SOUTHERN FRONTIERS OF THE RATIONAL IMPULSE: The top one percent pay forty percent!

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2019

And other familiar group "fictions:"
Just how dumb are we "rational animals?"

More specifically, how dumb is our nation's "public discourse" at this point in time? Let's put that a different way:

To what extent is our national discourse really a war between rival scripts? As we try to answer that question, consider part of a recent column by George Will in the Washington Post.

Will's column appeared in the Post on Sunday, February 17. In many ways, the column made excellent points.

Throughout the column, Will noted that, while everyone likes to discuss "socialism," no one knows how to define it. Along the way, he also noted the sheer stupidity in Donald J. Trump's relationship to this ill-defined yet highly evocative "ism:"
WILL (2/17/19): In 1962, Michael Harrington, a founder of the Democratic Socialists of America...published “The Other America.” It supposedly kindled President John F. Kennedy’s interest in poverty, which had not escaped his attention while campaigning in West Virginia’s primary. Harrington, like “democratic socialist” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today, thought socialism should be advanced through the Democratic Party.

Today, socialism has new, angrier advocates. Speaking well of it gives the speaker the frisson of being naughty and the fun of provoking Republicans like those whose hosannas rattled the rafters when the president vowed that America would never become socialist. Socialism is, however, more frequently praised than defined because it has become a classification that no longer classifies. So, a president who promiscuously wields government power to influence the allocation of capital (e.g., bossing around Carrier even before he was inaugurated; using protectionism to pick industrial winners and losers) can preen as capitalism’s defender against socialists...
Donald J. Trump is the silly, preening president mocked by Will in that passage. But that wasn't the columnist's only good point this day.

It's also true that those who speak well of "socialism" rattle the cages of modern Republicans. Indeed, Republicans have long built a movement on the backs of their opposition to "socialism," and of course to "class warfare."

Over time, the conservative war against "socialism" has surged through various theaters and fronts. Back in the days of FDR, the war was waged against Social Security. In the time of LBJ, it was waged against Medicare, with private citizen Ronald Reagan stumping extremely hard.

As many liberal writers have noted, today's standard conservative wouldn't dream of eliminating those highly popular programs. But the war against socialism persists, now aimed at "Medicare for all."

The war against "socialism" continues, though none of the warriors would know how to define this useful monster in any serious way.

That said, who needs clarity? Over the course of the past many years, "socialism" and "class warfare" have functioned as useful, ill-defined battle cries within our dull-witted discourse. They've served as highly effective scare terms and as little else.

These terms provide a lot of heat and very little light. But then, the discourse we "rational animals" have created and tolerated tends to function precisely this way—and so it was that this passage appeared in that recent column by Will:
WILL: Socialists favor a steeply progressive income tax, as did those who created today’s: The top 1 percent pay 40 percent of taxes; the bottom 50 percent pay only 3 percent; 50 percent of households pay either no income tax or 10 percent or less of their income. Law professor Richard A. Epstein notes that, in the last 35 years, the fraction of total taxes paid by the lower 90 percent has shrunk from more than 50 percent to about 35 percent.
Will made several good points in his column. At one point, he even said that today's socialists argue, "with some justification," that our economic system is "rigged" in favor of the wealthy.

Will was certainly right about that! But just how dumb is the public discourse permitted by our biggest newspapers? Will's factoid about the top one percent provides a case in point.

Alas, poor oligarch! "The top 1 percent pay 40 percent of taxes," Will wrote at one point, quickly eliding the fact that he was talking about federal income taxes, not about overall taxes in general.

That's a familiar talking point in the eternal Republican war against "class warfare." It's also a claim that should never be allowed to appear in a newspaper like the Post.

What's wrong with Will's highly familiar factoid? Duh! In his factoid, Will seems to identify a gross disparity, with the top one percent of earners forced to pay some forty percent of [federal income] taxes.

One percent forced to pay forty percent—that sounds like a gross injustice! But this talking point, though highly familiar, is also grossly misleading. It's built on a dimwitted sleight of hand, to wit:

Duh! You can't even begin to evaluate that factoid until you know what percentage of overall income that top one percent receives! We'll assume that every journalists understands this obvious point, but editors at major newspapers keep waving Will's factoid into print, grossly misleading the public.

"The top 1 percent pay 40 percent of taxes!" Over at the Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity has peddled this groaner for decades. We're visiting the southern frontiers of our rational impulse when readers of the Washington Post are also exposed to such cant.

That said, this is one of the talking points which has long driven the war against "class warfare." Such gong-show claims come very close to being the "fictions" which Professor Harari discusses in his best-selling book about our war-like, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.

Sad! Within our script-riddled national discourse, one tribe has long conducted a war against "socialism" and "class warfare." Now, though, we on the left have begun to create our our tribal scripts and cries.

