Michael Barone looks on at our young liberal activist counterparts and comes away curious:
I have long been puzzled by the enthusiasm with which many young liberal bloggers cheer on proposals to raise tax rates on high earners. I can understand why they might favor them, but not why they seem to invest so much psychic energy in the issue.
Some of this may just be team ball: You cheer when your side puts up numbers on the scoreboard. So Democratic cheerleaders are rah-rahing what they insist on calling repeal of the Bush tax cuts (which have been in effect now longer than the Clinton tax increases they rolled back).
But the liberal bloggers cannot be entirely ignorant of the knowledge that we have a pretty progressive income tax already. In 2009 the top 1 percent of earners reported 17 percent of adjusted gross income and paid 37 percent of total income tax revenues.
By some measures the American tax system, including the payroll tax and state and local taxes, is more progressive — in the sense of extracting disproportionate shares of revenue from high earners — than most European tax regimes, which rely heaving on value-added taxes.
Plus, as liberal economist Lane Kenworthy points out, you don’t get much income redistribution from higher tax rates.
You get more from transfer payments. But, as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has documented, federal transfers are getting less progressive. Social Security and Medicare increasingly transfer money from young low earners to old people with relatively high incomes and considerable accumulated wealth.
One argument for higher rates is that increased revenues will reduce the federal budget deficit. But do liberal bloggers really care all that much about budget deficits? These same people often rue the fact that the Obama Democrats didn’t plow an additional $1 trillion into their stimulus package.
I think the answer to the puzzle can be found in a remark Barack Obama made during the 2008 fall campaign, a remark that seemed to go mostly unnoticed.
ABC’s Charlie Gibson asked candidate Obama if he would raise capital gains taxes even if, as in the past, that brought in less revenue to the federal government.
Yes, said Obama. “I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
Ponder that answer for a moment. A candidate for president — president now — said he wants to take more money from people who earned it even though doing so would produce less money for the government.
The philosophy that has to be behind that answer is also behind the Obama administration budgets that have proposed capping the charitable deduction for high earners. The clearly intended result would be a massive transfer of money from the voluntary sector of society into government.
Alexis de Tocqueville in the 1830s identified the voluntary sector as a unique feature of American democracy, one that gave it strength and character. He compared it positively with his own France, where centralized government stifled initiative and innovation.
Higher tax rates on high earners, even if they produce less revenue, are an attempt to centralize power in government and to limit the autonomy and countervailing power of individuals in the voluntary sector.
Which is why the liberal bloggers cheer them on. And why they eagerly join the Obama White House in demonizing the Koch brothers, who donate large sums to conservative causes. (Disclosure: I have spoken at two Koch conferences and was reimbursed for travel expenses.)
The Obama Democrats don’t want their funders like George Soros getting competition from the likes of Charles and David Koch.
Similarly, the prospect of Republicans spending as much money as Democrats (unlike 2004 and 2008, when Democrats spent more) led Obama to declare inoperative his denunciations of superPACs and to create his own, with Cabinet members authorized to raise money for it.
This election is a contest between a Democrat who wants to make this country more like Tocqueville’s France and Republicans who want to keep it more like Tocqueville’s America. The liberal bloggers are rooting for France.
Yes, Michael. They are rooting for a European socialist tyranny, provided they get to run the thing.
But honestly, is this just now dawning on you?
Here, let me help you out even more, then: not only is it the Democrats who want to make the central government more like the Mafia — where the beaks of the powerful are whetted, funds are then parceled out, allies are taken care of and enemies are punished, and the remaining trickle down makes it to the neighborhoods whose denizens are promised safety, in the way of entitlements, in exchange for their loyalty to the voting bloc — but it is the establishment Republicans, as well, the only real difference being that the Republicans believe they can achieve the same technocratic controls over the throbbing masses without raising the tax burden, and without cutting the military significantly.
So you’re wrong about the difference between Democrats and Republicans. The difference you describe is between the ruling elite and the classical liberal / legal conservative / constitutionalists who continue to fight the status quo.
And frankly, they’ve received no real help from people like you, who continue to think of politics more as “team ball,” where “you cheer when your side puts up numbers on the scoreboard.”
