E. J. Dionne puts it well today (via RaptorFence):
Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.
Forgive me for noting that Dionne’s beloved Burkean Jacksonian Whig “sparring partner” seems to believe this.
ThresherK
I’m stealing that.
I’ve never said that about EJ in my life, but I’m stealing that.
jibeaux
Yes, that’s singularly good and pithy.
FlipYrWhig
Yes, I have also noticed that conservatives seem to think the problem with the American economy is that poor people have it too well.
Waldo
It’s about the right length to tweet, and with a few adjustments might fit on a bumper sticker. Yes, I mean that as a compliment.
Aimai
Duh. That has been obvious for a very , very, long time. Another way of saying it is that the professional and popular right wing believe in carrots for the rich and sticks for the poor when anyone could tell you those motivations are backwards.
gaz
@FlipYrWhig: I know right? I mean, they have REFRIGERATORS fergawdsakes! Fucking moochers!
schrodinger's cat
Why do they always find some one wish washy like Dionne to argue the Dem side
Valdivia
The day Dionne says this to Burkean Whig Bobo to his face will be the day hell freezes over.
I know. You will hate me. But you must, must watch this Burkean Love Fest.
I confess I haven’t even tried. But figured you brave soul would.
Brachiator
And he’s just figuring this out now? It’s good to be a pundit.
Nice turn of phrase, though.
Rob in CT
The honest right wing argument is more like this:
If you tax the rich, they’ll pull up stakes and move, or at least they will invest their money in some place where prevailing wages are $.50/hr and there are no worker protections. The poor can’t do that – they’re stuck here, and they don’t get to invest, since they have no money.
THAT is the honest argument. That it is morally icky to most folks is why it’s not made often.
serge
Said Oliver, “Please Sir, can I have some more?”
schrodinger's cat
[email protected]
Have you checked out the video Sully has put up, about his debate/discussion with Dionne.
Ed Drone
I wouldn’t be in the 1% if you gave me a million dollars.
And there is a meanness, a gloating, petty, self-righteous meanness, to those who particularly want to keep their thumbs on the poor and middle classes. It’s turning the country mean — meaner than they were before George W. trashed the economy — and it’s getting worse.
Hope and change, meet nope, deranged.
And I still wouldn’t be in the 1% if you gave me two million dollars!
Think about that.
Ed
Fargus
@Rob in CT:
The even more honest argument is, “The rich have a gun to our heads, and we love it.”
Bubblegum Tate
The predicted wingnut response: “We aren’t GIVING the rich anything–it’s THEIR MONEY! But those strapping young bucks are buying t-bone steaks with MY TAX DOLLARS!”
Mike E
@Valdivia: EJ has already done this on NPR, though I cannot confirm if it was “to his face”, around the same mic, or in the same studio, from across the salad bar. Also.
Valdivia
@Mike E:
see what I missing because I don’t listen to NPR? I would love to have a loop track of EJ going yo’ mama on Bobo. A girl can dream no?
BenA
The problem with this country is that we have a lot of poor and not rich people that believe this is absolutely true. A lot of people in this country think they’re one of the landed gentry because they can afford a flat screen television. And if we raise taxes on the rich… the tax man will come and take away their flat screen television.
I’ve seen this attitude over and over again. People that in any other era who would be seen as being part of the working poor acting like they’re just a couple of tax cuts away from summering in the Hamptons…
Metrosexual Black AbeJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
How bad is it?
Roger Moore
@Fargus:
FTFY.
middlewest
I don’t think right-wingers, glibertarians, or the totebagger austerity crowd would understand why they’re supposed to be embarrassed by that statement at all. If you begin with the premise that all rich people got rich by being smart and productive and all poor people got poor by being stupid and lazy, then the benefits of upward redistribution are a matter of simple logic.
Waynski
I liked the part where he calls the Republicans out on their deficit panic. They don’t care about the deficit other than it’s a means to an end of getting rid of the social safety net. I wish more pundits other than Krugman would point this out.
Rob in CT
@BenA:
Reminds me of the argument I had with a friend about the estate tax a few months back. The guy will never, ever have any estate tax exposure. He wouldn’t even if I were running the show (in which case we’d have a progressive inheritance tax with a fairly small standard deduction). But he just thinks the estate tax is morally wrong (basically because parents love their children, and the government is bad. That’s the short version). My argument that no estate/inheritance taxation is a one-way ticket to aristocracy, and makes a mockery of our purported meritocracy, it bounced right off him.
