Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktAnd a long one at that, I’ve got a philosophical question to throw out there. I’ve been thinking about this, tangentially, as I’ve been working through my women’s health piece that I still intend to post, as well as other reading I’ve been doing lately. To include Scott’s piece tonight on higher education costs. So here’s the question:
At what age does one become an adult?
The context for my wondering about this is that I think that the most commonly legally accepted answer in the US–18–is an artifact of our educational system. But is that really the age at which one becomes an adult? Jewish tradition as I understand it says it’s 13 (Mormon tradition mimics that, at least for males). Historically for girls it was the age of menarche. Drivers’ licenses are issued at 16. Drinking age (which also used to be the voting age, until the Vietnam war threw a monkey wrench into the thing) is 21. What do you guys think (and why)?
OT even before I post: talk about a war on women: the auto-correct dictionary doesn’t recognize the word “menarche”
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
I guess I’m still stuck back in the 60’s on this issue. If we’re comfortable calling children adults so we can send them off to war at 18, then they’re adults.
I’m taking a little time off all…….so behave.
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That’s kind of my point, lms–I’m not convinced that they are adults at 18; I know I wasn’t.
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You’re an adult when you are self-supporting. Because that is when you don’t have to answer to your parents any more. Note that by my definition, some people never are.
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Legally an adult? If you are old enough to die for your country, you’re old enough to have a beer. I hate the 21 year old drinking age. Just doesn’t seem right.
Maturity wise? Depends on the person. I know people in their 40s who haven’t hit adulthood yet.
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Of interest for this topic, for the bc controversy, and for the definition of marriage topic:
I agree with yj that the most significant individual marker of adulthood is self sustenance. Yet the 14 year old street whore is not an adult.
Physical adulthood is post puberty. Emotional adulthood is sometime in the 20s for the majority of folks, from what I have read. Intellectual adulthood can be fairly early, perhaps as early as 10 in some folks.
Thus an 18 year old can be physically adult and capable of fighting, intellectually mature and capable of learning, and emotionally immature and thus unafraid of risk while feeling nurtured by belonging to a uniformed group.
Thus we string out the various legal indicia of adulthood. “Age for competent testimony”. “Age of consent”. “Age for work permit.” “Age for criminal liability.” “Age to drive.” “Age to serve in the military.” “Compulsory school attendance age.” “Drinking age.” “Contract age.” “Age to serve in the U.S. Senate.”
I think as society becomes more complex, and more relatively expensive, the age when we demand independence is increasing.
Having identified some of the sub-issues, I am unwilling to define a single “age of adulthood.” I am perfectly happy with presuming most 12 year olds can competently testify to the car wreck they witnessed, or give competent testimony in their parents’ custody fight, or to witness a document. I am perfectly happy with 18 year olds defending the nation and voting.
I would not be happy with 12 year olds voting and fighting. 21 is a good minimum drinking age. 30 is a good minimum age for a US Senator. One size does not fit all.
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We have the drinking ages and the driving ages reversed in this country.
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I’d make it 16 across the board for all the “adult” based on reasoning capability and physical attributes. Among other reasons, if someone commits a serious crime at 16, the prosecution will usually get them charged as an adult.
I definitely believe there needs to be one age whether it’s 16, 18, or 21 rather than the hodgepodge where you can be drafted or charged as an adult for a crime, but can’t buy a beer.
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Drinking and driving ages are state by state decisions, so I do not know what you meant, yj. Explain, please!
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Playboy interview with Paul Krugman that’s worth a read:
A couple of excerpts:
“PLAYBOY: You perhaps more than anyone expressed surprise and disappointment in the president when he failed to champion a much larger stimulus in 2009.
KRUGMAN: Obama is very much an establishment sort of guy. The whole image of him as a transcendent figure was based on style rather than substance. If you actually looked at what he said, not how he said it, he said very establishment things. He’s a moderate, cautious, ameliorative guy. He tends to gravitate toward Beltway conventional wisdom. He’s a certain kind of policy wonk, the kind that looks for things that are sort of centrist in how Washington defines centrist. He was talking about Social Security cuts during the 2008 primary. That’s how you sound serious in our current political culture. He wasn’t sufficiently distanced to step back and say that a lot of our political culture is completely insane.”
…
“PLAYBOY: Was the president right to focus on health care at that time?
KRUGMAN: Why are they in conflict? If he’s reelected, or if at least the Democrats have a strong enough showing in the congressional elections and health care survives, then something important will have been achieved. The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society.”
http://www.playboy.com/magazine/playboy-interview-paul-krugman
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Krugman is playing the flanking decoy role we see all the time: far-left outriders “concerned” and “disappointed” that Obama is too timid and conservative. It’s exactly backward. If you actually listened to what Obama said and not how he said it, you heard all along that Obama was and is far to the left. But he couches much of his class-warfare rhetoric in language crafted to sound reasonable, rather than the kind of fire and brimstone that FDR preached. Soaking the rich is just “common sense,” as Obama tells it.
His actions are a combination of audacious and incremental. He jammed his unconstitutional health care takeover down our throats (yes, he did), but he is betraying his campaign position on SSM more incrementally if no less dramatically in the end. Greg flagged this, for example, over at the thunderdome. Obama has indeed taken it upon himself to impose legal recognition of SSM on the whole country, one small step at a time, abdicating his constitutional duties as President in the bargain. He now decides what laws he will enforce, based on his own policy preferences (his claim that DOMA is unconstitutional borders on frivolous). People like Krugman only serve to give his true radicalism cover. I think all the complaining by the Krugmans out there about Obama’s supposed lack of zeal in enacting the left’s agenda of “change” amounts at best to a debate over tactics, and to some degree is just a tactic.
Update: link added.
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Driving ages are state by state, but the drinking age is effectively 21 by federal fiat. The argument is that we need to have a high drinking age to prevent underage drunk driving. Yet teenage drivers are the highest accident risk group even when controlling for alcohol use. Nor has the higher drinking age discouraged youthful drinking as anyone with a college age kid will attest.
If it truly is a public safety issue, it would be better to not let people drive until their 21 when they are more mature and have better developed motor skills. And since with a higher driving age, there would then be no chance of teenagers driving drunk, the drinking age could be lowered to 16 or so. That way teenagers could learn some basic rules about socially responsible drinking before being given car keys.
There would be some societal behaviorial consequences to this reversal, but nothing a more robust public transit system couldn’t cure.
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For American women: 16
For contemporary American men: 39
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I have a real problem with Obama being branded a radical when real radicals are justifiably outraged at his not implementing policies (closing Guantamano, banking reform, etc.) that he promised them.
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One or two minor disappointments don’t change the overall radicalism of his administration.
Look at it this way: he promised to close Gitmo, but he also said he was against gay marriage. You can’t tell me that breaking his word on the latter doesn’t more than make up for breaking it on the former. Anyone with sense knew the Gitmo talk was foolishness he could never deliver.
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tao, darling, you made me laugh out loud with that answer!
