Here’s one of the most repulsive articles you’re ever going to read. It’s at the badly misnamed “American Thinker” website by wingnut extraordinaire Matthew Vadum. And wait till you see this opening salvo:
Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?
Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more benefits by electing redistributionist politicians. Welfare recipients are particularly open to demagoguery and bribery.
Yeah, it’s the poor who manipulate the budget process to get favors from government. Because poor people have all those well-connected lobbyists working for them, taking senators on junkets and hobnobbing with them at Georgetown cocktail parties. It’s the poor who donate hundreds of millions of dollars they don’t have to curry favor with politicians and ensure that their interests are served by the legislation that is passed.
Pity those poor rich people and corporations, who simply don’t have access to the halls of power in this country the way poor people do. What can those powerless corporate fatcats do when poor people are able to spend virtually limitless amounts of money on campaign commercials on behalf of politicians who promise to do their bidding once ensconced in the halls of power and against anyone who dares to act in the public’s interest rather than theirs?
I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen poor families just waltz into a Senator’s office and get a meeting while CEOs are left sitting in the lobby, waiting futilely for their chance to talk to their elected officials. All the poor people snap up those $5000 a plate dinner tickets for fundraising events while well-heeled lobbyists get ignored. It’s a crying shame.
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Occam's Blunt Instrument
September 6, 2011 at 11:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Lies are the new truth.
philosotroll
September 6, 2011 at 11:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I think he’s right in that the poor will be generally more sympathetic to the democratic party. Of course, its hard to blame them. It often looks an awful lot like the GOP is out to screw the poor out of their pants… usually its because they are.
Tabby Lavalamp
September 6, 2011 at 11:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The comments are even worse…
Michael Heath
September 6, 2011 at 11:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Perhaps the most damning indirect evidence supporting your response Ed is the voting patterns of Justices Roberts and Alito. Their opinions repeatedly reveal that big business effectively owns their two asses. That’s sufficient in consistently leveraging the majority output of the Supreme Court when you couple their loyalty to the consistent support they enjoy from their three conservative colleagues, two of whom reveal fealty to conservative political goals far surpassing their role in developing constitutional rulings. That leaves the need to convince only one justice, whose also a solid conservative.
The NYTs did a piece a couple of years ago revealing the consistency and mechanics on how the court’s rulings were supportive of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is a very different type of organization than our local chambers. The U.S. Chamber is dominated by people like the CEO of Massey who negligently and unrepentantly caused the deaths of so many miners working for him.
bahrfeldt
September 6, 2011 at 11:51 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In his article “Borrowing a phrase the ultra-leftist Leon Trotsky used in one of his many anti-Stalin tracts”. So, he is a Stalinist.
unbound
September 6, 2011 at 11:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“The comments are even worse…”
I noticed that too. Many are advocating poll taxes or equivalent.
One is even advocating vote shares equal to their income. I wonder if that idiot even understands he is recommending a full blown plutocracy in which he would have no real say in anything either.
slc1
September 6, 2011 at 12:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re Michael Heath @ 11:43 am
And yet we have many liberals dissatisfied with President Obama, like commenter wow on this blog, threatening to sit on their hands, even if his opponent is Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann. Imagine Governor Perry sitting in the White House appointing the successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg who is unlikely to make it to 2016.
anandine
September 6, 2011 at 12:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Rather than a poll tax, Heinlein once suggested that each voting booth should have a computer that generates random quadratic equations. The voter would have to solve it before being allowed to vote. I wonder what that would do to the Tea Party vote.
zoboz
September 6, 2011 at 1:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Per Unbound’s remark about how many of the commenters don’t even realize that their line of thinking would render them subject to the whims of a tiny, self-interested group of plutocrats . . . it just goes to show that some people are willing to advocate almost anything if it will allow them to become slaves.
pinkboi
September 6, 2011 at 1:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not only should we register more poor people to vote, we should let prisoners vote (only, like, 2 states have that right now).
bananacat
September 6, 2011 at 1:54 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I had a boss that told me that college students should be allowed to vote, and in fact nobody should be allowed to vote if they haven’t held down a full-time job (which would have excluded his wife, but he said there should be an exception for people like her). His reasoning was that younger people don’t see the chunk of income tax taken out of their paycheck, and for some reason this man thought that taxes were the only issue that anyone should be allowed to care about when voting. Campus crime, slumlords, education standards, traffic, and transportation are just a few of the things that affect college students and things that they could do something about by voting. But my boss insisted that it’s all about taxes and if they’re voting to reduce crime or the get their landlords to have stricter standards, then they are voting for the wrong reasons.
