US Politics: trickle down economics and trickle up dysfunction

[Shryke]

A perfect insight into your inability or unwillingness to understand people who disagree with you. What he said isn't even controversial - "governance" does not mean endless compromise, or capitulation to the executive and his party. Opposition parties aren't just there for show, and if they are able to succesfully prevent many parts of the agendas of the other party/executive branch, then the system is working as intended

Uh no. Opposition party exist to oppose the governments agenda, not to oppose the government doing anything. Obstruction is not the job of any part of the government. What you and Commodore and the entire GOP seem unable to grasp is that you have to work with the rest of the government, even the parts of it you lost, to get shit done. And we can see this lack of understanding in the way that this has been a string of some of the least productive congresses in history that have almost driven the US into default a few times.

Like, I get that you think this is a rebuttal, but in reality you are just restating Commodore's point and showing the exact same ignorance. This isn't about "people who disagree with me" and your attempt to portray it that way is simply a projection of your own issues. This is about the fact that the government is supposed to DO SHIT. And the role of the opposition is to shape how the majority party DOES SHIT. Not to stop the government from doing anything.

Obstructionism isn't the role of opposition, it's the opposite of the role of government itself.

[MerenthaClone]

There's also the fact that the general right-wing pundits (and Congressmen) are currently screaming that Obama isn't doing anything about the "crisis" at the border. So when he asks for money to address it, they naturally give him money so that more children can be deported. Wait, I meant they repealed the 2008 bill that they wrote about how to process children from South America which is causing the delays they're complaining about. Wait, fuck. Oh, that's right, they do fucking nothing except continue to scream about how Obama is doing nothing.

There's obstructing an agenda, (for instance, I don't hold grudges against conservatives for trying to prevent the passage of the ACA, or even trying to repeal it a few times) that's understandable and expected in a two-party system. That's fine. What's not fine is adopting a political stance that amounts to "fuck you" when there are very real problems that need to be solved.

[Ramsay Gimp]

Ramsay, Boehner is suing to eliminate the delay of the employer mandate, a mandate he himself opposes. Therefore, he is suing in favor policy with which he disagrees. That's just incoherent.

You'll get no Boehner love from me, but he has a point. Agree with the law or not, it is the law, and the president is basically waiving it by fiat in an attempt to shield his party from the consequences of his policies. But I was responding to Shyrke's bigger claim - he said pointing out that obstruction is largely the role of an opposition party is evidence of irrational Obama hatred

As to "endless compromise", can you name ten distinct, significant policy concessions the GOP has made to Barack Obama and the Democrats? After all, if those compromises are infinite, as you say, you shouldn't have a problem naming ten.

I didn't say the GOP had made endless compromises or concessions. I was referring to the idea that they should and that anything short of that means they aren't in the business of governing, which has become commonplace among democrats

Why should a party make ten or any policy concessions if they can get away with not doing so? Imagine if Obama had actual free reign on ten distinct policies - that would shift public policy drastically

[TrackerNeil]

I didn't say the GOP had made endless compromises or concessions. I was referring to the idea that they should and that anything short of that means they aren't in the business of governing, which has become commonplace among democrats

Why should a party make ten or any policy concessions if they can get away with not doing so? Imagine if Obama had actual free reign on ten distinct policies - that would shift public policy drastically

Who asked Republicans to compromise endlessly? It would be nice if they'd compromise, I don't know, once or twice, without the threat of worldwide or nationwide economic collapse looming. They didn't compromise on the ACA, nor on Dodd-Frank. They barely compromised on the stimulus, and one of the three Republicans who did lost his job two years later. Where are all these bloody compromises the GOP has been making, or been asked to make?

[aceluby]

"No honey, I didn't do nothing all day. I was governing."

What bothers me the most about this right wing line of thought is that they actually believe that you can both govern AND not make a single policy concession. Then again this is a party where 100% of presidential candidates wouldn't agree to a tax increase w/ 9x as many spending cuts.

It's like going to an interview, telling your boss he sucks, his business is awful, and if you hire me I'll show you how bad your business is. Then he hires you, you screw everything up, get nothing done, make sure nobody else gets anything done, then point to everyone else and tell your boss "see... I told ya. You should give me a raise."

[Wise Fool]

The current GOP is in the mode of complete obstructionism. It is known. Has been since 2008.

[The Anti-Targ]

Paladin of Ice, on 12 Jul 2014 - 06:19 AM, said:

Gosh, it's as if concentrating wealth among elites who sit on it or store it offshore instead of channeling it to the middle and lower classes to spend and generate more domestic economic activity is something that weakens an economy! If only we'd had, oh, thirty years of federal tax policy to incubate that idea and see what happened...

But surely it's all going according to plan, slash govt revenue so you can create deficits and then slash budgets esp for social spending, and thereby privatise everything. Wouldn't right wingers be all for these outcomes as painful transitions to the long dreamed of privatised utopia with a fully emasculated government?

