Richard Epstein tells us what we need to do to fix our ailing economy:
At this point, it won’t work to reaffirm the deadly triumvirate that drives this misery: tax the rich, greater local control over real estate development and special privileges for organized labor. What’s needed is to break from the past with some unimaginative, but necessary, New Year’s resolutions in the areas of taxation, real estate and labor.
On taxation, don’t play the mug’s game of imposing ever higher marginal tax rates on ever lower amounts of income. Play it smart for the long haul. Low-income tax rates (and no estate taxes) will attract into states and communities energetic individuals who would otherwise choose to live and work elsewhere. Treasure their efforts to grow the overall pie. Don’t resent their great wealth, but remember the benefits their successes generate for their employees, customers and suppliers. Repudiate the politics of envy for the social destruction it creates. Don’t fret about the states and communities left behind. Let them adopt the same sound policies to keep people at home. The outcome won’t be a zero-sum game. Enterprise is infectious. Open markets are the rising tide that raises all ships. High taxation is the tsunami that sinks them.
***None of this activity costs the public a dime. All of it will increase tax revenues and reduce administrative expenses. The best test of a good policy is whether it is sustainable over the long haul. We know now that the progressive regime flunks this key test. At this point, all good libertarians can only take cold comfort that they have fought these destructive policies tooth and nail. In today’s overheated environment, our New Year’s resolution can be summed up in two words: deregulation now.
Tax cuts and deregulation- who could have thunk it!
Morbo
In Forbes no less, in other journalistic news the Washington Times thinks Rev. Moon is just terrific.
Brick Oven Bill
No taxes for people making over $1M but their kids have to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
cmorenc
This approach has worked out SO SPLENDIDLY so far, why not give it a try? Wait! “worked out so far” implies that it has been tried, and….we’re still waiting for the fabulous economic results to trickle down to the masses over the past decade of ongoing trial of this theory.
Keith G
I thought of being snarky, but I then realized that a national candidate saying such things can instantly claim about 40% of the voters. Add some charm, good looks, and a decent back story and now your talking up to 50-52%.
My tummy hurts.
TR
Seriously. Did any of these idiots ever take a US history class? We’ve tried this approach three times in the twentieth century — mid-1920s, early-1980s, and most of the 2000s — and it never worked out. Never. The first caused the Great Depression, the second quadrupled our national debt, and the third … well, you’re soaking in it.
We’ve had rising tides before. They swamped the levees and killed a lot of people.
asiangrrlMN
Who the fuck is this idiot? Seriously. Who the fuck is he and where does he reside? There’s a rusty garden implement with his name written all over it in dog shit.
Brian J
I’d say that a guarante of health care would make people much more likely to start their own businesses and thus do more for the economy in the long run.
Brian J
@asiangrrlMN: I believe he is a law professor at Chicago.
ET
I say wave a wand and say “abracadabra!” followed by “presto change-o” and TA-DA! Instant healthy economy.
Sigh. Same song new day.
MattF
Well, you’re not going to get rational economic advice from a Forbes magazine columnist. And, honestly, mocking people who are simply disconnected from reality has dropped off the bottom of my to-do list. “Take you meds”, I’d say– and then, just go away, please. On the other hand, this book sounds edifying.
PeakVT
Treasure their efforts to grow the overall pie.
I just can’t fathom the mind of a person who gets up in the morning to write drivel like that.
dmsilev
@asiangrrlMN: His bio:
Christ, I work at the same institute as him. I burn with shame. Fortunately, the law school is well removed from my neck of the woods.
-dms
georgia pig
The work never ends in the wingnut welfare factory (Hoover Institute). I guess they’re putting chum in the water to see if they get any bites, this particular variety being recycled Reaganite rhetoric circa 1980, probably aimed at the Palinites of the investor class, the type that would read Forbes instead of Barrons or the FT. It’s amazing how someone who writes nonsense like this manages to gets a teaching job at a top tier law school. Example: “Play it smart for the long haul. Low-income tax rates (and no estate taxes) will attract into states and communities energetic individuals who would otherwise choose to live and work elsewhere. Treasure their efforts to grow the overall pie.” Yeah, the creative class is really flocking to Alabama from Manhattan and Silicon Valley. Oh yeah, and Alabama is a fiscal nightmare. What a fucking moron.
sal
Notice he also calls for the repeal of race, sex, and age discrimination laws. Also, a healthy veneration of our wealthier betters.
