My Thoughts Are a Gas

by Molly Ivors

Well, we're back on Lovely Liberal Mountain and ready to buckle down and finish our summer writing projects, as Thers noted. And yet I find myself reflecting on the same worries I had before my bemusing week in Louisville (note to self: if you ever think it's a good idea to read 1100 essays on the same topic again, please seek professional help. kthnxbai.): what will be the role of populism in the campaign, and how will that populism be defined?

We're all panicking about the economy these days: from gas prices to food prices (which stand, in the wake of the midwest flooding, to push even higher) to loss of equity in our homes to a fucking insane presidential candidate whose campaign slogan, as Thers has noted, is "Everybody Dies!"  but also seems to have adopted a new mantra: "What Economic Problems?" Personally, I think we should all solve our economic problems by marrying pill-popping beer heiresses and calling them trollops and cunts in public: though I admit, the pool of people willing to share their bank accounts in exchange for such behavior may not be quite enough to bail out the whole country. Plus, some people are already married. But since we've essentially decriminalized polygamy, I don't think that will be much of a problem.

Anyway, back to the economy. In my College Writing class, I do a unit on the economy because I've found that the students I get--the traditional ones, anyway, who were generally born during Bush 1 at this point--have no tools whatsoever to dig apart the current economic ideology, even as they face it down and consider its effects in their own lives. I try to explain to them The Great Compression and what it meant in terms of the development of American civil society, and they're routinely blown away by the things  their parents had which they never knew.  (e.g. municipal garbage collection, which now seems weird and archaic, like one of those Little House stories about people making their own bullets). I'm no economist--just ask my credit union, who mourn my lack of numerical skills even as they rack up huge fees from my cluelessness--which is why I trust grownups like Krugman and Atrios to let me know how all this works. But I know what I see, and it's pretty grim.

And my students aren't stupid. They know what they see, too, but it has just never occurred to them to see it in any way other than a Norquistian Wet Dream. Taxes are bad, regulations are bad, globalization is good, corporate America has your best interests at heart. It's an essentially adolescent worldview, embraced by those who get to Ron Paul by way of Ayn Rand and haven't really figured out that they're supposed to outgrow that kind of selfishness at a certain point. (I'm totally rooting for a Ron Paul independent run, BTW. That would give Obama 49 states, rather than the 47 I've been confidently predicting. Go, Ron!) College students think they're Libertarians because they want to get high and make sure they have access to birth control. Oh, and they don't want to die in stupid wars. But they haven't thought much past that.

And so I try to reframe the economics debate via this concept I've been working on, and was delighted to see in the Washington Post this morning: taxes are the entrance fee into civil society.  And you can't cut taxes too far without having that civil society break down.

Let's imagine an alternate universe. The U.S. government is running a large and growing deficit. Not far down the road it faces huge increases in Social Security and Medicare costs. Naturally, the candidates for president want to remedy this by raising revenue. They don't want us to bequeath bigger deficits to our children or stake our future on foreigners' willingness to keep lending us money.

But have you heard this speech? "My fellow Americans, I have a plan to raise taxes so that the budget will be closer to balance and future Americans won't have to worry about their retirement security." Neither have I.

Somebody, though, should be giving it.

It's Roger Lowenstein, the "Exuberance Is Rational!" guy, and I think that's pretty compelling evidence in itself that we are poised at the edge of a sea change in economic policy and indeed, in the basic sense of what it means to be American. Lowenstein offers five points of argument, as follows:

1. End preferential treatment for private equity fund managers. (They pay 15%? Jesus fuck!)

2. Raise the cap on the payroll tax.

3. Reinstate a meaningful inheritance tax.

4. End unfair deductions.

5. (Best for last): Repeal the Bush cuts in income and capital gains taxes.

Is this what the New Populism is going to look like? If so, I guess it's a start. The fact is, taxes pay for things we need, like, oh, I dunno, food inspections. Personally, I'm swearing off tomatoes until my own are ripe--and they're still just little guys.

