To My Idiot Democratic Party: A Rant
From a blogger I occasionally read* who goes by the name of “Digby” (no relation to frequent Vox Nova commenter Digby Dolben) – in the context of a review of Michael Moore’s new film:
It’s extremely disheartening to see the administration and so many Democrats in congress completely ignore the political and policy ramifications of failing to engage in fundamental financial reform and fiery populist rhetoric at a time like this. This [tea party] movement is happening in a vacuum created by a lack of interest in this topic by liberals who are so enamored of being members of the new “creative class” and the like that they aren’t paying attention to the cynicism and anger that’s reaching critical mass among average working stiffs out there. It’s easy to dismiss it, but very, very foolish. The issues Moore raises in this film will be answered on the right with authoritarianism, militarism, immigrant bashing and violence. It’s a recipe for disaster unless the left takes this on in direct, political terms.
I’m getting more and more peeved at people who think of themselves as “liberals” because they drive Priuses, are pro-choice, eat organic food and treat the nanny like a member of the family: sorry to be the one to break it to them, but that’s horse dung.
Being a liberal used to mean protecting ordinary working stiffs from the excesses of their boss’s boss’s boss. It meant standing up for unions by supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, refusing to shop at Walmart, Whole Foods and other union-busting stores.
Being a liberal means recognizing that the government has an important role in helping balance society by equalizing the distribution of society’s goods through: 1. A (way more than now) progressive tax system, and 2. redistribution of wealth through both direct payments, and indirectly through support for public education (K through college) that is heavily subsidized and of excellent quality, and other public services.
The top marginal tax rate during the administration of that fiery Leninist, Ike, was between 91 and 94 percent. The meant that 94 percent of the top portion of your income (translated into today’s dollars, that portion above about $2 million) went straight from your bank account to the government. This had a chilling effect on executives awarding themselves obscene bonuses, because taxes would just eat up the majority of it before you could purchase a congressman with it. The structure encouraged a flattening of income distribution, and that’s exactly what happened.
(This is amazing: Republican president Dwight Eisenhower was more (genuinely) liberal than virtually any Democrat of national significance today? I think I see the real problem many Americans have with the Democratic Party: they refuse to be real, actual Democrats.)
Harry Truman is not just spinning in his grave: he’s going to pop out of the ground, stalk up to Capitol Hill and start kicking people’s tails at this rate.
We STILL don’t have health care? What the hell?? You know how to fix this: either single payer, or a hybrid system like in some European countries. The fix isn’t about “give dump trucks full of money to insurance companies,” I can assure you. Get. It. Done.
Look, Dems: the job of the Democratic Party is to protect Joe and Jane average from the rapacious greed and exploitative power of capitalism’s captains – the folks Roosevelt called “the Money Power.” Do your jobs, okay?
The thing is, if you do, you’ll have power for the next few decades, I promise you. You’ll be heroes to millions, just like the New Dealers were.
Or, you can sell your souls to support what this nation has become: a plutocracy, and plutocracies tend to be either reformed (see 1930s New Deal) or end in considerably more grief (see various armed revolutions in Latin America, Africa and Asia.) I much prefer (and could only endorse) the “reform” route of the two choices, but the choice is in your hands, Dems.
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*Let me put this in all caps, so there can be no mistake: I IN NO WAY ENDORSE EVERYTHING THE WOMAN HAS TO SAY, OKAY?
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I am puzzled by why you would have such rigid expectations and identification with the Democratic party. Personally, I find them as unacceptable as the Republican party. Both parties are liberal in the sense of being born from the modern, enlightenment, philosophy of secular individualism (a.k.a. liberalism).
Thanks for the response, Sam.
I identify with them because, of the two choices, they are the one that (historically, anyway) comes closest to doing things I can support – mostly along economic and social justice lines. Civil rights, social security, medicare, Head Start, Medicaid – even the space program – were all expressions of the New-Dealer idea that We’re All In This Together.
