I am pretty sure my taxes should be higher.
I am also pretty sure we don't need the maintain a military capable of fighting two wars on opposite sides of the world.
I'd like more, not less, of my tax dollars to go to the needy. Let's write more checks and hand 'em out.
I'd like my tax dollars to go to building public options in a variety of domains. This would save us all money.
For example:
-- Let's allow anybody to get into medicaid. While we're at it, let's pay for all preventive healthcare.
-- Let's allow companies to use TSP rather than getting ripped off by 401(k) providers.
-- public utility broadband and phone service.
-- Roads are expensive, planes are treacherous. Let's build more trains.
-- monthly checks to anybody who, last year, qualified for the earned income tax credit, rather they filled out the earned income tax credit or not? Let's do that.
-- public option bank account. We'll put the checks there, not through a middleman.
-- public option car insurance
-- public option housing. Not "the projects", but units in buildings that are subsidized / buildings in fancy places that are subsidized / etc. I want the people who work in my apartment building to be able to live there. (And, sure, the folks who actually work for the mega corp get nice housing vouchers and can, but there's a whole slew of subcontractors who don't and can't)
-- public option student loans, cutting out the bank middlemen.
See, the thing is? These'll all have upfront costs. And then they'll all pay huge dividends. So, I have entirely selfish and economic reasons for wanting them, over and above them being the obviously right moral option.
These are the ones that seem pretty clear cut to me. Do you disagree? What else do we need?
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What's whack is that it doesn't even need to be your tax dollars. The 1% could pay for all of this and still be so rich none of their descendants will ever have to work. There are more houses standing empty right now than there are homeless people. Auto manufacturers have tens of thousands (maybe hundreds combined) of new cars sitting in lots, rusting. America throws away 40% of its food.
ReplyDeleteIn short, America produces so much stuff that finding a place to throw most of it away is a huge logistical issue.
The problem is capitalism.
I am for sure not the top 1%. Let me be clear about that.
ReplyDeleteI am though the top 20%, and don't mind paying more. Especially since those fuckers (seemingly) won't.
I think it's worth having some epistemic humility about policy choices. So, I agree that America should build more trains, and invest more in public transit generally. But I probably wouldn't endorse a specific train-building plan unless I had done some significant research, or the plan's specifics were getting vetted by people I trust. See: trendy liberals in DC and NY wanting to build expensive trams or ferries instead of working on unsexy but cheap and effective forms of mass transit that serve more people.
ReplyDeleteThat makes me reluctant to endorse some of your specific proposals. So, maybe there are problems with how car insurance works. I don't know, because I don't have a car. But regardless, should the government have its own car insurance business? Would that solve the problems we see? Is that the best solution? I have no idea. I'm not even really sure how to assess that.
Housing policy is a similar issue. Unlike car insurance, I know it's a problem because I live in a city enmeshed in a housing crisis. And I read a fair amount about it. I start from the premise that the government needs to set policy to ensure that everyone can find affordable places to live. But those first principles can't get me to policy. Some people I read think rent control is the only way to protect poor renters. Others think it creates more problems than it solves because it constricts the supply of housing and leaves newcomers out in the cold. Public housing, community land trusts, rent subsidies, affordable housing requirements - there are many policy ideas. Most people I read tend to deride the policy you're advocating (a percentage of affordable units in market developments) on the grounds that it doesn't scale. Is that an unfixable problem? I don't know, and the answer would depend on many things (including which constraints we assume we can bulldoze vs. which we can't).
A more general point on public ownership. It's not a panacea, as anyone who's had a terrible experience with a government-run service can attest. Government actors can have perverse incentives, just like private ones. The key question is how things are regulated, and for what purpose - that is often more important than who the owner is.
Largely right, Sam Zeitlin. I like public option not because I see it as a panacea, but, rather, because it has a very different set of problems from raw market capitalism. It forces companies to compete with an option that has no interest in profit. I think that's a good thing.
ReplyDeleteHow Much Do You Need?
ReplyDeleteA little googling. According to 2015 Census:
Top 10% of households start at ~130k AGI
Top 5% of households start at ~215k AGI
Top 1% of households start at ~465k AGI
That's AGI, so income minus deductions and retirement and crap.
investopedia.com - What Does It Take to Be in the 1%, 5%, 10%?
Btw can I just say that I'm frustrated that the republicans want to raise my taxes? I finally finish school and start work only to discover that the republicans want to raise my taxes to redistribute to the super rich. Wtf?
ReplyDeleteWhat, what? Sam, can you unpack that?
ReplyDeleteI've heard some talk of lowering 401(k) deductions (totally an increase of taxes on the middle class), but that's dead in the water. The only other thing I've heard is a $4,000 tax cut.
William Nichols basically they propose capping SALT and the mortgage tax deduction to save money and balance their tax cuts. Those changes penalize upper middle class people in states/cities with high taxes and expensive housing markets - NYC is hit particularly hard.
ReplyDeleteI have an attitudinal difference with this, but it's quite possible that it only seems important to me.
ReplyDeleteIt seems (though I could easily be wrong) like you're saying "I'd be willing to pay more, and here's how my more money could be spent to make a more just society." I applaud that!
Personally, I come at it from the other end: "Given current spending priorities on other things (e.g. military) it would cost me more in taxes to fund a just society. Therefore, I should be paying more. Incidentally, I'm also pretty sure that I'd be happy to do that, but even if I weren't it's still the way things should be."
Like I said, the difference seems really important to me, but it's quite possible I'm the only one.
Yes, more government involvement in things like housing, health care and banking would come with problems. But wouldn't be nice if for once, as a society, our problems were rooted in surplus of humane behavior?
ReplyDeleteAnd most importantly, excellent, free public education from pre-K to post-doctorate. That's the secret to economic growth and stability, I believe. But despite that, a lot of conservatives froth at the mouth at the idea.
There is a reason that conservatives fear and loathe education. An educated populace makes better choices for society and that tends to not favor the ultra-rich less.
I agree on the military budget. Defense is one thing, but the only reason to keep spending that high is to artificially inflate certain industries that would otherwise not be profitable.
What baffles me is that we've seen this philosophy work, both abroad (the Nordic countries) and at home (Minnesota), yet as a nation we act as if these solutions are crazy moon language.
ReplyDelete(I assume because these solutions don't overtly benefit corporations or the 1%, which seem to be the metric for everything in this country.)
Tony Lower-Basch Yeah, I'm not sure I'm saying that.
ReplyDeleteI think I'm saying: My taxes should be higher. Full stop.
Additionally, here are some ways I'd like to see taxes spent.
Which I think is closer to your second statement than your first one, but I'm not sure!
William Nichols: Makes sense! So it seems like we're agreeing on two true things: (1) taxes on the well-off should be way higher than they are, and (2) there's a whole laundry list of ways that more government funds could lead to a more just, more kind society.
ReplyDeleteI think that the logic goes "(2) is a moral obligation, deontologically, and therefore (1) is true in this context because you're not going to get to (2) without it." And you've got some other sequence of how and why they're true ... and like I said, maybe it doesn't matter which order you come to things from. I feel like it does, but it seems awfully quibbly when we're both in agreement about the truth of the true things.