One thing that really makes me mad though: if liberals say pretty much anything, conservatives will accuse us of being unpatriotic, of opposing freedom, and of being anti-democracy. So here they are literally advocating for many citizens to be denied the freedom and the right to vote. So why aren’t more people calling them on this when they are the textbook definition of anti-democracy? Let me get this straight: pulling troops out of other countries is someone anti-democracy, but literally wanting people to not be allowed to vote is somehow pro-democracy? I guess this is another case where they use a buzzword that they don’t know the meaning of.
Nentuaby
September 6, 2011 at 2:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Anandine, intelligence/education requirements for voting sound kind of nice if you’re intelligent and educated and very naive. In practice– and I do mean “in practice”, not “on more detailed theoretical analysis,” American states have implemented them before (as literacy tests) with malicious intent– they lead to a vicious cycle. Those who are under-served by a flawed educational system become disenfranchised, and thus have no voice changing the educational system, and thus their children receive perhaps even worse educations… Etc.
eric
September 6, 2011 at 2:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
As opposed to the rich or corporations, who would never vote themselves mor tax breaks.
What planet is he living on? Does he not get the ‘goverment for the people’ concept?
Michael Heath
September 6, 2011 at 2:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
bananacat:
All consumers pay taxes since the the price of goods and services they procure has an embedded tax component which must pay the tax liabilities for the entire supply chain who delivers this good or service (along with all other un-avoided costs, such as wages, materials, and the cost of capital). Otherwise these companies couldn’t stay in business.
In addition, at least in my state, renters (which college students living off-campus typically are), pay more in property taxes than homeowners for a given $1 of property value since they don’t enjoy a homestead exemption tax. This additional tax burden costs renters a premium of $450/yr. more in taxes embedded in their rent price for every $50,000 the property they rent is worth.
Even though universal cognizance of these facts would best serve liberal political objectives, it’s been my personal observation they’re equally or even more uninformed about these facts than conservatives, especially the first one.
D. C. Sessions
September 6, 2011 at 2:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Anti-democratic” is when you refuse to accept the decision of the voting majority. Limiting the franchise, on the other hand, is just a quality control measure with regard to the electorate.
For instance, there’s plenty of historical basis for restricting the franchise to the adult (no living ancestors) citizens (male children of citizens) who pay taxes on the land they own.
I think that this is where we’re headed.
Bronze Dog
September 6, 2011 at 2:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I was about to jokingly agree on the quadratic equation test, but Netuaby posted:
Definitely a piece of history to remember, since that was indeed one of the tactics used to marginalize blacks. In the short term, we might be able to knock down the anti-intellectuals, but then we’d be providing ways for more insidious manipulators to marginalize those with legitimate barriers to education and opportunity.
Chiroptera
September 6, 2011 at 3:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
bananacat at 1:54: Campus crime, slumlords, education standards, traffic, and transportation are just a few of the things that affect college students and things that they could do something about by voting.
And that is the whole idea behind the universal suffrage.
In the “good ol’ days,” it was assumed that only people with property had an interest in how the government functioned. But everyone is affected by the laws that get passed and how they are enforced, so everyone has an interest in how the government functions.
It’s not as if anti-drug legislation doesn’t apply to college students, or as if poor people don’t travel down roads maintained with their sales tax dollars (and the property taxes that their rents are paying).
frankniddy
September 6, 2011 at 3:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
On one side of their mouths, they say that the poor don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and complain that half in this country don’t pay taxes at all. On the other side of their mouths, they say the poor shouldn’t be able to vote. Whatever happened to no taxation without representation?
D. C. Sessions
September 6, 2011 at 4:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
They’re applying the converse.
abb3w
September 6, 2011 at 4:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It depends on what the reason you hold elections is.
An election is a mock war; it is cheaper for society than holding a real war. If you don’t let the poor vote, they are more likely to try the alternative.
Taz
September 6, 2011 at 4:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I would support a “knowledge test” for voting if took the form of a short basic fact quiz on the US Constitution, with all answers supplied and well-distributed ahead of time. You could even bring the answer sheet into the booth with you. It wouldn’t test anyone’s intelligence, but voters would need to do the minimal amount of work involved in getting the answers, and would learn some facts by rote.
jeevmon
September 6, 2011 at 4:37 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
bananacat
So here they are literally advocating for many citizens to be denied the freedom and the right to vote. So why aren’t more people calling them on this when they are the textbook definition of anti-democracy?
