The Glade 4.0

From my perspective, the wealthier you are, the more you benefit from the social contract. Not only in terms of the value of the assets the government protects, and the value of the contracts it enforces for you, but also in terms of how much a wealthy person benefits from all the horrid "socialism" that conservatives whine about.

For example, let's say I am wealthy enough that I make about a million a year entirely from investment dividends. I have no income beyond cap gains, so my tax rate is 15%.

The businesses I invest in have lowered costs because they ship goods over a highway system that is paid for by public funds. The human capital these businesses have are able to produce goods and services better and more efficiently because we have a public education system in the country that educates everyone born here, for free. Entrepreneurship is expanded because we have low cost state colleges, and that education opens up all kinds of opportunities for new businesses and jobs. The businesses I invest in are able to do business over the government subsidized internet for cheaper, and more efficiently. A government sponsored health program allows people to live longer, more productive lives, and as a result, they exist as consumers longer than they otherwise might. Minimum wages keep people at a particular earning level, which means they can buy more products that the companies I invest in sell. Worker safety laws keep people working in jobs longer, and help to keep volatility out of the labor force. Social Security keeps people spending money on the products and services these companies provide long into their retirement years.

The fact of the matter is that the wealthy benefit from the social contract, and social programs, in a compound fashion. Pound for pound, the wealthy industrialist sees more benefit from public education than someone who actually uses public education, even if that industrialist never set foot in a public school. The wealthy investor sees more benefit in terms of compound dollar value in a government subsidized internet than the poor person who uses it to read his email.

That is the first reason that the wealthy should be taxed more than the poor, in my estimation. The next reason is that if you are going to tax, you should tax with a mind of doing the least harm to the smallest amount of people while gaining the greatest benefit towards achieving your goals. I said it earlier in the thread, but the megabillionaires in this country could stand to lose 99% of their total wealth and it would in no way affect their lives or the lives of their families. That's an extreme example, and I would not advocate that high of a tax rate on those individuals. When you tax the lower and middle class earners, you actually kick your economy in the nuts. They are the people who spend the most and get money moving in the economy. Keep their taxes relatively low, but increase taxes significantly on the people who are the wealthiest. It makes sense practically, and in my opinion it's the only way to tax fairly.

I would, however, advocate a couple of more tax tiers, and a steep rate on the very wealthy in this country. Start it out on people with an income of over a million a year, just to toss the number out there.

From my perspective, the wealthier you are, the more you benefit from the social contract. Not only in terms of the value of the assets the government protects, and the value of the contracts it enforces for you, but also in terms of how much a wealthy person benefits from all the horrid "socialism" that conservatives whine about.

For example, let's say I am wealthy enough that I make about a million a year entirely from investment dividends. I have no income beyond cap gains, so my tax rate is 15%.

The businesses I invest in have lowered costs because they ship goods over a highway system that is paid for by public funds. The human capital these businesses have are able to produce goods and services better and more efficiently because we have a public education system in the country that educates everyone born here, for free. Entrepreneurship is expanded because we have low cost state colleges, and that education opens up all kinds of opportunities for new businesses and jobs. The businesses I invest in are able to do business over the government subsidized internet for cheaper, and more efficiently. A government sponsored health program allows people to live longer, more productive lives, and as a result, they exist as consumers longer than they otherwise might. Minimum wages keep people at a particular earning level, which means they can buy more products that the companies I invest in sell. Worker safety laws keep people working in jobs longer, and help to keep volatility out of the labor force. Social Security keeps people spending money on the products and services these companies provide long into their retirement years.

The fact of the matter is that the wealthy benefit from the social contract, and social programs, in a compound fashion. Pound for pound, the wealthy industrialist sees more benefit from public education than someone who actually uses public education, even if that industrialist never set foot in a public school. The wealthy investor sees more benefit in terms of compound dollar value in a government subsidized internet than the poor person who uses it to read his email.

That is the first reason that the wealthy should be taxed more than the poor, in my estimation. The next reason is that if you are going to tax, you should tax with a mind of doing the least harm to the smallest amount of people while gaining the greatest benefit towards achieving your goals. I said it earlier in the thread, but the megabillionaires in this country could stand to lose 99% of their total wealth and it would in no way affect their lives or the lives of their families. That's an extreme example, and I would not advocate that high of a tax rate on those individuals. When you tax the lower and middle class earners, you actually kick your economy in the nuts. They are the people who spend the most and get money moving in the economy. Keep their taxes relatively low, but increase taxes significantly on the people who are the wealthiest. It makes sense practically, and in my opinion it's the only way to tax fairly.

