Super Fun Time Politics Thread in Which We Discuss Stuff

by **allentown** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 00:00:15

pacino wrote:
While I find Rick Perry personally abhorrent, one can read him as making the opposite but equally logical case, and the Texans keep electing him so clearly it's a winning argument there. But education does strike me as a national issue, and the USDOE has an important and helpful role IMO.

It may be a winning argument, but it doesn't mean it's working. By almost any measure, the citizens of Texas are in terrible straits right now.

I'm all for idealogical arguments, but show me where they've worked, you know.

I think we'd be better off shutting down the Education Department. The federal government is a small percentage funder of public education, compared to both the states and local government and has not really improved the situation. Any enterprise with too many masters at cross-purposes is going to have trouble succeeding. You can say that education in Texas sucks, but you can also say that the federal Dept of Ed hasn't really done anything to improve the situation.

Presidents like to talk about education and have a finger in the pie, because parents are very concerned about public schools and it gives them a chance to grandstand in an arena for which they ultimately aren't responsible. This hurts both the federal government and local education. The President has enough federal issues to worry about. This is analogous to local city councils wasting their time on ineffectual anti-war and and anti-immigration resolutions. All levels of government are doing poorly enough that the elected officials should focus 100% of their energies on what they are responsible/accountable for. They all want to escape their own problems and fish in another level of government's pond. It is little more than responsibility shirking.

If we want to say that education is a crucial priority of the federal government, then we should expect the federal government to pay at least half the cost and bear the primary responsibility for the success or failure of public education. That isn't happening, so just stop the farce.

by **FTN** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 00:07:51

JFLNYC wrote:There are lots of smart people around here, so here's a crazy idea: How about we simplify the tax code with a flat tax, no deductions, but the standard exemption is $50K for an individual and $100K for married couples (I have no idea if those are the right numbers, but you get the point)? No distinction in type of income, by the way. Wages, salaries, carried interest, dividends, everything is treated the same. The exemption would be indexed up or down depending upon the cost of living where you live (we do it for OPS+, why not with taxes?) and would also have built-in COLA increases of some sort. I'd try to avoid any other expeditions, although I could be convinced to grandfather in up to 2 for children already covered when the new law went into effect. And, again, no deductions.

Simple, flax tax for the conservatives, but to combat its regressive nature, very large standard exemptions to help the lower and middle class. But, putting aside political impossibilities, as a substantive matter what works and what doesn't?

i'm a big fan of simplifying the tax code, but if you do that, you remove an entire cadre of tax lawyers who make their livings finding loopholes in a trillion page long tax code. is lethal still in hiding? im sure he'd be the one to object.

the reason i asked about the differences in lowering income tax and raising the sales (consumption) tax is that there has to be a better way than the current method. the problem really is the loopholes and workarounds though. a guy like warren buffet has to pay more than 20% a year in taxes....he readily admits that. wealthy people make more money but they also spend more money. what you take away in terms of an income tax, you can maybe recover in a consumption tax. that added amount, in the form of a sales tax, would have to be a federal tax that helps offset the reduction in the income tax.

the reality is, someone is always going to get screwed. if you're a billionaire, you don't want to pay 50% in income tax. and if you were a billionaire, you wouldn't want to pay that much. you can afford it, of course, but you don't want to pay it. if you're paying 27%, you'd rather be paying 20%. but if you are buying a porsche instead of a civic, should you be taxed more? there has to be some kind of formula. but that just makes things more complex.

of course its not just about simplifying the tax code and making it "fair", you also have to get rid of wasteful spending. it feels like the problem is so complex that the people who can change it have just put their collective heads down and said "its beyond repair"

by **drsmooth** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 08:37:15

FTN wrote: it feels like the problem is so complex that the people who can change it have just put their collective heads down and said "its beyond repair"

As, I believe, you yourself have clarified, the problem is not especially complex; it's a matter of math, of statistics, of reducing accomplishment of a more resilient distribution of economic responsibility to a formula.

The politics, on the other hand, is intractable.

by **JFLNYC** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 08:54:11

The quote attributed to me is not mine.

by **Bucky** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 09:04:26

FTN wrote:The quote attributed to me is not mine.

by **Luzinski's Gut** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 09:04:40

This post left with "yeah, and so what?" kind of feeling.