Brent, what you touched on (being old enough to die for your country) is why–when I was in, don’t know if it’s still the law or not–enlisted guys who were under 21 could drink on post/base (it generally didn’t apply to officers, since we all had to have college degrees to be commissioned, so were generally over 21 to start with).
You guys are kind of surprising me with how young you’re willing to grant adulthood. . . although maybe it’s because all the guys are weighing in so far. My personal tendency is toward an older age (25 or so). I find yello’s reversal of drinking and driving ages pretty darn intriguing! I hadn’t ever thought of something like that.
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My son is almost 18, so I have seen a lot of 16 year olds the past couple of years.
They are not adults.
Nope.
And girls driving at 16 are scary.
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And girls driving at 16 are scary.
I find that women in general driving scare me, qb (and I obviously speak as someone with two X chromosomes)–whoever told them that putting on makeup in traffic is permissible!!
Although I have to admit, since I’m spending a lot of time with cops in squad cars just now, it seems to me that guys do more boneheaded things in cars–at least when cops are around–than girls do. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s akin to the “white coat affect” on blood pressure.
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My son and I joke that the most dangerous place to drive in our area is the new, upscale shopping/residential/etc. development, where every five seconds you are nearly t-boned by another yuppie mom in her SUV, careening through the narrow streets around Trader Joe’s or Urban Active or, worse, one of the parking garages (which we call the demolition derby).
Sadly, it’s a “joke” that is quite true.
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Don’t even get me started on yuppies in SUVs. . . it is the basis of one my entries on MsJS’s 50 questions (which, BTW, we still need 15 or so to finish the list, so submit your entries!!!)
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“We have the drinking ages and the driving ages reversed in this country.”
Agreed. Problem is with two income families, an utter dearth of public transit & a car oriented infrastructure, pushing the driving age back a couple years is pretty unfeasible in most of the US.
On Obama, he’s pretty clearly within the mainstream of US political thought. I suspect the critics who imagine he’s some kind of radical leftist are projecting upon him their deep rooted fears that the last three decades of creeping conservatism have been exposed as the root cause of our current economic troubles and societal imbalances.
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“. I suspect the critics who imagine he’s some kind of radical leftist are projecting upon him their deep rooted fears that the last three decades of creeping conservatism have been exposed as the root cause of our current economic troubles and societal imbalances.”
My hats off to you, that is funny!
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Troll@5:58mst, who are you quoting?
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Okie,
The last paragraph in the comment above.
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” Troll@5:58mst, who are you quoting?”
He was quoting me. I understand why he’d take the comment as humor; but I quite honestly can’t come up for another explanation for some people’s belief that Obama is a radical leftist.
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My close R friends all believe he is very left at heart, Brian, but constrained by the demands of the Presidency and the primacy of Congress in budget matters to preside from the center left. They all think he would nationalize everything if he could. They all think he holds to a “redistributionist” model. They point to evidence of this, often from the ’90s, just as QB has done. When I point to his long expressed admiration of Bush 41’s FP and how close he has adhered to that model, my friends will often concede that point, which they think is minor, but which I think is a big deal.
It really is as if the portrait I see is not the portrait they see and vice versa. Yet we can describe the same set of historic facts.
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I really don’t see how there is a debate about whether Obama is a redistributionist. He has never repudiated his earlier views and indeed continues to advocate redistribution. This was what he said to Joe the Plumber. All he does today is modulate the rhetoric. He says “we can’t afford” “tax cuts for the rich,” because they would require cutting entitlements. He says that if you earn > $1 million (actually it’s 250k, tops) you should pay federal income tax of at least 30%, as if this is a matter of deontological justice. Obamacare’s great “gift” to the country is making health care a right, or more accurately an entitlement. That is its point. Nancy Pelosi underscored this when she (farcically) claimed that Democrats had after 200+ years delivered on the Founders’ vision by giving everyone the right to health care.
Obama absolutely is a welfare state redsitributionist. Nothing at all has changed about that. As Karl Rove’s column described, virtually all his policies are based on giving away other people’s money.
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bsimon:
the last three decades of creeping conservatism
Can you tell us how this creeping conservatism has manifested itself?
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Agreed. Problem is with two income families, an utter dearth of public transit & a car oriented infrastructure, pushing the driving age back a couple years is pretty unfeasible in most of the US.
The utter dearth of public transportation prevents lots of good ideas from being implemented. We are just too geographically diverse a country, but being able to get around without a car would solve a lot of problems.
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yell:
but being able to get around without a car would solve a lot of problems.
Clearly we need more government investment into teleportation.
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19 always worked well for me. The majority have taken some steps by this point–going to college/university, serving in the military, getting a job, etc. I never liked 18 as it was an invitation to get alcohol to teenagers.
Ultimately, the line is arbitrary. So, I’m fine with 18 as an age for voting. If we have to have one age for everything, then I’d go with 19.
BB
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Apropos for the stated topic:
http://www.gocomics.com/fminus/2012/02/19
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“My son and I joke that the most dangerous place to drive in our area is the new, upscale shopping/residential/etc. development, where every five seconds you are nearly t-boned by another yuppie mom in her SUV, careening through the narrow streets around Trader Joe’s or Urban Active or, worse, one of the parking garages (which we call the demolition derby).
Sadly, it’s a “joke” that is quite true.”
As a guy who is forced to run on roads because we don’t have sidewalks or many trails nearby, I can definitely say that my biggest predator is a soccer mom in her SUV yakkin on her cellphone. Followed by snowplows and mailmen.
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Yello, that comic is great!!!
Brent: you could try what I’ve done a few times. Run with a can of spray paint in your hand. Scares the crap out of them when you suddenly tag their window because they didn’t see you when they “stopped” in the middle of the crosswalk. Plus, it’s really, really hard to clean off, and you can pick out the serial offenders.
It’s also kind of fun. 🙂
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QB – We’ve already had this debate. Anyone who favors a progressive taxation is a redistributionist by your definition. The tag applies to most Republicans as well.
BB
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So, let’s see, FB. I guess the right response is that no one is a redistributionist in your mind. That would include Obama, who was explcitly an advocate of “redistributive justice,” and has never, ever said a word backing away from that vision of a government no longer anchored to the “negative liberties” in our stingy Constitution but granting rights to stuff to be provided by government.
Progressive taxation is indeed redistributionist, but someone like Obama is much more of a redistributionist than, say, even George Bush.
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I strongly support progressive taxation. You can call me a “redistributionist” for that if you like, but I would/will consider that honorable.
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qb: you say “redistributionist” like it’s a bad thing. . .
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James Madison thought redistribution was a bad thing.
“A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.”
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Hmmmmmm. . . a wicked project. Like the interstate system! What was Eisenhower thinking????!!!!!????
Or parks!!
Or a safe municipal water system!!!
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Madison didn’t mention those things as wicked projects.
Road systems wouldn’t qualify as redistribution. Nor parks.
Municipal water systems aren’t even federal works.
