Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktYou’ll all be glad to know I’m done with my brief obsession with the people who produced, filmed and promoted the crappy video that turned the ME on it’s head. I was more interested in the psychological profiles of the characters involved than the political ones anyway. Now I’m stuck on Romney.
Here are his comments again, the ones I had a truly visceral reaction to.
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.
Romney went on: “[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Earlier I challenged Scott to say what he meant.
I think the elephant in this room is that you agree with him. Just say so.
jnc replied first,
I’ll own this. I definitely agree with him. I mean it when I say I’m a libertarian. It’s the most persuasive argument he’s made in my view thus far in the campaign. Note also that the 53% vs 47% meme isn’t original to Romney. The first I saw of it was from Erik at Red State in the Facebook posts in response to the “We are the 99%” meme as part of Occupy Wall Street. The “divide the country” approach didn’t start with Romney, he just draws the line differently than OWS
then went on to talk about the “Life of Julia” and his ideas on the flat tax. Just a reminder, I ridiculed the “Life of Julia” and said it reminded me of the dopey sex ed material the girls watched in the 60’s and btw, a lot of us are intrigued by jnc’s tax proposals. Too bad Romney didn’t mention either of those. He was too busy embarrassing the 47% of the population that don’t pay Federal Income Tax or the 47% of Obama’s base, and brought out the tried but true euphemism that Brigade (of PL fame) always trots out……………..liberals are on the dole and only vote for Democrats so they can continue to get “free stuff”.
Romney seems to be confusing the 47% of people who don’t pay Federal income tax with 47% of the population at large who are Obama’s base who will naturally vote for Obama. A large number of the 47% who don’t pay income tax are seniors, vets, people living in the poorer states in the south etc., many of whom also generally vote for Republicans. It’s a little confusing who he’s actually insulting here but it seems to be just about everyone who isn’t in an exclusive group of wealthy Republicans.
And then after challenging me on what he considered my mis-representation of Romney’s words and taking something out of context, Scott said this,
I thought I did, but if I need to be I can be more clear. I agree with him.
I have said this many times, but if the way in which we fund our government is through income taxes, then everyone should pay income taxes, and the tax rate should be flat with no exemptions.
I think this is interesting because none of the quotes I was objecting to had to do with a flat tax or even Romney, Scott or Jnc’s tax solutions which are all slightly different if I understand them correctly. Romney/Ryan don’t like to get into the same kind of specifics that Scott or Jnc do, so I know less about them than I’d like to.
Political differences and tax solutions aside, I wanted to know whether they agreed with the Romney comments I quoted above.
And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax”.
Here are a couple of maps showing counties that voted for Obama and the richest vs poorest counties in the country.
Matt Welch over at Reason.com:
I should theoretically be the target audience for this stuff. I never took out a federally guaranteed student loan, never enjoyed the mortgage-interest deduction; I worry all the time about government spending and entitlements, and I am not unfamiliar with the looter/moocher formulation. But this kind of reductionism does not reflect individualism (as David Brooks charges), it rejects individualism, by insisting that income tax is destiny. It judges U.S. residents not as humans but as productive (or unproductive) units.
There are to my mind many more important things to consider in this presidential race than Mitt Romney’s reductive parroting of plausible-but-wrong GOP tropes. But the reason this controversy will have legs is ultimately because many Republicans think Romney’s comments were just fine . They are about to learn what the rest of the country thinks about that.
That piece above from “The Corner” (linked in the Reason piece) should please Scott and Jnc. We’ll see who’s right…………….but I think Romney just screwed his chances of ever becoming President of the United States. Personally, I don’t think he deserves it.
Filed under: 2012, Mitt Romney | Tagged: vote |
All Things in Moderation 
I have said this many times, but if the way in which we fund our government is through income taxes, then everyone should pay income taxes, and the tax rate should be flat with no exemptions.