At least he doesn’t say we can’t eat cake.
El Cid
This is an innovative approach which has never been tried!
Conservatives should try running on a program of de-regulation and tax cuts for the rich and union-bashing!
This has never been done! The American public will love it!
jwb
@cmorenc: Hey, we haven’t gone all the way and tried the no tax, no regulation plan. The only reason we haven’t received our free ponies is because we’ve only ever allowed a highly compromised version of this plan go into effect. Compromise kills the pony, don’t you know.
asiangrrlMN
@Brian J:
@dmsilev:
Chicago, you say? Not so very far from Minneapolis. I believe a road trip is in order when I get back to MN. I’ll fire up my trusty rusty chainsaw on the way.
The Ghost of Richard Jaeckel
Hay, that “Onion” is really funny!! Heh heh heh!
Heh.
What?
r€nato
On cue, the Arizona Legislature has proposed massive tax cuts as a cure for the state’s economic doldrums and budget crisis.
r€nato
Well I already said it elsewhere but I guess I should have saved it for this thread:
Tax cuts always lead to more government tax revenue.
But more government revenue is a very bad thing.
Therefore, we should raise taxes to 100%, which would deprive the government of all tax revenue.
If you think this makes no sense, then you haven’t been getting your minimum daily requirement of Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh.
Hiram Taine
Clearly, what we now need to do is go to an an antiprogressive or counterprogressive taxation system, the more money you make the less percentage you pay and anyone over a certain figure, say ten million per year, pays nothing. Conversely, anyone under a certain figure, the federal poverty level say, pays their entire income..
That should fix things right up and incentivize people to make lots of lots of money. We won’t have any poor if we take all of the poor’s money in taxes.
r€nato
@Hiram Taine:
there’s a scholar’s chair and a nice, fat chunk of wingnut welfare awaiting you at AEI.
Waynski
What always drives me crazy about these supply siders citing the Reagan and Bush the younger years claiming it was tax cuts that spurred growth is they ignore the fact that during those years there was massive government spending fueled by deficits. That’s Keynesian! I’ve always wondered if that ignorance is stubborn adherence to an ideology or cynicism.
Occasionally, they’ll point to Kennedy’s tax cuts spurring growth and increasing revenue, which they probably did. However this ignores the fact that to pay for the war, the 1950s saw tax rates for the rich at 90%. Bring that down to 50% and it’s stimulative. Taking the top tax rates from 37.5% to 33 or 34% or whatever Bush brought it down to is simply a giveaway to the rich and I’ve seen little to show that this fosters growth. At some point less is just less.
Davis X. Machina
That’s the effect of repealing the capital gains tax and/or taxing only wage income, not earned interest or distributions from funds, which have been GOP staples since Noah shut the door on the ark.
Wilson Heath
Arthur Laffer is the only economist who believes in the Laffer Curve anymore. Yep — no serious economists onboard with the drivel anymore.
PaulW
The problem, Mr. Wilson Heath, is that we are surrounded by UNserious economists and clueless talking heads who still worship said Laffer Curve drivel. All the serious economists don’t get invited to the Sunday Talk Shows because they’re all socialists and boring and besides they’ll upset Newt or McCain or Holy Joe too much.
Brian J
@dmsilev:
You’re at Chicago or NYU? Either way, I’d like to hear more.
Carl Nyberg
These innovative rich people have a weak track record at producing the kind of wealth that grows the economy in a way that benefits regular folk.
The innovative rich have a stronger track record of financial sector “innovation” which has the side-effect of leaving everyone else in debt and crashing the economy periodically.
Now middle-class people have a strong track record of spending their money in a way that benefits the entire economy.
Brian J
@Waynski:
Here’s the thing: I can accept the idea that tax cuts might–might–be part of some effort to stimulate the economy. After all, if they get people spending or investing, either in another person’s business or in their own business, it’ll help people if it keeps them employed. I don’t know anything about the literature on this, but the idea isn’t so ridiculous that it deserves derision.
