Explanation Wanted

Can someone please explain something to me? Why are people so persistent in fighting the fight they want to fight rather than the one they actually have? I’m seeing scores of endlessly repetitive arguments against hardcore objectivists and a similarly large number against radical socialists (usually referred to as “the Right” and “the Left”, respectively). Those groups do exist and are probably over-represented on the Internet. However, their numbers are rather small and they’re almost completely without political power in the actual scheme of things.

Here’s an example of what’s actually under discussion: whether the top marginal tax rate should be 35% or 39% and to whom it should be applicable. Seeing one side of that as rugged individualism and the other as the Red Menace sounds a bit overwrought to me.

My answer to the question, BTW, is that it’s largely window dressing; it doesn’t make a great deal of difference one way or another. The higher marginal rate on those making incomes greater than $250,000 will have such a small effect on the deficit, economic growth, and income inequality that it will barely be measurable if at all. What objection I have to the increase in taxes is largely that the money will probably be taken from one group of people making more than $250,000 and given to another group of people making more than $250,000. I think there are ethical, economic, and political reasons against that but I don’t see it as Grim Death one way or another.

So, can someone help me out? Why the acrimony? Why the positioning as a stark choice?

12 comments… add one
  • PD Shaw Link

    I think you may need to ask Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. I’m reading Gordon Wood’s “Empire of Liberty,” and its striking how quickly these two brilliant men respond to fairly moderate policy proposals (from a current perspective, like federal assumption of state debt) and immediately question the other’s true motivation and express the belief if the other side has its way, the republic will be destroyed (either becoming a monarchy beholden to Britain or under French administration).

    I’m coming to think we Americans are and have always been a very conspiratorial people. If you say you want to raise marginal rates two points, what you appear to be communicating is that you really want to raise them twenty points, but this is all you can get at one time. So stopping a two point raise is the first fight in stopping a twenty point raise.

  • Ben Wolf Link

    @PD

    Well you can count me in the conspiratorial camp. I think a great deal of the “left-right” acrimony is a product of vested interests who want people at each others’ throats and thus distracted from who really runs things in this country.

  • Andy Link
  • steve Link

    I think this is worse with the internet, but I guess we have always had some of this. I look at our two candidates and see two people not really that far apart when they have governed. They differ mostly in their rhetoric, and even there, neither is especially extreme most of the time. Even on foreign policy where Romney worries me, I think that James is correct when he always points out that past actions constrain presidents more than most recognize.

    Steve

  • PD Shaw Link

    @Ben, well I would never disagree that there is usually some basis for many conspiracies. I think Republicans are largely correct that Democrats, if left to their own devices, would resort to tax and spend policies ad infinitum and Democrats are largely correct that Republicans will use starve the beast tactics to force cuts or limits on programs too popular to oppose directly. But I guess my belief is that once motivations control the debate over a given policy, the quality of the debate diminishes remarkably. Its no longer a two point change, its about the other side wanting to kill grandma or nationalize the private sector, two points at a time.

  • Drew Link

    I think the answer is rather simple. I wouldnt argue that a marginal rate of 35 vs 39% is the difference between economic freedom and the Red Menace. That’s simplistic. The problem is that once you get to 39% the left will immediately start working on 43%, because “after all, it’s only 4 more percent.” And then……. That’s the game.

    This game of incrementalism is the same with gun laws. No one in their right mind thinks AK 47s are just for deer hunting or self defense. But give up the battle on those, and then it will be a 30 aught 6′ a shotgun, a hand gun………and next thing you know….

    I’ve posted this before. I remember interchanges with left leaning types about government services. “well, you know we have to care about peoples basic needs so we have to provide food clothing and shelter. That’s all.”. Right. I once quipped “how long until cell phones become a basic need; a right?”.

    Harpoons removed from my chest as a crazed right winger, sure enough you see attempts to subsidize cell phones by lefties. It’s a “safety issue” you see.

    Think about food stamps. The poverty rate has been steady at 12 to 15% for decades. But what fraction of the populace is on food stamps? It ain’t 12 to 15%. It’s a vote creating scheme.

    Liberalism is a mindset. It’s not about caring for the unfortunate. And after all, our large government diverts such a huge amount of its taxation, as Dave points out, to those who can manipulate the power levers of government to their advantage. Liberalism is about a misguided notion that people can’t make it on their own, or that all should be somewhat equal, or the childish view that some people arent just parasitic. It’s a hard fact of life to come to grips with that. So they put them on the dole, and make the productive out to be evil to sell their notions. Just look at any Obama speech. The very few who really can’t make it and need our collective help could be lavished with government proceeds if that’s what we really did with the tax revenues. And I’d be Advocate Number 1.

    But that ain’t reality. It’s about creating voting constituencies. It’s about creating government power and entrenched political careers. Why otherwise intelligent people don’t seem to grasp this obvious empirical fact flummoxes me.

  • jan Link

    The degree thatincrementalism plays into all of this is a key factor. Because, the more that one gives, the more that the other wants. That’s the game of ‘ratios’ that seems to be played among those who ‘have’ and those who ‘need.’ And, the more that people receive from another, the less becomes their motivation to do for themselves.

    My husband has a friend he originally met as a vendor at a local farmer’s market. Eventually this guy couldn’t financially make it here in CA, moving to FL, and then Arizona. He keeps in touch with my husband, who has encouraged him to finish his college education. Matt finally completed his degree requirements, but is also subsisting on two different disability programs — one from the military and the other through medicaid and then medicare permanent disability. He, admitted, the other day, that he really has no incentives to look for work anymore, as the payments from both of these government subsidies covers his basic expenses.

    His story isn’t much different from so many other’s. For instance, studies have been done, dealing with UE benefits. It is only when these benefits are about to run out do many of the unemployed find jobs. That’s just a statistical reality. It’s like doing homework — you wait until the last minute to get it done.

    This is human nature, and human patterns that we all fall prey to. The government, though, seems to be more and more a party to this enabling of the populace, which ultimately leads to complacency and a weakening of a society’s work ethic and/or resolve to realize their dreams. The president’s latest move, stripping work provisions from Clinton’s welfare reform act, is just another death of an incentive for people to make a life of their own.

    So, Dave, all these little things eventually add up. Even the most innocuous ones, such as a small marginal tax increase, aids and abetts a lopsidedness in a given populace, whereby one is expected to provide according to his ability to fit another needs (paraphrasing Marx, of course).

  • Sam Link

    There you have it. EVERYTHING has to be a slippery slope to Socialism or Fascism or whatever extreme. We can never argue any incremental change on its own merits anymore.

  • The irony of it all is that this particular slippery slope starts with majorities of both Senate and House Democrats voting in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts in 2010.

  • Drew Link

    Sam

    I think you are incorrect. Has government grown (especially in relationship to the size of GDP, or of its legitimate tasks) or not? It’s an empirical question. I think the evidence is in, quite decisively.

    Invoking slippery slopes to fascism is a red herring, and intellectually dishonest.

  • Icepick Link

    When was fascism associated with small governments?

  • Sam Link

    @Drew

    There are plenty of countries and time periods with shrinking tax/gdp, government/gdp and privatizing of former government functions.
    Where are the Republican bills with common sense reduction of import tariff rules? Oh I forgot, they have to repeal Obamacare a 33rd time.

    @Icepick/@Drew

    I had corporate cronyism/big business Republicans in mind I guess. I’ve also heard slippery slope to a Theocracy. And the Muslims have a secret plot to take over starting in Dearborn. And there’s going to be an Amero and a giant NAFTA superhighway to usher in the antiChrist and fluoridation is designed to mellow us out when it happens. Be afraid.

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