Because for a conservative, democracy is for the Right Kind of People. There has never been a time when conservatives have been in favor of expanding voting rights. Conserviatives believe in traditional hierarchies and power structures, and that these should be reinforced. When the discussion was about property qualifications for voting, it was the conservatives who stood against universal white male suffrage. When the discussion was about extending the franchise to non-whites, it was conservatives who stood against it. Ditto women, etc. The conservative mind does not desire an expansion of voting because such expansions are deemed inherently threatening to what they perceive as the proper order of things.
The last three years fits into this framework perfectly. While one cannot chalk ALL of the venomous opposition to Barack Obama to his race, it is fair to charge a significant amount to it, but it’s more than just the fact that he himself is not white. It’s that his election revealed that the country is not as white as it used to be and that the tradition of white hegemony is at an end. The only comparable historical precedents I can think of are Jack Johnson and Abraham Lincoln.
D. C. Sessions
September 6, 2011 at 4:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bear in mind that the origin of the term, “conservative” is not in the sense of “cautious.” It’s in the sense of “hanging on to what is ours.” The original conservatives were defined by their opposition to allowing the rabble (read: anyone outside of the nobility and squirocracy) a voice in the Government.
Some things never change.
I’m waiting for the next step in “corporations are people” from the same people who brought us Citizens United: extending the franchise to corporations, possibly based on one vote per equivalent income (corporate gross receipts divided by the median personal full-time wage.)
harold
September 6, 2011 at 5:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I assume the person who wrote this and some of the even more offensive people who wrote the admiring comments must be somewhat financially comfortable.
The situation they complain about is imaginary (there has never been a time in US history when there was much redistribution; social programs have always been need-based, and social program payments are remarkably low right now relative to unemployment- arguably enough so that businesses are net suffering).
The hateful vitriol is completely unjustified.
I read somewhere that “the poor” have become a new target group for hate, and that seems to be the case.
But even so, what is producing so many people filled with callousness and unjustified hate and bile, based largely on delusions? This isn’t Weimar Germany. We don’t have 1000% inflation. We haven’t been subjected to humiliating reparations. What is causing this?
Yes, I know that Obama’s policy of being black accounts for some of this, but it’s been around for quite a while now.
What is US society doing to produce so many of these hateful, embittered, delusional, irrational people – so crazed with delusional self-pity and unjustified anger that they even reject basic democracy?
Tim DeLaney
September 6, 2011 at 7:05 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It would be a consciousness-raising study to determine what proportion of their total income is paid in taxes of all kinds by various income groups. Trouble is, such a study is nearly impossible in the USA.
Consider a family of four with a household income of, say, $45,000 Since they buy many of their necessities from corporations, the pay a part of the corporate tax load. How much? Who can tell? If they are renters, their rent bill conceals property taxes. Again, how much?
They pay the cruelly regressive payroll tax of 14+%, which the rich escape almost entirely. Sales taxes? Depending on the state, it’s still a puzzle how much is paid by each income group.
Some of them pay significant tolls just to get to work. And who pays the bulk of motor fuel taxes? I’d bet a dollar to a moldy donut that the average corporate CEO doesn’t give a fleeting thought to gasoline taxes.
When you add it all up, the lower income groups probably pay as big a percentage of their income in taxes as the Donald Trumps of the world, even though they might pay zero federal income tax. I could be wrong, but how could anybody know?
We just don’t know how badly the working stiff is getting screwed. One can be pretty sure that the answer is “Pretty badly”. The rich make the rules, and the working stiff lives with them.
The answer, it seems to me, is one single tax paid by all citizens, and distributed to all those jurisdictions that are empowered to levy taxes. Of course, the taxpayer would get an itemized statement indicating where the tax dollars went. Now, we could actually compare John Doe’s tax bill to that of Donald Trump.
Under such a system, the vote wielded by above family of four would have real meaning.
jayess
September 6, 2011 at 7:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Did he mention what the income limit for citizenship is? I need to determine my place in the new order. Am I an upstanding citizen with rights? Or a lazy leech draining the income from decent Americans? There is no way to tell!
justvisiting
September 6, 2011 at 7:59 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
abb3w,
I’m so stealing that line – well said!
meg
September 6, 2011 at 8:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s one of the reasons I actually don’t mind our system here in Oz. From what I understand we are the only ‘western democracy’ with compulsory voting.
