Mike --
I like appreciate long posts, so thanks, and maybe we can take this one step at a time, and take it seriously. I've been back online lately a little more often lately -- more often than I would prefer frankly -- so I hope I can keep up with this is a reasonably timely manner. However, please be patient if my responses lag a bit. For now, I propose to address this bit by bit, and I may have as many questions as comments. This post won't make it all the way through your second sentence, and contains no reference to Littleton or guns.
I've added two gravy links at the bottom for anyone willing to read (or even scroll) through my chunks. The first is a priceless picture of Newt and Bill (c. 1995?) promising campaign finance reform within a year, a handshake for the benefit of the assembled photographers. The second link contains an interactive graphic (courtesy Salon and its conservative columnist David Horovitz) to which only an inside-the-beltway Washingtonian could perhaps object, not any real American, so who cares?
Ian, the horrible shooting incident's root cause was not the availability of guns. But the result of 35 years of liberalism which forces both parents to work, (because of super high tax rates) and removed all sense of right and wrong from our schools.
By "liberalism," I will take you mean the term in the contemporary sense of the welfare state, especially as it applies to your "root cause" tax rates that force both parents into the workplace. (I realize you go on to apply liberalism as a social or cultural stance as well). I think you are correct that the last 35 years have seen pretty dramatic changes in U.S. tax policy, and my perception is that taxes a proportion of GDP has indeed risen over this time period. Why don't you see what you can dig up on tax history, and I'll do the same.
Perhaps we could compare not only government spending as a portion of GDP (or, historically, GNP restated) over those thirty five years, but how and to whom the burden was apportioned over time. My sense is that the effective tax rates on the wealthiest Americans has fallen dramatically over these years, and that corporate taxes now also contribute proportionally less of their top line than they did then. If so, I think it might help to point out that, traditionally at least, lower tax rates on the wealthy and on business has been a central tenet of Republican economic policy. Why would the supposed "tax-and-spend" liberals want to lop off the first half of that sobriquet as it applies to the natural constituencies of the supposed Republicans?
A possible suggestion: you want a family able to support itself through a single wage earner? Work for better labor laws and stronger unions. Unfettered capital looks after its own interests and, one must admit, it does that with admirable ability. Unfortunately, capitalism disproportionately rewards those at the top, the capitalists. Capital marshals all its resources -- given rights, en masse, through the legal fiction of incorporation -- to shape our politics to its own ends.
There may indeed be some overlap between what's good for General Motors and what is good for America, but, I think its a far from perfect perfect match. The problem is that, by and large, General Motors couldn't care less if its business practices are good for anyone but General Motors, and neither could most of its stockholders. Please note that I say this without prejudice, since it's GM's sole job to make money however it best sees fit.
The punt goes that politicians make policy, and corps. make money, and they will comply will all applicable laws as good corporate citizens. Well, politicians may make laws, but to an alarming degree, corporate money makes politicians. Good corporate citizenship gets watered down before it can even be invoked. On the other side, provisionally, the unions would be more than happy to cease a campaign dollar battle that they will never win, but I think Mr. Hastert will see to it that even a partial, imperfect cease-fire never gets discussed. It would be interesting to see what kind of politics we would have without money working its influence. Personally, I think it would be good for America, although I bet General Motors would object.
Currently, workers are a means to an end, capital reproduction, and to the extent they are rewarded at all it comes as a grudging necessity, resisted as much as possible. Again, capitalism is free of value judgments, so this is the natural state of things. But, using your equation, put more money in the hand of a single worker, and the partner will no longer be forced out of the home; and since, ceteris paribus, union jobs pay better wages and offer better benefits than their non-union counterparts; you should be humming "Solidarity Forever" about now.
The right usually preaches thriftiness and self-sacrifice as the answer here (personal if not corporate, whatever the tax rate) but if you think taxes are to blame, I say let's look.
Some of this is boilerplate, I understand, so reasoned probing is in order. I wouldn't mind if this conversation touched on questions of "shareholder democracy" or corporate media or the non-existence of left-politics in America or the shortcomings of American unionism or transnational capital or the rate of real wage growth or contract ideology etc., but all things in good time. I'll try to get to more of your original post, and any response to this, as time permits, and your stomach stands.
Finally, my favorite quote from the NYT, several years back, to which I have neither link nor hard copy citation, but I'm happy to offer it here, imperfectly remembered, since it fits so well. I think it was early '95, and Clinton was all about the country touting the economy's rate of new job creation. The reporter was talking to a middle aged man who had recently been "downsized" by AT&T. The reporter said, quoting Clinton, you know the economy has produced 500,000 new jobs in the last 12 months. "Yes I know," he replied, "my wife and I have four of them."
ian
salonmagazine.com
salonmagazine.com |
