Most here have seen the downsides of forced agreement and intolerance of other points of view on other sides, and the resulting arguments here. While BT is better in general, we do still tend to cut arguments short on many issues.
So rather than actually come up with content, I’ve decided to post some positions and invite people to argue with me. I won’t rate anything posted in this thread, though others are, of course, still welcome to.
Rights – Equal rights are the single most important thing in a Democracy. From this comes pretty much everything else. This includes access to education, marriage, taxation, contract/business rights, and medical procedures including, yes, abortion. While you can regulate these things – especially medical procedures – to some degree, banning them outright or raising the bar unreasonably high is fundamentally unhealthy for Democracy. Any candidate that supports anything in this category is inherently unsuited to govern. While this does reduce the scope of debate, it also (I feel) focuses it on more useful things.
The role of government – Creation and protection of infrastructure and the commons. This includes environmental protection, electrical/water/information distribution, and ensuring that copyrighted works pass promptly into the Public Domain. I think there’s more room for honest debate here, but I’d still be wary about supporting any candidate that pushes the role of government much larger or smaller than this.
Taxation – I’m in favour of a relatively high flat tax on all income. While this is harder on the poor, it is substantially simpler to enforce. This should, ideally, free up more resources to be used to help the poor stop being poor.
Wealth distribution – Economic policies should be tuned to ensure that the spread of wealth (distance between richest and poorest) is as small as possible. Towards this end, I am extremely opposed to most forms of “corporate welfare”.
War – Inherently bad. There is no such thing as a good war. Wars may be justified, in the interests of protecting oneself or others from inherently hostile philosophies or nations, but diplomacy is both more efficient and produces better results.
Censorship – Inherently bad. The costs of censorship regimes will always be higher than regimes that attempt to reduce the costs of and barriers to information distribution. These regimes will, thus, always fall fairly quickly, especially when in competition against a non-censorship regime. Information is one of the most inherently valuable goods.
Candidates and politics – It’s better to oppose all candidates than support one that opposes your beliefs. Supporting one that opposes your beliefs moves the public dialogue away from those beliefs; opposing all candidates moves it towards them.
Pragmatism and politics – Voting for a candidate that you think will win is inherently harmful to the democratic process. The process assumes that everyone will vote for the candidate that best represents their beliefs. Voting for a candidate that you think will win is an attempt to game the system by predicting what candidate others think will best represent their beliefs. With a sufficient number of such voters, the best thing a candidate can do is to take as few positions as possible and instead focus his energy on persuading voters that people will vote for him; this severely curtails or eliminates public debate.
Got something else you want to argue about? Start a thread under this diary!
I would advise that they file all these important topics away for discussion and focus first on the basics:
Cease aggression and disarm
Consider abandoning the new program of mass slaughter of their own citizens
Climb out of the pit of feudalism
However, in the interest of full disclosure, I would be obliged to confess that I have an agenda, specifically the continuation of human life on earth.
“Taxation – I’m in favour of a relatively high flat tax on all income. While this is harder on the poor, it is substantially simpler to enforce. This should, ideally, free up more resources to be used to help the poor stop being poor.”
OK, I’ll take that one.
Any flat tax is inherently regressive. The only thing attractive about it is the promise of simplicity. Most flat tax proposals allow an exemption for individuals falling below some income threshold, which inevitably requires calculation of income. Poof, there goes the simplicity, which is the only real argument for it in the first place.
And in order to collect enough revenue at a reasonable rate, any tax must inevitably fall on most of the middle class. So the flat tax would hit hardest on the lower middle class. I think not many here would see that as a good thing.
For a much better discussion of the flat tax, check out these two diaries at EuroTrib:
What is a “flat tax rate”?
Flat tax, schmlat tax
Other than that, I pretty much agree with you. But don’t let that get you down.
I’m with you a flat tax is very regressive especially on income. Now, if you want to exempt everyone that makes below a certain amount (say $20K/yr or so), it might be more doable. Most flat taxers want to move away from income tax and charge more sales tax, which is EXTREMELY regressive in targeting the poor.
I think we could solve a lot of financial problems by making the corporations pay their fair damn share. Cut their off-shore tax haven scams off and their accounting tricks which show that they didn’t “profit” nearly as much as they actually did.
