The new Village talking point in favor of cutting taxes for the wealthy and services for the middle-class is that giving more to our Galtian overlords is simply the fair, moral thing to do. Matt Yglesias puts it well:
[W]e used to have a debate in which the left said redistributive taxation might be a good idea and then the right replied that it might sound good, but actually the consequences would be bad. Lower taxes on the rich would lead to more growth and faster increase in incomes.Now that idea seems to be so unsupportable that the talking point is switched. It’s not that higher taxes on our Galtian Overlords would backfire and make us worse off. It’s just that it would be immoral of us to ask them to pay more taxes even if doing so would, in fact, improve overall human welfare.
This is a good issue for conservatives to strut their stuff. The winger starting position is that cutting taxes for the rich is good, because trickle down works, it creates jobs. The Bobo/Sully/Morning Joe “moderate” position is that, even if cutting taxes for the rich doesn’t create jobs, then it’s the *fair* thing to do, make everybody share the pain! There’s a fall-back position beyond that too — even if raising taxes on the wealthy is necessary economically, the way the Democrats propose to do it won’t work. Also too, class warfare.
None of these arguments will ever involve relevant numbers. You may see an occasional reference to the number of dollar bills you’d have to stack to get the moon relative to the federal deficit, or a colorful financial graph titled “reality check”, but that’s about it. The real reasons we have to take from the middle-class and give to our Galtian overlords have more to do with fairness, morality, maybe even philosophy. Numbers are for the little people.
zach
Given that peer reviewed science is now treated as a he-said/she-said subject in most of the media, there’s no use hanging around waiting for a reasoned economic debate.
Where are the convenient fictions for Democrats on par with “tax cuts generate revenue and government spending kills jobs?” If rainbows-and-unicorns-for-everyone is going to go unchallenged in the press, Democrats might as well take advantage of it, too.
parsimon
For good reason: they’ve figured out that the numbers, not to mention the historical evidence, don’t support their position, so it’s best to avoid the subject altogether.
But yes, the argument from morality seems to have taken over, at least as far as you can tell from watching Meet the Press (featuring Brooks and Republican strategist Alex Castellanos, and even Eugene Robinson granting the framing to an extent) this morning.
This is standard-issue libertarianizing of the issue, no?
feebog
And the way to counter this nonsense is with real numbers. On charts, in bold colors. This should be a no-brainer for Dems, don’t know why it seems so hard to master.
PurpleGirl
I again reference the article 9 Things the Rich Don’t to the Tell You About Taxes by David Cay Johnston. He picks apart a number of the winger/Republican talking points.
http://www.wweek.com/portland/article-17350-9_things_the_rich_dont_want_you_to_know_about_taxes.html
I’d like to point out that even if rich people all hired at least one or two personal assistants with their tax savings, that wouldn’t be enough jobs to give every one who needs a job a job.
Loneoak
Gonna ride that Laffer Curve into the sunset.
RossInDetroit
@feebog:
If people aren’t inclined to be persuaded the charts and graphs just make their eyes glaze over. They’ve been lied to so much by slicksters with figures they’re conditioned to disbelieve something that’s contrary to their instincts if it’s backed up by data.
Feelings seem to matter. Fairness is a powerful motivator, hence this latest strategy.
Fred
Don’t have anything to add other that the fact I have to stare at some google ad at the bottom of this article shilling some far right wing “The roots of Obama’s rage” book.
cleek
and don’t forget the corollary: 50% of Americans pay no taxes!
if you’re lucky you can get them to admit that that stat only applies to Federal income tax. and that it’s only true because of loopholes, deductions and refunds. and if you want to eliminate loopholes on lower/middle income workers, you should want to eliminate them for the rich, too. bbbububutbut… the rich will take their money and leave! fine.
JGabriel
DougJ @ Top:
No, no, no, no, no. That’s exactly backwards:
Numbers are for college professors and other fancy-pants socia1ist cultural elitists who think they’re better than you.
Real Americans don’t need numbers to know what’s right!
.