The difference is, the progressives embrace such a thing, while many Republicans continue to believe that voting for “electable” candidates is a remedy to our country’s problems rather than a Band-Aid used to cover the infection.
A good deal of it is simple ignorane, it would seem:
http://thehill.com/polls/212643-hill-poll-likely-voters-prefer-lower-tax-rates-for-individuals-business
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Covering an infection is bad.
The only way I see to stop the gravy train is tie the governments budget to a balance budget amendment, as a percentage of GDP. If they know the only way to get more money is to increase GDP, then the GDP, and the economy, will grow.
I suggest a BBA that includes a 10% reduction on compensation for every federal employee(including elected officials) for every percentage point spent over 18% of the previous years actual GDP. If they don’t submit a budget, they get NO compensation til they do.
It didn’t go unnoticed Mr. Barone, outside of Rush Limbaugh, it was actively ignored. Where the hell were you sir?
Oh. One more thing. That philosophy, it has a name.
And it ain’t the pragmatism of a good man.
Jesus H. Christ. We deserve to lose.
Fairness is code for having the government in control of more of the economy. Dems know that lack of funds will never stop them from spending as much as they want, (see Obama-Pelosi-Reid). Taxes are for power enhancement, not revenue.
And this.
Who knew the Fourth Estate were communists?
I know. Trick question.
…that for goeffb.
I mean, it is time to trot out the C word, isn’t it? Not sure what else to call it, in this, the race to catch up to the lie already halfway around the world.
“Marxism” covers all the bases I think.
May I submit a work order for the blockquote format (notes and articles)?
Can we get a space between paragraphs? I’ve tried adding P and BR tags but to no avail.
One work around for now dicentra: double space and type a single
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period
#content blockquote {
margin:10px 0px 30px 0px;
padding:0px 0px 0px 16px;
background:url(images/blockquote-border.jpg) 0 0 repeat-y;
font-family:’Droid Serif’, Times, serif;
line-height:21px;
font-style:italic;
}
#content blockquote p {
padding:0 !important;
}
#content blockquote p cite {
padding:5px 0px 0px 0px;
font-size:12px;
font-weight:bold;
}
Maybe it’s the bolded stuff that is preventing paragraph breaks? Maybe delete it from https://proteinwisdom.com/wp-content/themes/ari/style.css?
Yes, said Obama. “I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
Ponder that answer for a moment.
Shewt, hoss, I recognized exactly what that meant—right down to the tyrannical impulses—the instant he said that, no pondering required.
And so did everyone on this blog. And half the dextrosphere.
Welcome to our world.
They like higher taxes because they don’t expect to ever pay them. They know they are essentially unemployable at levels that will subject them to higher taxation, or, like so many in DC, they expect to be able to blow them off…
Nothing like being so far down around track you’re lapping the field. Are guys like Barone ever going to catch up?
Some more tremendous outsider scholarship, via Ace & comradearthur.
FTFY. Until we can come up with a real definition of GDP and write the definition and the formula into that BBA, the liar class will piss on us and tell us it’s raining.
I think you are being unduly harsh to Mr. Barone. He has been on the right side of these issues for a long time dating back to at least when I was reading him on US News and World Report back when that publication was still worth reading. In all seriousness, why do you imply he has just figured this out? Especially when he starts with, “I have long been puzzled….”?
Hey, the quote format looks much better, both in Jeff’s post and in Bmoe’s comment, but it’s still mucked up in Ernst’s comment. He must have angered the CSS gods somehow.
Because I’m responding to this bit, where he seems to reach the column’s reasoned conclusion: “This election is a contest between a Democrat who wants to make this country more like Tocqueville’s France and Republicans who want to keep it more like Tocqueville’s America. The liberal bloggers are rooting for France.”
As if this is some new revelation.
And given that several weeks back he wrote this, well. That’s a gauntlet being dropped. By a guy who is probably comfortable with the whole custom of dropping gauntlets.
Michael wants patience and prudence. In the face of an active move to deconstruct the American revolution and turn it into the French revolution.