What political alternative is there, in the United States of 2009?
Matt,
It was funny that you brought up Ike, because it reminds me of what I just I read from Joy Davidman’s Letters (she was the one who married C.S. Lewis). She seemed to dislike Ike and wondered what was going on with America with their love affair with Ike (she was living in England at the time). Seems that America is always confusing the world, even with former Americans.
“It meant standing up for unions by supporting the Employee Free Choice Act, refusing to shop at Walmart, Whole Foods and other union-busting stores.”
There is a lot I agree with your postt and then disagree about. Buy being liberal means standing up for the Employee Free Choice Act and if you dissent on that or the fact that secret elections might go by the way side you are outdide the “circle”
Might want to tell that to the far right George McGovern that is has problems with it.
Just saying I respect the “Liberal point of view” but it seems putting that in there makes the case there can be no dissent from what Union want for their own power
Not sure how that is very pro-working man or a balanced vied of Catholic Social Justice
Just saying. Be care ful with your examples
“I am puzzled by why you would have such rigid expectations and identification with the Democratic party. Personally, I find them as unacceptable as the Republican party. Both parties are liberal in the sense of being born from the modern, enlightenment, philosophy of secular individualism (a.k.a. liberalism).”
I disagree, and think Matt Talbot is exactly right: the democrats need to be MORE liberal, and if they become so, they will be both more in line with catholic social teaching, and more successful as a political party.
Aside from abortion and gay marriage, the right has very little to interest me as a catholic.
You have just explained EXACTLY why I vote republican.
The only real difference I see between the 2 national parties is the abortion issue. Since Clinton rid his administration of Robert Reich, pushed through a welfare reform act that puts children in institutionalized day-care so that their mothers can work menial jobs and gave China most-favored-nation trading status irregardless of their terrible track record on human rights, the democrats have shown themselves, through their actions, to be just as much a slave to the interests of big business as the republicans.
But there does seem to be some difference on the issue of abortion, that one issue determines my vote, and I expect it will continue to do so until somebody actually demonstates real care for the poor.
phosphorious: Becoming more liberal is problematic because liberalism hangs its hat on the autonomous individual, which is a dangerous myth. I am a personalist not an individualist. So, in opposition to liberalism (and neo-liberalism), I find myself to be something of a conservative leftist.
Matt: As for what there is to be in 2009, I find that such a question limits the political imagination. Imagine thinking in such a way in fascist Poland (or the antebellum South to the Negro)–What else is there to be right now? Obviously there are few alternatives if we take it to be the case that under such limited options we have no recourse to a better, different world. But I maintain that political malnutrition is not the only option, I can—and indeed must—imagine a better world.
Ben – the Republicans have always been the “party of the rich” in Truman’s description; the second half of that Truman quote is, “The Democrats are the party of the common man.” They once were; they could be again.
I can—and indeed must—imagine a better world.
Oh, I do, Sam, I do. The thing is, I can either form a new political party (which I’m actually considering) or work within the existing structure – for the time being, working within the existing structures seems the prudent course (does that make me a conservative?)
I guess my frustration come with this: To what extent is the idea of having a political imagination simply blowing smoke in the wind which makes it nothing at all—or at least impossible? A political imagination means something that is not the case in practice but is certainty true can be argued for for its sheer possibility. This was what MLK Jr. did. He fought for a freedom that was a foreign idea to the political imagination of the Jim Crow South. And he did so with the opposition of BOTH parties. Party lines create the impression that we can only go so far in advocating for a political reality that ought to be, I think.
That’s actually an excellent point, Sam – given that MLK is one of my heroes, you’d think I’d be more in tune with that.
The thing with MLK is that he (and the SNCC, the NAACP and others) built a movement grounded in Christian charity and self-sacrifice, not on domination and defeat of his enemies. I tend to think of “third way” politics as mere Clintonian “triangulation” – maybe it’s time to question the premises of both “sides?”
