Mike Kole has a good piece up over at Kole Hard Facts of Life on jobs, taxes, and declining population. Be sure to check out the comments.

One thing that I realized while reading that piece was that I have an assumption about what would happen in communities where we drop taxes to skeletal levels. And that assumption is a lot different than what I think I see from Mike and certainly from other libertarians. I don’t have a lot of proof that my assumptions are right. I suspect that the libertarians do not, either. And there are always other factors at work, so I’m not certain we’ll ever get a properly controlled experiment.

My ideal economic world is a place where those who work hard and/or cleverly will prosper, where those who don’t work hard and/or work stupidly will suffer, and where the vast middle who work reasonably hard do reasonably well. In this desire, I believe I’m aligned with most of my libertarian friends and many others.

The difference is in opinions to the most feasible path to that place. I think libertarians, by and large, believe that if you lower taxes and limit regulation enough, that economic world will pretty much materialize. With the resulting solid base of industrious middle class citizens, communities will thrive.

Meanwhile, I guess I have more of a dystopian view that if you lower taxes and/or regulation much from current levels, you’ll end up in an economic world more like the Gilded Age or Mexico where a tiny few will amass wealth and have sufficient leverage to ensure that the vast majority work extremely hard just to survive and add to the vast wealth of those few who have the leverage and resources. These subsistence level citizens will not have the time or the money to tend to their communities which will fall into squalor and disrepair.

I would love to find out that my fears are misplaced and their view is correct.

I’m not going to have time to do justice to this article by Pam Tharp about a candidate forum in West College Corner, Indiana, but I had to at least take the time to highlight an interesting statement by state Senator Johnny Nugent in response to a question about things he’s done to create jobs in his district.

Nugent said he authored the largest job creation program ever — riverboat casinos — with gambling revenue the third-largest contributor to the state treasury.

Makes me think of the good old days of American prosperity, Dad heading off to work early, hard hat and lunch pail in hand, ready for a long day of dealing blackjack and making this country strong.

(The rest of the article is worth a read and brings up some substantive points I really ought to address.)

I think that there is honestly a blind spot in these Southern political leaders where they just don’t get why folks are upset about them celebrating their treasonous past. The simple fact is that their predecessors took up arms against the United States to preserve their right to own people. Sure, they had their reasons. Everyone has their reasons when they take up arms against others. With a time machine, maybe we could have a great time listening to the folks who fired on Sumter and the folks who destroyed the World Trade Center argue about who had the greater justification. But, as it’s my country fired upon in both cases, I’m nationalistic enough not to care too much about the particulars of their respective grievances.

Now we have the governor of Mississippi rushing to the defense of the governor of Virginia’s decision to revive a celebration of the Confederacy in that state. The linked article suggests that people are upset that it’s “insensitive.” My objections to the Confederacy isn’t that remembering it hurts my feelings. Rather, I have these old fashioned notions that both treason and owning people is wrong. Combining the two is really wrong. And getting sentimental about the combination is appalling. I’m happy enough to let bygones be bygones, but if elected officials from Confederate states insist on bringing up the past unpleasantness, it should be to apologize and to thank the northern states for bringing a forcible end to their peculiar institution.

Haley Barbour doesn’t think celebrating the taking up arms against the United States means “diddly.” He goes on:

I don’t really see what to say about slavery, but anybody that thinks that you have to explain to some people that slavery is a bad thing, I think that goes without saying,” Barbour said.

Goes without saying? Then why, pray tell, did we have to fight the bloodiest war in our history to get your predecessors – who you want to celebrate – to remain part of the United States rather than defect, primarily for the purpose of continuing the practice and expanding it into the territories?

Please excuse me. This “Lost Cause” crap just drives me nuts.

Bear with me for a second here. Earlier this year, I read a book I very much enjoyed, Born to Run by Chris McDougall. In it, among many, many other things he mentions the beneficial aspects of chia seeds which the Tarahumara Indians of the Copper Canyon region of Mexico eat and which, apparently, assist with their ability to run insane distances without a great deal of injury. A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law came for a visit, and she brought some chia seeds. (Yes, this is the same stuff they use for Chia Pets.) So, I figured what the hell, and I started eating them before runs.

And, sure enough, I felt like I had more endurance for the runs after eating the chia seeds. When I mentioned this to my sister but minimized the significance by suggesting that it may well be a placebo effect operating, my sister responded, “so what? If it works, it works.” Placebo effect doesn’t mean the effects are illusory, it means that our brains are capable of operating on our bodies in ways we don’t quite understand.

So, that was floating in the back of my mind this morning (I ran a few miles before work after fueling up on some yogurt & chia) when I was thinking about the significant number of people against whom I am trying to collect debts who are in one stage or another of applying for and/or receiving social security disability benefits. There are some who are very clearly disabled. But there are also plenty where I look at them and, not to put too fine a point on it, call bullshit.