"Serious" Superluminar
Numbers made me sick of my gastritis.
catperson
The thing that’s always missing from the “it’s unfair to tax the wealthy, because they worked hard for that money and they deserve their Galtian riches” is that government economic policies for the last 30 years have helped them get and keep it. You only have to look at the concentration of wealth in this country to see that.
zach
@RossInDetroit: “If people aren’t inclined to be persuaded the charts and graphs just make their eyes glaze over.”
There’s an effective way to make an analytical argument to the public and a comprehensive way. Republicans tend to be good at the first. For example, imagery of a million dollars every year since Jesus was born or the graph that shows how the stimulus killed American jobs. Obama did a good job being simultaneously effective and honest during the campaign when it came to his tax plan, but this is a very rare example and it was still largely countered by Republicans just saying that Obama was going to raise everyone’s taxes.
RossInDetroit
The trend in this country has been to shift taxation away from Capital and onto Labor. That worked so well that now they’re going after government programs benefiting labor to fund another round of tax relief for the rich. The biggest concentration of wealth is in the hands of those who let their money work for them. This does take knowledge and work in many cases, but in dollars/hour terms it can’t be considered earnings through personal effort.
zach
@cleek: “that stat only applies to Federal income tax”
This isn’t even correct. It only counts what voodoo economists call “the personal income tax” which is a made up term used to segregate payroll taxes from the rest of income tax. Federal taxes (not even including state income and sales taxes and fees) are only modestly progressive when you combine all income tax and the effective corporate tax rate. Note that these same people call social insurance a giant Ponzi scheme so they’re the last ones that should say there’s some difference between payroll taxes and the progressive income tax.
John McCain ran an ad in 2008 blasting Obama for the fact that he’d give tax cuts to half of Americans that don’t pay any tax at all. It was a golden opportunity to fight back and I have no idea why Obama didn’t take it. Just film some person saying “John McCain doesn’t know how many houses he has and doesn’t think that I pay taxes. I don’t think I’ll vote for him.”
parsimon
@catperson:
This gets it exactly right, but I’m damned if I can see a way to point that out to the American public without being charged with engaging in class warfare, whining, resentment and so on.
The country is quite enamored of the idea that we have a level playing field here, and achievement of the American dream is predicated on that notion. To say that it ain’t so is to mess with very strongly held beliefs.
I don’t like to be all “Yes, but” about the matter, but I’m honestly stumped on how to counter the rich-deserve-their-riches theme, on how to say, “No, they don’t necessarily.”
parsimon
Further to my last, it occurs to me that Obama is to an extent granting the rich-deserve-their-riches claim by arguing, as he did in his budget proposal speech countering Ryan’s plan, that we’re not the kind of country that ditches seniors and the needy.
Well and good, make an appeal to our moral sense, but it’s also worth insisting that the now-rich have gotten a plum deal for at least the last 30 years, which is no longer supportable.
No doubt this sounds like socialism. I’m tending to be won over to the thought that Obama needs to haul out some charts in order to make a sheer economic argument about the insupportability of existing tax rate arrangements.
parsimon
Shit. My last comment is awaiting moderation because I failed to misspell soci*lism correctly.
catperson
@parsimon: I don’t think it has to be framed as “they don’t deserve it”. Not sure if it will play any less as class warfare, but something like “the rich get more out of the system than they pay into it”. There’s probably a much punchier way to say that, but the key point is to get it into the consciousness that the rich didn’t get to be rich without help from the government.
The biggest barrier of course is class bias and the conception that poor people, old people, basically any non-rich people are lesser human beings who deserve what they (don’t) have.
Vixen Strangely
Fairness:
1) Some people worked very hard to be born into the right family, win the lotto, or legally hoodwink people outta their hard-earned dough–hey, waittaminute….
Life’s not fair.
2) And if the rich folks still don’t like it, they can roll around in a big pile of what they’ve got left over until they feel better.
Somehow, this “fair” argument works like Vitamin K on my otherwise bleeding heart.
tkogrumpy
Ive said it before and I’ll say it again. When some one accuses you of class warfare, the retort should always be, “the class war is over and the rich guys won.