Sam: good point about MLK. The pro-life movement could learn from that model. Like the civil rights movement, to be pro-life is (at least in its pure form) rooted in a mentality that is, as you say, “a foreign idea” to our modern culture, including to BOTH political parties.
My mantra these days is that the country would be a lot better off if the Democratic Party contained more true progressives, and if the Republican Party contained more true conservatives. That would seem like our only hope for finding a true “via media” between the (equally valid) ideals of subsidiary and solidarity. Of course, it goes without saying that both progressivism and conservatism, in their purest forms, should be pro-life. I’m planning to do a more in-depth post on that whenever I have time.
This lack of imagination was the exact point of this somewhat cryptic post: http://vox-nova.com/2009/10/08/the-danger-of-imagination/
I missed that earlier, Sam – great reflection!
I think the 1991 Summer of Mercy in Witchita, KS was such an attempt of the pro-life movement to apply the lessons of the civil-rights movement to the pro-life movement.
It didn’t work. It lead to Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992 and the passage of the FACE act in 1994.
It was really after these failures that the prolife movement became so closely aligned with the republican party. Casey had been a pro-life democrat, and he pretty much asked to leave his party by the leadership.
It might be worth while to take a close look at this history if you are considering trying a new model for the movement.
Might want to tell that to the far right George McGovern that is has problems with it.
I think McGovern (who never has been close to labor and was not endorsed by labor when he ran for president) is just the type of example being referred to.
The EFCA is intended to give working people an effective right to organize – something the Church views not as unnatural or extraordinary, but as ordinary and indispensible to a just social order. EFCA takes the bosses out of the role of deciding if and how workers organize.
I think McGovern (who never has been close to labor and was not endorsed by labor when he ran for president) is just the type of example being referred to.
McGovern has a good heart, but his 1972 presidential campaign was in many respects the nail in the coffin of the New Deal coalition.
Matt,
While I understand the desire for a more progressive tax system, I’m afraid the chances of it happening are slim to none.
It’s true that in the 1950s the top tax rate in the U.S. was just above 90%. Today the highest top tax rate in the world is just north of 60%. This isn’t because Swedish leftists today lack the backbone of commie Ike. Tax rates have come down over the last few decades throughout the world not for ideological but for practical reasons, and the trend is likely to continue as the world becomes more globalized and it becomes easier for people to move to lower tax jurisdictions. That’s not a pleasant reality if you’re on the left, but it is the reality, and has to be faced eventually.
BA – while I’m touched by your teary-eyed concern for my broken lefty heart, I think you are too pessimistic about the chances of restoring some justice to the tax system.
One reason the tax rates have come down in the developed world is that US tax rates are so low; as the Big Kid On The Block, that’s bound to have an effect on tax policies of the rest of the world. Raising the top marginal tax rate to (say) 70% would allow other countries to raise theirs, thus allowing them to pay for all the the programs their citizens want.
Of course, raising taxes substantially on people who can afford to pay more will result in lots of huffing and puffing from the business right, and if it gets bad enough, ridiculous, badly written polemical novels featuring leaden prose and characters named “John Galt,” but that’s a risk I’m prepared to take.
One reason the tax rates have come down in the developed world is that US tax rates are so low
The U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. Hasn’t stopped corporate tax rates from coming down in other developed countries. Indeed, there are a number of countries (Ireland, for example, and Spain) that already have top tax rates lower than the U.S.
The concern when you raise taxes on the rich is not that they will complain or write bad novels. The concern, as New York recently discovered, is that they might up and leave. Progressives ignore this reality at their peril.