Oh, I know the argument about choosing to vote. And there are people who are not registered, usually for ‘religious reasons’. But here are a few points to consider for it:
1. The money you guys spend on the ‘get out the vote’ campaign? Goes to other, sometimes better, causes.
2. There is no question of ‘valid’ votes. (If you did go to 2 polling booths and vote twice, you will get fined. Given I’ve never heard of it becoming an issue, that is never being a big enough factor to call a result into question, it seems to be a deterrent).
3. We vote on Saturdays so that most people do not have work commitments. And if you do work, your boss MUST allow you to go and vote. If they don’t they are fined.
4. It’s amazingly painless. When I was 17, we were about 6 months away from an election being called. An electoral commission worker showed up on the doorstep, doing a routine check on voters in the house. He asked if there were any 17year olds. My mother said yes, and got me. I was then given a form, which I completed, and he then filed for me. The upshot, I would be automatically enrolled on my 18th birthday. (as it was, the election was held 2 days before my 18th, but hey). I don’t think they still do that (and we were an area with lots of teenagers, so maybe it was targeted) but most schools now send the forms home with kids in their final year. There are no ‘exceptions’ to who can be enrolled, though I’ll admit to not knowing the status of prisoners.
5. Yes, people whinge. Hell, our last federal election is a case study in voters feeling disenfranchised. But we all do it. If you want to do a donkey vote (a deliberate blank or wrong vote) you can, but as I explained to my nephew who was voting for the first time, it doesn’t count as a protest vote. It just doesn’t count.
6. We never see this argument being made.
Just a few points to consider. I don’t know if it’s ‘perfect’ (I don’t think much in any democracy can be) but I think it’s better than a system that leads to this kind of thought.
Chiroptera
September 6, 2011 at 9:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Tim DeLaney at 7:05: I could be wrong, but how could anybody know?
You could try looking it up.
Pinky
September 6, 2011 at 9:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
When did “welfare” and “welfare queen” come back into vogue as dog whistle words? I thought we were done with the politicians grunting “welfare bad” to their Neanderthal minions.
A linguistic investigator should look into the Republican propaganda to see where the dog whistle words originate. I often wonder if the Koch brothers have their counterpart to Joseph Goebbels on staff.
Modusoperandi
September 6, 2011 at 9:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I left a comment there (essentially a modified version of the first chunk of this comment) stating that if the poor shouldn’t vote because they’ll just vote themselves largess, that states that get back more from the federal government than they send there should have no representation in DC.
It has yet to appear.
Harold “I read somewhere that “the poor” have become a new target group for hate, and that seems to be the case.”
They always were. It’s the working poor that are the targets now.
“But even so, what is producing so many people filled with callousness and unjustified hate and bile, based largely on delusions?”
A lot of people are simply mean. Add to their number with the poor, dumb and scared, keeping them in a perpetual state of boiling rage with media built for precisely that purpose, pump up the past with a false version of an idealized history, and inculcate them against any pesky “facts” or “reality” that disagrees with what they’ve been told, and you’ve got a considerable block that’ll point their ire wherever you tell them to, and one that will consistently vote if you give them an “other” to bring them out to the polls (and there’s always an “other” to hate).
jeevmon
September 6, 2011 at 10:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Pinky -
When did “welfare” and “welfare queen” come back into vogue as dog whistle words? I thought we were done with the politicians grunting “welfare bad” to their Neanderthal minions.
I would say November 4, 2008. Some might make the case for January 20, 2009.
bananacat
September 6, 2011 at 11:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I thought “welfare queen” was a Reagan invention. Welfare has been a hot issue since then (and possibly before). I don’t remember it being a big deal during the Bush Jr. years, but Clinton made a pretty big deal about “welfare reform”, if I am remembering correctly from my late childhood.
Tim DeLaney
September 6, 2011 at 11:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Chiroptera:
You cannot be serious.
What you are saying is that one could “look up” what portion of each of the Fortune 500 corporations tax payments that our mythical $45,000 household actually bears the brunt of. Good luck.
Each of these 500 companies, if they didn’t have this tax burden, would distribute that money to its owners (stockholders) in the form of dividends, or to its customers in the form of lower prices, or to its employees in the form of higher wages. Or perhaps it would plow the profits back into the business, with even murkier financial consequences.
Look it up? Pray tell, how does one “look up” such a number for every corporation, and every household?
Let me put it this way: My example household actually bears the burden of the corporate income tax to an unknown and unknowable degree.