[Fez]

But surely it's all going according to plan, slash govt revenue so you can create deficits and then slash budgets esp for social spending, and thereby privatise everything. Wouldn't right wingers be all for these outcomes as painful transitions to the long dreamed of privatised utopia with a fully emasculated government?

Even in Kansas there's a bare level of government spending that most conservatives expect to have; things like vouchers for charter schools, autism treatment programs, etc. These are things that every state, no matter how right-wing, provides, except for a handful that are just too poor to, like Alabama. And now, thanks to how massive these tax cuts were, Kansas is unable to fully fund these things, which is why Brownback is so incredibly unpopular.

If you look at year-over-year budgets for states that Republicans either took over in 2010, or already had, you'll see they enacted massive spending cuts for FYs 09/10/11 since they all believed austerity was better than tax increases or accounting gimmicks to balance their state budgets. However, since then, when tax revenues started increasing as the economy slowly improved, almost all these GOP-controlled states started increasing their budgets again rather than locking in all the cuts. They didn't restore everything, and naturally they only focused on budget areas important to them, but they knew that there's a certain level of service that they couldn't go below without pissing off their own base as well.

Of course, they often did this in a stupid manner (see, vouchers) and of course they also enacted tax cuts where they could (Kansas stands out an extreme example though), but almost all states have seen year-over-year spending increases for the past three years (more, for states that recovered very quickly).

[aceluby]

And then in MN we raised taxes, increased public spending, and have found ourselves 10th in unemployment, I believe we're 1st in education, and our economy is relatively flourishing.

It's as if investing in your state and having people work for your state doesn't kill the economy, but actually allows it to flourish. Who knew that more money being spent by middle and lower class people would lead to steady hiring practices. Well, except anyone with a decent grasp on economics that is. Funny how that works.

Seems pretty simple. When the private sector is hiring, look for places to cut since the private sector can make it up with their growth. When the private sector is cutting, look for places to invest to inject some of that lost money back into the economy so consumer demand is minimally impacted while having the added bonus of creating a spending atmosphere that could jumpstart the lack of growth in the private sector.

[Altherion]

Jose Antonio Vargas, probably the most well-known undocumented immigrant in the U.S., has beendetained in a Texas border town after flying there to report on the plight of the Central American children being held at the border.

I'm kind of confused about what he thought was going to happen. You can get onto domestic flights in the US with a driver's license or a similar photo ID (i.e. it doesn't have to be a passport or anything else that proves your citizenship). However, if you show them a foreign passport from a country that requires a visa for travel and you don't have the visa, they can't just ignore that.

[Frog Eater]

I am glad we turned back the planeload of illegal immigrants. That is what we are supposed to do. Just because they are from Honduras makes no difference to me.

Why not fly the whole population here otherwise? Give the whole population refugee status? Why not fly the whole population of Syria, Cuba, and whatever other country here. Give them all government services! We have unlimited money!

[Mudguard]

I'm kind of confused about what he thought was going to happen. You can get onto domestic flights in the US with a driver's license or a similar photo ID (i.e. it doesn't have to be a passport or anything else that proves your citizenship). However, if you show them a foreign passport from a country that requires a visa for travel and you don't have the visa, they can't just ignore that.

He knew that there was a good chance that he'd get detained by immigration but went anyway, so what happened wasn't a surprise. He was posting about his fear of being detained right before he was detained. And now that he's been detained, he's getting a lot of press for his cause. Seems a bit orchestrated to me. I don't have a problem with that, and I actually think it's a good strategy for raising awareness, but he should be willing to get deported or go through the normal procedure for a person in his situation. I don't think he should get preferential treatment or a pass just because he's famous or is well connected.

[sologdin]

sounds like that plane's passengers may have qualified as refugees under art. 1 of the convention on refugees and their return is a very serious violation of art. 33 of same. they appear to have been subject to refoulement.

[lokisnow]

sounds like that plane's passengers may have qualified as refugees under art. 1 of the convention on refugees and their return is a very serious violation of art. 33 of same. they appear to have been subject to refoulement.

So are you saying we can impeach Obama over this!? ;)

********

Here's a great article tearing to shreds that classical and moronic slogan, "taxation is theft" beloved by the less thoughtful libertarians.

http://www.juliansanchez.com/2014/07/14/on-the-slogan-taxation-is-theft/

The slogan that “taxation is theft” used to be fairly popular among libertarians—particularly anarcho-capitalists, who reject the legitimacy of even taxation to support a minimal state—and apparently, in some circles, it continues to be. Matt Zwolinski recently brought up a thoughtful old Loren Lomasky essay arguing that this is an unhelpful way for libertarians to talk, and promptly drew all sorts of fire from people who are fiercely committed to their slogan and, if anything, wish it would be chanted louder and with greater frequency.

