The Cato Institute's David Boaz thinks Barrack Obama is a collectivist. But Republicans should take note: He thinks John McCain is a collectivist too. In their campaign speeches, Boaz notes, both candidates discourage the individual pursuit of happiness, particularly if it has anything to do with money. They disparage success in business or economic pursuits, implicitly denigrating those who have done the most to ensure this nation's prosperity and wealth.
There is a whiff of hypocrisy here. Mr. Obama, who made $4.2 million last year and lives in a $1.65 million house bought with the help of the indicted Tony Rezko – and whose "elegant suits" and "impeccable ties" made him one of Esquire's Best-Dressed Men in the World – disdains college students who might want to "chase after the big house and the nice suits." Mr. McCain, who with his wife earned more than $6 million last year and who owns at least seven homes, ridicules Mr. Romney for having built businesses.
But hypocrisy is not the biggest issue. The real issue is that Messrs. Obama and McCain are telling us Americans that our normal lives are not good enough, that pursuing our own happiness is "self-indulgence," that building a business is "chasing after our money culture," that working to provide a better life for our families is a "narrow concern."
They're wrong. Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment. And if you chase after the almighty dollar, you just might find that you are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do things that improve the lives of others.
Not so sure about Obama though.
I think this is an opinion most of us share. We don't begrudge the surgeon (well modulo AMA supply restrictions) his nice house nor think he shouldn't be compensated for his skill and education. At the same time we view the individual who has a passion for surgery and French literature but chooses surgery one way while viewing the person without such a passion who just chooses the career that will make him rich as having misguided priorities.
Also I think it is perfectly fair to question the applicability of Romney's buisness experience to the federal government.
I would argue that while the rich do enjoy a few more conveiniences the vast vast majority of extra earnings past a fairly moderate amount go into buying positional goods. Having a BMW doesn't (usually) get you there any faster, a roles doesn't tell time better nor a fancy suit better keep you warm. Rather these things are pleasurable largely because they connote status.
Sure many goods that people buy as their wealth increases would be slightly desierable even if you had no notion of status whatsoever but people desire them out of all proportion to their better performance. Or to put the point diffferently the middle class today lives more comfortably than Rockefeller did in his day. Which do you think Rockefeller would have preferred to be?
If true this has two consequences. First that earning wealth is largely a zero sum game (with positive externalities) hence giving some justification to dismissing the pursuit of wealth as a means to happiness for most Americans . Secondly it sugggests that higher marginal tax rates for the rich (if enforceable) will do little to discourage people from working harder to gain more money (our judgements of status will adjust accordingly).
Game's over when you start with that premise. Read Boaz again:
Yes, if you start with a social engineering premise, Boaz's individual-rights-based critique won't make much sense. But that's not terribly responsive.
Charity or philanthropy aren't either if they are "required". The doing good works only is virtuous if it is done voluntarily with truly charitable intent. Anything else is just indentured servitude. What one ought to do, versus what one is forced to do, makes all the difference.
That these two, who both aspire to the pinnacle of self-aggrandizing public "service", should keep their stupid traps shut. They aren't speaking as spiritual advisors, but as political stooges, so I find their self-rightousness repulsive. I don't need the likes of them to tell me about the virtues or pitfalls of the persuit of material success ... they need to concentrate a little more on THEIR job responsibilities, which they are voluntarily trying to assume, and how they are really going to accomplish anything of worth without damaging the rest of us. Politicians of any stripe usually cause more harm than good.
This, I think, is a completely over-blown non-issue. Suppose we got 90% taxation so that a surgeon had to live on $100,000 a year instead of a million. Does anybody seriously think that he's going to choose to work at McDonalds instead of practice surgery? Or that people who want to be doctors won't still go to medical school? What else is he going to do instead?
Maybe go overseas? I hear they have hospitals there too.
Of course he won't practice medicine, especially if medical school and malpractice insurance continue to cost what they does now. (And that's even leaving aside the lifestyle issues... 12+ years of education and 60-70 hour weeks don't look nearly as attractive for $100K/yr than for $1mill/yr.)
He may still go to med school, but he probably won't work as many hours or treat as many patients - a definite net loss to society. He's no different than a lawyer: he's not going to work the extra 40 hours if he can't bill for them.
You don't need every surgeon to make a different job decision. A 90% tax bracket might cause, say, one in four surgical candidates to make a different career choice. Something that doesn't require years of extra education, heaps of debt, and undesirable hours in exchange for only a moderately better income. Would it serve our country well if our tax policy effectively cut the number of new surgeons by 25% while we're simultaneously arguing over affordable access to health care?
Arguments about incentives to become a surgeon, arguments about the possible benefits conservation might have, arguments about trying to help the desprately poor, none of these things matter. Cause no one matters other than YOU!
Also: Obama has a funny name and a big house. He should go back to rich-ville where he came from, and never talk about sacrifice again. Stupid Islamist-Socialist-Fascist.
A high marginal tax will make us into one big community of Amish!
No, but the hypothetical overtaxed surgeon will only work 35 hours a week, remove a few of the neighbors' warts at his kitchen table on the weekend for (unreported) cash, and either set up one heck of a non-taxable fringe benefit package through his LP or LLC, or failing that will become a unionized employee of some huge HMO.
And the next time you really need surgery in a hurry, have fun scheduling it 6 or 9 months in advance.