In this case, I think it works best as a tax on all income, or all income beyond a certain amount. Definitely not a sales tax. Those simply don’t work very well for so many reasons.
So what do you suggest instead of a flat tax? It seems pretty obvious that the current American system just isn’t working. Adding more and more rules to try and put the tax burden in the right place just drops it on those that can’t afford to dodge the rules – IE, the poor. Canada’s isn’t quite as extreme (I can do my taxes easily, and I’ve got really bizarre ones, because a lot of my (paltry) income comes from government research funding and investments) but it’s still a little too convoluted for its own good, especially when it comes to calculating dividends from investments.
(Actually, I’ll admit it. I threw that one in because I was afraid things weren’t going to be contentious enough, and tax is always a good thing to argue about. Because a government that doesn’t have money can’t spend money.)
How about this for a “flat” tax: Tax 40% (yeah, you heard me!!) of all income (ALL income!) after your first $50,000 for the year. Okay, maybe 35%. That has zero impact on the poor, small impact on the middle class, and big impact on the rich, and it should mean our government ends up with more money incoming than they do now (unless you buy into the whole “high taxation means people won’t bother trying to earn money since they know it’ll be taxed” thing…), at least in my mind which has done no math on the topic. What’s the obvious gaping hole I’m missing in this (besides the fact that the rich are in charge of our government)?
Oh, and this tax is applied to corporations in exactly the same way, as though they were people. It’s all right off the top, doesn’t care how you use the money you get to keep, as long as the gov’t gets its chunk. Which does mean something like double taxation on corporate owners, since they get paid out of those profits. But hey, if the corporation is a person, then it’s making money and paying you, both ‘people’ deserve to be taxed on their income, right? If the corporation was a smart person, it wouldn’t pay you so damn much.
Oh, and no sales tax. Those just make prices harder to figure.
There is one problem with corporate taxes: are you taxing net income, or are you taxing profits? Economically, taxing net income is problematic, because in a competitive market, most corporations will wind up with as little profit as possible. Increased costs (such as taxes) will simply be passed along to households. But taxing profits leaves you open to accounting manipulation.
Other than that, you seem to have hit the core of what I’d like to see.
I say income. Once you mention the word “profit”, you octuple the size of the tax code, because you have to define what expenditures count, how it’s tabulated, and so on. As you said, they’ll get around it.
And the thing is, that’s how taxes work on people: we get taxed on our income. We can deduct some things, but we can’t deduct every cent we spend, we don’t just get taxed on how much we save. Similarly, a corporation shouldn’t get to deduct everything it spends.
Yes, I’m sure they’ll be happy to pass costs along, but you know, that’s business for you. I guess that’s how they manage to squeeze this tax down onto the poor after all!
Or maybe we shouldn’t tax businesses at all… if the taxation on people is really and truly airtight, covering every bit of income they get, then who cares if corporations build up quadrillions of dollars? Nobody can collect it without paying up! I think there is an even bigger hole in that than in my original plan, but I’m tired. And still avoiding work…
Well, the hole is personal corporations that exist simply to move money around for their owners, so the money never actually passes into the owner’s hands. It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it’s workable with the modern corporate/financial structure.
Of course, if you can find a way to fix that, you’ll fix a lot of other problems too. But it’s a tough problem, one that will probably be a topic of much debate if progressives ever manage to regain control of the government.
See, and this I could go for in my little dream universe, though I might still make two levels rather than a flat tax — one at 35% for income between 50,000 and 200,000, one at 50% or even more for everything higher.
As for the corporate thing, if you were to tax profits rather than net income, I could good things come out of it: encouragement to reinvest profit rather than hand it to the CEO or whatever, as it will be taxable income, for example.
But this is all conjecture, and I’m sure I’ve got some flaws in there, too.
The major argument against the income tax in its current form is its complexity. It is inevitably subject to gaming. Everybody games the system. And inevitably, those with more income and more diverse sources of income have more opportunities to benefit from gaming the system. I don’t see any way around that.
The major argument for the flat tax is that it purports to eliminate the complexity and hence the opportunities for gaming. I think in practice a flat tax would only modify the gaming behavior, not eliminate it. In short, I don’t think the flat tax has any practical advantage over the graduated income tax in its current form.
