Tax repeal: Good idea or no?

Great Debates
41

The DOE budget page. Generally grants to local school systems, supplementing locally raised funds. Cut those and you do cut education.

So, again, why the special attention to an item amounting to about 3% of the budget? Is it simply the most notable example of the states’-rights aspect of US conservatism? Is anyone propounding it, even those offering other straw men as retorts (that means you, Sam - all you’ve done otherwise is rephrase yourself), going to explain its extraordinary attractiveness?

42

Oh, and adaher? The government is not “them”. It’s us. It isn’t some alien, foreign entity bent on subjugating us; it’s just a mechanism we use to act collectively. Starving the government is starving ourselves. Certainly the government could operate more efficiently in many ways, as could any business - but that doesn’t invalidate its nature or purpose.

The misconception you’re a part of spreading has been IMHO very damaging to the general understanding of the nature of democracy, which is a different thread. This isn’t really a hijack, though, because the decisions about how (and yes, whether) to balance the budget arise from such viewpoints.

43

hmmm, I see that according to this(PDF) (scroll down and click on GRAND TOTAL), in 2002 the DOE sent $46 billion dollars in grants to the 50 states. So I don’t think I can get behind saying that eliminating the DOE would have no effect on education. It sounds like elimination would devastate state & local education programs and/or cause huge local tax increases.

OTOH, the 2002 budget for the DOE was $56 billion ((cite - PDF)), so administrative overhead appears to be 20% of their budget, which to me doesn’t seem like a model of efficiency. OTOH, and don’t know what was actually done with that $10 billion and how much really was overhead.

44

Well, for one thing, the estimated cost of the tax cut in 2004 is closer to 300 billion dollars a year.

45

Re-reading the post I responded to, it was a bit more vague that I originally thought. There is a common argument that if the Founders were around today, they would oppose our government.

I feel compelled to blow off steam whenever I see this reasoning because it assumes that the Founders could have envisioned the US as an economic powerhouse with 290 million people, streching from coast to coast, with telecommunications and whatnot, power extending overseas, etc etc.

While I’m sure the Founders would uphold the same principles of a republican government, I don’ t think that they’d necessarily find that the same size of government would suit the 21st century as well as it suited the 18th century.

So, apologies if I mistakenly took my fuming out on you. If that was the argument you were making, however, let’s leave it to another day.

46

The problem is that a lot of Americans will in fact tolerate tax increase, just not on them. The reason the tax cuts disproportionately went to “the rich” is that they pay most of the taxes. In 2002, the top 1% of the taxpayers paid over a third of all income taxes collected. Now, most of the reason for this is that they make a disproportionate share of the money (by definition). But another reason is the downside of the (mostly good) progressive tax system. Heck the top tenth of one percent of tax payers ponied up 16% of all the money.

So for most Americans, numerically, there is something for nothing as far as they’re concerned. Just up (or re-up) the taxes on that one percent and you get to provide the services to the other 99%. Takes a heck of a politician (or a really, really rich district) to resist that deal.

47

Manhattan, I see a couple of holes in this logic:

(1) It ignores the ways in which the rich can use their money and political connections to largely control the political debate. Despite the worries of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the rich seem quite able to fend for themselves in the political realm. Thus, while there may be this supposed instability where the many will tax the hell out of the rich few, in reality it doesn’t seem to manifest itself in the real world. (The ability of the Republicans to get the gift and estate tax repealed is living proof of this.) For what it’s worth, I think Robert Nozick (who is a libertarian social philosopher) had an argument in his book “Anarchy, State, and Eutopia” as to why it is always possible for the rich to buy off just enough of the population to get their way than to let the masses run rampant over them.

(2) As you rightly point out, the fact that the top few percent pay a large share of the income taxes stems in large part from the fact that they have such a large share of the income. It is only partly, and secondarily, due to the fact that the federal income tax is progressive (unlike the payroll and most state/local taxes as a whole which are regressive). What this means is that while the income tax may not collect all that much money from middle-income people, it can still hit them fairly hard as a fraction of their income, and thus they are still concerned about the level of the tax. (For the poor, the federal income tax is truly a small player since most of the taxes they pay…all in many cases…are payroll taxes, state and local sales taxes, and the like.)

48

I stand corrected.

Well, that would be a good case in my mind. I’m not particularly hostile to the department of education, but it’s certainly an area I wouldn’t mind seeing cut - schools are, as stated, a local issue. The more leeway we give to the federal government to control local issues, the worse off we are. Forcing states to comply with federal wishes by withholding highway funds, and that sort of stuff, just screws up the whole balance.