BA – Yeesh. You have a strange sense of what might support your arguments, I must say. From the article you linked to:
The world’s smallest violin is in my hands, and playing a weepy song for all those poor rich people…
Anyway, if the top marginal tax rate is raised substantially, a bunch of billionaires might leave the country? I mean:
A. So what? and
B. Why would they?
Raising taxes in New York might make millionaires start looking for mansions in Connecticut or Rhode Island, if they have lower tax rates: but if the federal tax rate were raised, where would all those rich folks go, especially if taxes are raised throughout the G7? What, are Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and assorted fast food magnates all going to move to the Congo? Gimme a break. They want to be in America, because it is the richest market in the world. But they could all leave, and take all their money with them, and it would still be the richest market in the world.
Although I am not the “digbydolben” Matt is referring to, I endorse every word of what the other one has written–except that I don’t see it happening, because of the American infatuation with the “myth of Horatio Alger” and the endemic distrust of government there.
It has never been accepted by the American people that the “government” is they themselves.
I DO believe that there is a revolution of some sort brewing, but I predict that it’ll come from the Right, as has many times been predicted by American political thinkers, and, although I don’t agree with my Church on the subjects of “gay rights,” and also disagree with her on the method of opposing “choice” in so-called “abortion rights,” I think it’s high time that a “Catholic Party” was formed in the United States–one that follows the “whole cloth” position regarding life’s sacredness, and one that demands social and economic justice for the poor.
Matt,
I’m not sure why you’re having such trouble with the concept here. The argument is not that taxing the rich is not that it imposes some hardship on the rich. The argument is that if you raise taxes too high, the rich will move to a lower tax jurisdiction and you won’t get their money. Let me repeat that: They. Will. Leave. And. You. Won’t. Get. Their. Money. Capiche?
It’s all well and good to talk about all the countries raising their taxes at the same time, but if such an agreement could be worked out don’t you think they would have done it already? The problem is that for such an agreement to work, pretty much every country has to participate. If one country keeps its taxes low, it reaps the benefits and the plan is a failure. It’s this sort of tax competition between governments (among other things) that has brought down rates over the last 30 years. You can’t just wish it away.
if such an agreement could be worked out don’t you think they would have done it already?
With Republican presidents (or Clinton-style conservative democrats?) Well, no.
More generally, I think you overstate the extent to which the rich would leave the US under a more progressive tax system – unless there was a mass exodus of the rich from America in the 1950s I haven’t heard about.
The GOP did try for a couple of years to preserve a provision where multimillionaires would go overseas, renounce their American citizenship and be able to return to the USA to live tax free on their off-shore investments.
Matt Talbot,
Is there, in your opinion, any moral dimension to the marginal tax rate? In other words, if 91% or 94% is “fair,” why not 100%. Is it licit for the state to demand 100% of someone’s income or profit above a certain amount? Where is that line drawn? $20 Million? $2 Million? How about $200,000? Why? No one is asking you to “play a weepy song” for all those “poor rich people,” but they are persons and citizens. Does the fact that they’re rich mean they don’t have to be treated fairly?
Incidentally, I’m very middle class, an active Vincentian and on the board of my local homeless shelter, so I’ll thank you for not indicting my character on the basis of this question.
Is there, in your opinion, any moral dimension to the marginal tax rate?
Yes, Mark, there absolutely is a moral dimension to the marginal tax rate. Raising the marginal rate and using the money to address the needs of your fellow citizens redresses unjust income distribution.
Is it licit for the state to demand 100% of someone’s income or profit above a certain amount? Where is that line drawn? $20 Million? $2 Million? How about $200,000? Why?
100% is probably excessive, under most circumstances: 35% is too low, especially in a time of great need, as now. Where should the brackets be? That’s really beyond the scope of this post – I’m making a case for Democrats to commit themselves to their historic constituency, which is working people and the vulnerable (including the unborn – that’s another thing I’m working on Democrats about.)
Does the fact that they’re rich mean they don’t have to be treated fairly?
Of course not – but “from each according to his ability, and to each according to his need.” (Marx was quoting the Acts of the Apostles.)
I’ll thank you for not indicting my character on the basis of this question.
I wouldn’t dream of it, Mark.