When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like a nail. jnc is fooling himself if he thinks Romney is in any way an advocate of a flat tax. He made his fortune exploiting the arbitrage of unequally treated cash flows. I agreed last thread that the minute you give things like dividend preferential tax treatment, presto, everything becomes a dividend. Money is very mutable that way.
Except it seems wages. The 15.3% (well, 13.3% for the moment) payroll tax is already a flat tax with a top end cap which dampens the progressivity of the ‘income’ portion of the federal tax system. You have to be very clever to turn a paycheck into anything other than ordinary income unless you have access to the carried interest magic box.
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yello:
When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like a nail.
I don’t know how this relates to what I said. Perhaps you could explain.
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I don’t know how this relates to what I said. Perhaps you could explain.
As ‘fair’ as a flat tax is (and we really don’t want to pick that scab more than we have before), there are valid reasons both fiscally and morally for a graduated progressive tax system.
A flat tax, aka the hammer, is a very blunt tool for a wide array of issues we address with the tax code. Whether these are best addressed in the tax code is an enormous debate all to itself. For example, the mortgage interest deduction is the largest tax payout in the system and our entire real estate industry is built around it. The deduction is probably not the best way to encourage home ownership (the advantage ends up getting baked into the price) but it’s there and eradicating it would be a very painful process, but one seemingly necessitated by they Romney/Ryan platform of mutually exclusive promises.
On the other hand, the earned income credit, the re-fashioning of the Nixonian negative income tax, seems to be a success in making work a more desirable solution over welfare and was a major component in the bipartisan Clinton welfare reform package. It is also partially why the 47% don’t pay taxes. If we want to get more people to have skin in the game, it would have to be repealed.
That leads to the much reviled (at least around here) concept of a living wage. A $10 per hour job with a 20% flat tax is really no better than a $8 an hour job with a $20k personal exemption. And then it comes down to squeezing blood from a turnip. The bottom 40% of households make 12% of the aggregate income. You tax rich people for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks (and I do realize I just made a taxes-are-theft metaphor), it’s where the money is.
We could go onto things like marginal utility and such but it is late.
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yello:
there are valid reasons both fiscally and morally for a graduated progressive tax system.
Certainly not morally. In fact a progressive tax is by nature quite immoral.
With regard to fiscal reasons, you have an unstated presumption that the government should be addressing the wide array of issues it attempts to address via the tax code. That presumption is wrong. In a free society it is not the government’s legitimate job to manipulate outcomes (like for instance increasing home ownership).
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In fact a progressive tax is by nature quite immoral.
This is where we part ways philosophically. It’s immoral not to have one. But I do have to side with you that addressing issues via the tax code is usually the worst way to do it. But then we get back to the hammer problem. The tax code is the easiest but most opaque way of manipulating outcomes.
And while I concur that the government shouldn’t be directly encouraging home ownership as a policy goal, it does so because it serves corporate interests. People with mortgages think twice before doing things that might affect their income. Home ownership creates a docile workforce.
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yello:
It’s immoral not to have one.
I cannot conceive of any coherent, consistent moral philosophy that would lead to this conclusion. Certainly, at least, not one which holds that rights inhere in all men equally.
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YJ – I don’t think JNC thinks WMR favors a flat tax. I am convinced JNC’s conception of such a tax is better than what we have now. I would not favor the same flat tax he does, but if my only choices were the current system and the JNC tax I would choose his.
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“yellojkt, on September 18, 2012 at 8:43 pm said:
…
When your only tool is a hammer, all your problems look like a nail. jnc is fooling himself if he thinks Romney is in any way an advocate of a flat tax.”
Nope. None of the Republican candidates proposed a real flat tax, not even Herman Cain. All were some variations of give aways to the rich/investor class as they often involved complete elimination of the capital gains tax in addition to a (supposedly) flat income tax on the rest of earned income. However, I don’t think any of them rolled in the FICA taxes so I still wouldn’t consider it a true “flat tax”.
Hence my support for Gary Johnson.