The founders didn’t even allow a federal income tax, though. Let alone the modern redistributionist state. Say what you want, but they set up our system to thwart the very kind of “majority faction” that is the life blood of Obama politics.
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I would say that anything that is funded by taxes is redistribution, because some of you will pay more than some of us.
And, yes, I know that the founders didn’t allow a federal income tax–but they also didn’t know that their small little coalition of states and commonwealths would grow to encompass the width of an entire continent. That’s probably why I find arguments based on the “founders” so mystifying; we live in a different world now, with different requirements. They were wise and good men who founded the greatest nation–but they weren’t omniscient.
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To say that all taxing and spending is redistribution is simply to drain the concept of meaning.
As for the founders, they didn’t know the full extent of what the country would become, but they recognized it would grow and planned it that way (Federalist 14, for example). They explicity contemplated growth and addressed its advantages and challenges.
The physical size of the country today is actually less a challenge than it was in the beginning, because technology makes travel and communication much easier. we can travel across the country much faster now than you could travel across the country in 1789, and communication is effectively instantateous. They also explicitly contemplated the USA as a commercial republic and planned our government to facilitate commercial strength and growth.
I’m not sure what any of this has to do with redistribution and the modern welfare state, but there is nothing about the difference in our world today that makes the original plan obsolete.
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qb, do you intend to re-argue decisions that were made so long ago (about 100 years) with the first implementation of federal income tax? Is that the start point?
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qb, do you intend to re-argue decisions that were made so long ago (about 100 years) with the first implementation of federal income tax? Is that the start point?
The discussion was about who is the real Obama, redistributionist radical, or centrist etc. Michi said progressive income tax is redistribution, and then that all taxing and spending is. I simply responded to that.
As a general matter, though, I do reject the notion that seems to be held by liberals that their gains are sacred while everything else is up for grabs. So yes I would look at the income tax if I were in charge, so to speak. It is a disaster and exactly the kind of tool for majority faction the Constituion was supposed to moderate. The country is careening toward disaster. We need reform.
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The founders, BTW, also didn’t allow women to vote.
Hmmmmmm.
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The founders, BTW, also didn’t allow women to vote.
This cries out for snark.
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qb, you do not think you are being at least somewhat hyperbolic?
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Hyperbolic about what?
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qb@1:27pm: What snark? If you can’t say it here, please don’t allude to it.
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I believe you have a sense of humor, but not that much of one. Sorry, wouldn’t be prudent. (Will forego the smiley face as cheesy.)
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Michi said progressive income tax is redistribution, and then that all taxing and spending is.
No, actually, you’re the one who said progressive income tax is redistribution. I did say that all taxation is redistribution, because I think it is–it’s taking money from each of us individually and pooling it, then spending it on things that (in theory, anyway) benefit us collectively. Whether it’s a flat tax or a progressive tax, some will pay more into the pool than others.
And, yes, my comment about the founders and women voting was a bit snarky, but I was pointing out that you can’t hold them up as paragons of perfection because they weren’t, and the world has (to quote Stephen King) Moved On.
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“The country is careening toward disaster.” For one.
It’s the right wing version of what on left is “the country will careen toward disaster if Republicans are elected” [paraphrasing]..
No better, no worse.
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We are incurring trillion-dollar deficits, stacking up IOUs at a crushing pace. Printing and borrowing at unsustainable levels. The economy is stagnant with millions apparently permanently unemployed. The housing market continues to have much of the country strapped or underwater, and this is a problem without solution other than taking our lumps. Large parts of the rest of the world are teetering on default and collapse. Our President’s solution is more regulation, more industrial planning, and especially more taxes.
That to me is careening toward disaster, and it is just some of the highlights. The piper is calling.
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” qb: you say “redistributionist” like it’s a bad thing. . .”
Capitalism itself is inherently redistributive. QB uses it as a pejorative, pre-judging that unregulated redistribution is always good and gov’t redistribution is always bad.
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“Capitalism itself is inherently redistributive. QB uses it as a pejorative, pre-judging that unregulated redistribution is always good and gov’t redistribution is always bad.”
No, that’s just making nonsense out of language. If you don’t want words to mean anything, fine, but it’s not worth having a discussion like that.
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unregulated redistribution is always good
Well, it worked out well for the guys at Goldman Sachs et. al. for a while. . .
(Note to self: must really, really find that sarcasm font.)
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QB – Redistributionist strikes me as a made up word that is meant to sound mildly pejorative. For example, distribution vs. redistribution. How is to distribute again different from to distribute? Before we know what a redistributionist is, we should first know what a distributionist is. Somebody made up a word and gave themselves a gold star.
I couldn’t resist looking it up in an online dictionary (Merriam Webster), which characterized it as someone who believes in a welfare state. Taking that definition, George Bush is as much a redistributionist as Barack Obama. [The tax code isn’t mentioned in the definition.] Presumably, the idea is that gathered taxes are then distributed (the RE is utterly redundant) dependent upon need. I would gather that you are using an expanded definition that includes inputs and outputs. English is flexible in that way. I wonder what the opposite of a redistributionist is. Perhaps that would be a distributionist, though I havent the slightest idea what that might be.
One pet linguistic peeve of mine is the expression “I could care less.” Taken literally, it means very little. Friend says, I just found $20! Other friend responds, I could care less. Well, yeah. If the first friend found a quarter, you probably would care less. What it’s meant to signify is that you don’t care in the slightest about the original statement. If you will (and even if you won’t), “I couldn’t care less” is a response with meaning.
As the word hypocrite has been redefined in these here parts to suit a political usage, I see no reason that a nonsense word such as redistributionist isn’t equally vulnerable.
BB
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I happen to agree in part with that criticism of the term “redistributionist”–it seems to imply a prior distribution. Now, that could be simply a distribution in statistical terms, or it could imply that someone “distributed” the wealth, and I have made the point before that the latter would be a fallacious implication, because no one distributed the wealth before government comes along to “redistribute” it. (Yes, I know all about the next moves in the argument — laws, markets, aren’t neutral, it’s the law that let’s GM charge me 20k for a car, etc.–and I buy none of it. Again, this is just obfuscation to me.)
All that said, the term is used to refer to policies and practices of government taking wealth from A to give to B, or simply compelling A to give it to B (a la the birth control mandate). At some point, one is forced to use language as it is used to discuss issues and not try to play semantic games with it.
You have not seen me deny that George Bush was something of a redistributionist. But not like Obama. When Obama talked in that 2001 radio interview about the limitations of the “negative liberties” in the Consitution as opposed to a set of fundamental affirmative entitlements in achieving “redistributive justice,” when he told Joe the Plumber that we need to “spread the wealth around,” he referred to ideas that go beyond the weak tea of George Bush and No Child Left Behind. Those comments have an intellectual context and pedigree. His friend Cass Sunstein has basically argued that the Constitution should be reinterpreted to provide positive entitlements. Elsewhere the idea has been called a Second Bill of Rights. This is more than weak-kneed Republican compromise with the welfare state.
