Idea: Conversing with people of diverse opinions can lead to thought.
(Note: This is not the same as putting up with disagreeable people who like flinging their feces over the Internet.)
I was having a pleasant back-and-forth on one of my more conservative friend’s Facebook page which led to a probably overly-long-for-Facebook comment on my part. But, it seems like a good enough basis for a blog post. Also, a periodic reminder to seek out people of good will who have different opinions. Try not to get mad at each other. The discussions will be good for you.
Anyway, the subject of taxes came up. I mused about the relationship between taxes and happiness indexes because high-tax areas often seem to be areas where people rate themselves happy. He correctly pointed out that those indexes are subjective and also observed that he and I are happy living in low-tax Indiana. Which led to this, from me:
I think a fair amount of my happiness comes from having located in the People’s Republic of West Lafayette. It’s not very high tax or liberal compared to your average college town, but compared to the rest of Indiana probably more so.
Part of what makes me happy about the community is that there isn’t a lot of (noticeable anyway) dysfunction in the people with whom I come into contact. West Lafayette is a bubble. Tippecanoe County is less so but still a bit of a bubble when compared to the rest of Indiana.
The question is whether spreading social services more broadly can, in effect, expand and strengthen that “bubble?” Or, to get out of using the mildly pejorative “bubble” characterization, can spreading social services more widely reduce the dysfunction in the general population? Can taxing the rich and spending it on the poor effectively improve education, improve health, strengthen families, make people more productive, and make communities happier places to live? How much can you tax before the good things produced by the spending is outweighed by the unhappiness created by taxing and taking peoples’ money?
Then you get to the moral question — even if you generate significantly more happiness through taxing and spending, is it morally justifiable to take from the few and spend on the many? On this point, I’m probably never going to have a meeting of the minds with the “taxation is theft” purists. But, as to the previous point, I think there is a lot to discuss and to be learned about what sorts of social spending is effective and about when you hit a point of diminishing returns with respect to taxation.
Doug, I can’t answer the morality question, nor am I competent to draw the line–to determine where “diminishing returns” begin. But when I was researching my book “God and Country,” I found overwhelming evidence that markers of social dysfunction are far lower in high-tax, social welfare countries: teen pregnancies, divorce, crime, etc. There is a similar body of evidence with respect to high-and-low tax states in the U.S. (those Southern red states with lots of professedly religious folks have higher divorce rates, etc. than “permissive” blue states.)
Any sense of whether the relative lack of dysfunction in the blue areas enables the permissiveness or whether the permissiveness reduces the dysfunction? (Or, maybe it’s just a correlation without necessarily a causal relationship.)
My research was focused on religiosity, and the data mostly proved correlation. That said, my impression was (and is) that imposition of religious conformity (either through government or social stigma) had a negative effect on individual social behaviors.
On the moral question, I think the answer is based to a large extent on where on the spectrum one lands on the extent to which we are part of a community versus being mostly a collection of individuals.
And, for anyone looking to make a book purchase, here is the link to Sheila’s God & Country.
Thanks!
You can’t really prove a correlation. A correlation is nothing more than a statistical calculation. It neither proves nor disproves. It exists independent of whatever mitigating factors are included in the analysis. I can pull a correlation by taking weather data in Denver and seeing if a soccer team in England wins or loses based on that information. I could correlate rainy days to more wins. I could correlate sunny days to more injuries, or whatever the case may be. Qualitative analysis is even worse because now the outcomes and results are based on your perception and your own interpretation which includes ones own biases.
You are certainly correct in your observation, but correlations allow prediction, and the strength of the correlation is also an estimate of the accuracy of that prediction. There are many events where we can’t do controlled studies for a number of reasons, so we often end up using a number of variables which are strongly correlated with the variable we want to predict and correlated with other sensible variables. (It takes art as well as science to do that properly.) One technique is multiple regression among other methods, used by lots of people, including economists and business people to make predictions and invest money. For example, the next time you go to your Vanguard/Fidelity or other site, you will see R squared somewhere in the economic analysis of a stock. My point is that just because a correlation is not as good as a controlled study, it doesn’t make it useless or irrelevant. In fact, it is quite useful, particularly when controlled studies are too difficult or present ethical problems. On the other hand, we can always feed in crazy variables to any equation and end with crazy outcomes.
Qualitative analysis is also far from perfect, but there are many solid and valid methods to use if you want something that makes sense. Like other methods, you can always do crazy stuff with irrelevant variables and end with wild conclusions. Hopefully, rational and ethical people will be involved but that doesn’t always happen. That’s why it’s important to be able to understand the “methods” section of a research report.
Regarding your question about whether it’s morally justifiable to take money from the rich and “give it” to the poor, it brings to mind the book “Plutocrats” by Chrystia Freela and the (now classic) book “The Price of Inequality” by Joseph Stiglitz. Apparently, inequality leads to social upheaval and instability, and revolution, none of which rich people want or hope for. Unfortunately, the 1% usually seems to be insulated from that insight, and many appear to believe that their vast possessions stem from their moral superiority while the rest lack that sort of sensibility. As Stiglitz pointed out in his now famous Vanity Fair article, the 1% eventually come to the realization that they really need the lower 98%, and that they are not independent of society or necessarily morally superior. Stiglitz says that insight often comes too late.
I think it’s morally justifiable at least to a certain extent both for the utilitarian reasons such as what you describe and because I think a lot of the value acquired by the wealthy is a function of the society in which they had the opportunity to operate.