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“yellojkt, on September 18, 2012 at 9:46 pm said:
This is where we part ways philosophically. It’s immoral not to have one”
Clearly I don’t share your morality. Paul Krugman actually got to the nub of the issue nicely a while back as an argument over first principles:
I’m pessimistic that the limited government arguments will actually win the day. I expect we are on the road to Greece as there is no incentive to truly address the deficit and debt problems at current interest rates. Once the rates go up, it will be too late. My primary focus is shifting to minimizing my tax exposure to avoid being tapped to fund President Obama and the Democrats programs.
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“lmsinca:
“… It’s a little confusing who he’s actually insulting here but it seems to be just about everyone who isn’t in an exclusive group of wealthy Republicans.”
I think his intent was to adopt the Red State 53% vs 47% meme that was put up in response to the OWS 99% vs 1% meme.
http://the53.tumblr.com/
As you note though, his conflation of his electoral strategy argument with an entitlement/taxation argument has been counter productive.
“…but I think Romney just screwed his chances of ever becoming President of the United States. Personally, I don’t think he deserves it.”
It’s been a cumulative process, however I believe that the reaction to the killing of the ambassador in Libya, coupled with the leaking of the video and more importantly Romney’s reaction and attempts to walk it back have been a pivot point.
I think if there was a little more Chris Christie in him, Romney could have brazened his way through to making a case about the narrowing of the tax base being an unhealthy development in a democracy.
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yellojkt, on September 18, 2012 at 8:43 pm said:
…
You have to be very clever to turn a paycheck into anything other than ordinary income unless you have access to the carried interest magic box.”
Not really. You just need a Sub Chapter S Corporation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S_corporation
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I think his intent was to adopt the Red State 53% vs 47% meme.
It does seem that way but he made a complete hash out of it by conflating the 47 to Obama’s base for which he is getting a good bid of ridicule. I never particularly cared for the Red State construction because it did deliberately ignore those who pay federal taxes other then ‘income’ tax.
It’s been a cumulative process,
His campaign is dying the death of a thousand cuts. Americans like a winner and he is attracting an odor of doom. He could still turn it around but it would required a black swan externality. He thought it would be the embassy attacks but he completely muffed that opportunity, if the exploitation of a tragedy can be called that.
I think if there was a little more Chris Christie in him, Romney could have brazened his way through
Christie carries his own baggage (and that’s not a fat joke) but he has strengths that could have helped him. He could have made a lot of hay out of the Chicago teacher strike in a way Romney just can’t.
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“The deduction is probably not the best way to encourage home ownership ”
I don’t think we should be encouraging home ownership.
And the progressive tax is inherently immoral. I’m no more or less responsible to government than any other. The only thing worse is forcing my participation in the entitlements and other non-public goods.
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I put this post up last night and then went to bed. Thanks for the responses. I sort of wish a few of you would lay out your tax reform suggestions in one place and argue the merits so we could all see them complete, instead of snippets, and compare and contrast as well as debate the moral arguments or lack of. I’m pretty sure between jnc, Brent and Mark, with yello and Scott arguing harder opposing visions, we could settle here at ATiM on a plan and even vote if we wanted.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the subject of my post. I can’t tell if it’s uninteresting to the rest of you or if I’m off base or what. I keep thinking about that bubble test Scott had all of us take. Jnc touched on it a little but otherwise nada.
The guy I quoted from Reason gets it and believe it or not Peggy Noonan gets it also.
I wrote recently of an imagined rural Ohio woman sitting on her porch, watching the campaign go by. She’s 60, she identifies as conservative, she likes guns, she thinks the culture has gone crazy. She doesn’t like Obama. Romney looks OK. She’s worried about the national debt and what it will mean to her children. But she’s having a hard time, things are tight for her right now, she’s on partial disability, and her husband is a vet and he gets help, and her mother receives Social Security.
She’s worked hard and paid into the system for years. Her husband fought for his country.
And she’s watching this whole election and thinking.You can win her vote if you give her faith in your fairness and wisdom. But not if you label her and dismiss her.