How rational are we rational animals even within our own liberal tents? All in all, not very! As a simple matter of fact, the public discourse under which we all suffer is, at the present time, very dumb.

That said, two tribes are now extremely active throwing scripted scare terms around. In the pages of the New York Times, our own tribe's growing approach to war recently spread to mink coats.

The Others complain about socialism. Our tribe complains about something else.

How rational are our liberal cries? Reader, must you ask?

Tomorrow: Letters, they print letters

Fuller disclosure: What percentage of total income goes to the top one percent?

Let's just say that the share has been increasing! According to Berkeley's Emmanual Saez, the top one percent were receiving 8.9% of total income as of 1980.

By 2015, their share of total income had risen to 22.0%. We'll note that this is roughly the same "past 35 years" to which Will refers in the passage posted above. That said, facts like these are rarely allowed to intrude on the pleasures of tribal war which emanate from our major news orgs.

Even among our ranking journalists, we "rational animals" just aren't very sharp! If we want to understand our world, we have to get clear on that fact.

35 comments:

  1. "WILL: Socialists favor a steeply progressive income tax"

    Your high-priest George Will is as much a bullshit maestro as all your other high-priests, Bob.

    Socialism is collective ownership of the means of production, and that's all there is to it.

    And your globalist warlike lib-zombie death-cult is the worst enemy of socialism. The so-called 'Republicans' are not even close.

    ReplyDelete
  2. “In the pages of the New York Times, our own tribe's growing approach to war recently spread to mink coats.”

    Again, that doesn’t make sense based upon the article (in the Style section) that Somerby linked to in yesterday’s post, where he said “Tomorrow: Racist attacks on the joy of mink coats.”

    Still waiting for Somerby to explain what these “racist attacks” were supposed to be.

    The article was a personal reflection by an African American woman about her mother and the meaning of owning and wearing fur coats within the black community, or at least a subset of it. She defends the wearing of fur against PETA, a nominally leftist group. She relates the suspicions of some black women that the opposition to wearing fur was another attempt by white society to bring down black women.

    I suppose there are conservative anti-fur people, but isn’t that movement typically associated with the left wing?

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  3. The other part is math.

    Suppose, to create a simple example, the government is collecting $500 billion in taxes. And the top 1% are paying 30% of that. Now, along comes a spider who creates a $200 billion tax cut. Now the Government is collecting only $300 billion in taxes.

    However, defenders of the tax cut are going to point out that the rich are now paying 40% of taxes. See, taxes have become MORE progressive.

    Never mind that 30% of 500 is $150 billion and 40% of 300 is only $120 billion and the top 1% got a $30 billion tax cut.

    Another funny thing is, I saw that argument - from defenders of Obama, after he made most of the Bush tax cuts permanent.

    Also, I find the constant focus on the legendary 1% to be misplaced. As if somebody at the 98th or 97th or even 91st percentile is just a working class schlub living paycheck to paycheck.

    The top 1% takes 22% of the income, but the top 10% takes about 50%. Those members in the top 9% may want to take some from the top 1%, but most of them do now want to share what they take with the bottom 50%.

    Just watch how the 'socialist' Democrats love to propose "middle class" tax cuts where most of the benefits of the tax cut goto the top 20%.

    Because, after all the top 20% is in "the middle". The middle having been defined by OWS as the 75th to 98th percentile of income.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They talk about taxes, federal taxes, as if taxing people is the goal in itself.

      You're paying federal taxes -- and what are you getting back? Nothing.

      You do get something for paying state and local taxes, yes. But those usually are only a small portion of all taxes. And you get nothing from the feds, who take most. It's a waste.

      Delete
    2. Good job with the satire, Mao. Not perfect, but keep working at it.

      Delete
    3. Thanks. Sure, I'll be working on it.

      So, what are you getting back from your federal income taxes? Describe your typical day, and all the instances where the feds help you get by and prosper.

      Delete
    4. Your previous post was better. Satire shouldn’t sound like whining or begging others to be a sidekick.

      Delete
    5. Thanks again. Q.E.D.

      Delete
    6. Good one! You’re getting better again.

      Delete
  4. “The Others complain about socialism. Our tribe complains about something else. “

    So we are to assume the “something else” is racism, apparently.

    But that’s odd, because no Democrat running in the midterm made “racism” the focus of their campaign. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t much mentioned. Nor are the currently announced presidential candidates building their platforms around it.

    That doesn’t mean there isn’t a valid complaint there, just as Republicans, one would assume, feel that there is some validity to their critique of “socialism.”

    (Republicans also complain about “identity politics” in ways that are quite similar to Somerby’s complaints about it. But he doesn’t pause to examine to what extent that phrase is, like “socialism”, also being used as a scare tactic.)

    It’s a big subject, and merits a debate. But by ascribing both sets of “complaints” to simple tribalism is doing an injustice to both sides.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Bob wrongly makes a fuss over the lack of clarity in the word "socialism". That lack of clarity is normal. There's a similar lack of clarity in other "isms", like capitalism, Judaism, etc.