If you were an orthopedic surgeon and you got $2,500 for doing a hip replacement, once you did 40 and made your 100k, why would you do the 41st?
The reason medical school costs so much is that there is an expectation that doctors will be able to afford to repay those loans once they start making the big bucks. Remove that expectation and the cost of a medical education will come down. (Making it easier to open medical schools wouldn't hurt either; part of the reason there aren't enough doctors is that the medical monopoly does everything it can to discourage competition by making it next to impossible to open a medical school. In fact, I've long said many social problems could be solved by closing half the law schools and doubling the number of medical schools.)
Same with med mal insurance. There's absolutely no reason doctors couldn't band together and self-insure the way other professions do; they just aren't sufficiently motivated to do so when med mal premiums are still manageable. However, if their salaries were reduced and premiums were no longer manageable, alternatives would be found.
Doctors who won't work 80 hour weeks any more because the pay is no longer worth it would force hospitals to adopt new policies so they don't have to. Is society really better off for having emergency room surgeons who've been awake for 36 hours? Given the conditions under which emergency rooms operate, I'm frankly surprised there are as few cases of malpractice as there are. I'd like to see lawyers conducting jury trials after they've been up for 36 hours and see how well they do.
The bottom line is that most doctors are doctors because they want to be. While the money helps, if you like science and enjoy helping people you're going to gravitate toward that profession.
Things like job fulfilment and happiness take a second seat to the number of Fat Sacks of Cash Money we are able to take home.
Yes but think of the benefits that would accrue from the corresponding increase in community organizers and diversity outreach coordinators.
But even better: let us assume there is some segment of surgeons who went into the field purely for monetary gain. Let us further assume a higher marginal tax rate and spiraling malpractice costs would dissuade these surgeons from entering the field in the first place, or would encourage them to leave the field and become consultants/HMO managers/drug company salesmen. If they are equally skilled as the idealistic doctors, why should they be discouraged from entering the field? Does society value their life-saving skills any less just because they enjoy their new Porsche more than they enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of "making the world a better place"?
The only place you'll get a response about expectation to be able to pay is from the students themselves when asked why they'd willingly take on all this debt, or from the banks who provide the student loans; neither of which are in a position to lower med school costs. Just the application process alone can costs $5,000+ when applying to multiple schools.
I suppose you could solve that by regulating med school prices at the same time you jacked up the marginal tax rate. But this is a Very Bad Idea(tm) for obvious reasons.
Completely off topic note:
Michael Duncan has been doing a weekly "History of Rome" podcast for nearly year now. He's been tracing the development of the republic and their many wars and internal issues.
The last 2 podcasts (and I think 1 more) will be about your VC nom-de-plum, Gaius Marius, beginning with his reform of the legions, his 7 consulships, and his defeat at the hands of Cornelius Sulla. This is an extremely good podcast if you're interested in learning about he Roman Republic (and through the Imperium still to come).
http://thehistoryofrome.blogspot.com/
Apologies to the gathered masses for going off topic. And no, I have no connection to the podcast other than an avid listner.
Next time, Wesleyan should get Gordon Gekko to deliver the commencement speech:
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
And greed -- you mark my words -- will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
Why? Because the developer had to live in the city too. And there was a certain amount of civic pride that people had, and they wanted to live in the most beautiful city they could build. Businessmen would buy up vacant land, or farmland and build public parks for no other reason than the fact that the city should have one. They would form art galleries, symphony orchestras, fund a YMCA for public health, and so on.
Today, everyone wants to cocoon in their ugly McMansions. Developers and corporations don't live in the cities that they build, so they don't care if they throw up the ugliest buildings with bad landscaping. Our suburbs are built for making money and nothing else.
There once was a time when worshipping the dollar was not always the most important thing in life. Today it is. I have no qualms if people say they have the right to worship money, but sometimes I like to think that we once had a better perspective on life.
Call me a dreamer or a romantic, but it would be nice for ONCE a suburban developer actually spent a few dollars on some decent landscaping that would enhance life for everyone.
Apparently Brian Mac thinks there's a paradise of unsocialized medicine somewhere in the world -- perhaps next to Atlantis or the Lost Continent of Mu.
But how's Mr. Boaz of the Cato Institute doing? Living comfortably is he?
Either that, or he just thinks that a 90% tax bracket would encourage doctors to go overseas, where they could make more money. Answers on a postcard please.
I am a libertarian who thinks that greed is a vice, but I also think that sexual promiscuity is a vice - and I would find the government's attempt to regulate the former as offensive as an attempt to regulate the latter. It never ceases to amaze me that liberals who have spent the last several decades chiding conservatives for wanting to legislate morality have no compunction against legislating their own morals, particularly when it comes to economic matters.
But apart from value judgments, the proper question I think is this: Who contributes more to the net well being of society, the entrepreneur who becomes wealthy in the process of creating dozens or hundreds of jobs or the social worker who doles out the taxes paid by productive folk to those who will not or cannot work? Note that I'm not saying that social workers don't perform a sometimes necessary task, but I am saying that society - and the poor - would benefit if we had a far higher proportion of entrepreneurs to social workers than we do now.