I would, however, advocate a couple of more tax tiers, and a steep rate on the very wealthy in this country. Start it out on people with an income of over a million a year, just to toss the number out there.

Montegue, your examples are ridiculous, and don't even support the solutions you advocate.

The guy who makes a million a year on dividends? Your increase on income taxation of million-dollar+ incomes won't, by your claims, increase his taxes at all.

Is this a new era? Instead of getting owned by your sources, now you're going for getting owned by your own posts?

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

Basically, I need more information.

Facism is not a school of thought, it is a racial slur.

As far as Obama goes, it's clear he still opposed the release. That doesn't make "surprised and angry" a lie, they still did what he opposed, and he did not know that they would for sure release him. I would guess he didn't want to damage US relations with Libya so soon after we re-established ties when they abandoned their WMD program. If Scotland had released him to Libya as a prisoner and Libya had immediately freed him, we would have been forced to condemn them over it.

Democrats have been running Congress for nearly four years, and President Obama has been at the White House for 18 months, so it's not too soon to ask: How's that working out? One devastating scorecard came out Friday from the White House, in the form of its own semi-annual budget review.

The message: Tax revenues are smaller, spending is greater, and the deficits are thus larger than the White House has been saying. No wonder it dumped the news on the eve of a sweltering mid-July weekend.

Mr. Obama inherited a recession, so let's give him a pass on the budget numbers for 2009. Clearly the deficit would have been large no matter who was President, even if the David Obey-Nancy Pelosi $862 billion stimulus made it larger than it otherwise would have been. What's striking about the latest budget estimates, however, is that the White House is predicting the numbers won't improve much through 2011, the third year of the President's term.

As a share of the economy, the White House now says the deficit in fiscal 2010, which ends on September 30, will be even larger than in 2009: 10%. That's after a full year of economic growth, given that the recovery began last summer. More remarkable still, the deficit will barely fall in fiscal 2011, declining only to 9.2% of GDP in the second year of a recovery that ought to be gaining steam.

To put this in historical context, consider the nearby table that compares deficits as a share of GDP under Presidents Reagan and Obama. The 1981-82 recession was comparable in severity to the one Mr. Obama inherited and reached similar heights of unemployment. The deficits that resulted from that recession were the source of huge political consternation, with Democrats, the press corps and even some senior Reagan aides insisting that only a huge tax increase could save the country from ruin.

Yet as the table shows, the Reagan deficits never reached more than 6% of GDP, and that happened only in 1983, the first year of economic recovery. As the 1980s expansion continued, the deficits fell, especially as the pace of spending slowed in the latter part of Reagan's second term. Few remember now, but when Ross Perot won 19% of the Presidential vote in 1992 running more or less on the single issue of the deficit, the budget hole was only 4.7% of GDP.

The Obama deficits are double that, and more than one-third higher than even the Gipper's worst year. What explains this? Part of it is that Democrats are simply spending much more, sending outlays as a share of GDP above 25% for the first time since World War II. The White House now says outlays will be higher in 2011, at 25.1% of GDP, than at the height of the stimulus in 2009 and 2010.

This is an ironic tribute to the degree to which Democrats on Capitol Hill have been increasing spending willy-nilly below the media radar. The 111th Congress is the most spendthrift in a century outside of World Wars I and II.

The other explanation for the record Obama deficits is that revenues have been so anemic, thanks to the lackluster economic recovery. In the Reagan years, revenues as a share of GDP never fell lower than 17.3%, despite (or we would say because of) his pro-growth tax cuts. In 2010, by contrast, the White House now says tax revenues will hit an astonishing low of 14.5% of GDP, rising only to 15.8% in 2011, even with the huge tax increase that hits on January 1, 2011.

The White House predicts revenues will rise sharply after that, as it also assumes the economy will grow by more than 4% in each of 2012, 2013 and 2014. The last time the economy grew that rapidly for that long, however, was from 1997-2000 and from 1983-1985. In both of those cases, taxes were falling. The Obama White House plans a huge tax increase next year, followed by the ObamaCare tax hikes that hit in 2013, and that's before whatever else the President's deficit commission recommends.