Corporations are abstract entities that cannot actually bear the burden of taxation. Only people can do that. You bear that burden, and so do I. We both bear it to an extent that defies quantification. A piece of paper, i.e. a corporation, doesn’t pay taxes in any real sense of that phrase. Corporations don’t pay taxes; they collect them.
democommie
September 7, 2011 at 7:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“And yet we have many liberals dissatisfied with President Obama, like commenter wow on this blog, threatening to sit on their hands, even if his opponent is Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann”
Commenter Wow, to the best of my knowledge, does not vote OR live in the U.S. If my surmise is incorrect I’m sure he’ll be along momentarily to straighten us all out on that aspect of his life.
democommie
September 7, 2011 at 8:25 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Them thar poor folks that Vaguedumb wants to disenfranchise? Aren’t a significant fraction of them the folks who cling to gunligion and are anxious to use their semi-automatic voters rights to correct liebral balloting?
eric
September 7, 2011 at 8:47 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Harold:
IMO, some wrong memes are just really appealing because they let the speaker/thinker off the hook. I.e., they make a general problem of society seem like someone else’s fault, or they point to an (incorrect) solution which requires no work or sacrifice by the speaker. The ‘the poor are economically dragging us down’ meme does both. Which is why its popular.
Its not so much maliciousness, as it is a deep-seated desire to find a silver bullet solution to our problems. When someone claims to offer one, it can be very emotionally difficult to turn down.
If you want another example, the ‘we can solve the budget problem by making government more efficient’ is another, similar, meme. Its been popular for decades for the same basic reasons – it simultaneously foists spending/taxing problems on someone else, while pointing to a solution which requires no sacrifice on the part of the typical speaker/believer.
I think it’s very similar to magic thinking and some religious behavior. The mindset seems to be: it sure would be nice if Rick Perry’s prayer rally actually brought rain to Texas. It sure would be nice if his 75% cuts to the Fire Department budgets did not result in greater fires, because our rain dan…er, prayers worked. So let’s all believe it will work. Let’s all believe that we can close our eyes and tap our heals and bring rain, because it would be so damn wonderful if it did. Similarly, it would be so damn nice if we could balance our budget by taxing the poor or making government more efficient, so let’s all believe it will work.
harold
September 7, 2011 at 9:01 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Tim DeLaney –
You don’t understand the most basic aspects of economics.
Anyone who thinks or claims that corporate executives are Santa Claus is either deluded, trying to shill propaganda and not very good at it, or both.
Actually, this isn’t wrong – theoretically. Unfortunately, major US corporations seem to be run for the benefit of a management elite who get each other onto boards of directors and hire each other as executives. Actually giving significant dividends to shareholders when appropriate is not a strong point.
This is just stupid. Firms that are anywhere near rational set prices to maximize profit. They won’t lower prices unless that’s what would happen. They aren’t your grandmother, and they aren’t supposed to be. They don’t give you presents.
It’s true that the very smallest scale businesses sometimes use mainly mark-up pricing as a heuristic. They can do that because their suppliers use the market to set prices.
See explanation of prices above.
A rational business should invest in new projects based on the value and timeliness of the projects. “Coming up with” a project to dump money into, because the money is there, not because the project is good, is a terrible idea.
You left out some of the most common uses of cash by US corporations – 1) excessive bonuses to executives who had nothing to do with the success but were in the right place at the right time to loot some of the money or 2) inappropriate acquisitions (the process of which throws a lot of fees around, whether that partly explains the appeal or not).
I have no idea why you were babbling about corporate taxation anyway; that wasn’t the topic.
There may be some plausible arguments to be made for lower corporate taxation. These aren’t them.
harold
September 7, 2011 at 9:09 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Eric and Modusoperendi –
Well, I agree with you both, but I guess my question is not “why at all?” but “why here more than in other societies?”.
This is so on target it’s worth commenting separately on.
I’ve noted many times that the Joe the Plumber voting bloc just wants something for nothing.
“Tax cuts” – Superficially, more money without having to do any extra work or stand up for yourself.
Discrimination – Obviously, if some qualified applicants are disqualified on the basis of ethnicity, gender, or orientation, that seems like a win to a certain type of mind.
War – Some other guy will have to fight it and it lets them feel “macho” with no risk.
etc.
democommie
September 7, 2011 at 9:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Its not so much maliciousness,”
Bullshit. Not that I disagree that they’re whiners and blamers but the malice is palpable from a large %age of the conservaturds whose groupthink I get to listen to on a fairly regular basis.
I think the rest of your comment is true but they know they’re being malicious and they FUCKING enjoy it.