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bsimon:
Capitalism itself is inherently redistributive.
No it isn’t. That is just silly.
In the first place re-distribution presumes and is dependent upon a given distribution as a starting point. Capitalism assumes and is dependent upon no such thing. In fact it would be far more accurate to say that capitalism results in a natural distribution of wealth, than that it is redistributing it.
In the second, capitalism represents a voluntary exchange of value for value. In a typical capitalist exchange, each person is receiving at least as much, and generally more, value than he is giving up to get it. (Value, remember, is an entirely subjective notion, relative only to a valuer.) In other words, far from wealth or value being “redistributed” via capitalist exchange, wealth or value is actually created.
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FB:
Taking that definition, George Bush is as much a redistributionist as Barack Obama
Absurd. He may well be somewhat of a redistributionist, but he is not as much of one as is Obama.
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Of course it’s absurd! Then again, so is the term redistributionist. It’s meant as a pejorative term that can be applied to Democrats. Obama pushed the AHCA, so he’s a redistributionist. Bush pushed Medicare Part D, but he’s not.
Then again, now I need to figure out what more or less of a redistributionist means. And down the rabbit hole we go. I wish I took the blue pill.
BB
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What terminology would you prefer, FB, to describe government policy that is designed to take from A to give to B?
We aren’t allowed to say “socialist” or “welfare socialist” or “welfare statist” or “collectivist” or “Marxist” or “Marxian” any other term I’ve seen.
All are objected to as false and pejorative for some semantic reason.
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FB:
Your professed puzzlement over the word redistribution puzzles me. It quite obviously refers to the use of government coercion to take wealth from some people and give it to others. That is hardly a mystery.
You seem not to recognize the distinction between a voluntary exchange of wealth/value between people, and the forced removal of wealth/value from one person to another. The former results in a given distribution of wealth, and the latter, which can only come after the former has occurred, plainly results in a redistribution of wealth/value. Again, the distinction is hardly a mystery.
BTW, there is no such thing as a “distributionist” since the distribution of wealth is a naturally occurring phenomenon as the result of human interaction, and not the result of conscious, human direction. Redistribution, on the other hand, is and can only be achieved as the result of a conscious, human decision to forcibly remove wealth from one set of people and give it to another. The humans who are making those choices or are advocating for such choices to be made by someone are therefore quite logically called redistributionists.
That you don’t get this is, well, surprising.
Lastly, I agree wholeheartedly with you on “could care less”. People who say it generally mean the precise opposite of what they are saying, and it drives me crazy.
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FB:
It’s meant as a pejorative term that can be applied to Democrats
Well, I certainly agree that it is a pejorative, but that is because of the actions it signifies…a desire to forcibly take from one person in order to give to another. We can invent a new word for this, if it makes you feel better, but it too will eventually become a pejorative because it is the desire the word signifies, not the word itself, that is offensive.
And if Democrats don’t want to be derided as redistributionist, then they should stop advocating wealth redistribution.
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Like most of my bretheren here on the right, I view Obama’s centrist act as just that – an act. He has to act within the realistic political constraints that he faces. But what do you think Obama would do without political constraints?
I guess one way to think about Obama is:
If Congress had sent him a health care bill that was single payer, do you think he would have signed it?
I think he would have, in a heartbeat. Single Payer > Mandate
If Congress had sent him a health care bill that nationalized the entire US healthcare system, do you think he would have signed it?
I think he would have, in a heartbeat. No Profit Motive > Profit Motive.
I’ll throw this out for the left here: Can you think of a bill, any bill, so far to the left that Obama would veto it? Where do you think he would draw the line?
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Obama is on record and video saying that he supports single payer. I know people like ruk have a fit when someone equates that with socialized medicine, but the objections are form over substance. There’s no question at all that Obama would have sought and signed the most leftward possible legislation up to and including full socialization/nationalization. ACA was incremental and designed in part to collapse into a more aggressive approach like single payer.
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Interesting question, Brent.
I went and pulled up a list of presidential vetoes on wiki (that font of all knowledge) and read back through the ones that GWB and WJC vetoed to get some context, and I have to agree with you that I don’t think that there has been any legislation in the past two administrations that he would veto (and he’s only vetoed two bills thus far in his Presidency).
But I think that that says more about how far Right Congress has moved than the Presidency. . . and it may also have something to do with the fact that Congress is wildly more unpopular–and has been for some time, under leadership from both parties–than the President. I could be wrong, but I think that even at his lowest level Bush and Congress were about equally unpopular.
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Instead of using actual bills, how about concepts? Of these concepts, assuming a Congress passed them, would he veto?
50% male / female requirement for corporate boards of directors
Maximum wage
Nationalizing the oil industry
Mandatory public service between high school and college
Undistributed Profits Tax for corporations
Golden Share for all S&P 500 companies.
Hard race and gender quotas for all colleges and companies with 50 employees of more.
Blanket amnesty for all undocumented aliens
Legalization of marijuana
Legalization of all drugs
Price controls for food and energy.
Are any of these concepts a “bridge too far” for Obama?
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I’m confident Obama would not veto any of those with the exception of drug legalization–I don’t really know where he stands there.
If he thought the politics allowed it, I’m also confident he would advocate almost all of these. He might temporize a bit on quotas and amnesty, but not much for practical purposes. No question in my mind he would advocate corporate board quotas and maximum wage. No question he would push price controls. I think he would also jack the top rate up to 70 or 90% as well, and use a variety of “windfall” and “excess earnings” taxes to make sure he spread the wealth around. He has actually said many things poining in these directions over the years, like his promise to hit oil companies with windfall profits taxes and “use that money” to help people pay for energy.
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50% male / female requirement for corporate boards of directors
Maximum wage
Nationalizing the oil industry
Mandatory public service between high school and college
Undistributed Profits Tax for corporations
Golden Share for all S&P 500 companies.
Hard race and gender quotas for all colleges and companies with 50 employees of more.
Blanket amnesty for all undocumented aliens
Legalization of marijuana
Legalization of all drugs
Price controls for food and energy.
Brent, great talking point list. My guess is that he’d probably veto all but perhaps mj, although you will have to explain an “Undistributed Profits Tax”. If you mean taxing in the second year profits that were held on account, a tax like the old tax on “C” corps that held more than a certain sum on account, I doubt it. A fed “Golden Share” – a King’s X rule – wow! Never. He has said we have to lower our corporate tax structure. In a war I think he would sign onto wage and price controls. I don’t see single payer on this list.
If I thought he would not veto almost all of these described policies made into statutory law I would not ever vote for him. I’d give him legalization at the fed level of all drugs. Hell, he didn’t veto the NDAA so I’m not going to vote for him.
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And now we’re onto redefining the word, which pretty much means taxation as you defined it, Scott. Presumably, anyone who favors the 16th amendment qualifies. More or less, can’t say as it really matter.
