What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Taxes

Good article in today's New York Times about how none of the fiscal proposals by any of the presidential candidates add up to anything that looks fiscally responsible.

Columnist David Brooks has criticized both Clinton and Obama for promising in their last debate that they would not raise income taxes on people making under $250,000 or $200,000 per year (though Obama did talk about the possibility of raising the cap on the Social Security tax, which presently taxes income only below about $100,000). Brooks said that these promises make it next to impossible for either candidate to follow through with the domestic programs they’ve proposed while maintaining some semblance of fiscal responsibility. Though I often disagree with Brooks, I think he’s right on this one.

Which raises the question: why is it so hard for us to talk realistically about taxes? I think the reason comes back to the fundamental problem in American politics today: the disconnect between people and their government.

It seems to me that people blame their government for taxing them. And they believe it’s their elected officials that impose or reduce their tax burden.

But I don’t see it that way. “Government” doesn’t tax me; government is the means by which we decide to tax ourselves for the programs we say we want. Or at least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. If it doesn’t work that way now, it’s because too many people see government as this alien entity apart from us. But it is us, whether we want to admit it or not. And we have the responsibility, like it or not, to decide whether we’re willing to pay for the things we say we want. And responsible politicians should have the courage to tell us that if we’re not willing to pay, then maybe we don’t really care about those programs after all.

I trace this disconnect back to the Reagan administration. He had a winning line when he said “It’s not the government’s money, it’s your money.” And it’s easy to get the reaction: damn right it’s my money, and The Government has no right to take my hard-won earnings away from me.

Reagan's line is a dangerous one because it’s half right: it is your money. But it leaves out the fact that it’s also your government. To leave out that part is like going to the supermarket, arriving at checkout with a cart full of groceries, and they saying “I’m not going to pay, because it’s not the supermarket’s money, it’s my money.” If you don’t want to pay so much, fine—but some of that food is going to have to be put back on the shelf.

If Clinton or Obama had been talking responsibly, they could have said: Yes, I can promise not to raise taxes on people making under $200,000 a year. But if I make that promise, it’s going to be much, much harder to provide universal health care, affordable college education, vital infrastructure improvements and investments, and energy saving programs, among many other things. We’re not paying our bills now, and the entire Iraq war is being put on our national credit card, so just ending the war won’t get us the cash for these programs either. Now, it’s your choice: do you still want me to make that promise?

Because in the end, it’s not up to the politicians to decide for us whether our taxes go up or down. We live in a representative democracy, so it’s up for us to decide that question. We’ve given up that responsibility because too many of us don’t want to admit that we have that responsibility. It’s easy to criticize someone else for decisions that should be your own; it gives you an out from making tough choices, but it also cuts your own decisions out of the loop.

Only by taking that responsibility back can we begin to have real discussions about what we want, and what we’re willing to pay for. And it would be refreshing to hear one candidate ask us to do so.

As with many other questions facing us today, we seem to want politicians to tell us what they're going to do. But instead, they should be asking us what we're willing to do.

The Momentum Myth

"The tide is turning," said Hillary Clinton after her win in the Pennsylvania primary. And her victory, like the tide, was due to scheduling more than anything else.

Almost without exception, both Clinton and Obama have won where they have been expected to win. Obama's win in Iowa was a true upset, but Clinton was favored to win in New Hampshire all along except for the five days between that contest and the Iowa caucuses. After New Hampshire, states have fallen pretty much as predicted, though Obama's margins in some places have been larger than anticipated.

It's always possible that patterns may change, but it doesn't seem likely. And if they don't change, it's extremely unlikely that Clinton will get the nomination, no matter what the predictable--and predicted--benefit she got last week. She can spin her Pennsylvania win as momentum, and can Obama same next week Obama assuming he wins in North Carolina.

But in this contest, it seems that demography is destiny. There is no real momentum, only the happenstance of the Democratic primary/caucus schedule.

David Brooks has been one of the few people to bring up this point (for instance, on the April 25 PBS Newshour). It's disappointing to see so many others in the media failing to question the momentum myth, though it's only one myth among many that they've failed to analyze in their consistently disappointing coverage of this race.

About This Blog

The name of this politics blog, "Reasonable Arguments," is aspirational. I believe that reasonable people can disagree, but also that reasoned arguments can moderate positions and enable people, if not always to find common ground, to at least see the sources of their differences. And that itself can promote further productive discussion.

What I have little tolerance for is the unprincipled or purposely deceptive argument, and those are all to common in today's politics. I believe that people on either side of an issue should be called out when they make claims that they know will be misleading, even if technically true.

In the attempt to sway voters or rally the faithful, I hear far too many of our political leaders presenting issues in all-or-nothing terms. Rarely does any idea lend itself to an uncomplicated, risk-free or monetarily-free solution. As the saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good: we don't need to require perfection to make things better. We, and our politicians, shouldn't need to ignore possible downsides to policies and proposals to conclude that, on balance, we should or should not enact or continue various programs.

I think it's important to recognize that what we see is tempered by how we think; we all have preconceptions that affect what we choose to believe and what we don't. But we have the power to at least try to be self-critical, to engage in the imperfect attempt to asses the facts before we come to conclusions. Even the attempt to do so will lead to better political discussion than we have today.

I'm sure my biases will be evident in some of my posts, but I do my best to avoid knee-jerk reactions. I hope others will do the same.