But the idea that tax cuts will more than make up for lost revenue? I don’t know of any evidence, anywhere, that supports that idea. It’s nuts that we’re still having this argument.
Svlad Jelly
I am fucking flabbergasted that they still trot out this horseshit after the last decade. Tax cuts will increase revenue! What the fuck kinda head trauma does a mother fucker have to suffer for that kinda crazy to spill out in public?
“The best test of a good policy is whether it is sustainable over the long haul. We know now that the progressive regime flunks this key test.”
Holy Fucking Shit Balls!!!!
PaulW
Hey, here’s a suggestion to the Club for Greed crowd, if they are so truly serious about tax cuts being such a good tonic for our economic ills… let’s go with ABSOLUTELY NO TAXES AT ALL!
C’mon, it’s a sure-fire winner! No one in their right minds want to pay taxes anyway! Who’s gonna vote FOR any idiot who even suggests keeping any tax at all? So let’s go for it, the gold ring, the big prize! Push for a NO-TAX platform! Oh, yeah, absolutely no taxes at all!
That means we won’t generate revenue anymore for all those socialist programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and also unemployment benefit extensions, and also our entire military and coast guard, and then there’s the federal funding that goes to the states to handle law enforcement, fire protection, education for our kids, roads and bridges, clean air and water, libraries and community centers, various utilities, stuff like that. No tax revenue means no more revenue for subsidies for agriculture, college research grants, emergencies both local and global. Oh wow. And hey, best of all, no more tax revenue means we won’t be paying government officials’ salaries anymore! Yay! Now our Senators and Congresspersons will work for FREE!
“But,” say you socialist evildoers, “people will WANT to work for a salary! Cutting off revenue isn’t going to end spending! Where will all the money come from?”
This is the beauty part! WE’LL JUST KEEP BORROWING FOREVER. And because we’re so big as part of the global economy, no creditor nation will ever come calling for the bills like they did with Argentina and those other loser nations! YUP. That’s right. WE’RE TOO BIG TO FAIL…
/Swiftian sarcasm mode off
Trust me. Someone on the far right is going to take this way too seriously.
liberal
@Carl Nyberg:
More generally, the vast majority of the truly rich are just parasitic rent collectors. (“Rent” == economic rent.) That’s why taxing the living sh*t out of them will affect the economy not one iota.
liberal
@dmsilev:
I think the most evil aspect of this crypto-feudalist scum is his work on “regulatory takings”.
dmsilev
@Brian J: Chicago. I work in the physics department.
-dms
Mary
As a UofC law grad I feel compelled to not defend, but at least explain Professor Epstein. He is the very definition of the absent minded professor, and a true idealogue, to boot. Like most of the hard core Chicago Economics apostles, he views the world in completely abstract terms. Believe it or not, he’s not a bad or greedy guy – he just honestly and truly believes that Milton Friedman and Ronald Coase represent the final evolution of economic theory. A young liberal prof once said of Epstein “The problem with Richard is that he believes everyone in the world is as nice and well meaning as he is.”
RepublicanPointOfView
What you seem to not understand is that the economic policies of George Bush were a failure – not because of the economic theories being pursued, but because they were insufficiently pursued.
Everyone knows that the economic engines of our economy are the wealthy. Everyone knows that cutting the top marginal tax rates will stimulate the economy and increase government revenues. The problem is that these plans were insufficiently addressed.
John McCain was partially correct last year when you stated that the wealthy were those making more than $5M a year. Therefore, the answer to our current economic situation is to eliminate taxes of everyone making more than $5M a year. The other part of the answer is to raise the taxes on all of the non-job producers making less than $5M a year.
tootiredoftheright
@Brian J:
About the only people that seem to actually use the tax cuts to stimulate the economy are the lower and middle class after all if someone pays 20,000 in taxes out of 60,000 they earn each year then lowering the amount of taxes by even a few hundred has an effect since they would either be paying off bills or living more comfortably. Both effects would help the economy.
Someone who only pays 200,000 in taxes (without using any loopholes, exemptions) out of a yearly 5,000,000 earnings having their taxes cut by several thousand doesn’t have any economic benefit since they already have several million additional dollars each year they could pump into the economy.