The failure to understand this is what gets my dander up when people pontificate about the obligation of wealthy folks to "give something back to society." Certainly, there are some wealthy parasites in our body politic, but any tax policy designed to force these folks to give something back is going to apply to a far greater number of people than the parasites. And I ask you: Hasn't somebody like Bill Gates, merely by the fact of creating hundreds of thousands of jobs (both directly and indirectly, through the efficiency gains of a widely-used operating system), contributed more than enough to society to justify his great wealth? Why do we as a society have a right to force him to do any more? Why should we want to do so if it discourages folks on the margins from pursuing a similar life path?
There's absolutely no reason doctors couldn't band together and self-insure the way other professions do; they just aren't sufficiently motivated to do so when med mal premiums are still manageable. However, if their salaries were reduced and premiums were no longer manageable, alternatives would be found.
Why haven't they done this in areas where premiums are no longer manageable right now? Instead of self-insuring, they simply stop doing certain procedures, move away, or stop practicing medicine entirely. Presumably these folks "liked science and enjoyed helping people" but that only went so far in the face of economic reality.
Boaz: 'Mr. Obama ... disdains college students who might want to "chase after the big house and the nice suits."'
But, Obama: 'He disparaged students who want to "take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy."' (I have to take Boaz's word for disparaged, since I'm too lazy to chase down the text.)
There is a world of difference between those who 'chase only after ... things that our money culture says you should buy' and those who might want to 'chase after the big house and the nice suits'. Obama did not belittle those who pursue their own happiness, he belittle those whose pursuit of their own happiness was wholly unfettered. (Really, he didn't even belittle them. He belittled those who pursued what society told them to pursue.)
Moreover, I'm sure there are still passionate right-libertarians active in political philosophy, but this column smacks of someone who's not met Nozick's work (which I take to be _the_ most important modern work on right libertarianism). My guess is the executive vice president of Cato is in fact familiar with Nozick,. Perhaps he read it and ignored Nozick's many, many mentions of unsolved problems in the scheme (e.g., legitimising Locke's private property rights)?
In any case, to use an impoverished interpretation of right libertarianism to criticize an impoverished version of social pluralism seems to me to be a fat waste of time.
The world's doctors come to the US to make more money. If you know of a country where doctors can do better financially than the US please share it with us.
RBG: You have illuminated a possible reason for Bill Gates' success: Dropping out of Harvard kept him from having to listen to a self-sacrifice-advocating commencement speech.
Bill Gates is a really bad example to prove your point. Bill Gates' great wealth, contrary to popular belief or what Microsoft would have you believe, has come not from innovation, creativity and producing the best product, but from savvy marketing, crushing the competition, and suppressing innovation by making sure that his OS was the dominant one.
Microsoft is the prime example of what is wrong with capitalism--not what is right with it. We are stuck with distinctly inferior products just because of market domination.
The candidates trust public actors but distrust private ones. That seems to be the focus of Boaz's concern.
Thought it was pretty obvious I was talking about NI's hypothetical scenario of 90% tax brackets.
Regarding the ethical stance (here, the invisible hand of the market), see, again, Nozick, e.g., dealing with rogue protection agencies and with the spectre of a dominant protection agency abusing its monopoly power and justifying compensation of the John Waynes.
Regarding the interpretation, Obama wasn't talking about public versus private (in the excerpted portions, which is all I'm going by, again because I'm too lazy to track down more). He was talking about what sorts of values private individuals should have, or, more accurately, what sorts of values he thinks they do have, and he was exhorting them to act on them.
NB - Nozick recognised a gap between what can be legally required and what can be morally required, so Nozick could well have supported an exhortation to act charitably, etc. While I know Rand is out there, and I'm not claiming here to address every argument she made, her suggestion (similar to Hegel) that property rights are tied to survival suggests positive rights to aid (which suggestion I don't think she addressed, though she almost certainly elsewhere criticised such rights). Moreover, Rand (and Nozick) have an awful time trying to define the contents of rights without relying upon notions of need, desert, etc.
(My guess is similar arguments could be made re: Boaz's reading of McCain.)
(Again: I keep referring to Nozick because, to my knowledge, he is the standard conversation basis for modern right libertarianism, at least as political philosophy.)
[Obama] disparaged students who want to "take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy."
Entrepreneurs are creative people who want to build companies, not merely chase consumer goods like some Cargo Cultist.
If you think my opinion of Microsoft is misinformed, I have one word for you--Vista.
Do you think there would be no computer operating systems if Gates had never been born?
Does none of the credit go to the programmers who actually developed the software and the engineers and others who design computers and related equipment?
Yes. Gates started a company and was very successful, and earned his money, but to attribute Microsoft's contributions to the economy to him is just celebrity-worship.
And in other news, perennial presidential candidate Ralph Nader derided John McCain of being a pawn of “corporate interests. But Democrats should take note. He thinks Barack Obama is a pawn of “corporate interests” too.
All kidding aside, it’s difficult to take seriously anyone who tries to suggest that there is no fundamental difference between McCain and Obama and that both are merely “collectivist” – a term that appears to be little more than convenient shorthand for “anyone who disagrees with David Boaz.” Just look at the actual stances on the issues that the candidates have taken (as opposed to selectively edited quotes):
On Health Care – Obama favors creating a new federal entitlement and a new federal bureaucracy to force every private health plan to conform to the “genero[sity]” of the new entitlement. McCain opposes both mandates and entitlements and favors letting consumers buy their own health insurance policies across State lines and restoring market competition to the health insurance market.