I, too, have long liked Barone. But like many others he simply doesn’t see the urgency many of us see — and have been writing about for years now. And by the time he catches up, I fear he’ll be too late to the party. Like many others who’ve spent their last several decades combing through the weeds of political minutia and thus not being able to see the forest for the trees.
Their life redefines insular. I know, I’m a reporter and have seen it up close.
It’s easy when you earn $75k, tops, and live with a few others in a funky Adams Morgan 4 bedroom. You hit the parties and receptions 3-4 nights a week where liquor flows in torrents and the Hors Doeuvres are heavier than a wedding.
There’s girls aplenty and they are not shy; failing to hook up simply means you have a cold or something. People take you seriously. A lot more so than in college, anyhow. The coolest thing? No one tells you that you preach to a choir.
And then they grow up…a little. Crappy, union-run DC isn’t so cool anymore. The girl who you were living with wants a house and to get knocked up. DC’s schools suck, the crime is heavy and all that shit about the complexities of urban life? It means jack since you’re favorite bartender got knifed and your mountain bike stolen. The “up serioused” beard and ironic glasses are gone; so are the flannel shirt and blazer look.
The taxes that you railed about are a little more complicated. You’re earning more but keeping less and where you see it going–DC’s third world government; another government boondoggle on Constitution Avenue–pisses you off, though you don’t write about that lest you seem like the once interesting Mickey Kaus, whose now sort of a Marty Peretz lite on the dick-bag scale.
None of this makes it into print, but you talk and you notice that the girl from The New Republic married a guy from Freddie Mac and has her kid in a day school at a Lutheran church and the guy who you knew from the American Prospect put together that website and is taking sponsor ship from the Oil Exploration lobby.
Bill Clinton doesn’t seem like a stooge anymore and your brother, the lawyer for the Private equity shop in Silver Springs, does have a sweet place on the Severn near Annapolis…..
Whereabouts in Madam’s Organ?
heh
But what happens next Roddy? Doesn’t that induce some cognitive dissonance that eventually leads to spitting the bit?
Gonna go off topic here but I have question. A real question, not a rhetorical one.
To what degree do we lay this state of affairs at Santorum’s feet? Romney’s had every advantage but it seems to me that Santorum was pretty much our “good enough” guy.
None of use are super psyched about some aspects of his legislative record. I’m not. Nor am I super psyched about some of his campaign rhetoric or tactics.
So, here’s the question, no one really saw Santorum as the conservative choice a year ago. Mainly because he wasn’t. He’s just been pretty good at times, bad at others, and, mainly, not Romney.
What if someone else was in this role? Someone without his legislative history. Someone more likely to tell the unions to shove it up their asses?
I guess I’m wondering if everything is as fucked as it seems at the moment or if it’s not at least 25% Santorum going off the reservation.
His legislative history is actually pretty good. Tough for a Senator, because so much horsetrading happens in bills. So I look at his record vs the rest of his GOP class, and look at the way conservative groups rated him.
And it’s not really unions that are the problem. It’s public sector unions. If private unions want to price themselves out of jobs, that’s on them.
I didn’t look at Santorum a year ago because I was looking at others who are no longer around. But once I started paying attention I could see he had a lot to say.
As for the rest, well, when you’re getting outspent a zillion to one, it’s tough. That he’s done so well — he may end up taking MI re: delegates — is rather astounding, I think. But there are certain conservatives who at this moment probably wish they’d jumped into the race.
I’ve also been pleasantly surprised with Santorum quite often. But, what you alluded to a couple times there. This is going to be presented as the conservative loss in the narrative. Myself, I’m more than willing to see Santorum as a conservative because he is one.
As an exemplar of conservatism though? No. And maybe that makes part of the difference.
(Not to diminish anything else discussed here but if he wasn’t our last best choice I’d have given him plenty of shit by now.)
I think Santorum has evolved nicely. But then, I guess I’ve been listening to him call in to Levin’s show for a couple of years now, and he’s kind of grown on me through behavior and answers in context.