Col. Klink
Between the Strausians, Neocons and the Friedmanites it won’t be too much of a surprise if at the end of this century Godwin’s Law will apply whenever anyone references the University of Chicago in a dispute.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@MattF:
This is something I’ve suspected for some time. The collapse of the Soviet Union profoundly destabilized the political economy of the United States. Without a real threat to face, we no longer needed to have the grown ups in charge in our govt., we ate our economic seed corn via a massive transfer of wealth and income from the middle class to the investor class, and quickly became our own worst enemies.
gopher2b
Whenever I see someone argue that no estate taxes are necessary for a strong economy I immediately know they are full of shit.
jrosen
Here’s another irony: The same people who attack Darwinian evolution because it seems so heartless and cruel (the strongest survive, the weak go to the wall) seem to love the same process in the economy.
Maximizing efficiency might be the goal of abstract economics, but should be the goal of a real society? Suppose you abolish all regulation of the drug industry (a Milton Friedman move) and let competition do the work of keeping the market safe. That is, a few people die from one of Company A’s bad product and everyone else stops buying from A (assuming of course that everyone KNOWS about the result and it is surely known that Company A is at fault —not so easy to assume). Great…the market worked! But is the death of even a few people worth the result? Even a single death by carelessness is called negligent homicide and it is still a crime, I believe. How do the people who howl about the destruction of a blastocyst (which may or may not be a person) feel about that?
If efficiency is the sole criterion, then what about the handicapped, the old, and others who can no longer produce (or never could)? is it the gas-pipe for them…shades of Soylent Green! ?? I wonder what Prof. Epstein and is ilk would say to that?
That Friedman and Epstein are (were) Jews is interesting to me, as one (non-observant) myself. I have no doubt what the Rabbis who compiled the Talmud would say…or the Prophets, or Jesus for that matter.
What do the filthy rich do with all that money anyway?
tootiredoftheright
“Suppose you abolish all regulation of the drug industry (a Milton Friedman move) and let competition do the work of keeping the market safe. That is, a few people die from one of Company A’s bad product and everyone else stops buying from A (assuming of course that everyone KNOWS about the result and it is surely known that Company A is at fault”
Thing is there is enough real world evidence to show that even if a drug company produces drugs that kill off their users said company will still be around since guess what they control the market and without any regulation no one has the choice not to buy from them since every other company uses their products.
Competition doesn’t exist in an unregulated marketplace. There is a reason why monoplies come into existance.
tootiredoftheright
@jrosen:
“What do the filthy rich do with all that money anyway?”
Sadly none of them appear to have built a big vault and swim around in the paper money and cold coins.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@jrosen:
They invest it. Even with heroic efforts, a single person can only spend so much on hookers and blow. Everything left after that has to be invested somewhere. And there are only a finite number of low risk, high quality investment opportunities at any given point in time. When you have too much money chasing too few good investments, you are going to get an asset inflation bubble (and the Depression/Panic that inevitably follows) every single time. This isn’t rocket science.
The formula for taking an unstable mania/panic prone economy and stabilizing it is very simple – take wealth away from the investor class and give to the folks below them. That’s what we did in the 1940s and 1950s – it wasn’t just the Keynesian stimulus of FDR’s New Deal which built the great American middle class of the mid 20th Cen – it was the high tax rates of the Truman/Eisenhower era that did it.
gopher2b
@<a href=”#comment-1518502″>jrosen:
gopher2b
@jrosen:
See Tiger Woods
Califlander
John, my boy, you’re being unfair. The professor didn’t just propose tax cuts and deregulation — he also called for union-busting and the repeal of the minimum wage.
S. cerevisiae
Jesus H. Christ. I’ve seen this movie before, and it sucks.
As was said by others above, I can’t believe there are still fools who treat the Laffer curve seriously. Who wants to bet that Pawlenty cites this article favorably? It looks like just the thing for him to use in his futile and quixotic bid for the low information voter in 2012.
I suppose it is part of the Gospel of St. Ronnie. The deification of one of the worst Presidents ever continues.
Ash Can
@RepublicanPointOfView:
Wrong. The engine is the middle class. Republican economic policies fail not because they’re not “insufficiently pursued,” but because they’re based on a fallacy to begin with. Garbage in, garbage out.
danimal
If tax cuts worked the way they say they do, the solution to our budget deficit is simple: Announce a 50 year plan to reduce taxes every year until the tax rate bottoms out at .001%.