I will assume that most sane libertarians get all that, and that when they say “taxation is theft,” they’re not claiming that everyone is somehow using words wrong, but rather employing a kind of metaphor, along the lines of the vegan slogan “meat is murder,” urging that we should all use “theft” in a way that encompasses “taxation” as just one more distinctive subcategory (like “embezzlement”) once we recognize that coercive expropriation by states is illegitimate, because taxation is morally on par with all those other transfers we currently describe as “theft.” Bracketing the substantive plausibility of the underlying claim, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that sort of rhetorical strategy: “Marital rape” was an oxymoron until enough people insisted it shouldn’t be, and now, happily, it isn’t. Lomasky thinks this one, however, is counterproductive—and here’s a slightly different way of putting his point.

One important component of “theft” as ordinary people use it—though I note the dictionaries don’t always capture this aspect—is that it is intentional. “Theft” is not just taking what one has no right to, but what one knows or reasonably ought to know one has no right to. When someone grabs your coat from a pile at a party, having mistaken it for theirs, then insofar as you’re persuaded they really have made a good faith mistake, you try to convince them of the error without resorting to calling them “thief.” (Especially if there’s some possibility that it will turn out you’re the one who’s mistaken.)

Not all disagreements, of course, are so easily resolved. Even in anarcho-capitalist utopia, after all, there would be some kind of legal system providing for non-consensual transfers of property in the case of disputes. When one person’s actions directly or indirectly harm another, there will often be disagreement about whether compensation is owed, and if so, what amount is reasonable. There will be complex contractual disputes, or questions about whether a parcel of property has easements on it, or about whether the prima facie rightful owner’s claimed property boundaries are just right. Some of these disputes will actually be pretty complicated, and not easily resolved by recourse to simple moral first principles. Invariably, either because the facts or the legal (quasi-legal?) rules are complex or ambiguous, whatever system is in place to resolve these disputes will sometimes get it wrong.

We can stipulate language evolving however we like in an imaginary anarcho-capitalist utopia, but it seems most natural to imagine the denizens of AnCapistan distinguishing between these kinds of inevitable good-faith errors and plain old theft. And it seems natural because there is a morally salient difference between simply taking what you like without regard for whether you have a right to it, and adhering to some process designed to adjudicate and enforce rights claims, even when that process will necessarily yield an unjust outcome in some cases.

Saying “taxation is theft,” then, doesn’t just entail that the speaker thinks taxation is no more morally justifiable than theft. It implies that this ought to be so self-evident to any reasonable person that those who disagree are (at best) just engaged in some kind of transparent rationalization for disregarding the rights of others. That seems both clearly wrong and unfair, even if anarchists are ultimately right about the illegitimacy of taxation. Why bother arguing at all if you believe that justifications for taxation are merely pretextual, and the great majority who regard it as legitimate (whether voters or agents of the state) do not really care whether it violates people’s rights? One might, I suppose, try to awaken a mugger’s dormant conscience by reminding them “you have no right to do this to me!”—but that would be an attempt at shaming, not persuasion: The mugger’s problem is not that he doesn’t know, but that he doesn’t care.

Lomasky’s point—beyond the rhetorical utility of this particular slogan—is that libertarian rhetoric (and, to be sure, the rhetoric of some more intemperate progressives, but that’s their problem) sometimes treats good faith disagreement about what is right as equivalent to amoral indifference to what is right. Very occasionally, that may be an effective rhetorical posture even when it’s somewhat unfair. Usually, though, it seems to be neither fair nor effective—except, perhaps, at delivering whatever psychological satisfaction people obtain from imagining themselves among the righteous few in a sea of thugs and moral imbeciles. When one is politically impotent, I guess, one takes what consolation prizes one can.

One additional theoretical consideration that’s largely independent of Lomasky’s (and Zwolinsky’s) main point. The slogan that “taxation is theft” is ambiguous: We can read it to mean, as the anarchist typically does, that taxation per se is categorically illegitimate, but also as a more specific claim that actually-existing taxation involves depriving people of specific holdings to which they are entitled. The second claim, it seems to me, is indefensible even if we suppose the anarchists are right as a matter of ideal theory. If we take that theory to be some variant of neo-Lockean/Rothbardian/Nozickian/whatever account of initial appropriation and transfer, almost nobody residing in any actually-existing state can justify their present holdings by reference to an appropriately untainted provenance running back to the State of Nature.

Serious theorists tend to acknowledge this at least in passing, but it’s one of those elephants in the room that anarchist and minarchist libertarian thinkers alike have tended to give conspicuously short shrift. In Nozick it’s basically relegated to an unsatisfying footnote to the effect that, yes, maybe we need a one-time carnival of patterned redistribution. (This is the political philosophy equivalent of Richard Dawkins tweeting “j/k: God did it up to amoebas, but THEN evolution.”) In other writers, it rates a few (equally unsatisfying) pages of hand-waving about homesteading and adverse possession.