Mark C
It strikes me that it’s time to take “Galtian Overlords” out of the rotation. It seems every blog is using it multiple times a day. Randian Hero Overlord fits Paul Ryan better anyway.
tkogrumpy
@Mark C: I for one am not willing to give it up yet .I talk to a lot of low information voters who have never heard the term.
patrick II
I hate that we go along with the word “redistribute” as if there is some natural norm that we are redistributing from. There isn’t. The economy over-rewards some people because of choices we have made about distriubtion in the laws we have written. It is a choice, not a default. To distribute more of our economy’s created wealth to working people would be fair distribution, not “re”-distribution.
WereBear
But that’s not because it’s moral; it’s because it is the Meme of the Week.
parsimon
@catperson: Rather than “the rich get more out of the system than they pay into it”, how about “the rich enjoy disproportionate rewards”?
Nah, that’ll never go down, even though people know perfectly well that it’s true. See again the fantastical need to believe that we enjoy a level playing field.
From a rhetorical perspective, Obama and company should probably put this plainly on the table: “Now, we will be accused of engaging in class warfare, of suggesting that higher-income Americans are bad people. Don’t be misled: that is not true. Rather, we embrace the view that the entirety of the American citizenry is in this together, and those who have been rewarded over time need to put back into the system of which they’re a part.”
Something like that. Cut the ‘oo, oo, class warfare’ criticism off at the knees. Much as I hate to say it, people need to be told what to think in response to various narratives. The goal is to give them space to think in response to the “class warfare!” theme: Oh, I don’t know, I think you’re trying to play me here, because yo, the rich do enjoy all kinds of breaks and tax loopholes and whatnot.
kansi
@parsimon:
I think he DID say this, in almost these same words, in his budget speech.
spark
Of course this has always been the underlying emotional motivation driving the Galtian Occupation Party. At least now the lies and doubletalk are being driven out into the open.
Stockman this day in Wapo is predicting open class warfare. Let it come say I.
kansi
I have a headache from pounding my forehead repeatedly while watching MTP this morning. David Gregory, after rubbing up against John McCain for the first part of the show, repeatedly asked Kent Conrad if Obama knew he would have to raise taxes on middle class people who made $250,000 a year. In what reality does someone pulling down a quarter of a million, or even six figures, qualify as middle class? But he kept referring to middle class voters as those who make less than 250,000. That puts class warfare in a whole other light!
parsimon
@kansi: Ah!
I think it needs to be repeated over and over and over again. We all know that most Americans never listened to that budget speech. As it stands right now, the “class warfare!!” argument from morality is winning.
I was fairly disgusted watching Meet the Press this morning that the Republican talking point about how Obama is painting the rich as evil got no pushback whatsoever, but rather a sort of embarrassed silence, and a pass. It was but a short step to Fox News.
RossInDetroit
I think this can get a lot worse before anything revolutionary develops from the lower economic classes. There’s still a lot of money in their pockets that our Galtian overlords can appropriate before they have nothing to lose by revolting.
As bad as it gets, there’s always someone less fortunate and people can tell themselves it could be worse.
burnspbesq
The economic case for progressive income taxation, which is based on the principle of diminishing marginal utility of wealth, has always been less than compelling. The classic work on this subject, Blum and Kalven’s “The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation,” was written the year before I was born.
Progressive income taxation became part of the social compact in this country because it was perceived to be fair that those who benefit disproportionately from the existence of the state should bear a disproportionate share of the cost of having the state. It only stays a part of the social compact as long as those bearing the disproportionate burden agree that they are getting value for money. That agreement has broken down.
burnspbesq
Of all of the kinds of taxes that can be imposed, the one that is most efficient (in the sense of being easy to administer and collect), a VAT, is also highly regressive.
A progressive income tax may or may not be “fair,” depending on your view of what counts as fair, but it is beyond question that it is relatively inefficient, because there are inherent incentives to evade which require an intrusive and expensive enforcement apparatus.
Choose your poison.
tkogrumpy
@parsimon: As my wife can attest, I threw a fit, but not the pancake syrup, at the T.V. during that segment. 0 pushback/
burnspbesq
@tkogrumpy:
An admirable display of restraint.
tkogrumpy
@burnspbesq: Thanks, to the 58 Y/O
parsimon
@tkogrumpy: Yeah. I think it was the most appalled and repelled I’ve ever been on watching that show. Like, wow, you guys (producers, I guess) have really jumped the shark completely and totally, haven’t you. Also fuck David Brooks.