In the crude sense of electoral politics it’s a tough road to finesse hammering public sector unions on the one hand, while simultaneously attempting to woo private sector trade unionists on the other, particularly when the more attentive private sector unionists realize their very survival hinges on the strength of the big money and consequent political purchasing power of the public sector unionists’ favorable back-scratching cycle with the Democrat pols.
I shall pace around, drink a beer, and think on the matter.
Just a bit conflicted at times and I’m not sure why.
Oh, Jeff, you’ll get a kick out of this. Got caught in a reverse gogoplata a couple days ago. First time in about 15 years.
Managed to get injured and everything.
Dominant position. Got caught. Fuck me.
bh, now that I know what a reverse gogoplata is, it hurt just to watch it demonstrated.
Looks to me like the risk of injury is very real, even if you were moving at half speed.
Ouch.
I totally bought the arm bar feint, Blake. Went for the underhook on that side so I could base off it and rotate to transition out and about a quarter second later there was an ankle on my throat.
It was really embarrassing. Really super embarrassing.
Just out of curiosity, bh, what is it about Santorum that’s giving you heartburn, the soccon priggery (allegedly) or “compassionate” conservatism?
The “compassionate” conservatism, Ernst. By that I mean the fiscal compromises.
The super scary socon stuff I secretly cheer on as a Burkean.
Santorum has a likeability quotient deficit.
Somewhere is his past he was a hall monitor.
In my case it’s frustration with the unwillingness of people on our side to call a spade a spade because “you can’t say that“.
As di said, anyone paying close attention at the time knew what Obama meant by that. If you were to go back through Rush Limbaugh’s archives from that period, I bet he hammered that every other day —at least. But, other than Rush, only those of us on the “lunatic fringe” were willing to speak up.
Barone is a great numbers guy. Nobody better at explaining trends that can be quantified. But he’s not an ideas guy.
Look, I’m glad he’s discovered or rediscovered Tocqueville, and I’ll be happy to see him make a hobby horse out of him, if he’s so inclined.
But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s a marxist in the White House who wants to turn my country into just another failed social expirement. Fuck that
And the problem is, nobody among the conservative cognoscenti has the guts to say what we all know out loud.
Except for Limbaugh and a few undeservedly underappreciated bloggers like our host.
It’s not really heartburn though. Don’t want to oversell my thoughts here.
It’s more that this isn’t really a cage match between the squish and the rock-ribbed conservative.* It isn’t. I’d like it if that were the case.
* Romney isn’t a squish, first off. He’s not on our side at all. Maybe he’s a squish to them. And Santorum isn’t a hardcore conservative. He’s a pretty good conservative, that’s it.
BT has a point.
My take on the compassionate conservatism stuff is that Santorum believes that gov’t created the problem, so government is going to have to play a role in solving the problem. But he also understands that gov’t is the problem. So I would characterize his position as one in which we get gov’t out of this viscious cycle (circle? —I never remember the metaphor) and into a positive one where there’s less reliance on government, and thus less need for government programs, and so they shrink away.
A decade ago, other than Reagan conservative, I think I probably would have described myself as a libertarian leaning conservative with social conservative sympathies. Obviously, (since I’ve found myself—unexpectedly I might add— in the role of resident Santorum cheerleader) today I’d describe myself as a social conservative leaner with libertarian tendencies. Part of that is being older (and I hope wiser), burdened with a mortgage and blessed with three children. But the point is, I still recognize the importance of fusionism. I believe Santorum wants to get gov’t on a track where gov’t becomes less central to the lives of the needy, and less intrusive in the lives of the rest of us. Personally, I think that’s a better deal for libertarian minded conservatives than what Mitt Romney is going to have to offer.
The “compassionate” conservatism, Ernst. By that I mean the fiscal compromises.
I have a problem with that, too bh. The ideas that he’s floated about tapering people off of social programs bother me. Cut ’em off cold turkey.
It’s like quitting smoking. It’s that or we turn into Greece.
Couldn’t agree more. Really, I couldn’t.
I suppose my point involves brand protection. Just as I don’t like hearing how George W. Bush was some sort of arch-conservative, I don’t like hearing that Santorum is.
They’re not. Neither of them.
What happens if you cut ’em off cold turkey?