On entitlements – Obama favors raising Social Security taxes (again), thinks that Medicare Part D wasn’t generous enough, and thinks that comparatively poorer young people were put on this Earth to pay for the benefits promised to the comparatively wealthier retirees who voted them into existence in the first place. McCain opposes expanding existing entitlements, wants to means-test Medicare, and has consistently supported letting younger workers opt at least partially out of Social Security.
On farm subsidies – Obama favors farm subsidies including ethanol. McCain has consistently opposed farm subsidies even to the point of going into Iowa to denouncer ethanol subsidies.
On free trade – Obama favors backing out of our existing trade treaties unless they include more trade restrictions to benefit various special interest groups that support his campaign (read: unions). McCain has been one of the most ardent supporters of free trade to the point of talking to voters among whom it might be unpopular to convince them that they should support it.
On taxes, spending and earmarks – Obama favors not only repealing the Bush tax cuts but higher levels of taxation on top of that, favors even higher levels of spending, and supports earmarks (ask his wife’s employer). McCain has never voted for a tax increase and generally favors lower taxes, has bucked his own party on spending (particularly for popular programs) and doesn’t do earmarks.
And so on and so forth.
I think it’s fair to say that there is a pretty clear difference between the two candidates on issues of economic liberty and I’d even go so far as to say that not only is John McCain more of a proponent of economic liberty than Barack Obama and most of his colleagues in the Senate, he’s probably a more consistent supporter than most of the American public who support many of the popular programs that McCain opposes, are more likely to trade restrictions, and probably favor (at least in theory until the details are revealed) a more “generous” and paternalistic welfare state than McCain.
In which case if Boaz actually believes that McCain is a “collectivist,” then the overwhelming majority of the American public are “collectivist.” In which case Boaz is making the perfect the enemy of the good.
FYI, in the speech mentioned, Obama uses the phrase "collective service" one time, in this context:All recoil in horror at this "collectivism."
J.F. Thomas,
One word solution. Mac (as in Apple, not me).
Ain't capitalism grand? Always gives you choices. Now, if the Government runs everything, we would only have Vista.
I have a real problem with rich folks, particularly politicians, criticizing others who want what they have. I don't see any difference between them and the preacher who visits gay prostitutes while condemning gays and so on.
How in the hell does anyone, including Obama and McCain, know what motivates people? I thought a tenant of Liberal theology was that you are not supposed to judge others?
I have known wealthy and very successful, relatively well off people. None that I have met were motivated, per se, by money. Money is only a visible sign of their success doing what they love doing. That said, would they do it without the chance to get rich? I doubt it. Because they are selfish? No, because there would be no way to judge if they are successful or not. Before you criticize this, consider how many politicians do and will sell their souls for votes. Votes equals success which equals power which equals money (inevitably, it seems).
Beware the politician or the preacher who wants to take most of what you have while, of course, keeping what they have as they are noble and you are base and disgusting. What you end up with is a mass of poor people and a bunch rich politicians. ( See the Soviet Union.)
Go ahead and raise taxes to 90%. Other jurisdictions will attract people who earn high incomes and reap the benefits.
I agree with David Boaz 100%. I have so much respect for entrepreneurs, people who take risks and build companies that add wealth, jobs and happiness. They could have become lawyers and sucked value out of the system before entering politics and lecturing the rest of us, but they didn't, thank goodness.
If Obama wore a potato sack, I'd respect his rhetoric, but the fact that both he and McCain are rich makes their silly exhortations contemptible.
The straw man is the one created by those who think that successful entrepeneurs are in it for the money.
And please equating regulation of something as personal and private as sex with regulation of the market place (on moral terms to boot!) is simply stunning. The capitalist form economic is amoral at best. It is also anti-government and surely not a protector of the common good. There are simply winners and losers. We have spent the last 30 years ignoring the energy crisis we face today because of the "harm" that it would do to the economy. I suppose oil over $130/bl and gas at over $5/gal does not really harm the economy.
While I understand that government is not a panacea and cannot solve all problems, the market place does not solve any problems either--it is simply about dollars and cents. To the extent that any government "supports" such a market place, the market place itself must pay for that support. And in any enlightened government, there must be a sense of the common good that finds meaning beyond making enough guns to blow up all of the other people on earth.
How about our surgeon raises his prices, so he still makes $1 million a year after paying his 90% tax rates, and everyone else pays 67% more, so if an operation cost you $10,000 for his services, you'd now pay $67,000? (The exact size of the rise depends on what the tax rate the surgeon faces now, I've assumed a 33% one).
Or, how about a middling scenario, where the surgeon raises his prices somewhat, so people pay somewhat more, and other people do without the surgery?
Do we need surgeons more than they need us? Remember the legal incidence of a tax is not necessarily the same as the economic incidence.
as did his wife who admonished her audience to enter the public sector while complaining of the high cost of dance lessons, sports programs, and summer camp.
It's my opinion both these people, and their backers, would have us all in the public sector; that is, wards.
Good grief, how totally nauseating. How can anyone seriously cite Prince Teddy as an example of personal achievement and selfless sacrifice? If I were born into a gazillionaire family, and got a Senate seat handed to me as a family heirloom, maybe I could "achieve so much" and "make such a difference" too. Indeed, given Prince Teddy's immense advantages, the question is not why he achieved so much but why he achieved so little.