Every year, decrease the tax rate incrementally and watch revenues increase. By year 50 or so, the tax rate will be virtually zero and the revenues will overflow IRS coffers. Tax stability, via planned, incremental changes, is baked into this plan as well. What’s not to love?
Ash Can
@tootiredoftheright:
This. I’ve never been able to understand how the free-market fanatics can sing the praises of unfettered competition and then turn around and kneel before the altar of virtual monopolies. “Objectivism” my ass. For something that claims to be based on reason and logic, it sure works hard to avoid any actual thought.
Glidwrith
@Califlander: He also called for repealing anti-discrimination laws (sex and race, especially noted). How nice to know my salary would be reduced to favor the white-male-next-door which would mean more money for me because my taxes were reduced!
I especially love his bit that progressive policies have already failed when we haven’t had them for the past 8 years minimum and haven’t re-implemented them yet.
This jerk makes my head hurt.
Cain
I never understood tax cuts to the rich as a way to spur economic growth. I mean if I was a rich capitalist I would take that sum of money I saved and try to find a way to grow it. That means, I’ll take that wealth and put it somewhere I would get a higher return. So off it goes to India, China, Vietnam or some other place that has cheap labor, and low taxes and make products that I can sell back to the suckers here. The money leaves teh nation and gets spent somewhere else. There is no trickle down effect at all. It’s not their fault, that’s what they are supposed to do.
It really pisses me off that they don’t even qualify the tax cuts by saying that you can only have it if you spend your money in this country. I mean what the fuck? Aren’t you like breaking your oath as a citizen when you do that? Morons. A friend of mine is a big libertarian, and as Mary was saying above about Epstein, he believes everyone is as nice and well meaning as he is. In fact, I find that true of a lot of republicans who are really nice and helpful but still subscribe to this kind of silly philosophy. Pretty frustrating.
cain
Waynski
@Brian J and others — Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully on the revenue side re: Kennedy Tax Cut of 1964 (Johnson actually got it passed). Have probably heard it so much it got drummed into my head. Here’s an interesting article on Hauser’s Law – a concept I hadn’t seen before.
http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2009/12/hausers-law.html
Anyway, on the Laughable Curve, I agree.
gopher2b
@Glidwrith:
Ugh, white males. The cause of all the world’s problems.
aimai
I was just thinking about the point ThatLeftTurnInABQ makes this morning–that is that too many rich people, and too easy investments, makes for an inflationary/bubble producing rush for investment opportunities. My solution to this problem, modest though it is, is based on my understanding of the ways in which wealth, in previous eras, was used up. I think what we need are a series of violent peasant revolts that lead the wealthy to have to spend most of their “extra” money on
1) health care
2) castles
3) well paid mercenaries
4) charity in the form of scholarships, churches, hospitals, libraries, and free circuses.
What we need is an incentive structure geared around soaking up excess investment capital, not channeling it into more and more bubble investment opportunities. I say lets use populist violence. Its time tested.
aimai
Brian J
@dmsilev:
Oh, so you’re a dummy, then? :]
chrome agnomen
can’t we let an effigy write the column and teach the course, and burn him? win all the way around.
Brian J
@dmsilev:
Oh, so you’re a dummy, then? :]@tootiredoftheright:
Again, I don’t know enough about the specifics of the literature to have a firm opinion one way or the other. It doesn’t seem ridiculous to think that allowing people to have money could help spur the economy, whether that money goes to those at the top or those at the bottom. I don’t think the events of the last decade prove that giving a lot to those at the top is a surefire way to spur growth, to say the least, but under certain circumstances, I could see it being true.
But as a way of eliminating the deficit? There’s just no evidence to support that view.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@aimai:
Viva la Jacquerie!
[looks around]
Hey, where did all those dead peasants come from? How did that happen?
Glidwrith
@gopher2b: Now, now, don’t condemn all of them – I am married to one after all :)…….and isn’t our host also ONE OF THEM? We can give them a pat on the head and have them toddle back to the kitchen where they can make yummy goodness, just don’t let them near politics./snark
Fax Paladin
Like the shout-out to Joe Bethancourt, BTW.