There are a LOT of people like my friend.
jonas
The rich have proven their virtue by being rich and are thus deserving of society’s largess. The poor, on the other hand, by deciding to be poor, display their need for more discipline.
Violet
GAH! He has to frame it as an apology even to get noticed.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Rob in CT: I have never understood why we just don’t call inherited money income and tax it as such. The money belonged to the person who died and nobody else. Any transfer of said money represents income to the heir. Simple.
Valdivia
@schrodinger’s cat:
that’s exactly where my link goes. I am hoping you will answer @Metrosexual Black AbeJ: and tell us if it’s the Burkean Love Fest I presumed. I am a coward and couldn’t even watch it.
Brachiator
@Rob in CT:
Isn’t this happening already? And don’t a lot of people, including the middle class, benefit from the offshoring of manufacturing?
I am not disagreeing with you, only suggesting that a lot of us, not just the rich, have bought into a shitty system.
Rick Massimo
Forgive me for noting that I first heard this aphorism in 1991.
And maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t just made up out of thin air back then.
honus
@FlipYrWhig: Or, to put it the way a friend of mine did about 30 years ago, “Reagan thinks the problem with the economy is that the rich people don’t have enough money.”
Mark S.
Maybe it was another website, but I thought I read one of the bloggers here use that exact phrase just a couple of weeks ago.
joes527
@Mike E: but .. but … but … but .. but …
TOTEBAGGERS!
arguingwithsignposts
Yesterday, on a local NPR station (WILL-AM), they had KThug on for a Q and A before a live audience. I can’t find the audio online, but it was fascinating stuff. He pretty much laid to waste any of the Rethug arguments for austerity, etc. If anyone else heard it and can post a link, I’d be grateful. He’s much more persuasive than Dionne, if only because BoBo couldn’t stand in his presence.
Also, via Driftglass, Brooks wrote this:
The stupid packed into that single paragraph is a wonder to behold.
Mike E
@Brachiator: And the logical conclusion of “repatriation” of corporate wealth is them burning pallets of cash on barges floating off the coast in international waters, rather than paying something remotely close to a fair tax rate, just because they can. Look what you made them do!
schrodinger's cat
@Valdivia: @Metrosexual Black AbeJ: Actually I only watched the first 5 min, Dionne begins the interview by thanking the Tea Party, I could not watch beyond that. It was nauseatingly polite. Where can we find fire breathing liberals (not the ones that direct that fire towards their own side).
Villago Delenda Est
Our overlords moan and our overlords bitch
Our rich are too poor, and our poor are too rich!
Villago Delenda Est
@arguingwithsignposts:
Well, with the notable exception of the late unpleasantness, I guess that’s true in the same sense that the Holy Roman Empire was holy, Roman, and an empire.
The Orginal Raven My Ass
See the Mormon’s Building Bridges at the Salt Lake Pride Parade?
Roger Moore
@arguingwithsignposts:
Wow. That is 10 pounds of fail in a 5 pound sack.
OzoneR
Conservatives I know will flat out say this
If you’re rich, it means you work hard, so its ok to give to them, they’ve earned it. If you’re poor, you’re lazy and you haven’t earned it.
I’m not sure why liberals think this is something conservatives would run from?
Rob in CT
@Brachiator:
Yes, it is happening already. The question is whether policy can nudge it (in either direction), and what the downsides would be to said nudging.
And yes, there is upside to the current situation… this is the bit about how things are cheap at Walmart and Amazon and whatnot. We have all probably taken advantage of this from time to time. I certainly have, as my family is doing really well despite 8% unemployment – we have college degrees, jobs, etc. And that’s w/o talking about money I’ll likely inherit someday. So it’s a sweet deal for me and mine. FOR NOW.
My worry, setting aside morality, altruism and all that is this: I think the foundation is rotting and the house is gonna come down on top of us. Considering that I have a really sweet deal (but am not so uber rich as to be able to hop in the Lear and jet off to my private island), I don’t want that. So, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, I want to raise taxes, including my own, and I want to make other changes designed to provide for greater class mobility. I think that would be healthier and more sustainable. And since these things are not zero-sum, I expect what I and others like me would get would be a slightly smaller slice of a bigger pie, in the long run. The alternative is more of the same, in which I pay abnormally low taxes, buy cheap goods, but face the non-zero (and increasing) chance of catastrophic societal failure. I figure that’s a bad deal. I want to pay for some social cohesion.
rlrr
@OzoneR:
More often than not, being rich is a function of one’s parents’ wealth.
BenA
@Comrade Javamanphil:
It’s not particularly hard to avoid inheritance taxes either especially on family business and property, etc. The most common straw man is that somehow a business is going to be taxed out of existence by the inheritance tax… when something like that hardly ever applies.