I've worked in DoD for 16 years, I've seen the waste and horrific decision making that comes out of a bloated bureaucracy that exists solely to reinforce its existence. You just can't convince me that the government we have is necessary...and as bad as DoD is, it is well oiled machine compared to other federal agencies...I mean, most federal agencies don't even have a strategic or operational planning process. That fact alone got my ass sent to the Mexican border for three months teaching planning to the Border Patrol and Immigration/Customs Enforcement back in 2006.

We need a government, I'm not an anarchist, not even a libertarian, but the growth of government since the 1940s has been alarming and in many cases, unnecessary.

drsmooth wrote:
Luzinski's Gut wrote:The philosophical question to me has always been: how much government is enough? I am wired to believe the government that governs least governs best...

this was basically true when most people lived on farms.

Then along came the Industrial Revolution, which changed things, but not the apparatus of US governance, that much. Suffice to say the chore of coming on the 'right' balance got much more complicated.

But industrialization wasn't the only complicating factor. The Shield of Achilles lays matters out in more useful detail

by **drsmooth** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 09:13:40

JFLNYC wrote:The quote attributed to me is not mine.

you're up early, JFL

by **drsmooth** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 09:45:29

Luzinski's Gut wrote:This post left with "yeah, and so what?" kind of feeling.

I do not mean to denigrate you or your views LG - I have immense respect for you - but anyone who imagines the post-WWII world is somehow essentially the same as the world prior to that time (and I'd take the measuring point back to around the 1880s) but for a (presumably assumed unwarranted) expansion of federal government, needs to re-examine their foundational assumptions.

There are innumerable things we could do to improve how we govern ourselves, and any reasonable combination of those things would probably result in 'efficiencies' of some kind, measurable in dollars, employed individuals, etc.

I'm not convinced leaving lots more things up to unfettered individual discretion, or the discretion of entities in which due process is not an organizing principle, results in a happier place for everyone to live.

by **JFLNYC** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 11:31:04

drsmooth wrote:
JFLNYC wrote:The quote attributed to me is not mine.

you're up early, JFL

Must be ever-vigilant to those trying to misquote me.

by **drsmooth** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 11:50:09

JFLNYC wrote:
drsmooth wrote:
JFLNYC wrote:The quote attributed to me is not mine.

you're up early, JFL

Must be ever-vigilant to those trying to misquote me.

curses - 'foiled again

by **kimbatiste** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 12:59:01

Sounds like they might actually get something done on the fiscal cliff today. Payroll tax holiday is not likely to be extended. Shame - loved that thing.

by **Bucky** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 14:39:19

I really wish they would wait until the market closes to announce a deal. My employee stock purchase program strike price is based on today's close, and I want it to be LOOOOOOOWWWWW

by **Luzinski's Gut** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 16:39:27

It's not that the Federal Government required expansion - it did - but not to the lengths it has gone. I know the world has changed dramatically since 1940, but there has been an immense growth of government twice since then...once in the 1941-1947 timeframe, largely because of WWII and Cold War, and then in the late 60s/early 70s, mainly because of the civil rights movement and the counterculture. There was a very dramatic shift to the left of the political spectrum in the 70s, even Nixon was a very liberal conservative.

The growth of government is a huge reason why we are running massive deficits and have unparalleled debt...there has to be significant contraction of the government if for no reason other than it has become too expensive to maintain. The question then becomes - what can be cut with limited effects on the greater percentage of the populace? And I'd submit that a corollary of that would be - do you reinforce successful programs or do you continue to throw good money after bad?

Our government was never designed to be efficient and god knows its terribly inefficient.

drsmooth wrote:
Luzinski's Gut wrote:This post left with "yeah, and so what?" kind of feeling.

I do not mean to denigrate you or your views LG - I have immense respect for you - but anyone who imagines the post-WWII world is somehow essentially the same as the world prior to that time (and I'd take the measuring point back to around the 1880s) but for a (presumably assumed unwarranted) expansion of federal government, needs to re-examine their foundational assumptions.

There are innumerable things we could do to improve how we govern ourselves, and any reasonable combination of those things would probably result in 'efficiencies' of some kind, measurable in dollars, employed individuals, etc.