JasonF
@Mary:
I’m also a U of C law grad and I agree with what Mary said. Professor Epstein is really a very nice guy. He’s just stark raving bonkers. The joke that used to be told about him was that the Richard Epstein version of the Bill of Rights would read as follows:
I took a seminar on communications law with him and the big take-away was that we should abolish the FCC. If it had been a seminar on election law, the take-away would have been that we should abolish the FEC, and if it had been a seminar on securities law, the take-away would have been that we should abolish the SEC. Because that’s just how he is — in Professor Epstein’s mind, we’re going to get much better outcomes for everyone if we let the market do its thing without distortions from the government.
lonelypedestrian
Ah union busting. It really is a classic like “Jesse’s Girl” or something.
Don’t try to argue.There is no unemployment in a favela. Everybody knows that.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JasonF:
Where does he think “the market” comes from? The Market Fairy? The Stork? Cabbage Patches?
Any working market above a neolithic level of social and economic complexity requires some system of governance. Which means..
[wait for it…]
[wait for it…]
Government!
I mean we can argue about whose government should be involved, but as the old saying goes “..we’ve already established what you are, now we are just haggling over the price“.
Zack!
I was just thinking about this maxim from the right the other day–it’s a nice sentiment but it’s completely bullshit. The problem is that most people aren’t in need of a “rising tide,” so much as they need a boat in the first place to keep them from drowning. The most glaring “real world” example of this–i.e. when it stops being a metaphor–is Katrina. We all saw how well that rising tide worked out for the people of N.O., no?
Jim in Chicago
I think Al Franken put it best: “The problem with the estate tax is it punishes the most productive members of our society: the children of the extremely wealthy.”
JasonF
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
It’s an exaggeration to say that Prof. Epstein believes we should completely get rid of the government, and if I led anyone to believe that’s his opinion, I apologize. Certainly he supports allowing people to sue for breach of contract and for some torts, and you obviously need a working court system to handle that. And while I’ve never talked ot him about it, I’d guess he supports having a government for national defense purposes (not to suggest he would support the War on Terror or the current Republican policies or even necessarily a standing army — just that at a certain point, it’s legitimate for the government to use force in defense of the country).
Anyway, apropos of U of C law, here’s my favorite U of C law cocktail party story:
When I was in my third and final year of law school, I decided I would take a class called Con Law III. The way Constitutional law worked at the U of C was that they divided it up into four or five classes. Con Law I covered separation of powers and the structure of the government — all that stuff that’s found in the Constitution as originally adopted, as opposed to the Bill of Rights. Con Law II covered First Amendment issues — free speech, freedom of religion, establishment of religion, and so on. Con Law III covered equal protection. There was also a class called Criminal Procedure that covered the Fourth and Fifth and Eighth Amendment protections for the accused. Don’t ask me why that class is called Criminal Procedure instead of Constitutional Law — every law school calls that class Criminal Procedure for reasons I’ve never been able to figure out.
So anyway, it comes time to take Con Law III and I’ve got two choices for professors. And both of these guys are really good. I mean, if you had taken a survey of the students as to who the best professors were, both of these guys would have finished in the money. They were both really smart, really nice, really capable teachers. You simply couldn’t go wrong taking a class with either one.
And I agonized over which class to take. On the one hand, you had David Strauss. He was just a great guy. I had taken a class with him two years before — torts — and he was my favorite professor that I had taken up to that point. I really enjoyed that class, and had wanted an opportunity to take another class with him again. Here was that opportunity! On the other hand, the other guy had a really good reputation, and while I had heard the one-off lecture from him here and there — at U of C law school, there was always some professor giving a lecture at lunch sponsored by some student group with free pizza, and I tried to attend a lot of those lectures because free pizza — while I had heard him lecture a few times, I had never taken a class with him. And like I said, he had a really good reputation. What to do, what to do? Go with the known quantity, the guy who had been my favorite professor up to this point? Or expand my horizons and try a new professor.
In the end, I decided to go with Professor Strauss’s class. As expected, the class was great. I learned a lot and enjoyed every moment in that class. It’s not really accurate to say I regret picking Professor Strauss because I don’t. Except that you’ve probably never heard of David Strauss and this would be a much better story if I had chosen to take the class with the other professor, Barack Obama.