BB
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Wow, Brent, even I–good leftie that I am–couldn’t support most of the things on your list. . . so that is a totally unanswerable question. This reminds me of the discussion that I had back in 2004 with a guy who was going to vote for Bush again because “Democrats want to take our guns away.” It’s just not even realistic.
Needless to say, I disagree with qb’s entire comment at 3:35, and I think that nationalized or single-payer health care is a fine idea. The VA is an excellent healthcare system that doesn’t get half the credit it deserves for caring for an ever-expanding and complicated patient population.
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Michi,
You actually think Obama would veto single payer?
On what basis? He is on record saying that he supports it.
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FB:
And now we’re onto redefining the word, which pretty much means taxation as you defined it, Scott.
Wrong. If i understood it to mean taxation, I would have said taxation. The government uses taxation for a lot of things that do not constitute wealth redistribution.
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Did I miss single payer?
No, I don’t think he’d veto it given the chance–you and I agree on that one.
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A Golden Share is basically a government veto over all corporate policies (especially mergers). In other words, Company A could bid for Company B and the government could block regardless of what the shareholders decide. Golden Shares are common in Europe and Japan.
An Unidstributed Profits Tax was imposed by FDR. To encourage companies to hire and invest in infrastructure, he imposed a “use it or lose it” tax on cash held on corporate balance sheets.
FWIW, the 50% mandatory quota for boards of directors is in force in Norway. The government will put you out of business if you don’t comply.
Price and wage controls were implemented by Nixon
The 92% top marginal tax rate in the 40s and 50s for all intents and purposes was a maximum wage.
Mandatory military service is required in Israel.
Blanked amnesty has certainly been discussed.
Legalization of marijuana is a boilerplate Libertarian position.
So, most of these are not that far out. I am asking the left-leaners here what is too far left for Obama.
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Brent, my wife says we still have the undistributed profits tax, but it is largely ignored b/c there is a rule of reason applied.
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“Bush pushed Medicare Part D, but he’s not.”
Both Scott and QB have said Bush was a redistributionist.
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The things I learn on this blog!
How is a Golden Share different than the existing antitrust laws on the books? More broad?
Did the Undistributed Profits Tax and Nixon’s price and wage controls work? Or are they no longer in existence because they were ineffective?
There’s a lot of things that other countrys do (Norway and Israel in your two examples) that just won’t fly here. Legalization of marijuana seems to me to be an excellent potential revenue stream for the government (taxes!!).
I would say that you’re asking if I think Obama would govern as a Socialist given the chance, and I just don’t know because it’s not within the realm of possibility; I think that most of the things on your list are too far left to be implemented the way you have them stated. But then, maybe I’m just not sufficiently imaginative!
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A golden share is like a share of stock that is a trump card. It gives the government a veto right.
You probably could compare it in some ways to antitrust review of mergers by the FTC, but it is broader and need not necessarily be exercised pursuant to some legal standard as in antitrust review. It’s just … a trump card.
Wage and Price Controls were a colossal disaster (shock!).
The undistributed profits tax would probably get you into a debate between New Dealers and anti-New Dealers. Work in my opinion? Of course not.
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A Golden share is basically a single share of stock worth 51% of the vote. So the government can vote down anything it wants, but it is usually reserved for anti-takeover defense. For example, France has a list of corporations that are “critical to the nation.” This list became public when Pepsi was rumored to be interested in Danone, the maker of Dannon Yogurt and Evian. Apparently food is a national security issue for the French.
A golden share does make a company takeover-proof, and that means the company will trade at a discount to its peers. So in some ways, it is taking wealth from shareholders for the benefit of the government.
Antitrust rulings can be appealed and the government can lose. IIRC, the latest one was the Whole Foods / Wild Oats merger where the government lost in court.
The Undistributed Profits Tax has been largely credited for causing the downturn of 1937. FDR was going after money that had already been taxed once, and by that time the war between FDR and the rich was getting personal. I’m not sure how it ended, but I think people were getting sick of FDR’s overreaching by the late 30s.
Wage and Price controls were a disaster. Originally meant to prevent profiteering in the wake of the Arab oil embargo, it simply ended up causing gas lines, and people ended up deciding expensive gas is better than no gas.
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Great summary of those issues, Brent.
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Mich:
There’s a lot of things that other countrys do (Norway and Israel in your two examples) that just won’t fly here.
The question Brent has posed is not whether any of this would fly here, but rather who believes Obama would oppose/support them if they had a chance of flying here.
There has been much talk about Obama being simply a standard issue centrist liberal, and much objection to the notion that he is at heart a radical progressive who is simply constrained by the practical reality of his times. People who think he is the former, and object to him being labelled the latter, would presumably think he would veto most of the things on Brent’s list. I too am interested in who here actually thinks he would veto those things.
For me, I’m with qb and Brent. Having the chance to sign such things is actually, I suspect, Obama’s wet dream.
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Thanks, QB.
And Scott is right. That is why I phrased the questions as “Would Obama veto?” What is too far for Obama?
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Well, from what you’re telling me, I think he’d veto the undistributed profits tax and the wage and price controls because they didn’t work out the first time (and I do believe that he is a pragmatist above everything rather than a rigid ideologue). The golden shares I’m not so sure about; i could see an argument that something (say, drone-making technology) is so crucial that he’d want to nationalize it. Hmmm–healthcare, anyone?
Mandatory national service of some sort. . . yeah, I could see him signing that one into law, but I don’t know that he would if it was required between high school and college. Say two years of service before your 30th birthday and I think he’d sign off on it.
I think he’d veto mandatory board membership diversity, but then I don’t think that he hates business as much as I get the impression that you guys think he hates business. I think he doesn’t understand big business very well and hasn’t been that well served by his economic advisers (Geithner and Summers in particular–I wish he’d kept Orzag around, and Austan Goolsbee makes sense to me).
Blanket amnesty? No, I don’t think he’d sign that, but I think that he would go ‘way to the left of the DREAM act if he could and make citizenship easier to obtain for kids.
If Congress passed a 92% tax rate as you described it I think he’d sign it.
What have I forgotten?
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Brent:
Apparently food is a national security issue for the French.
Wait till I run this one by my French colleague on Tuesday! He’s always complaining that we Americans don’t understand food or eating–he will agree wholeheartedly with you! 🙂
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http://www.cria-online.org/6_2.html
Way off topic, but rather interesting background for those of us interested in the petrochemical industry generally.
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Ah, Mark, we went way off-topic hours ago! It’s the weekend. 🙂
The beginning of that article has a very “1984” feel to it, doesn’t it?
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One good off topic deserves another.
60 Minutes did a piece on research at Harvard Med School concluding that antidepressants work only by placebo effect on all but a few extreme cases, i.e., don’t really work at all based on pharmaceutical action. Some of course dispute the findings or their strength.