The problem is not the income tax. The problem is how income is defined and calculated. What started as a quite simple idea has become a bloated, convoluted, bureaucratic nightmare over the course of nearly a century of legislative meddling and corporate gaming. You are absolutely right that the current American system isn’t working, or at least isn’t working as it is intended. But I think that is a consequence of the meddling and the gaming, not the underlying principle.
Rather than scrapping the income tax in favor of some other, less progressive, tax I would redefine the graduated, progressive income tax more or less in its current form but without the successive layers of exemptions, deductions, credits, etc. I would define what is income as unambiguously as possible. I would define a tax rate beginning with zero percent at the poverty line and increasing linearly with income. The tax rate would be determined entirely by the origin and the slope of the line. No brackets, no exemptions, no credits, no nothing.
I would tax corporate income in exactly the same way, perhaps even including some minimum income level taxed at zero percent to encourage startups. I would require that corporations calculate their income for tax purposes in exactly the same way they calculate income reported to their shareholders.
I’m sure clever individuals could find ways to game such a system, but I think it would be harder for them to conceal the effects.
(I love the idea behind this diary.)
Role of government. . .I don’t know if I’m arguing or if I just didn’t catch this point between your lines, but the older I get the more I believe in the gov. as a source of protection for the little guys against the big guys. It’s paradoxical that something so big should be expected to help people so small, but in a corporate world, we individuals cannot possibly afford to take on the big crooks or defend ourselves against them without some help from our gov., whether that be in providing good and sufficient public defenders, or freedom of access to information, or etc. When the government moves forcefully us too, as it has in this administration, we are up Citizen Creek without a paddle. When an administration like this one removes right after right, both overtly and stealthily, it is terribly hard, if not impossible, for individual citizens ever to get them back again.
should be “moves forcefully against us,”
What I’m thinking there is that the primary purpose of government is providing people with the tools they need to make something of themselves. I meet a lot of people who are quite obviously intelligent but stuck in dead-end jobs simply because they couldn’t afford a college education, or can’t afford to pick up enough of the right computer skills, or whatever. And then you’ve got the people who have the education and skills, but live somewhere without decent Internet access. So they can’t afford to move, but they also don’t have the bandwidth they’d need to telecommute.
Helping to level the playing field as it were.
I think you might have a better way of phrasing it. Maintaining the commons is part of evening the playing field. But so’s defending individual rights, providing good public defenders, and ensuring that the legal environment doesn’t swing too far towards the big guns. (Which it can do without necessarily curtailing rights)
I don’t have the energy to agree or disagree with you right now. I have had just one of those weeks workwise. Today’s debates were enough for one day. I did want to thank you for this opportunity to discuss important topics to all of us. Will try to catch up on this thread tomorrow.
Ok. While just about everything you said I agree with I most vehemently and absolutely disagree with the flat tax and for the very reason you stated…it screws the poor once again. You mentioned that ‘ideally’ this would help them in the long run but sometimes that kind of ‘idea’ never pans out especially when it comes to the poor. That plan is simply a version of the trickle down theory.
Just because it ‘might’ be more simple is no reason to as I said once again screw over the poor. If anything a tax plan should first consider the poor with everything else following. And people wonder why so many poor people opt out of following or being interested in politics. It’s because we’re low person on the totem pole, well actually we’re not even on the totem pole.
If someone can’t come up with a better tax plan in this country then it would seem that the brain drain in this country is complete.
Okay, so what would make a better tax plan? The IRS doesn’t seem to be working so well. I’ve never had to deal with the American tax code personally, but I don’t know any American that likes it. Canadian tax is still progressive, but is substantially similar… Until you get into a) exceptions or b) low-income deductions. Which seems to kind of defeat the purpose, doesn’t it?
Truthfully I have no idea and anything to do with numbers is usually beyond me.
I do know one thing that absolutely drives me crazy and that is the fact that people who work in restaurants(and other places that tip) have to claim tip money as taxable income and I find that absolutely atrocious and should be eliminated completely. I find it more and more obscene every year when I read how corporations have offshore tax shelters, pay such low taxes compared to 15 years ago yet poor people have to pay taxes on their goddam tips. Tipping also then gives some employers the excuse of paying them even less than minimum wage because they get ‘tips'(like a woman I knew getting a little over 2 dollars an hour working as a waitress)
My only idea would be for someone with the knowledge to probably come up with some sort of progressive tax fair to everyone.