Comrade Kevin
@RepublicanPointOfView:
Conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Sort of like: “Communism didn’t fail! The USSR wasn’t really Communist! Nobody has tried it properly!”
The similarities between conservative ideologues and communists are remarkable.
aimai
Well, but LeftTurninABQ these people really do think there’s some kind of “market fairy” or that “the market” is a generic reality like gravity or hydraulic pressure. That’s why they are always searching to bolster their ahistorical and unscientific theories of how markets “work” with reference to imaginary constants like “human nature” or “want” or “greed” or something else, anything else, that will produce a steady state of actions and reactions without referencing human constructs like property, law, regulation, marriage, kinship, inheritance, custom, morality, religion, rent, sale, etc…
aimai
twiffer
@Glidwrith: speaking as a white male, i’d much prefer to be in the kitchen than anywhere near politics. changing my son’s diaper is also preferable to politics, though the smell is remarkably similar.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@JasonF:
Great story. Thanks for sharing that.
Mary
“Except that you’ve probably never heard of David Strauss and this would be a much better story if I had chosen to take the class with the other professor, Barack Obama.”
Eh, I think you made the right choice. Not that it wouldn’t be super cool to say you had Con Law III with Obama, but I wouldn’t trade ir for learning Equal Protection from Strauss. Also, Strauss once brought donuts to class because he felt bad for scheduling a makeup class for Friday morning.
Mike G
The libertarian paradise of Epstein’s dreams is available now — in Somalia. No income or estate taxes, certainly no gun control, markets as ‘free’ as they can get.
Funny how I don’t see much migration there by “energetic individuals who would otherwise choose to live and work elsewhere”. But I’d be happy to spread the word among the Galtards.
And remember, when it comes to Somali pirates holding ships for ransom, “Don’t resent their great wealth, but remember the benefits their successes generate for their employees, customers and suppliers.”
glocksman
After seeing that poster and reading the post, Steve Earle’s Snake Oil came immediately to mind.
Song on YouTube
Lyrics:
Ladies and gentlemen, attention please
Come in close so everyone can see
I got a tale to tell
A listen don’t cost a dime
And if you believe that we’re gonna get along just fine
Now I’ve been travelin’ all around
I heard trouble’s come to your town
Well I’ve got a little somethin’
Guaranteed to ease your mind
It’s call Snake Oil y’all
It’s been around for a long, long time
Say, your crops’ll burn if it don’t rain soon
Ain’t seen a drop since the tenth of June
Well I can open up the sky
People never fear
If you ain’t impressed yet, just tell me what you wanna hear
Well you lost your farm so you moved to town
You get a job, they shut the factory down
Now you sit around all day long feelin’ sad and blue
You need Snake Oil y’all, tell you what I’m gonna do
I can heal the sick, I can mend the lame
And the blind shall see again, it’s all the same
Well ain’t your President good to you
Knocked ’em dead in Libya, Grenada too
Now he’s taking his show a little further down the line
Well, ‘tween me and him people, you’re gonna get along just fine
Those lyrics are just as timely today as they were when he wrote them in 1988.
And for another Earle gem off of that album, here’s the title track.
glocksman
WTF?
I was in the middle of editing more ’em’ tags in to italicize all of the lyrics and when I hit ‘send’ I got a message saying that I wasn’t authorized to edit the post
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@aimai:
This is one of the things that sorely pisses me off about a lot of folks who are political science “thinkers” (scare quotes intended) – they are so freaking ahistorical it makes me want to choke them. Francis Fukuyama is a perfect example of this sort of Hegelian bullshit. These guys write about human societies as if 5 minutes ago we were all just dumped out of the loading bay of an alien spaceship onto the featureless surface of a previously uninhabited planet and told “OK, you’re on your own now. Figure it out for yourselves, from abstract first principles”. And then somehow society was worked out from there.
This.is.not.our.world.
Even the drafting of the US Consititution, which is probably the closest humans have ever come to that sort of scenario on any significant scale, was deeply, profoundly affected by what came before, in a very conditional way. Which anybody would know if for example they had actually read the freaking Federalist Papers they claim to love so much. And how people who claim to be “conservatives” can be so cavalier about just throwing away all of our history as if it simply doesn’t matter, beggars description. I have no idea what is going on inside their tiny little brains. None at all.