As for those workers who don’t pay any income taxes, they pay payroll taxes—Social Security and Medicare. They want to rise in the world and make more money. They’d like to file a 1040 because that will mean they got a raise or a better job.
They too are potential Romney voters, because they’re suffering under the no-growth economy.
So: Romney’s theory of the case is all wrong. His understanding of the political topography is wrong.
And his tone is fatalistic. I can’t win these guys who will only vote their economic interests, but I can win these guys who will vote their economic interests, plus some guys in the middle, whoever they are.
That’s too small and pinched and narrow. That’s not how Republicans emerge victorious—”I can’t win these guys.” You have to have more respect than that, and more affection, you don’t write anyone off, you invite everyone in.
I had to give up all my volunteer work this year, both the seniors and hospice, but I still have contact with hundreds of people who have lost and continue to lose ground in this economy. Some of them may not pay federal income taxes but that doesn’t make them lost causes, which is Romney’s message. It’s discouraging on so many levels.
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Sorry, lms. I didn’t see your full post last night. I tend to go directly to the comments section in the dashboard, and consequently sometimes miss new posts.
I wanted to know whether they agreed with the Romney comments I quoted above.
Obviously the implication that all Obama voters are dependent on government and do not pay taxes is wrong, as is the implication that all people who do not pay taxes are un-persuadable Obama voters. I think I acknowledged this earlier in a comment to someone else (ashot?).
However, on the implications that a certain philosophy of government appeals to Obama voters, that that philosophy includes assumptions about the legitimacy of forcibly transferring wealth from one demographic to another, and that people to whom that philosophy appeals will never vote for Romney, I certainly agree with that.
And on the point Romney was actually trying to make, ie that there is a large constituency of voters who will never vote for him, and therefore his job in terms of campaigning is to focus on the small slice of voters who are persuadable and not those who will never vote for him, he is obviously correct.
I keep thinking about that bubble test Scott has all of us take.
What test is that?
I sort of wish a few of you would lay out your tax reform suggestions in one place and argue the merits so we could all see them complete, instead of snippets, and compare and contrast as well as debate the moral arguments or lack of. I’m pretty sure between jnc, Brent and Mark, with yello and Scott arguing harder opposing visions, we could settle here at ATiM on a plan and even vote if we wanted.
We’ll never settle on a tax reform plan because we here do not share a vision of the purpose of the government. For example, yello (among others here) obviously believes that transferring wealth is not only a legitimate function of the government, it is indeed a moral responsibility of government. Hence he believes, quite rationally (within the context of the premise), that we need to have a progressive income tax. Since I reject his premise, the notion of a progressive income tax is entirely irrational to me. As always, we cannot agree on a way forward since we do not agree on first principles. It is those that we need to discuss, even though I know some here object to such discussions.
As I have stated previously, to me the whole concept of taxing income makes no sense. As a general rule, income represents a measure of value added to the economy. Why should a person be charged more by the government for adding more value to the economy? It makes far more sense to charge people for taking value from the economy. We should eliminate the income tax and replace it with a consumption tax. This will, naturally, still fall more heavily on the wealthy than on the poor since the wealthy tend to consume much more than the poor. But if a wealthy person chooses instead to live very modestly, consuming very little while investing the wealth in even more productive activities, or even giving it away to poor people, why should he be more taxed than a non-wealthy person who (by necessity) lives an equally modest life consuming the same amount?
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Mark McKinnon gets it also. Ayn Rand didn’t have a vision for all the people in the United States……………….she only had a vision for the winners.
Mitt Romney is running out of time, and voters like me are running out of patience. I’ve been giving Romney the benefit of the doubt, assuming that at some point during this campaign he would reveal some things about himself that would give me some insight into who he really is and what drives him. And that I would be compelled to support him.
I took a lot of heat from Republicans when I stepped out of John McCain’s campaign after the 2008 primaries. I still supported McCain, and voted for him, but I just didn’t want to be the tip of the spear attacking Obama. I thought he was a decent and honorable man—as I still do—and that his campaign would be good for the country. And I didn’t think it would be good for McCain’s campaign to have a soft trigger man in the slot.