Yes, those are all problems, and ideally things that would be fix-able with a simpler tax code.
Hm. Another idea to consider… Take a relatively high, flat tax – say, 20 to 25 percent of all income, excluding a few categories like tips, interest, etc. Then put a significant fraction of this money towards real aid programs for the poor and middle-class, with carefully-crafted reduction of benefits as your situation improves. This would include things like higher education funding, business start-up/job-finding assistance, relocation funding (to help people move around and find good jobs), and, of course, a real state medical program.
Sounds like a good start for a plan although not for poor people..and education is always the key..always, always, always. Not just monetary advancement but education is the key to people even realizing there are opportunities, ideas, culture out there. Being poor is a dead end street for the person or family involved but also contributes to the poorness of the country by ignoring or denying the great potential of that person or family.
Then again the whole education system here has deteriorated and needs some massive infusion of money for smaller class sizes, more schools, more teachers, more everything and not some phony test like the no child left behind fiasco.
Definitely on education. No disagreement from me. Though I think the way we educate needs to be reconsidered too.
I’m curious as to why you think the plan isn’t a good start for poor people? I think having an infrastructure that helps pull them out of poverty should be the primary goal. The question is how that can be done.
Well the education system I’d say needs to be revamped also, you’re right.
As for a plan, unless I missed something you’re saying barring some exemptions like tips, etc that this flat tax would also apply to poor people? That to me is wrong especially at that percentage.
I also think if someone is helping out another member of the family with less money…say by paying for a prescription every month to the tune of 720 dollars a year that somehow that family member should be able to claim it as charity or something.(I’m speaking from my own experience here with my sister spending this much on one perscription I need not covered by medi-cal)
Well, the idea is that they get taxed at the same rate as everyone else, but get more back from the “system” through a wide variety of aid programs designed to provide or help provide housing, food, jobs, education, transportation, and medication. So their net tax is less, but we defer the complexity until the point in the system where it puts the money to use. (Which is, theoretically, easier to regulate, as you don’t have to ensure that millions of people are complying with a Byzantine tax code.)
theoretically, I see where you’re coming from, but it would honestly be almost impossible to implement something like that without large numbers of people falling through the cracks, I suspect, or at least not without an incredibly massive restructuring. Not to mention the problems in timing… I live paycheck to paycheck, and if you take more out of my income, I cannot eat or pay my bills while I sit around waiting for you to get around to the redistribution. I have this problem with my tax refund every year.
Then again, if you took out half my paycheck but paid my rent, I’d come out a little better off (this is kind of hypothetical, as I’m currently unemployed and going to school, please note). So I do see where you’re coming from.
If you combined this with some kind of real living wage, maybe. I’d still favor progressive taxation, though, for the simple reason that it’s intrinsicly more fair to me.
Disagreement is so last century. Why would I bother disagreeing with you when I could just attack you, thereby clearly invalidating any and all points you might try to make regardless of how valid they might seem, had they not been spewn (spewed?) forth by one such as you?
Ha. Civil discourse. As if.
</snark>
Okay. Do I have to actually rad your diary to disagree with you or can I just disagree on general principle?
“read”
General principle’s fine. It seems to work well enough here in Canada.
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Definition is never an issue, its implementation on a daily basis is the challenge.
Bill of Rights
EU Declaration on Human Rights
UN Founding Principles
Four Freedoms – FDR
This leads inevitably to political activities and priorities. A platform stating policy which will unite a group of voters. The election campagne is a separate chapter, here is the moment to do all for a good result, awaken and touch people who generally don’t vote – almost a majority of Americans. For regime change, you need the ideals and activity of youth.
A majority party, like the Democrats, cannot permit itself to become a single issue party and should always be active with their minority supporting groups.
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I’d say that definition most certainly is an issue. A lot of people seem to object to the idea of equal rights, especially for ethnic minorities, women, and gays. As attractive as it might be to exclude these individuals from politics and polite society, it’s not really feasible, so arguments must be crafted as to why global, equal rights are desirable and necessary, even if they allow things that you are squeamish about. (IE, abortion, gay marriage, etc)
Then there’s the problem of how to articulate and protect those rights. The American constitution, for example, takes the approach of outlining what the government can do, while most do the opposite – outlining what it can’t. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The American one, for example, seems easier to ignore, while the “traditional” model focuses on eliminating the primary abuses.