Chat Noir
@JasonF: Excellent story — thanks for sharing! And I figured out professor #2 before I got to the end of your post.
JasonF
My story is also why I hope that President Obama appoints Professor Strauss to the Supreme Court. It would never happen in a million years, but it would make my story about a trillion times cooler.
Mary, when were you at U of C? I graduated in 99 — I wonder if we overlapped?
tootiredoftheright
@Brian J:
“I don’t think the events of the last decade prove that giving a lot to those at the top is a surefire way to spur growth, to say the least, but under certain circumstances, I could see it being true.”
The events of the past one hundred years show that the best thing to do is tax the crap out of the wealthy so they work harder to earn their money instead of being lazy slobs. As of right now most of the wealthy ones earn in an hour what a middle class person earns in a year of work.
The rich ones who don’t want to get taxed are the ones who tell their workers when wages are slashed if you want more money work more hours when the workers are already working ten to twelve hours each day.
Sly
You don’t tax the shit out of the wealthy in order to get revenue. You make the top marginal rates obscenely high (and the taxable income levels high as well) so that they avoid getting hit by it. It’s the same principle with the excise tax in the Senate HCR bill. They actually don’t want people to pay it so that they negotiate less expensive plans and keep costs down for everyone, as well as getting some parity into the wage/benefits equation.
The wealthy don’t spend their personal income on much of anything that’s of any productive value. That’s why general sales taxes and VATs are inherently regressive. But if you hit them with, say, an 80% tax on income over a million dollars, their much more likely to funnel their potential income into more productive endeavors. Previously this came in the form of stock, which traditionally gave executives and business owners further incentive to look at long-term solvency and growth in their business practices. This meant more jobs, higher employee pay and benefits to compete for better workers, etc.
When the opposite happens, when you give executives an incentive for short term gain (either through bonuses or stock options), you clearly see the result. They’ll do everything to maximize the short term bottom line in order to increase their share of the reward. Up until recently, Enron was the biggest example. They had running stock tickers in every office and meeting room, showing how much money they we’re going to individually make in real-time when they sold their options. It shouldn’t be surprising that they engaged in fraud to drive up the price. They call it moral hazard for a reason.
On Epstein, heres a gem from the Pit of Despair:
GENIUS!
Also a fan of Silent Cal. Hoocoodanode.
tigrismus
At this point, it won’t work to reaffirm the deadly triumvirate that drives this misery: [untried progressive policies which are in no way to blame for the current crisis, nor could they have caused it even if they had been tried]. What’s needed is to break from the past with some [policies that most of the last several presidents used to put us into astronomical debt and which at least in part actually caused the credit/banking crisis].
Mug’s game indeed.
tootiredoftheright
“VATs are inherently regressive”
Yet VATs for the most part tend to be more well fair in how the taxes are collected. Stores and restaurants don’t have to spend money on staff or waste time collecting and figuring out how much sales tax they owe. VATs vs Sales Tax if you are going to have either one the VAT is more fair to consumers and less expensive to collect so the revenue could be more then the sales taxes would.
asiangrrlMN
@Mary:
@JasonF:
As discussed in the Amy whatever her name is thread, someone can be a nice person and still act like an asshole in certain regards. I didn’t know Epstein’s bio when I read this excerpt, and he read like any other libertarian to me (except, not as mean, perhaps).
JasonF
@asiangrrlMN: Absolutely. What’s that old line about Hitler being nice to dogs? Nobody is the villain of their own story, and nobody — with the exception, of course, of Dick Cheney — sets out to do evil. As nice a guy as Epstein is in real life, the philosophy and approach to government that he favors creates a much worse world than one in which we have a robust regulatory regime and a strong social safety net.
Nancy Irving
“Repudiate the politics of envy…”
Why is greed good, but envy is bad?
Could it be because greed is an emotion felt by rich people–the desire for ever more of what they’ve already got; whereas envy is an emotion felt by the poor–the desire for some of what they haven’t got?
Why should one of these be an engine of growth, but not the other?