsidy worth a fraction of that income you aren't getting.
What’s wrong with a wish-fulfillment fantasy that tells women they could do well with power and without oppression? What’s wrong with girls geeking out over the idea that they’re special?
What's wrong with it, I would argue, is that many people might actually take it seriously enough to be influenced to some degree by it. The idea that men are the root of all evil is wrong and dangerous. Likewise the idea that government can be a completely benign force for good if only we put the right people in charge.
I don't see a comment by a "Jeff" on that particular post. Do you mean that you've been able to comment at Daily Kos generally, or specifically on Tool's blog? I would assume that the different sub-blogs there are more or less independently moderated.
The Constitution doesn't explicitly require the exclusionary rule. All it says is that you can't conduct search without a warrant. The exclusionary rule is one way of deterring illegal search and seizure, but it's not the only way, or even clearly the best way. It's obviously suboptimal in that it requires us to let people go free when we have evidence that they're guilty.
An alternative might be to make police officers or departments criminally or civily liable for illegal searches, but still allow the use of illegally obtained but otherwise legitimate evidence. In principle this would seem to be superior to the exclusionary rule (stronger deterrent, and doesn't require us to let criminals go free), but given the proven ability of police get away with murder, literally, it's not clear how well this would work in practice.
Buffett's saving rate isn't 100%. It's 100% minus whatever he pays in taxes. The point of a consumption tax is that taxing people like Buffett is just plain bad policy.
If Buffett were paying less money in taxes, he wouldn't personally consume any more. He'd have more money to invest, and he'd have more money to donate to charity when he dies. On the margin, Buffett's income is an unalloyed public good. It just doesn't make economic sense to tax it.
A) You just said that we were in agreement when I said it wasn't.
B) As commonly used, the terms "progressive," "flat," and "regressive" are normative. There's an implied assumption that taxes should be levied roughly in proportion to income.
But a tax can also be "progressive," "flat," or "regressive" with respect to consumption. A flat consumption tax is just that: a tax which is neither progressive nor regressive with respect to consumption. To object to a flat consumption tax on the grounds that it's regressive with respect to income is to miss the point entirely. The point being that taxes should not be levied in proportion to income, but rather in proportion to consumption.
Also, any consumption tax, flat or otherwise, is likely to be regressive with respect to income on average. If someone is making a million a year and saving $850,000, you're not going to get much more than 5% of his income with any sane rate schedule.
You seemed to be suggesting that the fact that a person could accumulate wealth tax-free as long as he doesn't spend it is somehow problematic, both immediately above, and also in your criticism of a flat consumption tax as being regressive (which it isn't at all, if consumption rather than income is the appropriate denominator).
I repeat my question above: What's the problem? If a person makes a lot of money, invests it, and never pulls it out to spend on himself, this is a Very Good Thing for all of us. What possible objection could there be to allowing his investments to continue to grow tax-free until such time as he or his heirs choose to spend them?
Only in the context of a recession. Normally, the limiting factor in the long-run growth of per-capita GDP and standard of living is the ratio of capital to labor.
For example, a person digging holes is more productive if he has a tractor (high capital-to-labor ratio) than if he has a shovel (low capital-to-labor ratio). To buy tractors, hole-digging firms need investors.
This is the single most important thing to understand about macroeconomics.
Insofar as this is a significant issue, it's applies to any progressive income tax, not specifically to one with discrete brackets.
Now that I think about it, I suspect that Ryan was under the misapprehension that going from the 25% bracket to the 28% brackets results in your entire taxable income being subjected to the 28% rate, so that it's possible that an increase in pre-tax income can actually result in lower after-tax income. I used to think it worked that way.
I would think that the observation that many members of the middle class do not have inheritances and don't own homes would be fairly uncontroversial. Am I wrong about that?
Also, if you define “savings” as anything you don’t spend, that includes most of the income of the super wealthy.
So what? The money doesn't do them a bit of good until they pull it out and spend it. Until then it's just a number on a balance sheet. And if it's invested productively, then it's producing positive externalities. Why would you want to interfere with that?
The natural interpretation of the quoted claim is that white Americans would on average have 75% less wealth if it hadn't been for racism, which is clearly not true.
The claim that you're making in your follow-up comment---that 75% of white Americans' wealth can in some way be linked to racist policies---is much weaker, and not self-evidently false.
That said, I'm not sure it's true that most wealth in the US is inherited. Could be, but I'd have to see evidence. And even if true, it doesn't follow from that that a significant amount of the wealth held by white Americans could be attributed specifically to inheritances derived from the subsidy value of homestead grants.
All that said, this is beside the point. Inheritances and home ownership aren't what separate the middle class from the underclass.
The left likes monopolies. It's "monopolies" that they don't like.