You might be interested to know that Warren Buffett has endorsed Barack Hussein Obama for President. I'm not sure who the second person you mentioned is.
That's not how income taxes work, unless you have a $100,000 personal exemption and a single 90% bracket.
But even on your scenario, the answer is: for the extra $250.
We already have this. "The top 10% of taxpayers kicked in 70% of total income tax. The top 1% of taxpayers are paying almost 40% of all income tax in the USA."
CNN
So 10% of taxpayers (not 10% of the population, most small children don't pay much in the way of taxes), is paying about 70% of the cost in the way that can be most directly measured back to individuals. A minority is already shouldering most of the burden of providing the climate wherein such wealth can be created. And that's not mentioning that the top 10% include people like doctors, and plumbers, who do a hell of a lot directly to provide the climate in which wealth can be created (it's hard to create wealth if you keep getting diseases from the bad plumbing in your bathroom).
Capitalism is correlated positively with high life expectancies, democratic government, respect for civil liberties, and environmental quality. If capitalism is amoral, then every other economic form that has been tried must be actively evil by contrast.
What planet are you living on? The market feeds us all. The market provides houses, warmth, transport, entertainment. These are worthwhile problems to solve.
I agree with this. Governments are hopeless at producing stuff. I however go further than you. Any government activity is paid for by the market. (In countries with a lot of natural resources, the payment comes from the use the market can make of those natural resources. Saudi Arabia wouldn't get a cent if there was no market for oil). Even when the government actively sets out to destroy the market place, the market place itself pays for the destruction.
Proving your opponent's point with this moral pronouncement.
And that's exactly what most people's problems ultimately come down to– dollars and cents.
Trivializing the importance of money to happiness is the collectivists' single most important tactic for getting people to accept the uniformity, mediocrity and stagnation in which their social policies inevitably result.
Actually he said America would be fine under Obama, Clinton, or McCain, but he preferred a Democrat. Indeed, he said the country would "do fine" even if an idiot ran it, which is good because an economic imbecile will be running the country no matter who wins.
Of course the plutocrats don't really care who is President. Their wealth will not be taxed, only the incomes of the middle class shlubs who can't avoid taxes and who feel the pain of them to a degree people like Buffett neither understand nor care about.
They have some correlation, but not as much as Boaz seems to think. Further, even where wealth does reflect individual accomplishment it's not at all clear that the accomplishment in question always does much to "ensure this nation's prosperity and wealth."
Sometimes it does. Successful companies contribute a lot to the economy, certainly.
Sometimes it doesn't. Does the difference in earnings between an NBA player and a guy who is just barely not good enough really measure their relative contribution to our prosperity? I don't begrudge the basketball star's income - he gets it honestly - but neither am I prepared to think that it is in any way a measure of his absolute contribution to society in the way Boaz imagines.
Actually, I have done this exact sort of calculation as a lawyer. I actually run the math on what my post-tax income per 'bonus billable hour' will be if I work x number of additional hours, versus the cost it will take to hire an auto mechanic or home improvement contractor to complete the particular task (and figuring they can get it done quicker too).
Thus, I will do drywall repair, electrical wiring, and overhaul my engine, but I will pay someone else to do my floors and do body work on my car. This cuts down the total number of hours I spend 'lawyering' - and takes jobs away from blue collar contractors. I can't be the only one who does this, and this is a socially destructive practice if done by someone like a doctor (as opposed to a lawyer) who actually benefits society by his work.
One might think you're making an argument that wealth and resources should be distributed more evenly, since you seem to believe that personal achievement is tied to the resources one inherits at birth, not the drive of the individual.
You are over-generalizing from a particular case. The talents and drives of individuals are not evenly distributed. Some will achieve despite lack of resources; some will fail to achieve despite great resources; and some will achieve only because of great resources. Ted is in the latter category, and like anyone in that category, it is risible to applaud the guy for scoring a home run when he started life on third base.
if inheritance is the main factor for achievement, as you seem to believe, it doesn't seem so very fair for those who are born to poverty.
Inheritance is not the main factor for achievement, but even if it were, life isn't fair and government coercion should not be used to rectify perceived "unfairness".
Actually, I think it was because we used to not have an income tax, and building developers had sufficiently fat personal profits to give them the luxury of building a legacy for themselves rather than a 9% profit margin.
Several points:
1) Regarding the call for top earners to contribute more money, you responded, 'We already have this. "The top 10% of taxpayers kicked in 70% of total income tax. The top 1% of taxpayers are paying almost 40% of all income tax in the USA."' You surely meant something like 'They are already contributing this much, and that is enough.' (since we can't already have a situation where they are contributing more than they have now).
That may well be true. But your evidence (and your link) don't show it. Your evidence is that the wealthiest taxpayers pay a overwhelmingly disproportionate share of the total taxes paid. But that is not the relevant question.
The relevant question is how much of the cost of the system should the rich be paying. Logically, it is not impossible that the rich should be paying all of the cost of the system, and so, without a moral argument, the mere fact that they currently pay some particular percentage cannot be an argument that they are paying enough.