Controversies like this are a reason I find burgeoning government control of prescription and treatment decisions troubling. I know others will say that no such thing is in the offing. I disagree. I suppose there is also the existing reality that the FDA already decides for us whether drugs are available. In any event, controversies like this raise interesting health care issues. Millions of people use these drugs, spending billions of dollars for them. Now leading researchers are saying they are no better than sugar pills for the vast majority. I think that socializing the cost, or even the perception that the cost is socialized, leads to less consumer discrimination and more consumption.
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Yep. That K’stan is looking for us to balance off for them against R and C is a reminder of our place in the world.
‘Goose, absent war or national emergency, mandatory service violates the plain language of the 13th Amendment. A Prez and a Congress must be clear as to what that is, IMO.
Brent, that tax is still on the books, I think. When the personal rate was over 50%, I could avoid that rate if my incorporated law firm was a “C” that did not distribute everything to me. I think the tax bite was at $100K of accumulated income. I am thinking it’s not paid attention to now as the top corp rate and the top personal rates are close. I am not sure of this, and wish we had a CPA available. My wife wo’t talk to me – she is actually doing tax returns right now.
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Watching depressed persons would not lead a keen or a casual observer to think that anti-depressants were placebos. I do not believe that they are for a minute.
There is this development now – while depression can come from three or four regions of the brain and different drugs affect different regions, one region is identified with all. And it can be treated with EST. Which is scary on its own.
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Mark, they make a subtle but critical distinction in research like this: the drugs absolutely do work. Patients get better. Psychiatrists say their patients get better. But double blind studies show that placebo groups do just as well. And their relief is real, not imagined. So the drugs do work; patients who use them have depression improved. The research is just saying it isn’t because of the PAI in most cases.
I’m not saying it is right or wrong. I haven’t reviewed the studies. But it is a major controversy. Medical science is full of these.
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QB, what I have seen is this: some depressed folks don’t respond to any of the major variants of the drugs, and some respond to only one, and some have periodic remissions, without drugs. It is said Lincoln had mild depression with periodic remissions. I do not see how any double blind study would work, considering the fact that depression is a symptom which has more than one cause.
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Mark, I’m not sure what you mean that double blind studies would not work. If a drug treated depression symptoms from some but not all causes, the study would simply reflect that in its results, and perhaps lead to more research on why it works in some cases but not others. The less than complete response would affect the clinical significance of the findings (as far as the FDA is concerned, for example) but not likely lead to a conclusion that it was ineffective if it treated a meaningful number of people.
Some drugs do have a “narrow therapeutic index,” meaning subtle variations can affect different patients. Thyroxine is a classic example. There is a lot of trial and error and titrating involved in finding what works for a patient. Antidepressants could certainly fit that description.
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“No, that’s just making nonsense out of language. If you don’t want words to mean anything, fine, but it’s not worth having a discussion like that”
Nonsense how? To redistribute something is to change its allocation. In capitalism wealth – capital – is constantly being reallocated. That’s the point, actually.
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As far as placebo effect for anti-depressants, this is a phenomenon that has been growing in the last 20 years or so. I thinks there are several issues involved that don’t necessarily have to due with efficacy. One is that there has been a substantial reduction in the social stigma that surrounds mental illness/depression, so many, many more individuals are seeking treatment and volunteering for clinical trials. These individuals probably would never have sought treatment in the past and odds are the depression would have resolved itself on its own. Just because they are now seeking treatment doesn’t mean it won’t resolve on it’s own and in fact does so as often when taking a placebo as on the active drug. The other thing to consider, in favor of the efficacy of antidepressants is that the rate of suicide worldwide has declined since the introduction of SSRI’s.
Link 1
Link 2
Finally, clinical trial subjects are self selecting and probably have tried everything else available, the class of anti-depressant just may not work any better than a placebo for those that have failed everything else.
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“We aren’t allowed to say “socialist” or “welfare socialist” or “welfare statist” or “collectivist” or “Marxist” or “Marxian” any other term I’ve seen.”
Feel free to use the terms, if they are accurate. Calling Obama a Marxist is as accurate – and as appropriate – as me calling you a Fascist. Do I need to quote your comment about about the meanings of words?
For all the bemoaning of his ‘redistributionist’ tax proposals, we’re still talking about tax rates lower than they were at the end of the Reagan administration. That particular redistributionist had to raise tax rates after lowering them too much. Meanwhile, the ACA which is now so offensive to conservatives is based largely on proposals that came out of the GOP during the Clinton years.
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Calling Obama a Marxist is as accurate – and as appropriate – as me calling you a Fascist.
No, actually it isn’t, if you get past bumper stickers about dictatorship of the proletariat and the scientific determinism. Neo-Marxism has had a lot of influence in the academic and political worlds since the 1960s, as has socialism more generally. Columbia University in fact became one of the US homes of Frankfurt School neo-Marxism when emigres landed there from Europe. One of the characteristic modes of thought they share with post-structuralists and deconstructionists is that all social and economic arrangements are political and based on power relationships of domination. Class and race conflict. Exploiters and exploited.
Where they go from there can vary, but generally it means using government to achieve “redistributive justice,” “economic justice,” “environmental justice,” and the like. Black liberation theology, for example, is also a development of neo-Marxism. That’s the ideology taught at Jeremiah Wright’s church. If you don’t believe it, go explore the website. Glenn Beck didn’t invent Piven and Cloward; their ideas have been central to the world of academic leftism and politics since the 1960s. They are real. I learned their ideas from my socialist professor. Saul Alinsky also really did write Rules for Radicals, and Barack Obama really did teach its principles. And Obama really is an avowed proponent of using government to effect “redistributive” and “economic justice.” Socialist and neo-Marxist ideas have influenced him in important ways.
For all the bemoaning of his ‘redistributionist’ tax proposals, we’re still talking about tax rates lower than they were at the end of the Reagan administration.
No, as a factual matter, that simply isn’t true. The top rate was 28% 1988-1990, cut to that level in 1986. It is higher than that now, and Obama wants it higher, probably a lot higher if he had his way.
That particular redistributionist had to raise tax rates after lowering them too much.
Calling Reagan a redistributionist is silly on the order of calling Obama a Randian libertarian. It’s your opinion that he lowered taxes too much, nothing more.
Meanwhile, the ACA which is now so offensive to conservatives is based largely on proposals that came out of the GOP during the Clinton years.
That’s an exaggeration on the order of saying that Lady Gaga is
immodest. But, again, you’ve never heard me say that all Republicans are pure. That’s why they are only the lesser of evils.LikeLike
bsimon:
To redistribute something is to change its allocation. In capitalism wealth – capital – is constantly being reallocated.
Not at all.
When we speak of capital being “allocated” in a capitalist system, we mean the use to which capital is being put by it’s owner. In no way whatsoever does it mean that the ownership of the capital is being transferred.
When we speak of government redistributing wealth, we mean precisely that…taking wealth that is owned by one person and transferring it to someone else.
To conflate the allocation of capital in a capitalist system with the redistribution of wealth in a welfare state is to to totally abuse both the language and the concepts involved.