I’m sure there are a non-trivial number who are flat out frauds. But the placebo effect discussion got me to wondering whether there are some who suffer disabling symptoms because something in their brain perceives a need to be disabled in order to get benefits. Maybe on some level, they can’t find or don’t want to work and aren’t, initially, in that bad of condition physically. But, they become aware of the possibility of disability benefits and, while they aren’t consciously seeking to cheat the system, on some level they come to see disability benefits as a lifeline – a steady source of income in a world where income can be uncertain. With those conditions, I wonder if disabling symptoms can begin to really set in with the actual cause being something akin to a placebo.

Like I said, random thought. Whatever the cause, in my collections business, the volume of people telling me they can’t work and have “applied for disability” is a source of annoyance. I’m happy it’s there for people who really need it. But, I’m convinced there is a significant freeloading component of the population trying to take advantage of it.

The Associated Press has an article on federal income taxes and the fact that about half of Americans don’t pay them.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.
. . .
In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.

As usual, I have mixed views here. On one hand, I think taxes have civic virtue. Paying them makes everyone invested in the community to some extent – sort of a pride in ownership effect. On the other hand, in political discourse these days, some folks have almost made a fetish out of the federal income tax, as if it’s the only sort of tax that matters. You’ll routinely hear a wailing and gnashing of teeth about how so, so many poor people (subtext: freeloaders) “don’t pay any taxes.” If you push, you’ll get a concession that it’s federal income taxes they don’t pay.

The people not paying federal income taxes are often paying other sorts of taxes: sales taxes, payroll taxes, property tax, user fees, excise taxes, etc. But, for whatever reason, those don’t count.

And, it’s no accident that the federal income tax soaks the rich. That was pretty much its entire purpose. The 16th Amendment allowing the income tax came from the socialists and the progressives agitating for a graduated income tax. And there is some justification to the disproportionate share of taxes paid by the wealthy. The wealthiest 25% of Americans control something like 87% of the country’s wealth. And, contrary to what we’d like to believe about ourselves, wealth (not that I have any great deal of it personally) isn’t solely (or even, arguably, primarily) a function of hard work and ingenuity.

A lot of it has to do with the system into which we were born – Gates simply wouldn’t have made his billions if he were born and raised in Somalia. And, apart from the system, there are obviously advantages to the particulars of one’s family and the like. I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about this sort of “unfairness.” But, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to require the prime beneficiaries of a system to do the lion’s share of funding it.

The older I get, the more I appreciate Spring. Every winter, it occurs to me that, once again, I’ve forgotten to leave Indiana. And, every Spring, I’m a little happier to see the warm weather return. Easter, among other things, is in the great human tradition of rebirth celebrations. Jesus joined the ranks of Osiris, Baldr, Persephone, Adonis, Mithras, Inanna, and other deities who died and came back to life, frequently in the Spring.

I can only imagine that the importance of “rebirth” in the Spring would be that much more significant for folks in an agrarian society where famine was much closer at hand.

Another thing that struck me while I was poking around the Internet for background on some of these gods is just how many different gods have been worshiped over the years. And to wander even further afield, Neil Gaiman has a fun take on gods who have fallen into disuse in his book American Gods.

The central concept is that gods and mythological creatures exist because people believe in them. Immigrants to the United States brought dwarves, elves, leprechauns, and other spirits and gods with them, but their power is diminished as people’s beliefs wane.

Anyway, Happy Easter everyone.

MSNBC has a story which is the latest installment of “every generation sucks a little worse than the one that came before.” Apparently 20 somethings don’t talk about their work ethic or “respect” as much as older people.

I’ve harped on this before, but was there ever a generation that viewed the younger generation as having it tougher, working harder, or listening to better music than the one that came before? I doubt it. But I’ve been hearing about the Decline since the 70s. If folks grousing about the kids actually knew what they were talking about, we should be living in huts, wearing rags, and starving by now.

The Slacktivist has a very interesting discussion on the difference between virtues and, particularly as Glenn Beck uses the term, values. This is a follow up to a previous entry on the same topic. The primary distinction is that “virtues” require being and work. “Values” generally require nothing more than saying one “values” something.

I was struck particularly by the discussion of two of Beck’s values: charity and personal responsibility. On the surface, these sound like good things, but there is a certain Orwellian “up-is-down” character to them where charity absolves one of any duty to help anyone and personal responsibility refers not to one’s own personal responsibilities but the lack of duty to anyone else.

What does Glenn Beck mean by “charity”? He means “charity” instead of justice. Charity as opposed to justice. He means charity as a strictly voluntary, optional, extravagant (in nature, if not in scope) act.* He means he owes nothing to the needy, that the rich man owes nothing to Lazarus at the gate.

This is a redefinition of charity that was invented expressly for the purpose of defending a lack of charity. It is “charity” that proclaims the right not to share, not to give, not to be affected at all by the need of others. It is a denial of obligation, a denial of connection and of interconnection, a denial of kinship. It is the charity of Cain, rejecting any obligation to be one’s brother’s keeper.

That same insistence — we are not our brother’s keeper — is also at the heart of what Beck means by the term “personal responsibility.” For the 912 Project this does not mean that you must take responsibility for your choices and actions, not blaming others for your misfortunes. It means, rather, that you are responsible only for yourself and that you are free of any and all responsibility for anyone else. For Beck, in other words, “personal responsibility” is a declaration of irresponsibility.