I’d agree about the single issue, but I think it’s support needs to be in the form of an overarching philosophy that cannot be compromised on.
This week I realized that I forgot a lesson that I thought I had learned. Molly Ivins says, “In the primaries, vote with your heart and in the general election vote with your head.”
We had a primary election for mayor Tuesday here in St. Paul. There were really only three candidates. The first is a DINO incumbent mayor who endorsed Bush for president and is bought and paid for by the Chamber of Commerce. The second is the endorsed Democrat who has not been a real strong voice for progressive politics. The third was the Green Party candidate – and a woman! I voted for the endorsed Democrat because I was worried about a general election between the DINO and the Green Party candidate where I assumed the DINO would win. Well, I was wrong!! The endorsed Democrat won almost twice the votes as anyone else and the Green Party candidate ALMOST beat out the DINO!! So much for pragmatism!! If more of us had gone with our hearts, we might be having a general election between a real Democrat and a Green!
Wow, that’s an awesome story. Maybe you could do a diary on the election with more details about the candidates, campaigning, etc?
Thanks, I’d love to do a diary, but I have a long and busy day at work today. I just get so tired of pragmatism and positioning sometimes. My heart aches for the possibility of really pulling out the stops and being able to support someone with passion (Rest in Peace our own dear Paul Wellstone!) And here I had my chance this week, and what did I do – I got scared and went with what I thought was pragmatic. Bummer!!
Do it! Do it!
Oh, to live in a place where the elections are between a Dem and a Green!
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between the lesser of two goods!
wow.
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It’s a bit unclear from your points how healthcare fits in here. The right to healthcare would probably put it under the purview of the role of government, since it is an inherently long-term and fundamental issue that free-market approaches are grossly inefficient in addressing, like water, environmental protection, and arguably education. From your perspective as a Canadian, how would you categorize universal health care?
Also, the problem with the IRS is not the progressive categories, but the exceptions and loopholes. Enforcement is only a problem when the system is deliberately set up to be unenforceable. Complexity definitely does make it harder on the little guy, who will not be able to take advantage of the same tricks that the wealthy do. I agreee that the tax system needs an overhaul, but the trick is finding the political will to make changes that negatively impact the wealthy.
I’d definitely categorize universal health care as a fundamental piece of infrastructure, and a matter of “commons maintenance”. I’m not sure why, though. From a purely practical perspective, keeping everyone as healthy as possible is more efficient. But do people have a right to stay healthy, or a right to health care? I suppose it kind of comes from the right to control your body, which could be another reason why conservatives are so opposed to it. You have a right to maintain your body in whatever condition you choose, to the limits imposed by nature and science, perhaps?
As for the IRS, I think the exceptions are generally considered to be a necessary part of the progressive categories, as they’re used to more precisely fit people into the right category. Unfortunately, this generates loopholes and excessive paperwork. You’re right that a drastically simplified tax code could still be progressive, but I think a better aim would be to make it “flatter” and, instead, focus on using the money to help raise up the poor and maintain the middle-class. Right now, the American system appears to place the majority of the tax burden on the poor and middle-class and give the majority of the benefits to the rich.
I can’t find much to disagree with, so I guess we can’t do that one.
This:
Is an attitude that Really gets me irritated.
Every election cycle my friends, acquaintances and co-workers would almost all be saying something like: “I voted for Joe Blow because I knew Mary Doe didn’t have a chance in hell of winning.”
We are talking numbers of people here. So if all those numbers would have voted for Mary, as I did, she just might very well have won. I don’t understand the attitude and I guess I never will. Never vote for someone you aren’t pretty sure will win? Makes no sense to me. It does not follow for me that your vote is any more “wasted” voting for Mary than it is voting for Joe, whom you do not feel represents what you believe in and want from government.
That would be exactly my stance. In fact, I think such “strategic” voting is ultimately very harmful, both for the health of the democracy as a whole and for one’s beliefs in particular. It seems to push things towards where the American system is now – elections that are basically content-free popularity contests, and a political environment full of opportunists and right-wing lunatics.