I'm not convinced leaving lots more things up to unfettered individual discretion, or the discretion of entities in which due process is not an organizing principle, results in a happier place for everyone to live.

by **Doll Is Mine** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 17:02:16

BREAKING: The U.S. will go over the fiscal cliff tonight.

by **TenuredVulture** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 17:04:55

I would like to adjust the conversation a bit as well--eliminating tax deductions is in essence cutting government spending, not increasing taxes.

by **The Nightman Cometh** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 17:40:23

Disagree with you LG. The U.S. had a surplus as recently as 12 years ago and much smaller U.S. governments ran large deficits. The problem IMO is political responsibility from our parties and not that the government is fundamentally too large.

by **dajafi** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 18:03:12

Luzinski's Gut wrote:The question then becomes - what can be cut with limited effects on the greater percentage of the populace? And I'd submit that a corollary of that would be - do you reinforce successful programs or do you continue to throw good money after bad?

Our government was never designed to be efficient and god knows its terribly inefficient.

When Nate Silver gets bored with political prognostication--and he will, if he isn't already--I'd love for him to turn his attention to evaluating how effective enacted policies are by the standards of their own objectives (which often are a matter of official record). I'll admit I'm not always very confident in what's "successful," and I actually follow this stuff.

Some of this is innately difficult to analyze--anything where you're positing a deterrent effect, say; consider the death penalty or a military buildup "to keep the peace"--but some of it is fairly straightforward. We're pretty sure that Medicare has dramatically cut the poverty rate for seniors. The Bush tax cuts were lousy as stimulus. (Tax cuts generally are lousy as stimulus in the current rate structure.) The bank and auto bailouts, distasteful as many found them, seem to have been effective, in that the economy didn't totally collapse and we got paid back. The assault weapons ban allegedly didn't do much to deter gun violence.

One might see this or that policy as successful by its objectives, and still either deplore the objectives or determine that it didn't do anything for you; see LG's point about HUD. I'm not a housing expert and I have some sympathy for those who assert that subsidies distort the market... but I also know that when Section 8 or Housing Advantage gets cut, human suffering in NYC increases and other related systems (shelter, corrections, public assistance) endure strain and higher costs. Many (most?) policies probably have feel-good effects that render them politically salable even if they don't "work," or work imperfectly; mass incarceration seems to have contributed to lower crime rates, which in turn has helped cities like NYC gain residents and boost business activity, but it's absurdly expensive, recidivism is rampant, and it's devastated already-hurting communities where everyone's either in lockup or effectively unemployable because of their records (and thus with incentive to recidivate).

The point is that without something like an objective baseline with editorial opinion--a Congressional Budget Office that "scores" the policy years after its implementation in addition to when it's proposed--we're collectively at greater risk of seeing bad policies enacted and failing to grasp their impacts than we have to be.

by **drsmooth** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 18:20:26

Luzinski's Gut wrote:I know the world has changed dramatically since 1940, but there has been an immense growth of government twice since then...once in the 1941-1947 timeframe, largely because of WWII and Cold War, and then in the late 60s/early 70s, mainly because of the civil rights movement and the counterculture. There was a very dramatic shift to the left of the political spectrum in the 70s, even Nixon was a very liberal conservative. ...

well............

"size" of government gets measured all kinds of ways, with all kinds of definitional ifs ands & buts. To keep things simple at the outset, let's look at size as a function of GDP.

Federal outlays as a % of GDP (link is to spreadsheet from whitehouse.gov) have increased since 1940....very gradually, fluctuating 2-3 percentage points around 20% since 1950. We had a very large spike during WWII as you noted, and nothing comparable since. Here's what it looks like:

So demonstrating "immense" growth relative to GDP will be difficult for you.

You could try various labor force metrics as well...I doubt that will support "immensity" very firmly for you either. But have at it.....

In absolute economic terms, I find it feels like everything has gotten immensely bigger in the past 70 or so years. And I find conversation about the proportions is more interesting, but immensely more difficult to resolve... 8-)

by **Phan In Phlorida** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 18:30:58

Hugo Chavez prolly gonna die. One of his officials has urged Venezuelans to pray for him.

by **drsmooth** » Mon Dec 31, 2012 19:09:54

this diagram of recent US economic history is enough to make anyone's gastric juices bubble...because determining the best - or even the least worst - thing(s) to do about it is not remotely obvious

for reference, that purple line, and my guess is that most of the blue 'other' line, owe most of their slope to the health care costs of an aging population

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