BenA
@Rob in CT:
Same thing here with a woman I work with who was all up in arms about the spreading the wealth comment Obama made… It took almost everything in my power not to say to her: “He wasn’t talking about you, you’re not wealthy.”
OzoneR
@rlrr:
Sure, trust fund babies, and that’s what’s so frustrating about it.
But you can’t help it when people idolize Paris Hilton types despite the fact they haven’t worked a day in their lives. Look at Hilary Rosen/Ann Romney, the country jumped to Romney’s side despite the fact Rosen told the truth- this rich housewife never worked a day in her life.
Raven
ATLANTA — Conservative talk radio host Neal Boortz announced his retirement Monday after four decades at the microphone, saying he will be replaced by former GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain.
Mino
@Rob in CT: I’d say the rich are singularly of little good to most of us right now. If they left, their small contribution would probably not be missed.
Mino
@Raven: You poor fellow.
Raven
@Mino: Actually like listening to him at 12:05 when Jamie Dupree comes on. Jamie doesn’t put up with all his bullshit ranting and raving.
muddy
@BenA: Did you mean it took almost everything in your power not to scream it in her face? (kidding)
I am the opposite, it would take everything in my power NOT to say that to her (and more). But then people I know are wary of the sharp retorts that will pop instantly out of my mouth, so they are more careful in what they say to my face.
I like being old, it means I am a curmudgeon when formerly I was a bitch for the same behavior.
Chris
@OzoneR:
The fully half of the rich people in this country who only got that way via inheriting from Mommy and Daddy be damned.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@arguingwithsignposts:
Reads like code for “WASPS are real Amercia, and everyone else is a trouble maker”
schrodinger's cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Isn’t Brooks Jewish?
Nylund
In basic economic theory, this isn’t a contradiction. The general idea is that there are two effects that move in opposite directs, the wealth effect and the substitution effect.
An overly simplified explanation is basically that the W.E. says that as you’re paid more, you can afford more “leisure” time and you’ll work less. The S.E. says that as you’re paid more, “leisure” becomes relatively more expensive, so you’ll actually work more.
Similarly, if you’re paid less, then you’re poorer and you’ll consume less leisure (ie, work more), but since leisure costs you less in forgone income, you’ll consume more leisure (ie, work less).
In either case, they move in opposite directions. Whether or not you end up working more or less depends on which effect dominates.
So, in essence, the quote is saying that the S.E. dominates for rich people and the W.E. dominates for the poor. It’s possible that different circumstances for the rich and the poor could lead to different effects dominating.
One can tell stories for both the rich and the poor about why one effect should dominate the other. Maybe those stories lead to the same effect dominating in either case, or maybe they’re different enough they have different dominant effects. There are four possibilities:
Case 1:
Rich: WE > SE
Poor: WE > SE
Case 2:
Rich: WE < SE
Poor: WE > SE
Case 3:
Rich: WE > SE
Poor: WE < SE
Case 4:
Rich: WE < SE
Poor: WE < SE
The quote above corresponds to Case 2. Whether or not that is correct, I'm not sure. I can tell decent stories for a couple of the cases.
There's also the problem that this framework assumes people have a lot of freedom to adjust their hours worked either at a single job, or by taking/leaving a second (or third) job. That's not always a reasonable assumption.
Point being, the apparent contradiction isn't necessarily a contradiction if you think that the rich and the poor are different enough that a different effect dominates in each case. EG, the poor simply can't afford to switch to leisure and work less while the rich can.
I'm not saying that's correct. The same effect could dominate for both (case 1 or 4), or they could be different, but in the opposite manner of the quote (ie, case 3 instead of case 2).
Rob in CT
@BenA:
The worst was debating it with my own mother, while watching Secretariat. There’s a scene in the movie where they’re worried they may have to sell the horse b/c daddy died and they have to pay estate tax. She got all “I just think that’s so wrong.”
Me being me, I fired up google, figured out what the estate tax was in 1973, and calculated what the estate in question had to be worth in order for the figured used in the movie to be correct. The answer was multiple tens of millions of dollars. In 1973 dollars.
This had no effect whatsoever.
Villago Delenda Est
@rlrr:
See Trump, vile asshole Donald, for an example.
When you start out five feet from home plate, let alone on third base…
SatanicPanic
@BenA: One of my relatives was up in arms about the ACA because “I don’t want to have to work for free, I want to be RICH someday.” She is currently working on a dental assistant associate’s degree.