And that Alex Castellanos had no business, no business whatsoever, even being on the show, being clearly stumping for — is it Mitt Romney’s campaign he was, or is, an advisor for?
Katie5
Doug, I disagree with you a bit on Scarborough’s approach. What is refreshing is that he’s put the meme into place that increasing taxes on the rich is inevitable. That’s a strange morality–inevitability–but it’s “out there”, as they say, so it will be hard to refute by conservatives. Not that they won’t try, but Joe’s made it far more difficult.
What I find difficult to understand about Scarborough is his attack on Medicare and Social Security because they are “middle class” entitlements. Watch how he inserts additional invective when he says those words. I suppose it’s based on the charity model so fondly resurrected these days by conservatives (the resurgence of the compassionate conservatives?). It’s important to maintain Medicaid. It protects the poor (unstated is that is the deserving and not the undeserving poor; this dichotomy is very much a part of the charity model). But horrors! that the middle class get any of these government benefits. I guess it’s some expansion of libertarianism. The poor should be protected by government. However, the moment you’re employed, once you’ve accepted the bounding conditions of the invisible hand, the government shouldn’t bail you out in any way.
(BTW, this probably underlay Clinton’s TANF too.)
Comrade DougJ
@Katie5:
Interesting, I can never figure out how that guy thinks.
Katie5
@Comrade DougJ: I think part of it follows a consultant ideal of employment. Everyone, at least 55-and-unders, should envision themselves as self-employed even if they’re working for large corporations. Having grown up in that model, they should be canny negotiators v.v. medical insurance companies.
Of course, it’s bollocks but I’m trying to get into the way they think.
Wolfdaughter
@Loneoak:
Absolutely. I had a discussion with a fellow church choir member the other day. He votes Republican and considers himself a libertarian. I brought up the Laffer Curve, calling it well-named because it’s laughable. He insisted that it’s valid. I replied that while I agreed the very high taxes (by which I mean well over 90% on the very rich) would probably be counter-productive, but that we actually have no idea where the optimum balance of taxes is. He agreed with that.
IOW, he’s going strictly on theory, something I’ve noticed that glibertarians in particular do. How can you claim validity for the Laffer Curve when no one knows how much you can cut taxes? It’s glaringly obvious that the last 30 years of tax cuts have been a resounding failure for all except the wealthiest.
mclaren
This actually relates closely to the previous article. America is all about the worship of pain and the imposition of suffering.
Americans hate joy and adore agony. Americans love watching people scream in agony and loathe people experiencing pleasure.
The secret nightmare that haunts every America is the prospect that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.
“No pain, no gain,” is the basic American credo. It explains our tax system (punish the poor), it explains our military adventures worldwide (bringing suffering and death to an impoverished third-world nation NEAR YOU!) and it explains our prison-industrial system (make ’em scream!).
America’s Calvinistic puritanical sadism and brutality remains the basic reason why history has pulled the flush handle on the U.S. of A., and why we now circle the bowl with the suction drawing us down.
AAA Bonds
The “libertarian” argument from “principles” is just a gussied-up version of the old 19th-century belief that wealth reflected inherent individual superiority.
That second belief, as an economic and policy principle, was partially responsible for at least six major American depressions that I can think of, the last of which occurred in the 1930s. (The latest recession is better attributed to that old idiot friend, “trickle down”, and Clinton-era legislation that codified the financial industry as the sole engine of American prosperity.)
The first move back toward those glory days of the 1800s boom-bust cycle is the annihilation of the social compact that appeared with New Deal legislation.
AAA Bonds
@burnspbesq:
Well, no, because the IRS isn’t inefficient and doesn’t seem to indicate or embody any notable inefficiency. It’s just underfunded, which destroys enough revenue generation to make spending on it problematic.
It’s loathed, too, but that’s inevitable.
burnspbesq
@AAA Bonds:
I almost hurt myself laughing at that. The stories I could tell, after 29 years of practicing tax law …
liberal
@burnspbesq:
Uh, wrong.
The two most basic principles of taxation are “ability to pay” and “beneficiary pay.” Progressive taxation obvious satisfies the former. It also satisfies the latter, since most high incomes are actually economic rents in one guise or another, and those exist only because of state-granted privileges.