That is, if a firm which is not a true monopoly (i.e., there are no legal barriers to entry) manages to win a large market share, leftists will call it a monpoly and demand that it be broken up or heavily regulated.
However, they do not generally object to true monopolies, and often favor even stronger protections for them. Hence their support for unions, public schools, single-payer health care, the FDA, Social Security, central banks, the USPS, and other genuinely coercive monopolies.
If we accept the 47% figure, they still are not a majority. No matter how unanimous they are in their voting, they can’t guarantee any government increase or decreases.
Nothing magic happens at 50%. They don't all vote, and they don't all vote for whoever promises them the biggest handouts. On the other hand, taxpayers don't all vote, and they don't all vote for whoever promises them the lowest tax rates.
The point is how it works on the margin. The more people who are getting a free ride, the more guaranteed votes the Democrats lock in. The more guaranteed votes the Democrats have, the farther to the left they can non-suicidally move, and the farther to the left the Republicans have to move to pick up enough swing votes to have a chance at winning.
Having 51% of the adult population as free-riders isn't necessarily going to send us into a welfare-state death spiral (we may be in one already as it is), but there's good reason to believe that having more free riders pushes the median voter to the left.
Typical simplistic, black-and-white libertarian thinking. It depends on context, Jay. If we're talking about whether Social Security and Medicare benefits are welfare, then FICA payments are an insurance premium. If we're talking about whether the poor pay taxes, then they're a tax.
Now, look, I'm the last one who'd suggest that we should be coddling the poor, and certainly I think we should subsidize them less. But this strikes me as a bit extreme.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Unions and Corporations”
It probably also requires something like single-payer health insurance because right now we’re all slaves to our employer-provided healthcare.
I'm not. I quit my job some time back and purchased insurance on the individual market. My premium is under $100 a month. I'm only 30, and I get that it's more for older people or people with pre-existing conditions, but it could go up severalfold and still be a fairly small percentage of my total living expenses. Of course, if I were older, I'd have more money saved up.
The idea that health insurance is the main reason people can't quit their jobs strikes me as silly. The biggest problem with not having a job is that you don't have an income, not that you don't get a health insurance subsidy worth a fraction of that income you aren't getting.
On “Fantasy Utopias”
What’s wrong with a wish-fulfillment fantasy that tells women they could do well with power and without oppression? What’s wrong with girls geeking out over the idea that they’re special?
What's wrong with it, I would argue, is that many people might actually take it seriously enough to be influenced to some degree by it. The idea that men are the root of all evil is wrong and dangerous. Likewise the idea that government can be a completely benign force for good if only we put the right people in charge.
On “As if being anti-woman isn’t enough…”
I don't see a comment by a "Jeff" on that particular post. Do you mean that you've been able to comment at Daily Kos generally, or specifically on Tool's blog? I would assume that the different sub-blogs there are more or less independently moderated.
"
If by "exactly that type of shit" you mean racial activists jumping to conclusions, then yeah, that did happen.
On “The Constitutional Conservatism Newspeak”
The Constitution doesn't explicitly require the exclusionary rule. All it says is that you can't conduct search without a warrant. The exclusionary rule is one way of deterring illegal search and seizure, but it's not the only way, or even clearly the best way. It's obviously suboptimal in that it requires us to let people go free when we have evidence that they're guilty.
An alternative might be to make police officers or departments criminally or civily liable for illegal searches, but still allow the use of illegally obtained but otherwise legitimate evidence. In principle this would seem to be superior to the exclusionary rule (stronger deterrent, and doesn't require us to let criminals go free), but given the proven ability of police get away with murder, literally, it's not clear how well this would work in practice.
"
We have a living constitution. Federalists are trying to make it not-living. That's not just an assault---it's attempted murder!
On “How To Design A Consumption Tax That Isn’t Stupid”
Buffett's saving rate isn't 100%. It's 100% minus whatever he pays in taxes. The point of a consumption tax is that taxing people like Buffett is just plain bad policy.
If Buffett were paying less money in taxes, he wouldn't personally consume any more. He'd have more money to invest, and he'd have more money to donate to charity when he dies. On the margin, Buffett's income is an unalloyed public good. It just doesn't make economic sense to tax it.
"
A) You just said that we were in agreement when I said it wasn't.
B) As commonly used, the terms "progressive," "flat," and "regressive" are normative. There's an implied assumption that taxes should be levied roughly in proportion to income.
But a tax can also be "progressive," "flat," or "regressive" with respect to consumption. A flat consumption tax is just that: a tax which is neither progressive nor regressive with respect to consumption. To object to a flat consumption tax on the grounds that it's regressive with respect to income is to miss the point entirely. The point being that taxes should not be levied in proportion to income, but rather in proportion to consumption.
Also, any consumption tax, flat or otherwise, is likely to be regressive with respect to income on average. If someone is making a million a year and saving $850,000, you're not going to get much more than 5% of his income with any sane rate schedule.