What would be enough? I'm not sure, and I won't resolve that here. But I would suggest that the level would reflect the relative impact of the system on different income levels. Suppose (perhaps counterfactually, but go with me here) that the current system is a mammoth boon to the already wealthy (not growing income disparity) and is significantly worse for the rest of the nation than some or most other alternative systems. We might well think the rich should be paying much more in that case than if the system benefitted the less wealthy relatively more than it benefitted the wealthy. (Indeed, in the case of a slave economy, few would be impressed if the slave-holder insisted he pay no more than 70% of the cost of maintaining the system of slavery, and that the slave should the rest.)
I'm not making an argument about the system and who it benefits relatively. I'm saying that to support your claim, you need to do so.
(Note that your link makes clear that the wealthiest pay so much not because of high tax rates, but because of great income disparities. Indeed, 'Their effective tax rate - the total tax they pay as a percentage of their income - has declined substantially.')
2) You said, 'Capitalism is correlated positively with high life expectancies, democratic government, respect for civil liberties, and environmental quality. If capitalism is amoral, then every other economic form that has been tried must be actively evil by contrast.'
I'm not sure which empirical data you're reviewing, but this seems incredibly questionable. I think everywhere you write capitalism there, you mean something like liberal democracy, because liberal democracies are the countries marked by those traits. But surely you're not going to insist that, e.g., the American form of market is 'capitalism', as opposed to a blended form with some significant socialist traits (e.g., a progressive tax rate, a social safety net, significant government spending and employment). I can't think of any 'capitalist' economy you might be pointing to that would meet those traits, especially such that in comparison with it, the American system is trumped in each of the categories you mention.
Hmmm. Congress and the President do not make all that much money in the form of earned income. However, they can and do make their money in other, more tax sheltered and tax advantaged ways.
Theresa Heinz Kerry paid only 12% on her unearned income which, as I recall, was around $500.000.00 the year Kerry (or the year before?) ran for President.
Most of the members of Congress are multi-millionaires and the vast amount of their money is unearned or otherwise sheltered.
What happens with the 90% tax rate on income is that the most productive members of our society get punished and are prohibited from acquiring the wealth that, in many cases, most of the members of Congress have already amassed.
I know some of you are fresh out of college, which means you need a period of time to take off the rose colored glasses and shed some light on the stuff you learned from aging hippies (my generation for which I apologize) who taught because they were not very good at doing anything else.
However, those of us who are "of the world" would appreciate it if you do not expect us to accept, as a matter offaith, your beliefs.
I don't know when Liberals and Hippies began to trust the Government to run our lives, but it is scary as hell to me.
Trust no one. Question everything. Demand facts. Otherwise, you are nothing more than a pawn for whichever political party to which you subscribe. If you think all these folks have your best interests at heart, well I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
not to get off into a car tangent, but i can tell you that at least for me, owning a BMW is not about status. it's about driving pleasure.
heck, i keep mine garaged and drive less than 5k a year, but man is it fun.
nothing to do with status, at least for me. until you drive one, you really can't understand.
otoh, i do agree that many do buy them for status.
But some of the preceding objections border on the idiotic. Of course there were programmers before Bill Gates, and of course there would have been operating systems without him. But Gates, and his company, did something that no one else had been able to do: Help transform computing into a scalable tool that was not plagued by compatibility issues. We're spoiled with the largely compatible file formats shared by Windows and Mac OS today, but in the past, this was a huge issue and Microsoft arguably made computing viable as the overwhelming economic force that it now is through the network effects of a broadly accepted operating system. Sure, Microsoft has acted monopolistically and Vista sucks, but that doesn't detract from this accomplishment.
And, yes, the programmers at Microsoft deserve some of the credit, but it took the vision of Gates and Allen to channel those energies into the economic and job-creating powerhouse that Microsoft has become. And at least through the 80s and 90s, Microsoft shared the wealth generated by its employees with its employees to an extent seldom seen before or since in American business. Sure, not everybody walked away with 50 billion dollars worth of Microsoft stock, but the proportion of Microsoft employees who became millionaires far outnumbers, I'd be willing to wager, the proportion at any other American company.
I'm still trying to figure out whether eddiehaskell is willfully obtuse or just naturally thick-headed. First, he says that the rich should be willing to "share a bit more of the cost for providing the climate wherein such 'wealth' could be created." It may be news to him, but the rich already share the far more than their share of these costs. Moreover, I doubt that most "wealthy" folks object to paying taxes for police, etc., (i.e., the costs of providing the climate . . . yada yada yada), but I'm not sure how increasing entitlement programs and other welfare programs amount to a cost of providing the environment needed for such success. Are subsidized drugs for seniors part of that environment? I'd call this a non sequitur, but I hesitate to dignify such an inane assertion with that term.
And this is rich: Comparing the regulation of private sexual conduct with the regulation of the "market place" - talk about stacking the deck! Why can't I simply rephrase that comparison in terms of regulating the sexual marketplace, where irresponsible behavior imposes very real externalities, with placing limits on my private economic conduct, for example, by taxing me and thereby limiting my private spending options? I suppose that when the issue is put this way, eddiehaskel will jump over to my side. After all, we've got to stop those nasty externalities, and if we describe the regulatory regime in such a way as to obscure the very real effects it has on the private lives of individuals, it suddenly becomes acceptable. Perhaps once eddiehaskel starts earning a living he'll realize that "regulation of the market place" is nothing more than regulation of "something as personal and private as" my own economic, lifestyle, and philanthropic choices. There is no regulation of the abstract marketplace, mr. haskel. There's only regulation of the private choices of participants in that marketplace.