But, I’m still a Republican. Trying to be, anyway. The progressive caucus is a lonely one these days. Nevertheless, we soldier on in hopes of regaining a voice in the party.
Well, the release of the Romney tape was a moment that certainly revealed something about him. But not what I was hoping for. Just the opposite. It reveals a deeply cynical man, who sees the country as completely divided, as two completely different sets of people, and who would likely govern in a way that would only further divide us.
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Have a great day everyone………………..yay hump day.
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lms,
Sorry for careening wildly off-topic last night but Core Principles and the Merits of Flat Taxes seems to be evergreen topics here.
To your question of who is the 47%, Romney conflates three:
1) Those who pay no federal income tax
2) Obama’s core support
3) Any American who gets a ‘handout’, which may be more or less than 47% depending on how you define ‘handout’. I have unsubsidized federal student loans but since I pay rapacious interest on them, I don’t consider them a gift or an entitlement.
The Venn Diagram of those three groups probably encompasses 90% of the U.S. citizenship. So in many ways his words can serve to enrage or fire up anybody or nobody depending on how you parse his ineloquent phrasing.
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yello
Sorry for careening wildly off-topic last night but Core Principles and the Merits of Flat Taxes seems to be evergreen topics here.
No need to apologize. I find them both to be valid topics and we all go OT, ATT (all the time). I’m really just curious about how many Republicans truly agree with Romney’s classification of voters. Maybe it will end up being unimportant anyway and he’ll have enough time to explain how he really meant something completely different than what he said.
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lms:
I ran across an interesting paper last night about progressive taxation and subjective well-being. The abstract:
Oishi S, Schimmack U, Diener E. Progressive taxation and the subjective well-being of nations. Psychol Sci. 2012 Jan 1;23(1):86-92. Epub 2011 Dec 8.
I can send a PDF to anyone that is interested in reading the paper.
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Scott:
We disagree and agree all in one paragraph–in fact, over the course of two sentences!
Why should a person be charged more by the government for adding more value to the economy?
I disagree with your basic premise that people who are making more money are adding more value to the economy. A quick google led me to this article that examined CEO pay at 50 Fortune 500 corporations. In their analysis, Tim Cook at Apple made the equivalent of 6,258 of his Apple employees–you don’t really expect me to believe that he added so much value to the economy that it equals the value added by over 6,000 individuals, do you? On average, CEOs made the equivalent of 379 of their employees, and again I can’t really believe that their contribution to the economy was really that great.
On the other hand,
We should eliminate the income tax and replace it with a consumption tax.
I’d vote for this. I’d be far wealthier if I was taxed on my consumption, which is far below average for my income AFAICT.
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Mich:
I disagree with your basic premise that people who are making more money are adding more value to the economy.
Value is subjective. Every voluntary exchange of money for a good or service is an expression of one person’s personal valuation of that good or service. You may not value Tim Cook’s contributions to Apple to be the equivalent of 6,258 other employees, but the people who are actually are paying for those contributions quite obviously do. Hence, he has indeed added more value. For them.
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Absent an October surprise that works in his favor, Romney is circling the drain:
I believe the phrase they’re searching for is “clusterfuck”.
And no, jnc, not schadenboner-worthy yet.
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“Michigoose, on September 19, 2012 at 10:17 am said:
…
“We should eliminate the income tax and replace it with a consumption tax.”
I’d vote for this. I’d be far wealthier if I was taxed on my consumption, which is far below average for my income AFAICT.”
You are a Gary Johnson voter:
http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/issues/economy-and-taxes
He’s for the “Fair Tax” which is a consumption tax with a prebate for essentials for low income people.
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=HowFairTaxWorks
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I put up a post on tax.
The only problem with the Fair Tax is that it doesn’t produce half the revenu necessary as described in the book. I’ll comment at my new post.
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