"
You seemed to be suggesting that the fact that a person could accumulate wealth tax-free as long as he doesn't spend it is somehow problematic, both immediately above, and also in your criticism of a flat consumption tax as being regressive (which it isn't at all, if consumption rather than income is the appropriate denominator).
"
I repeat my question above: What's the problem? If a person makes a lot of money, invests it, and never pulls it out to spend on himself, this is a Very Good Thing for all of us. What possible objection could there be to allowing his investments to continue to grow tax-free until such time as he or his heirs choose to spend them?
"
Ah. I stand corrected. And still have no idea what you actually meant.
"
Only in the context of a recession. Normally, the limiting factor in the long-run growth of per-capita GDP and standard of living is the ratio of capital to labor.
For example, a person digging holes is more productive if he has a tractor (high capital-to-labor ratio) than if he has a shovel (low capital-to-labor ratio). To buy tractors, hole-digging firms need investors.
This is the single most important thing to understand about macroeconomics.
"
Insofar as this is a significant issue, it's applies to any progressive income tax, not specifically to one with discrete brackets.
Now that I think about it, I suspect that Ryan was under the misapprehension that going from the 25% bracket to the 28% brackets results in your entire taxable income being subjected to the 28% rate, so that it's possible that an increase in pre-tax income can actually result in lower after-tax income. I used to think it worked that way.
On “Reihan Salam on race”
What else is there to say in response to an unsourced and implausible claim? "Citation Needed?"
"
I would think that the observation that many members of the middle class do not have inheritances and don't own homes would be fairly uncontroversial. Am I wrong about that?
"
I’m pulling numbers out of my hat, actually, but they seem reasonable
That about sums it up, doesn't it?
On “How To Design A Consumption Tax That Isn’t Stupid”
Why would you care about dodging the next bracket?
"
What incentive effects do discrete tax brackets cause?
"
I endorse this proposal.
Also, if you define “savings” as anything you don’t spend, that includes most of the income of the super wealthy.
So what? The money doesn't do them a bit of good until they pull it out and spend it. Until then it's just a number on a balance sheet. And if it's invested productively, then it's producing positive externalities. Why would you want to interfere with that?
On “Reihan Salam on race”
The natural interpretation of the quoted claim is that white Americans would on average have 75% less wealth if it hadn't been for racism, which is clearly not true.
The claim that you're making in your follow-up comment---that 75% of white Americans' wealth can in some way be linked to racist policies---is much weaker, and not self-evidently false.
That said, I'm not sure it's true that most wealth in the US is inherited. Could be, but I'd have to see evidence. And even if true, it doesn't follow from that that a significant amount of the wealth held by white Americans could be attributed specifically to inheritances derived from the subsidy value of homestead grants.
All that said, this is beside the point. Inheritances and home ownership aren't what separate the middle class from the underclass.
"
This is contrary to the literature, which shows that 75% of a white person’s wealth, on average, has come about due to racist policies.
No, it doesn't.
On “Why Do Liberals Care About Ron Paul’s Goldbuggery?”
I thought liberals didn’t like monopolies.
The left likes monopolies. It's "monopolies" that they don't like.
That is, if a firm which is not a true monopoly (i.e., there are no legal barriers to entry) manages to win a large market share, leftists will call it a monpoly and demand that it be broken up or heavily regulated.
However, they do not generally object to true monopolies, and often favor even stronger protections for them. Hence their support for unions, public schools, single-payer health care, the FDA, Social Security, central banks, the USPS, and other genuinely coercive monopolies.
On “Poor people don’t call the shots”
If we accept the 47% figure, they still are not a majority. No matter how unanimous they are in their voting, they can’t guarantee any government increase or decreases.
Nothing magic happens at 50%. They don't all vote, and they don't all vote for whoever promises them the biggest handouts. On the other hand, taxpayers don't all vote, and they don't all vote for whoever promises them the lowest tax rates.
The point is how it works on the margin. The more people who are getting a free ride, the more guaranteed votes the Democrats lock in. The more guaranteed votes the Democrats have, the farther to the left they can non-suicidally move, and the farther to the left the Republicans have to move to pick up enough swing votes to have a chance at winning.
Having 51% of the adult population as free-riders isn't necessarily going to send us into a welfare-state death spiral (we may be in one already as it is), but there's good reason to believe that having more free riders pushes the median voter to the left.
"
Typical simplistic, black-and-white libertarian thinking. It depends on context, Jay. If we're talking about whether Social Security and Medicare benefits are welfare, then FICA payments are an insurance premium. If we're talking about whether the poor pay taxes, then they're a tax.
"
Take the poor and cut them in half.
Now, look, I'm the last one who'd suggest that we should be coddling the poor, and certainly I think we should subsidize them less. But this strikes me as a bit extreme.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.