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McWing: good points about SSRIs and the placebo effect. While the drugs most definitely work, it can be a trial just finding the right one; I watched my ex work his way through at least a half a dozen–and one that made him both suicidal and homicidal–before he and his doc found one that worked. Anytime you’re mucking with brain chemistry it gets dicey.
Your point about depression resolving itself (often–not always) is spot-on. I think we’ve become a nation of quick-fixes too much of the time; we (my ex and I) are a good example both sides of your point. I’m pretty sure that when I left the military I went through a time when I was clinically depressed (leaving a job I loved and having to change my whole concept of myself), but I just hung on and things got better. My ex, on the other hand, when he became depressed tried to “just hang on” for way, way too long, and started seeking medical help AND self-medicating at the same time and it ended badly. I think that he was caught up a little in the social stigma effect that you mention, which is highly ironic given that (1) he’s the one who (in hindsight, but nonetheless) figured out that I had been depressed back then, (2) diagnosed my grandmother’s depression a few years ago when her geriatricians were missing it, and (3) counseled numerous amputee patients about it. The drugs do work, but you have to find the right one and, like I said, that can be a trial.
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Echoes what I wrote to QB earlier, ‘Goose. And I appreciate what George added, as well. I have seen SSRIs fail miserably, but other drugs work on the same patient. The brain series on Charlie Rose has been extraordinary. QB’s link makes a case for the placebo effect, especially on mildly depressed folks. Still, when you have watched one, two, or three drugs fail, and then one works, it belies for that patient the notion of placebo. And I have seen that several times. A recent story indicated ketamine was effective as an anti-depressant in many cases. http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/01/31/146096540/i-wanted-to-live-new-depression-drugs-offer-hope-for-toughest-cases
I understand double blind, QB – my point was only that there are too many variables at work and that we actually do not know enough yet to say patient “A” is like patient “B”. It is not like treating flu cases.
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Watching basketball does not work as well to keep off the dull times as playing it, but I lost my hops, some years ago, and don’t imagine myself grabbing the rim any time soon. I saw Jeremy Lin play for the first time today. He is really good. And he is apparently pointing up a political issue in China. From The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2012/02/chinas-new-sports-problem
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Mark: call me a bandwagon-hopper, but Jeremy Lin is the first person to get me interested in the NBA in around 15 years. Cheers to him–I saw him for the first time a week and a half ago when they beat the Lakers.
Go, Linsanity!
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Yesterday both bsimon and Mich made separate references to the same or a similar perception. bsimon referred to the “creeping conservatism” of the last few decades and Mich referred to how far to the right Congress has moved.
I think it is possible (not definite, but possible) that the population of the US has moved to the right. But by what measure can it be said that the US has been governed towards the right over the last 20 or 30 years?
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Calling Obama a Marxist is as accurate – and as appropriate – as me calling you a Fascist.
From Obama’s “spread the wealth around” comment during the 2008 election to his numerous interviews (where the questions and his points were more theoretical), it would not seem inappropriate to refer to this pre-Presidential Obama as at least neo-Marxist. His performance as president hasn’t been in any way that I can think of classic Marxism, so I imagine any true Marxist would be profoundly disappointed with president Obama.
That particular redistributionist had to raise tax rates after lowering them too much. Meanwhile, the ACA which is now so offensive to conservatives is based largely on proposals that came out of the GOP during the Clinton years.
Reagan’s tax increase, such as they were, were necessary compromises with the Democratic congress done specifically to pass his budgets, as was much of the non-Defense spending increases. A necessary component to getting the budgets passed—the Reagan admin had to set priorities as regards what it actually wanted to accomplish.
As regards the ACA, while very similar to Republican proposals during the debate over Clintoncare, it was a political strategy by some Republicans (some might call them RINOs) to be seen as offering a more palatable alternative (and they, and the current ACA, are much less awful than Clintoncare). Still, the Republican alternative didn’t get any traction then, and one would suspect that had they gotten to the point where they might actually become law, conservatives would have, generally, been just as unhappy with that approach as they are with the ACA now.
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From Mark’s Economist link:
Granted, Mr Lin’s own path to stardom is in itself unprecedented, but in America, the unprecedented is possible.
That sentiment remains true despite all my moaning about the lack of social mobility and despite qb’s prediction of the fall of our society.
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Nonsense how? To redistribute something is to change its allocation. In capitalism wealth – capital – is constantly being reallocated. That’s the point, actually.
“Redistribution” generally refers to an entity, normally a government, arbitrarily taking capital from one entity and giving it to others or spending it on it’s own initiatives without any direct say to the person whose wealth is being redistributed as to whether it should happen or what value is expected in return. In a capital transaction between parties, there is general agreement on the transaction, or the parties do not transact. It is clearly different for the government to take my money and spend it on the social safety net or for me to take my money and buy something from another party, where we both agree on the terms of the transaction or the transaction does not take place.
Also, the reasons behind capital transactions and wealth redistribution are different. One may happen because I feel there is something of value that you have that is worth more to me than my money (in x amount), and you feel my money is worth more to you than the thing of value. In redistribution, a 3rd party feels that either I have too much money and someone else has too little, and thus that disparity needs to be remedied irrespective of my feelings on the matter, or that they can better spend my money than I can, thus they should arbitrarily confiscate it and spend it as they (the 3rd party) sees fit.
I think this distinction is generally understood, as the “unfairness” of wealth redistribution is clear to many on the left, when they see the percentage of tax receipts payed by blue states vs. the amount of federal funds that are sent to red states.
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I think it is possible (not definite, but possible) that the population of the US has moved to the right. But by what measure can it be said that the US has been governed towards the right over the last 20 or 30 years?
Tax policy, largely kept in place though Obama (and, aside from the top bracket, be kept in place even without Republican obstruction) and foreign policy, if you consider a hawkish neo-conservatism to be an element of “the right”. Things like the NDAA and the Patriot Act are, and a more powerful unitary executive, are examples of Hamiltonian Federalism more than classic conservatism, but some would point to those as examples of being “governed from the right”.
Government spending has only grown, so certainly conservatism hasn’t been the rule in the area, no matter which party has ostensibly been in charge.
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Kevin:
Tax policy, largely kept in place though Obama
Under Reagan, the top rate went from 70% down to 28%. Since then it has gone up to 31%, then 39.6%, then down to 35%. Calling this a move to the right, either of the drastic or the creeping variety, seems to me to be an overstatement. And I definitely wouldn’t characterize Obama’s increasing the scope of executive power as conservative.
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And I definitely wouldn’t characterize Obama’s increasing the scope of executive power as conservative.
You’ll get no argument from me. Capital gains taxes are lower. On the “less conservative” side, of course, we’ve got the the Alternative Minimum Tax.
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Mich:
I missed this from yesterday:
I would say that anything that is funded by taxes is redistribution, because some of you will pay more than some of us.
There is a clear distinction between government spending on public goods, such as defense, which are not designed to benefit any single individual, and government spending on entitlements or services, for example medicare, the very purpose of which is to provide benefits to specific individuals. The term redistribution clearly refers to the latter.