Tim DeLaney
September 7, 2011 at 12:39 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Harold:
You have certainly demolished somebody’s argument. I wonder whose? Did I actually make such claims? Please point out where.
Reflect that every penny that a corporation makes ultimately comes from the pocket of a consumer, however circuitous the route might be. The poor bear some unknown portion of the corporate tax.
The rich make the rules by which taxes are levied, don’t they? Can you appreciate where this is headed?
You clearly have misunderstood me.
The topic, broadly stated, is exploiting the poor. Our tax system exploits the poor. The poor actually bear a higher tax burden than they realize. Or, for that matter, than you realize.
We should change our tax system so that we know where the burden actually falls. In that way, we could actually prevent the exploitation of the poor, and shift some of that burden to the rich.
I advocate a tax system so simple that the rich cannot plunder the poor without being obvious about it. This would give the poor some leverage–their vote.
Now please look at the article title and tell me again how off topic I am.
harold
September 7, 2011 at 3:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Tim Delaney –
This I actually agree with.
How did you decide what I do or don’t realize?
I broke it down very clearly above, but to reiterate, lower taxes would not, in themselves, be a reason for rational corporations to lower product prices, raise wages, or make wise reinvestments. I also noted that arguably any lowered cost that is not otherwise utilized is a good reason for a dividend, but that in practice payouts to executives often seem to be more likely.
I happen to support the idea of a society which respects human rights, international law, and the common environment, and provides a strong safety net for the needy and health care access and full education for everyone. But even within such a society, a rational business prices products and pays employees in a way that maximizes profit. These principles would be equally true even if I personally advocated authoritarianism, militarism, and denial of education.
Just because crony kleptocracy and laissez faire delusions are wrong (in my mind) does not mean that basic microeconomic priniciples are wrong.
If you underprice your goods, they will rapidly sell out you will create line-ups and a secondary market in which others sell your goods for more than you do. If you overprice them, you won’t maximize profit. The right price will be discovered. No-one ever directly “passes on” savings to the consumer. That would be idiotic. Prices are lowered only if lower prices will create higher profits.
The same principles hold true for wages.
Granted, tax changes or other reduced costs might allow you to shift to a lower price point and increase profit (or compel you to switch to a higher price even at the cost of unit sales). That depends on many factors, such as the price elasticity of the demand for the product and the marginal cost of producing new batches of the product.
I may have misinterpreted but it sounded to me as if you were saying the reducing US corporate tax rates would be guaranteed to result in lower prices, higher wages, more dividends, and/or wise reinvestments by companies. I am saying that this by no means necessarily the case. I am not even arguing for or against lowering corporate tax rates here, just saying that these outcomes are by no means guaranteed if corporate tax rates are lowered.
What tax system would that be, and what type of voting pattern would it cause?
Tim DeLaney
September 7, 2011 at 9:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Harold:
I would advocate abolishing (nearly) all taxes except one: A tax upon “spent household income” (SHI). Each household is taxed on whetever income, however derived, that it spends on consumer purchases. Any income that remains in or is invested in a qualified investment account is not taxed.
This system insures that capital formation is not inhibited, while taxing that income spent on creature comforts. The SHI tax would, of course, be graduated, and the steepness of the graduation would be decided by Congress. Every taxing jurisdiction would be funded from the same pot, and every taxpayer would receive a statement itemizing every tax dollar collected.
There would be details to be worked out: How to treat existing property ownership and how to structure inheritance taxes, for example.
What kind of voting pattern would this encourage? I seriously doubt that the poor would confiscate, by reason of their vote, everything that the rich possess, as might be feared. The middle class would act as a buffer to prevent that. The majority of people have a sense of justice, and that sense would act as a deterrent to outright theft.
Even today, I believe that the great majority of people in power–corporate executives who wield great wealth, for example–are decent people who genuinely want what is best for society. The two richest individuals in the USA, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, appear to be striving for the common good. Incidentally, they share two other things in common. They are both avid and skilled bridge players (they are sometimes partners), and they are both non-believers.
Obviously, there exist the Jeff Skillings (Enron) of the world who we must deal with, but damning every corporate executive is not the answer. I am all for making rules to prevent the unscrupulous from plundering the world of business for their own comfort.
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In a totally off-topic vein, I have in the last few hours gotten word that a federal judge has ruled in our favor (I am one of four plaintiffs) here in South Bend IN, in a suit to stop the city from buying a $1.2 million property and giving it to a Catholic school. I am, to say the least, very pleased. (Ed Brayton, our esteemed host, has commented on this case.)
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