Iola- Interesting, so now you're arguing inheritance is the only factor of achievement for Ted, but not a significant factor of achievement. Me thinks you speak from both sides of your mouth. And government coercion shouldn't be used to rectify unfairness? I guess we can get rid of the courts and executive's job to prevent crimes, negligence and the honoring of contracts &other assorted misdeeds. That's also a nice sound argument for why we shouldn't have stopped slavery too.
Except nuclear power, the transistor, penicillin, our transportation and energy infrastructure and most of the clean water and water treatment produced in this (and most other) countries.
Have you ever heard the term "public works".
All you people whining about the evils of collectivism must have never worked for a large corporation. The organization that most resembles the structure of the old Soviet Politburo is any large corporation you care to mention. Everything from the fake votes to the constant exhortations for the workers to contribute to the common good comes straight out of Soviet Russia.
And since this is a law blog with frequent postings on the Courts, I suppose everyone here is already familiar with the preferred mechanism...
Milton Friedman would probably have said Hayek was, but what the hell did Friedman know about libertarianism anyhow...
And this he did by eliminating the competition, not encouraging an open source system (e.g. along the lines of Linux) that would reduce the cost of computing while allowing superior products to come to market.
Microsoft products are over-engineered, over-priced and use too many resources. By being designed to use way too much memory (both CPU, RAM and hard disk space) they also increase the cost of hardware. Standardization has come at the cost of innovation and choice (and Apple stayed alive by carving itself out a niche and surrendering business computing to MicroSoft).
As for compatibility issues. What planet are you living on? Obviously not one that involves serious computing power. Companies that do real computing still run multiple platforms, and constantly have compatibility issues, because Microsoft products are so crappy and such hogs. Try running a serious Oracle database in Windows. You'll be waiting till the end of the world to get any useful data out.
No, we'd still be on Windows 1.0.
I never made the general claim that inherited wealth was the only or even the decisive factor in personal achievement, so I feel no obligation to defend that claim, and I reject the charge of doublespeak. I made a specific claim in reference to Prince Teddy. That some people have achieved great things without Prince Teddy's advantages hardly demonstrates that Prince Teddy would have achieved greatness without his advantages. There are many excellent reasons to believe he is inherently a mediocre individual at best.
And government coercion shouldn't be used to rectify unfairness? I guess we can get rid of the courts and executive's job to prevent crimes, negligence and the honoring of contracts &other assorted misdeeds. That's also a nice sound argument for why we shouldn't have stopped slavery too.
Um, unfairness is not the same as crime. Not yet, anyway. You're not a lawyer, are you? Please say no... please...
I do, right now, and the latter claim is flatly wrong.
I think you miss the point. The government may have directed funds toward these projects, but it did not create them. The wealth upon which these advances are based was a product of generally selfish individual actors pursuing money and happiness in a relatively free market.
So you should embrace capitalism and its corporate spawn for their progressive, collectivist mentality! The Soviets did a lot of nasty things, but surely they can be admired for their commitment to collectivism, a trait apparently co-opted by corporate America.
Though it should be noted that there is one tiny little difference between the practice of collectivism by the government and by a corporation: American corporations don't generally have the legal authority or power to send you to the Gulag if you don't buy their B.S.
I'm basically with you on the Microsoft thing, but when complaining about resource hogs, bringing up Oracle doesn't help your argument...
Re: Ted's achievements. Given his well-publicized illness, Massachusetts media run what I would call copious preliminary eulogies. Besides his well known list of legislative milestones, which are all on the big government/pork side for both MA and beyond, there was also an extensive feature on how he always helps out little people who come to him pleading. You could call it constituent services of course, but is sounds much more like kind caliph stories from Arabian Nights, when supplicants are provided instant relief by the ruler who bends or abolishes rules for them, provided importantly, there are enough stupid rules to bend. His reach even extended to Leonid Brezhnev. Also, resembles Godfather's reception of his pleading subjects. But wait, that's why the Kennedy family is called American royalty. And you can figure out the Godfather connection as a home exercise.
The government isn't "good" at producing these things, they're simply the most efficient at doing it on a national scale. This has been a core component of capitalism ever since Adam Smith outlined the 5 legitimate expenditures of government (defense, justice, infrastructure, public education, and government overhead).
The contention you're arguing against was correct: "Any government activity is paid for by the market." The government qua government does not produce or pay for anything; it is all paid for by the citizens, whether through personal or corporate taxation. "Public works" are only public because Uncle Sam's thumbprint was on the original bill, but it is the private citizenry who utilizes infrastructure to create actual value.
Your examples of individual inventions was beyond silly. NASA's mission is to explore space; the many commercial applications of spinoff technologies are not something the government "produced", they're the result of private entrepreneurs creating viable products out of the incidental technological advances. DARPA produced ARPAnet, not the Internet, and neither a government agency nor Al Gore gets real credit for what the private marketplace did with an invention they had already paid for through taxpayer dollars.