This idea combines with the stunted anti-justice redefinition of charity to rationalize the refusal to assist others as a humane “do not feed the bears” policy. Which makes sense if you think of the world as an uncivilized jungle. And if you think of people in need as subhuman beasts.

“If you quit giving people that stuff, they would figure out how to do it on their own,” one of Beck’s 912 disciples said to The New York Times’ Kate Zernike.** That man collects unemployment and Social Security, but spends most of his free time angrily making sure no one else can.

I’m back from vacation. I took the kids down to North Carolina to visit my folks then up to the Akron, OH area where Amy caught up with us at some friends house. Then we drove back home today.

According to Google Maps, that was roughly 1,560 miles.

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The kids were champion travelers. I was a little anxious about having the kids to myself for a lot of the trip, but I have to say, it was a good experience. I wouldn’t want to do it on a permanent basis, but taking them out of their element and being the sole parent for them for a while lets you get to know the kids a little better. At least that’s how it worked out in my case.

There is a big health care vote in the House today. From what I hear, the way the procedural stuff is set up, passage in the House pretty much paves the way for making the health care reform package law. What really caught my attention today was some ranting about how the Constitution will die today – this from people who did not bat an eye at warrantless wiretaps and suspension of habeas corpus for individuals designated by the executive branch as “enemy combatants.” To repeat: Tapping phones and suspending habeas corpus? No problem. Health care for the poor and uninsured? Constitutional crisis!

So, on to the substance. Do I think this bill is well designed? No. Not really. But I’m convinced that a well designed system can’t pass Congress. And, given the political capital spent on this bill, there will not be another effort made for at least another 15-20 years. So, the choices are the status quo or this. The status quo is simply unsustainable. We are spending 16% of our considerable GDP on health care already. We spend twice as much per person on health care as other countries. We already pay for something like 45% of those costs from public funds. And costs are increasing. (And no, despite what you may have heard, medical malpractice lawsuits aren’t the prime or even substantial cause of these increases.) Despite spending half as much, those other countries have health care results that are comparable or, in some cases, superior to the U.S.

To date, nobody has been able to direct my attention to an example of a successful market-based system of health care; leading me to be skeptical of whether such a thing can exist. One country that sometimes comes up in this context is Singapore. However, while its system makes use of private insurance, it also ensures affordability largely through compulsory savings and price controls.

Singapore’s system uses a combination of compulsory savings from payroll deductions (funded by both employers and workers) a nationalized catastrophic health insurance plan, and government subsidies, as well as “actively regulating the supply and prices of healthcare services in the country” to keep costs in check[.]

Markets are very good at allocating resources. However, to function properly, it seems to me that buyers need to have good information and the ability to walk away from a transaction. That’s a problem in health care negotiations. Health care decisions involve analysis of medical information that’s generally beyond the understanding of most people. And, even if you can rely on your doctor or otherwise master the medical end of the decision making process, medical pricing is often ridiculously opaque. Try calling up half a dozen hospitals and trying to get the actual price of a hip replacement. Even if they’re willing to tell you, there are likely to be an array of prices depending on who’s asking. And those will be qualified prices because any number of contingencies can affect the price, even in the middle of the surgery. Then you have the problem of getting an insurer to be clear, up front, about the terms of the insuring contract and then honoring those terms after the fact. The insurer operates from a position of strength, collecting premiums for years when there are no significant health issues, then being able to withhold a determination of whether it’s going to pay for a procedure until after the procedure is complete. Finally, any negotiating options you have in the ordinary situation pretty much go out the window once you’re in an emergency situation. It’s like negotiating with a gun to your head.

Politically, the pundits like to tell Democrats they are doomed if they vote for this thing. That may or may not be. I think it’s a certainty that they’re doomed if they vote against this bill. A political wind pretty much always blows against the party in power. It’s just easier to criticize than it is to govern. But, pretty much regardless of the substance, that wind will turn into a maelstrom if they are unable to pass legislation during tough times. During good times, the electorate will pretty much ignore ineffectual dithering as leaving well enough alone. However, during bad times, “strong and wrong” seems more comforting to people than weak and either right or wrong. Of course, “strong and right” is best of all. When asked about particular policies in the legislation, folks are generally on board. When asked about the bill or the legislative process as an abstract entity, that’s when public opinion goes negative. Once the law is passed, a lot of the negativity about procedure will probably evaporate pretty quickly. When the armageddon predicted by the bill’s detractors never materializes, they will be discredited and a lot of that negativity will evaporate as well. So, politically, the best option for Democrats is going to be voting for this bill. If the bill fails, there will never be anything concrete for the electorate to judge. Instead, the health care bill will always be the inchoate monstrosity built up by its detractors. Anyone associated with that monstrosity will be judged harshly – even if a particular lawmaker only dithered about supporting the monster and even if the monster never existed in reality.

Now, it’s all over except the shouting. And the voting.