I think you overstate the extent to which the rich would leave the US under a more progressive tax system – unless there was a mass exodus of the rich from America in the 1950s I haven’t heard about.
In the 1950s there were only a handful of countries with decent standards of living, and all of them had top tax rates comparable to America’s. You did get a fair number of tax exiles from Britain once Kennedy put the top rate in the 70s rather than the 90s.
Today a person thinking about relocating has a lot more options, and is much less tied to having to live in a certain place to do his work. In the 1990s half of the computer start-ups were started by immigrants. Would all of these people have come to the U.S. instead of Japan or Ireland if taxes had been where you’d like them? I doubt it. Bear in mind, it isn’t necessary for every rich person to leave for the gains from raising taxes to be largely cancelled out.
I assure you that countries like Sweden didn’t lower their top tax rates out of warm feelings for the rich. Nor, for that matter, where rates in the U.S. as high as they were in the 50s because Ike was more liberal than Kennedy (and Johnson, and Carter, and Clinton, and Obama). Thinking of the issue in terms of Republicans and Democrats is just provincial.
You did get a fair number of tax exiles from Britain once Kennedy put the top rate in the 70s rather than the 90s.
Which could be an argument for coordination of tax rates between G20 countries…but look, BA – there are many factors that influence where people decide to live. I doubt Bill Gates would decamp to the Caymans if we raise his taxes a bunch. Some of these folks would leave – but the thing is, when you decrease income disparities and do things to benefit this country’s working people, that tends to make everyone better off, in the broad scheme of things. Taxes and redistribution are a part of the answer; strengthening the power of working people through support for unionization is another. If you pay working people more money, they can buy more stuff.
The last three decades of having policies bent toward a Laissez-faire approach – low marginal tax rates, deregulation of the banking and finance industries, and so on – has yielded predictable results, if you are familiar with history: concentration of wealth at the top of the heap, relatively stagnant wages for the non-rich, periodic financial crises, cutbacks in government support for struggling people, etc. Those things have a tendency to destabilize society, and lead eventually to unrest – meaning anything from strikes to guillotines. The New Deal generation recognized that, and the result was no financial crises for 50 years after the great depression – as well as a broadly distributed economic boom the likes of which the world had never seen.
Wow, Matt. Talk about your isogesis. In context, the passage from Acts reads: “At that time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and one of them named Agabus stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine all over the world, and it happened under Claudius. So the disciples determined that, according to ability, each should send relief to the brothers who lived in Judea. This they did, sending it to the presbyters in care of Barnabas and Saul.”
This passage recounts a temporary, voluntary, limited charitible effort to relieve the suffering of fellow Christians in an afflicted region. Just as you and I might get together and agree to give what we can to help persecuted Christians in China.
To conflate this passage, especially through the interpretive lens of Karl Marx, into a scriptural justification for confiscatory taxes is absurd.
Which could be an argument for coordination of tax rates between G20 countries
You aren’t going to get all of the G20 countries to coordinate tax rates and stick to it. It’s a classic free rider problem.
there are many factors that influence where people decide to live.
True enough, but the fact that there are other factors doesn’t mean taxes aren’t a factor.
Look, maybe the lower tax rates have more to do with factors other than the possibility that people will move. People also tend to work less the higher the taxes, and spend more time and effort at tax avoidance, etc. It’s still the case that top tax rates have been trending down, and I see no reason to think that’s going to chance any time soon. Trying to blame Republicans and weeny Democrats for the fact that Sweden is cutting taxes is just silly.
Mark – I had no idea what “isogesis” meant until you used the word and I had to look it up – so I concede the point. So, okay, I’m not a scripture scholar, but what I was getting at was that being rich rightly imposes additional responsibilities on a person, and that I favor government action to ensure that the rich live up to theirs.
Reasonable income redistribution is essential to providing stability to an industrial society, and stability is an essential ingredient of economic progress; progressive tax rates and social programs are actually good for business, in the broader scheme of things.