    Furthermore, the lack of clarity isn't Trump's fault. People like AOC, Maduro, Mao, Lenin, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, and Bernie Sanders may all have meant different things by the term. Nevertheless, various versions of "socialism" produced terrible economic results in Russia, China, Romania, East Germany, Cuba, and Poland. It destroyed the economy of Venezuela, a prosperous. It led to the death of tens of millions of Chinese and Ukrainians.

    Despite this horrendous record, "socialism" is popular in academia and self-proclaimed "socialists" like Sanders and AOC are treated with respect. Trump was completely right to push back by blasting "socialism".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It only seems like socialism is a failure, because in all your examples, there wasn't an infusion of $17 Trillion (with a T) to keep it afloat, like there was with capitalism in 2008.

      Delete
    2. It only seems like a failure because 10 million Russians starved to death, including 7 million Ukrainians; 45 million Chinese died in the Great Leap Forward, and over 10% of Venezuelans were forced out of the country. Child mortality in Venezuela has jumped 30% in the last year.

      Delete
    3. Trump was completely right to push back by blasting "socialism".

      Says the wretched asshole who's been pocketing maximum SOCIAL SECURITY checks along with his wife, while on Medicare.

      Looks like Comrade DinC has gotten the campaign memo

      Delete
    4. David only hates "socialism', because he hates the soldiers in our military. He's like most Conservatives that way.

      Delete
    5. Trump’s USDA announces $12 billion in farmer relief from his tariffs.

      Socialism for ME, not for thee.

      Delete
    6. David refers to the millions who starved during upheavals under Stalin, Chinese communist takeover and so on. He is silent about those who died in the famines and disease after WWII.

      https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/151464

      The disruption caused by Hitler and WWII was as great as that after the overthrow of the Tsar and the overthrow of the Emperor in China, and it led to the democratic socialism and imposition of the safety net in Europe. These major changes in care for people were implemented BECAUSE OF the starvation and health issues following the war, they were not the cause of any upheaval.

      In Russia, people starved because the production of food was disrupted, not because of communism but because the serfs were freed and the organization of farming and transportation fell apart when the large landowners no longer owned farms and people who worked on them. It took time to replace one system of production with another.

      We will be facing similar disruption if we don't do something about global warming NOW. We should be taking these famines (which were routine before Europe learned how to transport food from one location to another) as cautionary tales about our dependence of each other, not as gloating about capitalism versus communism when neither system coped well with food shortage when other factors disrupted their food supplies.

      Delete
    7. Famines in the USSR happened because of the agrarian reform, collectivization. Collectivization was necessary for a super-fast industrialization. Super-fast industrialization was necessary to survive in the Big War, that they correctly guessed was inevitable, because of the global depression.

      It's a mixed record, but still there's no question that China and the USSR had achieved some incredible social and economic successes. Same with Cuba, and even N.Korea was developing much faster than S.Korea till about 1980.

      China has managed to reform itself, while others proved to be too dogmatic. In general, I don't see it as a total failure of the experiment.

      Delete
    8. Hitler also called himself a kind of socialist. "NAZI" is a acronym for "National Socialist".

      Delete
    9. mm - wikipedia says,

      National Socialism (German: Nationalsozialismus), more commonly known as Nazism (/ˈnɑːtsiɪzəm, ˈnæt-/),[1] is the ideology and practices associated with the Nazi Party – officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP) – in Nazi Germany, and of other far-right groups with similar aims.

      Delete
    10. Comrade DinC, I know what NAZI stands for you dumb fuck. A fascist by any other name still is a fucking fascist. Like your republican party and your unconditional support for Der Fuhrer Trumpolini.

      Delete
  6. More importantly, you might want to also look at what the top 1% pulled out of the system in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, etc. Your analysis would become more powerful if you also recognized that the folks in charge and those they serve will ensure that that class of people will get the biggest benefits from the system. So, think about that. Lovely stats to be had on who exactly benefits the most from the tax code that we have.

    A further point: When you look at the figures for wealth generation and who has the most wealth, you might also look at the fact that even as the top 1% have seen their incomes taxed, they have also increased their wealth in both absolute and relative terms over this 35 year period.

    Lots of ways to slice this salami, Bob...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One caveat - the "top 1%" are not the same people every year. Families are always moving in and out of income brackets.

      Delete
    2. 5:48,
      But not wealth brackets.

      Delete
  7. No one has pointed out as to what percentage people pay in taxes of their income. The rich do not pay a 40% tax on their income, as people on the right would like you to believe with that statistic.

    ReplyDelete
  8. More of this! Even though the story is quite old (but bears repeating), and taking on the likes of Will is only slightly more adventurous than taking on Maddow.

    Leroy

    ReplyDelete
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