So what’s the definition of an arch-conservative then?
Greece soon.
I don’t mind tapering older people off social security instead of cold turkey. (Which could be a terrible thing. Really, it could.) I just want the pain to fall on Boomers and X-ers alike without involving another generation.
That would be the deal we’d make with each other. Sucks to be us but at least our grand kids/kids are out of this scheme.
Really?
C’mon.
Well, nothing’s as conservative as reality.
Our definitions such as “arch-conservative” are those foisted on everyone by the progressive media figures.
I’m not trying to pick an argument bh.
There’s a natural tension between libertarians and traditional conservatives. And the only person who had a real genius for finessing it was Reagan.
Fine, as AuH2O seems a bit retro, how about an arch-conservative reduces spending from the previous year? Hey, the stimulus was just added to base line spending. Seems like a no brainer, right?
Let’s start there.
Guess what? Santorum won’t.
I guess I missed that bh.
Agree that it’s a no brainer, as well as a sure way to appeal to tea-partiers.
Would he veto such a budget if Congress passed one? Would he spend his political capital fighting to spend more?
On those I don’t think Santorum would but Romney would in a heartbeat.
“Somewhere is his past he was a hallmonitor.”
Hey don’t dis the hall monitors
I think geoff’s right. Santorum’s instincts incline towards the right. Romney? Who the hell knows?
I know we’re in the primaries but I’m not positing a negative against Santorum to make some sort of positive point for Romney.
Romney isn’t on our side at all. He doesn’t enter into my arguments.
I’m saying that no one in these primaries has spent the necessary time making speeches saying that the federal budget has recently exploded by X% and the very first step after repealing Obamacare is to repeal that new increase to baseline budgeting.
If that doesn’t happen, the game is also over. No one is saying that though. Personally, I don’t think that’s even an arch conservative thing to say. That’d just be an adult thing to say.
A strong conservative would say that the budgets before Obama were already terrible.
So, what would an arch conservative say?
I know where you’re coming from bh. I was mostly curious about how we define someone as an arch-conservative.
I’d probably accept Sarah Palin as an exemplar, but that’s because I’m fascinated —indeed awed— by the way she rocks a skirt and high heels.
Does the arch in arch-conservative come from arche? Same root as anarchic, archeology, autarchy, architecture, monarchy and so on? So, old and rule, ancient and command, that sort of thing?
I’d be rather happy with Palin myself, Ernst.
I was using “arch” as extreme or baby-seal-murdering myself, sdferr.
Myself, other person.
It’s a pattern.
I was thinking more along the lines of archbishop. i.e. a higher conservative.
Fucking english language.
The arch of Snidely Whiplash’s eyebrow sort of arch then, or the arching twirl of his mustachioes, we’ll say. A fine fit fellow for punishing the plebes.
And by higher of course I mean superior.
From now on, I suggest we converse only in philosophic German.
It’t the only way to know exactly what it is we all mean at a given time.
The archbishop is just another variant of a ruler or boss of bishops, is my take.
So it is.
Born in Europe in the embrace of throne and altar, conservatism — at war with the liberal “rights of man” bunch of street thugs and their limp-wristed, fussy philosophe brethren.
So maybe the arch-conservative should be some forerunner? Like Richard Hooker, perhaps?
Joseph de Maistre, perhaps?
And on geoff’s cheery thought, I’m off to bed.
An OT:
I find this project [ FrackNation ] interesting and have contributed enough so as to get the dvd when it is completed.
Both de Maistre and Burke have an acknowledged and firm pride of place in the early time of conservatism in its necessary bloom. Wherefrom were their antecedents, though, I wondered? As the reformation presaged that newer movement, the more distinctly political movement of the enlightenment, who were the upright yet resistant theorists of moderation, standing athwart ecclesiastical history shouting stop! back in Luther and Calvin’s day?