[MerenthaClone]

I am glad we turned back the planeload of illegal immigrants. That is what we are supposed to do. Just because they are from Honduras makes no difference to me.

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

[sologdin]

locke, it's a long tradition of the US declining to recognize the refugee status of citizens from its allies & clients, such as honduras, whose government reliably oscillates from solid right PNH to center right PLH. the US would rather recognize refugee claims from commie states like cuba, bolivia, nicaragua, &c.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

So are you saying we can impeach Obama over this!? ;)

********

Here's a great article tearing to shreds that classical and moronic slogan, "taxation is theft" beloved by the less thoughtful libertarians.

http://www.juliansanchez.com/2014/07/14/on-the-slogan-taxation-is-theft/

That is not a great article; it's not even a good article. It is mostly a dumb article. It does somewhat-correctly point out that the issue of property (re)distribution along libertarian principles is a thorny issues that many prominent libertarian theorists have devoted precious little time to. It is not completely unaddressed within the movement, as evidenced here, here and here attempting to deal with the issue, primarily in the context of discussing reparations for the descendants of slaves, but in principles which are broadly applicable. The last post, by Roderick Long, actually cites to Rothbard's tentative discussions of the issue in The Ethics of Liberty. It's an interesting issue, but it's inaccurate to suggest that it is has been wholly unaddressed within the movement.

As for the broader thrust of the article, it may be true that the phrase "taxation is theft" doesn't have much appeal as a persuasive phrase, although that is probably besides the point (I'm not convinced, and Julian Sanchez certainly isn't making the case, that the libertarians who are using the phrase are doing so primarily to be persuasive to unconvinced third parties).

As to the idea that the argument is wrong - Sanchez's position is, well, it's stupid - worse, it's willfully ignorant. "Taxation is theft" is a moral claim about the legitimacy of taxation. And specifically, at least in Rothbard's, The Ethics of Liberty, its a moral conclusion reached after an extended moral argument (beginning, at its roots, with the Principle of Non-Aggression).

Now listen, Rothbard, and other libertarian philosophers who have addressed the issue, may be wrong. That's fine. If Sanchez wants to make that argument - I'm all for it. But in order to do so, you have to grapple with the moral foundations on libertarianism on its own merits. You certainly can't resolve the argument, as Sanchez tries to do, by linking someone to an online dictionary. You can tell someone to look up "labor" "theory" and "value" in the dictionary, but what are those words going to tell you about the Marxist labor theory of value? Nothing, of course, because when we discuss terms of art used in philosophical discourse, we are by definition departing from common usage.

Now, does it make a lot of sense for internet libertarians to mindlessly chorus "taxation is theft" to non-believers? No, of course not. It is, as I said before, in part a moral conclusion based upon a series of arguments. It's not a convincing argument in and of itself if you don't already agree with the premises. But as I said above, I'm not terribly convinced that the people making the argument are really trying to convert others by making the statement.

[Swordfish]

Saying “taxation is theft,” then, doesn’t just entail that the speaker thinks taxation is no more morally justifiable than theft. It implies that this ought to be so self-evident to any reasonable person that those who disagree are (at best) just engaged in some kind of transparent rationalization for disregarding the rights of others.

Well, the libertarians and this quote about taxation hardly corner the market on that particular line of rhetoric. See also: US Politics threads, beginning of time - present.

Many progressives on this very board use this tactic almost exclusively whenever they disagree with someone.

That si essentially what makes these threads kind of boring, because there is so much of that to wade through.

[Athias]

Taxation is theft -- or to be more precise, it's extortion. Extortion is a substratum of the concept of theft. It's using intimidation, violence, or the threat thereof to extract money or other property. In other words, if I'm extorting property from you, I AM STEALING from you. It isn't a material biconiditional -- one can make the link to theft without including the entirety of its denotation. I agree with NestorMakhnosLoveChild that the "slogan" goes beyond mere semantics. It's based on moralist arguments and principles. Julian Sanchez engages in an obfuscation rather than address the objection. It's like making an argument against those who oppose the death penalty on the basis that "it's murder." "Well... without a State--and its protection--there's no justification for the right to life." Not only is this not true, but if we were to hypothetically indulge its veracity, it still does not explain why the State is entitled to a portion of it. If one wants to argue over what justifies current holdings of property, one can, indeed, provoke thoughtful discourse. Julian Sanchez, however, is merely arguing semantics. No counterarguments; no rebuttals; just semantics--which would be fine, if one can demonstrate that difference in words changes the communicated idea.

[Queen Ayras Lord Commander]

So are you saying we can impeach Obama over this!? ;)

I stubbed my toe. Impeach Obama!