BTW, you should know that the interstate highway system was originally conceived of and designed as a defense system. It’s full name is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
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BTW, you should know that the interstate highway system was originally conceived of and designed as a defense system. It’s full name is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
In the time I was becoming very interested in politics, Ike was POTUS, LBJ was SMajL, and Sam Rayburn was Speaker. The 3 of them met nearly weekly at times in the WH kitchen for cards and bourbon. DDE complained that the autobahns were a huge advantage for Germany in WW2, and he always wished they could be duplicated. Rayburn said we could do it if we called it a defense authorization. And so the biggest public works project in American history was born.
Many American Presidents were nothing to write home about. I want to return to the two days for GW and Abe and screw those other guys. Millard Fillmore? My ass.
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“and despite qb’s prediction of the fall of our society.”
Actually, QB thinks we can be saved with an R POTUS, I’m the doom and gloomer who thinks there will be no ability to cut entitlements.
I also love all the faith put into IPAB. What historical example is there of effective entitlement rationing in this country?
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I’m the doom and gloomer who thinks there will be no ability to cut entitlements.
Agree with Troll. I hope the economy can come back enough, and doesn’t fall too far, to support the current welfare state. We’ve had a history of somehow growing the economy just enough to keep it all from collapsing, so I’m hoping that’s what happens again.
If we depend on politicians cutting spending in significant ways in order to save us, we’re doomed. Doomed!
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Kevin,
There is a point at which debt inhibits growth, and keeps it very low, 1% to 2% a year. Japan has faced the last 2 decades with that. You combine the limited economic growth and an aging demographic (again, like Japan though not as bad) that tends to vote more regularly than other demographics and will be unwilling, I’ll wager, to cut themselves off from the sugar. As the French say, “Boom, goes the dynamite.”
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
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Scott:
BTW, you should know that the interstate highway system was originally conceived of and designed as a defense system. It’s full name is the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.
And an interesting little factoid about it that I learned from my Dad over the holidays is that it was mandated that, at certain intervals, there had to be a minimum of a five-mile stretch that was flat and level in order to be able to land/refuel/relaunch bombers. I have to admire planning ahead like that–reminds me of the 20-year training plans that I used to work on for the 82nd. I wonder if they even still bother to do that?
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Mich:
there had to be a minimum of a five-mile stretch that was flat and level in order to be able to land/refuel/relaunch bombers.
I had heard that, too.
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An entertaining discussion. Worth an entire month of words of the day. One word caught my attention in the latter portion of the discussion: Neo-Marxist. Neo-Marxist is presumably a new Marxist (and probably a riff on the pejorative tag on Neo-Con).
So, I take it that a Marxist believes that the capitalist system will inevitably be superseded by a socialist order and a classless society. Adding the tag Neo just means a newer Marxist. Given that the government is getting out of industries, not into them, Obama evidenty skipped a few chapters of Das Kapital, Reloaded.
But hey, those are fun sounding words to use. I think I’ll start calling Rick Santorum a neo-Phallist.
BB
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One word caught my attention in the latter portion of the discussion: Neo-Marxist. Neo-Marxist is presumably a new Marxist (and probably a riff on the pejorative tag on Neo-Con).
So, I take it that a Marxist believes that the capitalist system will inevitably be superseded by a socialist order and a classless society. Adding the tag Neo just means a newer Marxist.
No. It means more like updated and revised, and no longer beholden to all the doctrines of classical Marxism.
It occurs to me now that part of what is going on here is the same kind of problem we would have if I were trying to argue with FB about some concepts in physics that used terminology or ideas to which I had not been exposed.
Neo-Marxism is indeed a little broad and amorphous (just a little), but it is not a new coinage or a retort to “neo-conservative.” There is a large body of literature and thought going back to pre-WWII that constitutes neo-Marxism, often identified that way by proponents and antagonists and everyone in general. Gramsci, the Frankfurt School (Marcuse, Habermas, et al.), various others. I would say that, in broad strokes, they were people who rejected the notions of scientific Marxism about capitalism inevitably being superseded, the dictatorship of the proletariat, dialectical materialism etc. Some realized that the historical determinism of Marx was goofy and inconsistent with observable history. Some turned to Marxian critiques of culture. There is a wide variety out there, but they retain some of the fundamental ideas and modes of thought from Marx, including an emphasis on societal conflict and contradiction, oppression, exploitation, etc.
I realize there is a lot of arcana here. There is no way to do it justice in a forum like this, and I am not necessarily the best to do it justice. But the point is that neo-Marxism is not a neologism. It refers to a well recognized set of ideas and people who hold them. Indeed, you could say that one thing that many neo-Marxists and neo-conservatives share is that they both used to be Marxists. That is where the neo-cons came from. They were on the left. Some were socialists or communists. From that perspective, neo-Marxist and neo-con are not parallel terms, interestingly. One is an evolution. The other is a defection.
Addendum for the paranoid conspiracy theorists: The founders of the Frankfurt School had to flee pre-War Germany and moved to … Columbia University … where 50 years later the young Barack Obama studied politics. Suspicious, wouldn’t you say? ; )
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Given that the government is getting out of industries, not into them, Obama evidenty skipped a few chapters of Das Kapital, Reloaded.
Matrix: Reloaded was an excellent movie. If you are implying anything else, I will have to remove my white glove and strike you like a dandy. 🙂
Neo-Marxism defined. Mostly broader than traditional Marxism. I also find “neo-whateverism” usually has the flexibility to excuse behaviors or pursuits inconsistent with the classical variant, thus “Neo-Marxism” could embody, potentially, a philosophy of proxy Marxism, where it’s not the state that owns the means of production, but the workers control (and ostensibly benefit) from the means of production via taxation and regulation, and the government levies the taxes and issues the regulations, but does not own the means of production, per se.
As I noted before, I think any good Marxist would be deeply disappointed with the Obama administration. This was the guy who talked about sharing the wealth and the constitution being flawed because it was a list of negative liberties? Where is my Marxist utopia?
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FB:
Given that the government is getting out of industries, not into them, Obama evidenty skipped a few chapters of Das Kapital, Reloaded.
Given that you seem unaware of what the thread was actually about, evidently you skipped a few comments. The question that led to qb’s comments about neo-marxism was not about what Obama’s administration has done, but rather about what we thought Obama would like to accomplish if political realities did not prevent him from accomplishing them. Any response you might have to Brent’s question would be, I think, interesting.
Also, it seems a bit odd to me to characterize taking over a car company or dishing out federal subsidies to companies like Solyndra as “getting out of industries”.
And speaking of odd characterizations, are you still unclear about what the term redistribution refers to? We’ve provided, I think, some pretty clear explanations.
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Kevin:
As I noted before, I think any good Marxist would be deeply disappointed with the Obama administration.
Anyone with radical aspirations is going to be deeply disappointed with any administration. Even if the administration is populated with people holding equally radical desires.
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