Napoleon
@schrodinger’s cat:
He is (at least ethnically).
Chris
@arguingwithsignposts:
If that’s such a matter of concern to you, I suggest you call out the politicians who build their entire campaigns on an artificial distinction between what is and isn’t “the Real America.” Hint: they’re not on our side of the aisle.
I would add that it’s difficult for the citizens of any country to feel that they have anything at all in common in a world where “every man for himself” is touted as the paragon of American Values and Morals to which we all should aspire. If you don’t give a fuck about anyone but yourself, by definition you don’t give a fuck about the country.
muddy
@SatanicPanic: Maybe she’s hoping to secretly pry gold teeth out of people.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Bubblegum Tate: Wait. Who’s on the money again? David Koch or Caesar/George Washington? Wasn’t there a particular verse from that Jesus fellow about this?
SatanicPanic
@muddy: A morally and legally corrupt plan, but a bit more realistic
CW in LA
@gaz: Not only that, but when I go to the grocery store, I have to borrow a shopping cart from them. But a lot of these poor people, they have their OWN shopping cart! Talk about having it made. And they sleep on streets that I paid for with MY taxes, too!
Brachiator
@OzoneR: But you can’t help it when people idolize Paris Hilton types despite the fact they haven’t worked a day in their lives. Look at Hilary Rosen/Ann Romney, the country jumped to Romney’s side despite the fact Rosen told the truth- this rich housewife never worked a day in her life.
Isn’t Brooks Jewish?
liberal
@OzoneR:
Agreed. That’s why the only effective attack is to point out that the rich get that way through legalized theft.
After all, I’m sure some very professional bank robbers “work hard”.
Chris
@Rob in CT:
My take on it: you can believe that America should be a merit-based society where we rise or fall based on our own abilities, or you can believe that income taxes are a crime against humanity. Not both.
@BenA:
Ah, but someday she might be.
There’s an entire class of people who wish they were Rockefellers, create their political ideology based on that fantasy and don’t give a damn about the things that are actually keeping them from fulfilling that dream.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Fargus:
Like I said in an earlier thread: 99 sheep and one wolf, voting on which of the 99 sheep get eaten next. What’s actually good for the sheep isn’t even on the ballot.
(Apologies to Heinlein’s Ghost).
Chris
@Rob in CT:
After five thousand years of recorded history, you’d think elites would have figured out that very simple fact. But I suppose American Exceptionalism exists to tell them that they don’t need to worry because none of the lessons of history apply to them, being that they’re exceptional and all.
OzoneR
@liberal:
Because its proof that true arguments aren’t necessarily winning ones. If we’re losing an obvious argument “Ann Romney is not a middle class housewife” then we’re not going to win the overall economic fairness argument. The fact that the Romney thing is a losing argument shows middle class men and women are just find with believing they and the rich are on the same level.
Rob in CT
Actually, you can probably manage to believe in both of those, if you’re also for a 100% no-exceptions inheritance tax. It requires that you think your income is really reflective of your abilities/choices alone (which just ain’t so), but plenty of people already have that blindspot.
The reason I like to bring up the estate tax is that it’s really an iron-clad argument. If you claim to be in favor of meritocracy, you cannot possibly argue against taxing inheritance. The squirming starts right away.
It’s fun listening to people who love to talk about hard work and merit turn around an rave against the estate tax. It doesn’t follow logically at all, but this is emotional and emotion trumps reason most of the time.
Chris
@Rob in CT:
I meant to say “inheritance taxes…” don’t know why “income tax” got in there. But yes, I agree completely with that last.
catclub
@schrodinger’s cat: Because they look very carefully for them.
sparky
@jonas: well, yes.
John Wesley, quoted in Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
cckids
@BenA:
This. I have a brother-in-law whose grandparents are borderline “rich”, mainly due to buying lots of land in S.NV 50 years ago. He’s been bitching that, now that his grandparents are getting on in years, they “have” to sell land in the current depressed market, so they won’t, quote, “lose everything to the death taxes”. When we ask if they have a trust, done any gifting to their kids, ANY estate planning at all, it is, of course, NO, they shouldn’t have to, the money is theirs, there shouldn’t be taxes on it at all. I have very little sympathy for them.
Brachiator
@OzoneR:
To suggest that Ann Romney is not a middle class housewife is trivial. To suggest that she does not do any work because she is a rich stay-at-home mother insults a lot of women. Neither argument has anything to do with getting people to vote against Mittbot.
Also, are you suggesting that there is a wealth standard embedded in the Constitution?