“I’m getting more and more peeved at people who think of themselves as “liberals” because they drive Priuses, are pro-choice, eat organic food and treat the nanny like a member of the family…”
Well said, and I agree. Sometimes it seems that “liberals” are only trying to introduce a new way to consume in the name of “justice”, all the while still neglecting the poor.
Matt,
I sympathize with your concerns. Unfortunately, BA is right about one thing: if you raise taxes in a global economy, the rich can simply relocate to a place where they don’t have to pay as much. The same principle applies to labor; if we insist that companies raise wages, then they can go to countries where wages are low due to economic factors or political repression.
For instance, while the Western world wept crocodile tears over Tienanmen Square, the significance of that event was that it sent a clear message to the rest of the world that China would use repressive force to hold labor in check. It wasn’t until angry workers joined the students in the street that the authoritarian crackdown began.
I don’t think we can look to the powers that be to resolve this situation. We have to find ways to start new businesses that are based on profit-sharing, on worker ownership and democratic control. It is through those means, I believe, and not an adjustment of tax policies, that economic growth will finally become more equitable. On the policy level I think we should actually create tax incentives to start or to convert businesses to ESOPs or EOCCs. What we need, in other words, is distribution of productive property.
Thanks for the response, Joe.
This post is, in part, a voice crying out in the wilderness, I guess. The Republicans are all about supporting big business and the rich: that has always been their core constituency. The Democrats used to be much more about standing up to the Republican’s constituency – i.e, the party of labor and the middle class, but now are thoroughly corrupted and all but useless.
I am strongly attracted to the worker ownership and democratic control you describe and I suspect that as I learn more about distributism, I may well post a bunch on that as well. Unless something radically changes, I think the current regime is facing a terminal crisis.
What do you think are the biggest obstacles to arranging things along the lines you describe?
I sympathize with your concerns. Unfortunately, BA is right about one thing: if you raise taxes in a global economy, the rich can simply relocate to a place where they don’t have to pay as much.
This is simply wrong. The rich are among the least transferable because their wealth is often tied to land or markets. Sometimes the method of capture has to change, but taxing them is not difficult. See multi-national corporations headquartered in the Bahamas.
M.Z.,
Don’t they set up headquarters in the Bahamas precisely because it is a tax-shelter? This is one of the reasons why raising taxes to target the rich is often futile, no matter how much I think it ought to be done in principle.
I mean, am I totally missing something when a study by the Government Accountability Office finds that half of US corporations get away with avoiding taxes?
“The GAO said corporations escaped paying federal income taxes for a variety of reasons including operating losses, tax credits and an ability to use transactions within the company to shift income to low tax countries.”
Maybe my use of the word “rich” was too vague and general, but it seems to me that there is enough flexibility in the wealth of corporations to allow them to escape paying taxes in such numbers and with such frequency that changes in the tax code are essentially meaningless to them.
Matt,
I think the biggest obstacle is simple ignorance. We don’t learn about cooperatives, we don’t talk about cooperatives, we don’t think about cooperatives as a culture, as a nation – so of course there aren’t going to be many cooperatives.
But it isn’t because they “don’t work”. It is because the people who start them usually aren’t trying to start a movement to change society, but to improve their own situation. It’s usually very apolitical, a business arrangement of convenience for those involved. When they are tied to activism, its a sort of self-righteous college kid activism that turns normal people off.
Fortunately I think we are on the verge of a distributist renaissance. I count myself as part of a small but growing circle of writers, thinkers, and activists who are trying to bring more publicity to these ideas. If you want to learn more, I think you should check out the Chesterbelloc Mandate.
Sorry, I forgot to include the link to that article I quoted from:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1249465620080812
Thanks for the recommendation, Joe – I’ve got some reading to do :)
Various loopholes have been closed over the years. The most recent was that companies with substantial operations in the US now were considered US companies for tax purposes.