I was gone for a bit (neck injuries equal drugs! yay!) but this just cracked me up:
So the longer the words stretch the more understanding is created? I wouldn’t be surprised to find a German word with more letters than one of those amazing Jeff G. sentences.
barone
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/romney-appeal-affluent-suburbs-could-change-map/400536
dreamer
Jeff, Ernst, et al, thanks. I don’t disagree with anything you said but wonder how you hope to help him see the light with an approach that insults and dismisses him because he doesn’t yet have the same sense of urgency. I don’t see him as joining the other side, but why treat someone who should be a natural ally the same as Ann Coulter or David Brooks?
Pointing out errors or deficiencies is certainly warranted, but isn’t the end goal to educate and convince more people? Yes, Obama’s and his minions’ calls for civility were pap and pablum, but we do hold ourselves to a higher standard, do we not?
As to use of philosophic German – Ausgezeichnete Idee!
The mechanical grouping of referants into a word allows it to describe and define itself.
geoffb, the comparison between German and our host’s sentences is apt.
Charles, it’s pointed irony. I doubt Barone reads me, but if he does, he’s also read the many times I’ve praised him.
Charles, sometimes a glass of cold water in the face accomplishes more, in a shorter period of time, than several sessions of conversation over cocktails. We’re at a juncture where even those who would be our allies need to kick it into high gear, catch up on their remedial work, and get busy pushing back against the mob.
Those who would be our allies do us no favors by continuing to press the “patient, prudent, and moderate” narrative. In fact, they do our enemies a favor by making our position seem more ‘extreme’ that it really is.
You mean I never told you about my great great grandfather’s cousin, the famous
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän?
I don’t see much utility in reading the Enlightenment back into either the Reformation or Counter-Reformation. Insofar as I’ve thought about it, the Anglo-American version of modern conservatism seems to me to begin as a reaction to liberalism —more specifically the radicalism of the Jacobins.
It’s kind of like how both the Modern Republican Party and Democrat Party both like to claim Jefferson, without regard for how the Progressives changed everything, so to speak.
I wasn’t interested in “reading back in” so much Ernst, as curious how the earlier thinkers thoughts may have worked themselves into the thoughts of the likes of Burke and allies. (I’m reasonably aware of the distinctions between continental or British conservatism and their challenges and, on the other hand, the Americans and their very different motivations and aims.) But in any case, it was a mere speculation aiming at making genuine connections (if there are such), for the sake of deepening our understanding of the founders of European conservatism, taken broadly, rather than aiming at some questionable utility (what utility, even?). I mean, we all have antecedents, and sometimes, identifying those and drawing reasonable connections will improve our grasp of what it is we ourselves are on about.
I knew where you were going. But if Bloom was right, Hobbes so completely changed the terms of the debate that the pre-Hobbesian conceptualilzation of political relationships is utterly alien to the post-Hobbesian one.
Either the world and everything in it is ordered by the Will of God, or else the ordering of our affairs is susceptible to Reason.
I suppose we could say that the ultimate arch-conservative would be the one arguing for the restoration of the Hapsburg dominions.
Which of course makes the ultimate anti-arch-conservative the one arguing for a return to the Imperial Papacy of Innocent III.
It seems to me that there may have been other principles — alongside theological ones — espoused by such as Hooker, to pluck his name once more from the air (I’m not all that familiar with his work, I mean), as for instance “prudence”, deriving from Hooker’s reading of Thomas and Aristotle possibly, which in turn impressed itself upon Burke, to make the sort of thing I imagine (speculatively) more concrete. But again, this is merely suggestive at this point.
I know less about Hooker than you do (and I’ve forgotten most of the Hobbes I read), but my uned-ju-ma-cayted guess is that prudence is probably best understood as perhaps itself a theological principle.
As in God stuck us with this jug-eared imbecile Prince of Wales for His reasons, so lets not make our situation any worse in His eyes with a new Act of Succession to make sure the throne passes to that good looking young(ish) William with his lovely bride.
Did I hedge that spitballin enough?
I have doubts about prudence as a theological principle as distinct from a human virtue, attributable to man as man and to his reason as reason, and in that sense not a necessary derivative of revealed religion as such. I mean, the pagans were all over it, in the simplest sense, and Thomas wasn’t at pains to admit it.
But I gotta dash out to buy coffee. Can’t take this morning into the afternoon deprivation any longer. Back shortly.