@Rob in CT:
I strongly believe in the value of an estate tax, and agree with you that it might help avert an aristocracy (even though some history suggests otherwise). However, I don’t accept the idea that belief in a meritocracy means that you must then automatically accept an inheritance tax.
Do you believe, for example that the inheritance tax should be 100%? Wouldn’t this be the only way to insure a meritocracy? Why should the rich, or even the middle class, be permitted to spend more than a designated standard allowance on their kids?
danielx
Blows goats. Or so I’ve heard.
It’s out there. Let’s discuss.
DavidTC
@arguingwithsignposts:
Quoting Brooks:
You know, I have an odd question about that. Ignoring the problem with the fact that it’s the right that is attempting limit the ‘identity’ of the US, my question is this:
What country doesn’t have a common currency? What sort of stupid fuckery is this? Are there any countries that you cannot use the same currency across the entire country? Has there ever been such a country in modern times outside of a few exceptions like military occupations and civil wars?
Note he didn’t say ‘Only one common currency’, which I might chalk up to misunderstanding how it works in some places, where there is one official currency but many places accept ‘nearby’ ones, or how it works during a currency change over. No, he just said the US has ‘_a_ common currency’, like there’s places on this planet that don’t have one of those.
Also, what the hell is a ‘common history’? Is he saying we don’t literally have multiple histories, like some sort of merging parallel universes? That we are not, in fact, the DC universe after Crisis on Infinite Earth, and that Alabama, for example, did not go to war with Prussia in 1982, with all the residents of that state forgetting it in some cosmic retcon?
Or is he saying we all believe the same history? In which case, that statement is astonishingly stupid for anyone who claims to know anything about politics, as a rather large part of the problem are conservatives continually rewriting history so as to avoid the obvious fact they’ve literally been on the wrong side of everything.
ericblair
@Brachiator:
I agree that this is a pointless argument to get into with the Romneys, which is why they jumped on it. The real argument behind it is that Anne Romney might have been a “stay at home parent”, but understands nothing about the time and money pressures that are the problems in most households.
Depends what you call a meritocracy, I suppose. I think what people want is to make sure that everyone has some sort of chance to achieve their “pursuit of happiness”. We’re living in a country where the difference between rich and not-rich (nevermind poor) is growing greatly, and the mobility between wealth quintiles is decreasing, and looking at tools to prevent the end result of this, where a small pool of people have essentially all wealth and everyone else is locked out of everything but grubbing for the next meal.
Rob in CT
@Brachiator:
I don’t think inheritance taxation should be 100% because I actually don’t believe pure meritocracy is attainable or even necessarily desireable. In order to get there you’d have to address privilege so thoroughly you’d end up in a dystopia right quick. Plus, even if you could manage to create a pure meritocracy without absurd levels of coercion, you might find it’s a nasty place. If the Conservative narrative on wealth & poverty were actually true, how do you justify much of a safety net at all?
I’d rather have a stronger inheritance tax than we have now, but far less than 100%, coupled with a progressive income tax and government spending designed to aid social mobility. Basically what we have with some tweaks in a more liberal direction.
My argument is that the current estate tax, which Conservatives continue to rail against with hyberbolic excess, is pathetically weak. It’s basically the only systemic check we have on runaway intergenerational consolidation of wealth and it’s basically already been gutted. And this is apparently NOT GOOD ENOUGH. The mind reels.
Napoleon
@cckids:
What a moron, and I am going to guess someone who is simply lying to you. The estate tax applies to money as well as property, so regardless of the form it takes the tax applies, so just based on that his story makes no sense.
But wait, it gets better. In fact indepentant of the estate tax the basis for any property you own is adjusted to market value at your death. So if they bought that property for $1,000 and it is worth $1,000,000 by dying they manage to avoid $999,000 in capital gains. By selling that property now, and assuming they do not roll it over into new real estate per IRC Section 1031 they now have capital gains to pay on the $999,000 PLUS the estate tax they would have had to pay anyways.
Rob in CT
I was under the impression that %250k (individual) to $500k (married) in real estate capital gains was exempt from taxation. I’m not sure how that interacts with the estate tax.
My solution: adjust all capital gains for inflation. Then tax as regular income. The end.
Napoleon
@Rob in CT:
Only for your personal residence with certain qualifications.
SiubhanDuinne
@Raven:
Buh-BYE.
OzoneR
@Brachiator:
To suggest she does insults even more women.
brantl
@OzoneR: Conservatives won’t run from it, but it’s poison to anyone who works an honest day and is watching their compensation shrink, and shrink and shrink some more. So, it applies to about 80% of the U.S., I’m guessing.