It's a sane and comprehensible response to be skeptical of taxation when your government allows shit like this to slide. As in noted wanker P.J. O'Rourke's famous aphorism, "Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work, and then they get elected and prove it."  But Dems generally believe that government can do good, even though, in the same line, O'Rourke defines this as saying that "government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn." Well, I'm not aware of the party's position on lawncare, but progressive taxation and sane education policy would be objectively good for most people, in my opinion. And good childhood nutrition does tend to make people taller, so there's that. And that's worth some taxes, I think.

People are scared, and not without reason. But I think we can do something about it.

 

Comments

[DrDick]

I have a modest proposal for reforming our tax system. First, treat all income the same (including inheritances and capital gains). Second, eliminate the cap on payroll taxes entirely. Third, tax foreign income (with deductions for foreign taxes paid) for all residents of the US and eliminate offshore tax havens by making them felony tax evasion. Fourth, triple the corporate tax rates and eliminate all exemptions. Finally raise the top nominal tax rate (on say income over $250K) to 50%. Won't ever happen, but it would immediately solve our budget problems and flatten the income distribution.

[julia]

His number one proposal is one of the things that make me hope that he caves and picks Romney. I'd really enjoy a few months of pointing out that the tens of thousands of people Mittens laid off on his way to that $200+ million were paying multiple times more taxes on their income than he was.

[eRobin]

I think that the brand of populism you suggest is a good way to govern but not to get elected. Too many people believe that they will be rich one day to agree that increasing taxes on the rich is a sound economic idea. Plus, to be fair, people have hated taxes forever and ever and then for two weeks before that.

To get elected, you need to say that you'll create jobs. You need to communicate a protectionist message. And you need to have people like you. I have believed for a long time that energy is the magic policy area that will answer all three requirements. (switch out "like" and put in "inspire the living hell out of") If Obama pushes the right energy policy* I think he'll have the best chance at winning.

*That's a possible problem for him since he's on board with Cheney's disaster. But most people don't know or care about that so it's only a tiny problem. The real problem is ours if he actually believes in Cheney's energy plan. Gotta wait and see.

[lawsipanther]

Cheers to everything you said here, Molly, but I gotta ask:

Municipal GARBAGE COLLECTION seems weird and archaic? They still pick up the garbage where my parents live in the middle of nowhere. Is Liberal Mountain even further in the middle of nowhere?

I get my garbage picked up once a week, and I've never lived anywhere that it wasn't.

[Jake T. Snake]

No man is an island...

[dave™©]

Municipal GARBAGE COLLECTION seems weird and archaic? They still pick up the garbage where my parents live in the middle of nowhere.

I think in most places, the garbage services have been "privatized". The garbage collectors are not city employees, but employees of a company the city contracts with.

[res ipsa loquitur]

The mortgage interest deduction is one of those holy grails that I found myself defending to within an inch of its (and my) life until I read a book about income inequality a few years ago. Lowenstein is right -- why should we subsidize (my) ownership and not renting? One argument is that the deduction encourages community stability, but aren't we also interested in a mobile workforce?

That's a valuable unit you're doing.

[Molly Ivors]

Our garbage is collected by a private company we pay quarterly. If we have extra cans, we can buy stickers for the bags.

Our local municipality still collects garbage, but only in "city bags"--that is, bags that cost about 2 bucks for a large one. That's how they levy the tax.

[Kaleberg]

One problem is that students all use debit cards. If they actually saw paper money, they'd drop this "It's your money" nonsense in a flash. Maybe you should try showing them a dollar bill. It's got a government employee on the front, and its plastered with alphabet soup agencies and bureaucrats. If it were their money, it would have THEIR picture on it, and THEIR name on it.

Of course, issuing money, running a court system, an army, a police system, industrial policy and all that takes money, so the government charges taxes. If you don't want to pay taxes, don't use money. Don't bother the police when someone comes to murder you. Don't use roads or sidewalks. Don't register your title at a government bureaucracy when you buy a house. And most important of all, STOP WHINING.