49

Well, your argument was more on target than it appeared at first, but I still disagree, in any case. I believe they’d have advocated the minimum necesary government that we could manage - and I don’t think anyone remotely sane could say we have a minimal government. But that’s a hijack, I guess, so we can agree to disagree.

50

**Oh, and adaher? The government is not “them”. It’s us. It isn’t some alien, foreign entity bent on subjugating us; it’s just a mechanism we use to act collectively. Starving the government is starving ourselves. Certainly the government could operate more efficiently in many ways, as could any business - but that doesn’t invalidate its nature or purpose.
**

Starving government is not starving ourselves. It is keeping our own money rather than letting the government waste it. I’m not trying to invalidate government, only force it to become more efficient, which it will do if it has to operate on a budget. Currently, the government just raises its revenues whenever it wants. Since the govenrment is us, as you say, and we live on budgets, the government should as well. We don’t just say, “Hey, I want that, I’ll raise my pay to get it.”

**The misconception you’re a part of spreading has been IMHO very damaging to the general understanding of the nature of democracy, which is a different thread. **

And this misconception you’re part of spreading has been very damaging to individual liberties.

Now, to the Department of Education.

Prior to the establishment of the Dept. of Education, education was better than it is today if test scores and graduation rates are any indication.

Secondly, I have found no relation between money spent and educational achievement. If anything, there is an inverse effect. States that spend a lot per pupil often have lousy performance compared to states that spend relatively little. That’s not the cause, of course, it’s a symptom. Government throwing money at the problem.

Finally, even if you do insist on believing that money is directly correlated with achievement, and that cutting education funding will cut achievement, the states will still get their money. Instead of it going through the federal government first, they will collect it themselves, just like they did before. And they will do it more efficiently, as they’l be saving that 20% overhead the federal government is wasting.

One more thing, unrelated to funding. Education should be controlled by students and parents and teachers, not by beauracrats in Washington DC. If you want to improve education, one surefire way to do it is to take the decision-making out of Washington and return it to the people who are actually involved in the process of education.

51

Well, as you yourself note, correlation is not causation. But, since you claim this inverse effect, would you care to show it to us. Or, is this going to be yet another one of these negative statements about government that is made in this thread with zero evidence to back it up?

(1) We haven’t established the 20% is “overhead”, only that it is money that is not being given as grants directly to the states.

(2) Would you care to provide the numbers on what the corresponding overhead is at the state and local level.

(3) This collecting it themselves would mean that the states raise taxes. And, this is exactly the sort of thing that those of us on the liberal side have been saying would transpire with Bush tax cuts…i.e., state and local taxes would be raised to largely offset the drop in federal income taxes. By “largely offset”, we mean that it would likely more than offset the cuts in taxes received by poor and middle income people but would not offset the tax cuts received by the wealthy (because the federal income tax is the most progressive tax we got and state and local taxes are generally quite regressive.)

So, I hope you were out there fighting Bush on his attempts to impose various federal testing standards and the like on the states.

52

Yeah, heaven forbid one should spread to the people the idea that the government is theirs and they can take an active part in it! We certainly don’t want that in a democracy. Rather, it is better that they think of the government as the evil “other” that steals their money to waste and burn it.

Better to spread the sort of message that the Bush Administration is spreading, “We and our corporate benefactors know better than you and you should trust us. You don’t need to worry your pretty little minds about the details. We will take care of that for you. We don’t have to tell you who we met with to decide on an energy policy. We don’t have to allow you to see what we are doing on missile defense so we will start classifying details that weren’t classified before. And, let’s get on with this nice Patriot Act which will help us get the bad guys but won’t harm individual liberties one bit.”

53

Part of the problem I think we’ve always had, and that adaher reflects, is that the founders focused almost entirely on our rights and very little on our responsibilities. That rhetoric has continued to resound through the years, with anyone wanting to discuss civic responsibilities exposing themselves to contempt and suspicion of nonpatriotism. But rights entail responsibilities, just the same. Having the right to vote entails the responsibility to use that vote in the interest of the community above the self. Having the right to bear arms entails the responsibility for the safe use of arms. That isn’t “damaging to individual liberties”, it comes with the package.

54

A quick housekeeping matter: US Federal Budget Summary2002 (actual) figures from Table 8 BUDGET SUMMARY BY CATEGORY (In billions of dollars):
Discretionary: Defense 349, Non-defense 385
Mandatory: Social Security 452, Medicare 228, Medicaid and SCHIP 151, Other 275
Net interest 171 (not including principal, apparently)
Total: Discretionary 734, Mandatory 1106, Interest 171.

By the OMB’s own figures, then, mandatory spending (including interest) is 63.5% of the total budget, not 2%. And we’re adding to the national debt, not paying it down or even holding it steady.