Government infrastructure projects are not collectivism, and large companies (I've worked for several) are not havens of Politburo-lite groupthink. Bureaucracies may be inevitable, and employers may try all kinds of hokey exhortations to encourage loyalty and productivity. But if you can't tell the difference between nationally destructive collectivist principles and the "soft" power managers try to wield when coaxing their employees, you need to find a job in academia quick before your current employer figures out how poor your judgement is.
Nice, so its a specific claim with no general applicability whatsoever. Inheritance is irrelevant except when it comes to someone who's last name is Kennedy. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
How can Kennedy's achievement be solely based on his inheritance if inheritance isn't a major factor in achievement. Its interesting that you have yet to justify this inconsistency in your argument (saying its a specific claim is not a justification, you have to explain why it's specific). If someone can reach the pinnacle of success due solely to inheritance, it seems abundantly clear that inheritance is a major factor, but maybe that's just me.
Now try writing a consumer app that displays/behaves consistently across every Linux distro and desktop environment. Oops...
Look, the whole Microsoft==evil schtick is old and 10 years behind reality. I realize it's popular to editorialize that the open source movement would have made the whole computing world a nice utopia if they had gotten here before Microsoft, but that's simply the wispiest of wishful thinking. Today's marketplace is a lot better with a de facto standard in place for ~90% of desktops than it would be fragmented.
I don't know how the government is not "producing" something when it either directly invents it or contracts for its production (through NASA labs, the National Lab System, DOE facilities or other government agencies). Bell Labs (where the transistor and laser were invented) was a joint Federal/AT&T effort where AT&T reinvested some of its profits in return for its telecommunications monopoly.
To claim that nuclear energy (and weapons) were not invented by the government is just to ignore history.
"Public works" are only public because Uncle Sam's thumbprint was on the original bill, but it is the private citizenry who utilizes infrastructure to create actual value.
Ever since the dawn of civilization, one of the functions of government has been the building roads and water delivery systems. Governments have been removing waste for thousands of years. For the last 150 years or so, governments have taken on the burden of treating water as the connection between disease and contaminated and polluted water was recognized. All these functions, along with things like flood control and maintenance of navigation channels, are collective activities that evil governments undertake and have led to dozens of innovations (from bridge, levee, and water structure design to discoveries about disease transmission and treatment) and discoveries that have been made by government scientists.
BTW, the military along with IBM, actually wrote COBOL, the first computer language designed for business use, because the government wanted to encourage more use of computers. Private industry was unwilling to fund the effort.
Although I invite clarification, I can't see anything to support your argument re: the status of Nozick's work (or, really, the relevance of my argument that Boaz hasn't done his reading).
First, to the extent we are talking about libertarianism justified on the basis of the primary value of liberty, I do not believe Friedman was a libertarian. To the extent we are talking about libertarianism justified on the effects of certain types government control over individuals, I believe Friedman was a libertarian. Per Wikipedia, which I believe to be at least roughly correct in this case, 'Friedman himself considered classically liberal and consequentialist libertarian, stressed the advantages of the marketplace and the disadvantages of government intervention'. Moreover, I believe Friedman did support significant government restrictions on the economy of at least certain types. (E.g., 'Friedman maintains that it is legitimate for the government to interfere with the free market whenever anyone’s actions have "neighborhood effect."', link.)
Why does it matter which type of libertarianism we are talking about? Read Boaz again: 'Every human life counts. Your life counts. You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss. You have a right to seek satisfaction in accomplishment.' That's not consequentialist libertarianism, that's Nozickian, natural rights, side-constraints libertarianism.
Don't like my account of things so much? Read Friedman's here.
Note, even if you don't like my account, Friedman's comments confirm the point I was making - that Boaz ignores the obvious questions about libertarianism. Friedman: 'Some issues are open and shut. ... No, not property rights, because you have to define property rights.' NB - The problem raised by Nozick that I used as an example earlier? Property rights. So, both Nozick (whose book I take to be perhaps the important modern work on libertarianism as a political philosohy predicated upon the primary value of liberty - I hope that phrasing is more acceptable to you) and Friedman (who you argue knows something about libertarianism) think that there are significant difficulties with property rights. When Boaz says, 'You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss.', do you think he means 'You have a right to live it as you choose, to follow your bliss limited by constraints on the right to use property, the extent of which constraints is very much up for debate'? If so, then, again, his argument against Obama and McCain disappears, for he has offered nothing remotely looking like an assertion regarding the appropriation restrictions on property rights (if any).
I never defended Apple. I have a friend who worked for him at NeXt (remember that fiasco) and he has some horror stories.
Look, the whole Microsoft==evil schtick is old and 10 years behind reality.
I am not claiming that Microsoft is evil. It just annoys the hell out of me when people think that just because it dominates the market, it has created the best product. It's like saying McDonalds has the best food in the world because they have so many restaurants.
The judge in US v. Microsoft disagrees with you.
Moreover, no sensible definition of "monopoly" requires 100% market share, so Apple doesn't disprove that Microsoft is a monopoly.
McD's doesn't have the best food in the world. What they do have is the best business model for creating a standard level of product quality anywhere in the world. This may not sound like much, but the hardest part of any restaurant chain is ensuring the customer receives the same experience and same level of quality (whatever that bar is set at) no matter which chain he goes to; and McD's global ability to do so is an unmatched corporate achievment. (The parallels in competencies between MS and McD's are not coincidental, and whether you like their products or not they serve the same valuable service within their respective markets.)