A New Generation...

Just because I don't think an Obama candidacy would have a shot at winning does not mean I don't think the world would be a much better place with Obama in the Oval Office.

From an interview with Newsweek: "Our politics has very much been grounded in debates over the '60s. There's the '60s, the backlash against the '60s, the counter-backlash within the Democratic Party against the '60s. We've been effectively talking about Vietnam, the sexual revolution, the civil-rights movement for a generation now, and it doesn't adequately describe the challenges we face today. My peer group, I think, finds many of those divisions unproductive."

Amen. It's sometimes stunning to think about where our leaders are stuck. The Bush administration is still fighting against school integration. Democrats are still fighting (maybe) to realize Johnson's Great Society. We have experts on the Soviet Union making our foreign policy. The entire War on Terror is a giant war to contain Soviet Terrorist expansionism, and it is being prosecuted as such. Sen. Obama is right; fresh blood is exactly what we need.

An Inconvenient Truth?

A recent CNN poll shows Obama behind both McCain and Giuliani by 4 and 7-point margins, respectively. Most polls, as far as I can tell, also put Clinton trailing both GOP frontrunners. The one man (other than John Edwards) who appears to be even or ahead of both is...

Al Gore?

Perhaps experience still counts for something in this world. Whether Gore could manage a win as the '08 nominee is debatable, but the fact that he polls higher against the GOP favorites than either Clinton or Obama is pretty telling, I think.


(Full disclosure: Since I talk about John Edwards so much, I must admit that I've long been an Edwards fan. I voted for Edwards in the '04 primary, as Howard Dean had already dropped out by the time primary season got to my state. Also note that the '04 primary was the second time John Kerry failed to receive my vote...and the first time he was running unopposed. Seriously, who let that man be the Democratic nominee in '04?)

More on Edwards

Robert Novack (yes, yes, I'm citing Robert Novack) explains why Edwards might be the labor candidate in '08.

Emphasis on the "Gold"

So, Goldman Sachs, with its $9.5 billion profit this year, paid CEO Lloyd Blankfein a $53 million bonus.

I think this would qualify as an appropriate time - if ever there was one - to feature a WaPo editorial on what they call "Just Capitalism." Saying that executive pay has gone "unhinged," they note that,"since 1970, the pay of chief executives has jumped from less than 30 times the average wage to almost 300 times that level." How wonderful...

But, in light of my trashing of the useless uber-rich in previous posts, I suppose I'm obliged to at least let Sebastian Mallaby over at the WaPo defend hedge fund types. I'm just not sure I buy his argument... Along the same lines, enjoy this Associated Press tribute to Reaganomics. As John Hodgman once said, just think of the jobs for those diamond-tip cane polishers and monocle-smiths.

I feel so sorry for those millionaires...

The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial ($) today about the income tax burden in the US, arguing that silly liberals like me don't appreciate how much the rich pay in taxes:

"Imagine a banquet attended by 100 random Americans. If the bill for the meal is distributed like the income tax, the richest person in the room is required to pay one-third of the tab.... The three richest people are charged as much as the other 97. And the 30 or so lowest-income people in the room - those with a family income of $30,000 or less - pay nothing and eat for free."

This is already a "highly progressive" system, the editorial argues.

Before people get all shocked at how much our poor, poor rich citizens have to pay in taxes, please participate in another thought experiment.

Imagine the same banquet, with 100 random Americans and 100 plates of food. The way income is distributed in the US, that "unlucky" one person is eating 13 plates of food himself. The richest 18 people are sharing as much food at the other 82. And those 30 "free-riders" are stuck sharing 6 plates between them.

Income is pretty unevenly distributed in this country. Granted our income tax system is already progressive, but that does not imply injustice, and that certainly does not imply that a more progressive system would not be better for the country as a whole.

"Taxes are the price we pay for civilization," said Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Also, Peter Singer has some nice things to say about taxes, including that he could morally justify a much higher tax rate than is currently in place today.

I guess I'm not the only one...

The assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling institute explains why John Edwards might be the "Democrats' best hope."

What can I say? I just like numbers.

While I'm on the topic of Mr. Edwards, here're the results of a poll of likely caucusgoers in Iowa conducted in October by Harstad Research for Environmental Defense. The poll was released last Wednesday.

John Edwards 36%
Hillary Clinton 16%
Barack Obama 13%
Tom Vilsack 11%

Yes, it's only Iowa, but then again, nobody expected John Kerry to go anywhere until he won the Iowa Caucus in '04...

And some numbers...

According to an NBC News/WSJ poll (PDF) done from Dec. 8 - Dec. 11:

Clinton 43, McCain 47
Obama 38, McCain 43
Edwards 43, McCain 41

'Nuff said.

Okay, fine...

It's about time I comment on the hype around Barack and Hillary:

No. They won't win. Stop asking.