Democrats and their defenders will argue that the nature of the 2008-2009 recession, with its roots in financial panic, is the reason for the slow recovery. But it's also true that deep recessions have historically been followed by more robust recoveries.

The point we would stress is that there has also been a notable policy difference between the 1980s and today. The Reagan Administration also pursued fiscal stimulus, but its policy choice was permanent across-the-board cuts in marginal tax rates. Revenue didn't fall nearly as much as Keynesian economists predicted it would, and the economy roared back. Growth and spending restraint then reduced the deficit over time.

Democrats by contrast have pursued stimulus by spending and temporary tax rebates for selective constituencies. They did so first in concert with President George W. Bush, who was intellectually and politically tapped out, in February 2008. Then they did so again, on hyperdrive, with the February 2009 stimulus. They are now doing it again on a smaller scale with another burst of jobless benefits, adding some $30 billion to the deficit.

To put it another way, Democrats have been undertaking a vast fiscal policy experiment, blowing out the federal balance sheet in an effort to show that a country can spend and tax its way to prosperity. Look no further than the numbers in the White House's own budget review for the unhappy lab results.

You would hate to admit it, but big business has done more for you than you would ever care to acknowledge. It's why you have an affordable computer you are posting a message from, it's why people are able to spend money on LEISURE ACTIVITY such as watching plays where actors must execute fight scenes that you help choreograph, basically putting money into your pocket. It's why you have a cell phone that 10 or 15 years ago was an extravagance afforded only to the wealthy, and a car with a built up structure of refilling stations one hundred years ago was inconceivable.

And the fact that the super wealthy would only be somewhat wealthy if you took away most of their assets isn't even the most important reason why you shouldn't do such a thing.

And those big businesses would not exist at all without the social contract. Entrepeneurship would not exist in any reasonable form without government. Not only must the government exist to enforce their contracts, but government regulation and social programs actually help to provide businesses with customers that can make a choice.

You are certainly entitled to that opinion, I just disagree. If taxation is harmful, but necessary, then it stands to reason that we should do harm to the fewest people and to those people that it hurts the least. We should tax the poor and middle class very little, and the very rich a lot more. That way we maximize everyone's benefit while minimizing the harm.

And those big businesses would not exist at all without the social contract. Entrepeneurship would not exist in any reasonable form without government. Not only must the government exist to enforce their contracts, but government regulation and social programs actually help to provide businesses with customers that can make a choice.

You are certainly entitled to that opinion, I just disagree. If taxation is harmful, but necessary, then it stands to reason that we should do harm to the fewest people and to those people that it hurts the least. We should tax the poor and middle class very little, and the very rich a lot more. That way we maximize everyone's benefit while minimizing the harm.

I'll point out that the idea of minimizing harm is an intensely utilitarian ethical ideal, and as such isn't "wrong."

In fact, American pragmatism is largely based on utilitarian ideals. The real question is at what point you sacrifice other moral and ethical principles in exchange for utility. After all, Die Endlösung was utilitarian as well.

The real problem isn't that utilitarianism conflicts with other ethical principles; those are other moral systems and under utilitarianism, only consistency with its own principles is important, just as under those systems only consistency with their own principles is important.

The real problem with utilitarianism (and the reason I largely reject it now after previously thinking it a generally good system) is the ease with which it can be manipulated. It's very easy in formulating a utilitarian position to handwave away benefits one doesn't care about by pretending them to be minimal, or to inflate harms that support ones position, or ther reverse of either. With no terribly objective way to measure harm or benefit, it's easy to support almost any position and make it look far more reasonable than it really is.

Gun control is a perfect example; utilitarians like to poo-poo personal defense, hunting, and sport as minimal benefits, and exaggerate the potential for crime, while cleverly ignoring the inevitable increase in crime when criminals realize that people cannot protect themselves or their property.

I think you're mixing the usage of principle and the stance or theory of utilitarianism with each other inappropriately. Utilitarianism, like Kantianism, is an approach/viewpoint to/of ethical principles, not ethical principles themselves.

Hmm, very astute. What viewpoint would you consider yourself to use then on ethical issues?

Again, I think you've got some conflation of utilitarian viewpoints here with the idea of principles. One could just as well use a utilitarian approach to state that all individuals in a society should be armed as the inverse. It's the principles themselves that are in question, not the approach.

It kind of funny you two are having a debate on this topic.

I'm not sure what you men by this.