I mean, get real, people. First, Sen. Clinton, despite her commanding lead in polls, will fall as fast as Howard Dean did in '04 - and probably sooner, since Dean didn't peak until a little over a year before the election. Conservatives think she's too liberal. Liberal's think she's too conservative. She has crafted an a centrist approach on the Iraq War, an issue that brought down the GOP in '06. And if that wasn't enough, she will always be in the shadow of her husband. I have been lucky enough to attend speeches by both Hill and Bill in the past couple years. One of the two inspired me to want to go out and help our nation and the world. The other said very little of substance and - quite literally - almost put me to sleep. Anyone care to guess which one was which?

Now onto Barack. I love Barack Obama as much as the next liberal. His speech at the '04 convention was the first time I can ever remember feeling inspired by a politician who was not played by Martin Sheen. But he's too young. He's served a little over a term in the Illinois Senate, and now half a term in the U.S. Senate. The last time America elected a man to the White House who had not served a full term as either (1) a governor, (2) vice president, or (3) a U.S. Senator was Eisenhower, and he had previously worn the title "Supreme Allied Commander." Before that, you have to go back to Herbert Hoover, and that's not name with which anyone wants to be mentioned in the same breath. If he runs, he'll get destroyed.

Plus, Obama said it himself. In New Hampshire last week, he said, "People are very hungry for something new. I think to some degree I'm a stand-in for that desire." Couldn't have said it better myself. Once Democrats match that desire with a strong candidate, Obama's stock will plummet. Please, Senator, Russ Feingold stayed out of the race because he wanted to get something done with the tenuous Democratic majority. Have a heart and follow his lead.

Now, with Mark Warner not in the race and Evan Bayh having recently joined him, the right wing of the party has lost its two favorite sons (a good thing, all in all, I would say). Who will step up to the plate and unite the Democratic party? John Edwards is likely throwing his hat into the ring soon. On Tradesports, he is currently trailing only Clinton and Obama. And as I've written before, I think he legitimately has a shot.

As always, time will tell.

W.W.P.S.D.?

Peter Singer provides an excellent exhortation on charitable giving today. Singer, perhaps the philosophy world's most prominent proponent of utilitarian ethics, provided his most famous defense of his global utilitarian perspective in his 1972 essay, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality."

Today, Singer argues why today's wealthy should expand their charitable giving. A few gems:

"But the amount of foreign development aid given by the U.S. government is, at 22 cents for every $100 the nation earns, about the same, as a percentage of gross national income, as Portugal gives and about half that of the U.K. Worse still, much of it is directed where it best suits U.S. strategic interests — Iraq is now by far the largest recipient of U.S. development aid, and Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Afghanistan all rank in the Top 10."

His main point, after running calculations similar to mine: "[A] scale of donations that is unlikely to impose significant hardship on anyone yields a total of $404 billion — from just 10 percent of American families." This amount, over a number of years, he claims, is enough to essentially eliminate world poverty.

He analysis does support mine: "The remedy to these problems, it might reasonably be suggested, should come from the state, not from private philanthropy. When aid comes through the government, everyone who earns above the tax-free threshold contributes something, with more collected from those with greater ability to pay. Much as we may applaud what Gates and Buffett are doing, we can also be troubled by a system that leaves the fate of hundreds of millions of people hanging on the decisions of two or three private citizens." However, he does admit that the efficiency and protection from political special interests makes private philanthropy a more effective use of our money. While I wholeheartedly agree, I still believe that unless charitable giving increases substantially we still may need government to compel us to help others. It's an interesting question.

No matter what you think about Peter Singer, you should read his article. It's awfully hard to refute any of his points.

What is a progressive government?

What is progressive government, you might ask (or, if you are poster "Anonymous," you did ask)? Well, you want it, you got it.

But first, a brief digression into political philosophy.

In 1958, Isaiah Berlin coined the distinction between "negative liberty" and "positive liberty." A negative liberty is a freedom from restraint, whereas a positive liberty is a freedom to act. This distinction is not always clear. Is freedom of religion a negative or positive liberty? Do you have freedom from government interference in religious practices or freedom to worship as you please?

A line between the two can easily be drawn, however. When speaking of governments, a government can prevent us from doing something, or it can help us do something. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court established a right against segregation; a government cannot actively stop you from attending a school based on your race. However, 20 years later, they ruled that students do not have a right to attend integrated schools. A government cannot force schools to be segregated (a negative liberty), but in the presence of only de facto segregation, a government does not have to force schools to be integrated (lack of a positive liberty).

Most libertarians are negative>libertarians; they believe in a large set of negative liberties, i.e. a large set of things the government cannot do to people. I, however, am a positive libertarian; I believe in a large set of things the government must do for people.

This position is not new. In FDR's 1944 State of the Union Address, he said that people should have a "second bill of rights": the right to a living wage, economic competition, homeownership, medical care, education, and recreation. FDR, the quintessential positive libertarian, believed it was the government's responsibility to make sure people had these things.

This is what progressive government means to me. But don't take my word for it; ask Lyndon Johnson:

"You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory but equality as a fact and equality as a result."

In this country, lacking the social welfare systems of most of western Europe, we put all of the burden of righting social wrongs on a drastically underfunded, underresourced, and understaffed system of public schools, assuming this will make everyone equal. I have news for you: it's not going to. If people are ever going to be given the chance to compete on an equal footing in society, the government needs to provide the resources to help them do so. We need not only open the gates of opportunity; we must make sure people have the ability to walk through.That is progressive government.

And you used to want to be a millionaire...

The NYTimes has been running a series of articles recently about the new wealth gap in America - the difference between the rich and the über-rich.

Consider the following: If you earn more than $330,000 a year, congratulations! You're in the top 1% of income earners (about one million households). This elite cadre earns an average of $940,000 a year. If you're lucky enough to be in the top 0.1%, chances are you earn $4.5 million per year. And if you somehow mangaged your way into one of the richest 10,000 households in America, you're earning an average of $20 million per year. Looking at the pay ratio of executives to employees is really pretty disgusting.

Now, I'm all for capitalism, but these people ain't Rockefeller or Carnegie. If today's wealthiest people founded oil or steel conglomerates, then maybe I'd have some respect for them. But today's super-rich aren't Ayn Rand's hallowed Producers. I can't even explain to you what they do. Quoth my favorite editorial board:

"America has long had a problem attracting enough well-trained people to important but not particularly well-compensated positions, like public defender, social worker or teacher. But an era in which a cancer researcher moves over into health-care management consulting because the pay is better — as Louis Uchitelle reported in The Times this week — is something else entirely."

Most people can explain why communism doesn't work: take away incentives to work, and people stop working. As pop culture has now absorbed, economics is the study of incentives. People need an incentive to work. I have no problem with entrepeneurs making it big - this is good for the economy. But when a man brings home $295 million for making his company's stock decline 7.7%, something has gone dreadfully wrong.

Here's a way to keep the compensation of the über-rich down, provide an incentive for corporate boards to reduce compensation packages, and do lots of good: taxes. Right now, Barry Diller is in the same tax bracket as someone making $320,000 a year - the 35% bracket. Let's return a 40% bracket for incomes over $300,000 (as in the good old Clinton days), and let's make a 45% bracket for incomes over $1.6 million and a 50% bracket for people earning more than $8 million - still enough for them to bring home over $4 million a year (before you gasp, don't forget about the 91% bracket in effect from WWII to 1964). How much additional money would this bring into federal coffers? According to my back-of-the-Excel-spreadsheet calculations: over $100 billion.

Or you could look at it this way: more than $2,000 for every American without health insurance, or perhaps $150,000 for every child born into poverty. And let's not forget that the US, with it's "culture of life," has a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba.

Still feel good about that tax cut you got?

Finding Something Upon Which to Agree

David Brooks strikes again, pandering to both sides of the political divide while making himself appear the centrist - a "belle of the ball" to be wooed back by the GOP. Almost despite himself, however, he manages to throw in a few gems:

"Nurturing stable families in which children can develop the social and cultural capital they need to thrive.... It means publicly funded, though not necessarily publicly run, preschool programs." First, lets be clear what this means; this entire quotation is an exercise in fence-straddling. Translation for Democrats: "Social welfare/health care/education programs aimed at children, plus billions of dollars of additional support for education." Translation for Republicans: "Social values programs aimed at making good Christian 1950's homes, plus steps towards voucher programs for education." Well, I'll take what I can get - a couple billion dollars for high-quality preschool could solve a lot of problems in this country (one report even claims that every dollar invested in pre-school can save the country $7 (PDF) in the costs associated with crime, drug use, and teen pregnancy).

"Radical school reform: performance pay for teachers, and end to stupid certification rules, urban boarding schools..., locally run neighborhood child centers to service an array for health and day-care needs." Once again, some righty ideas mixed with some lefty ones, couched in language that appeases the far-right, but the sentiment is in the right direction.

"Spread assets. Every citizen, from birth, should have an IRA-type savings account. The tax code should encourage personal and employer contributions." Amazingly, he manages in this paragraph to appease both the personal-savings-accounts right-wing and the redistribute-wealth left-wing. But when a conservative starting a sentence with "spread assets," you know something's changed in America.

"Raise taxes on carbon emissions." ::Stunned silence:: Granted Brooks finishes that sentence by encouraging keeping capital gains and dividends tax cuts permanent (oh, those poor, poor, overtaxed millionaires), but raise taxes on carbon emissions? Music to my ears!

What comes out of Brooks's op-ed? American values are, as Ronald Dworkin says, in reality, a deep shade of blue. We want social welfare programs to help the most disadvantaged Americans; we want enough spreading of wealth that every American has at least the opportunity to succeed in life; we want to help the environment (though we have too much cognitive dissonance to actually do anything about it on our own).

The problem in actually making any of these things happen is that Americans still don't trust government (thank you Ronald Reagan). We're willing to take government funding, as long as it's not under government control. We'll take attempts to equalize wealth, as long as its in the form of private accounts. We'd love social welfare institutions - but we'd rather that private organizations provide them. Here's my problem - and my biggest disagreement with libertarians: while most Americans may not trust the public sector, I see no reason to trust the private sector. Sure, a corporation can probably get things done more efficiently than the federal government - I feel like there's very little disagreement about that. But will corporations actually get anything done? When you show me large scale, sustainable social welfare provided by a private entity, maybe we can have that discussion. Until then, American values must point us to one and only one thing: a progressive government.