Thursday, February 26, 2004

A response and an apology to Mr. Davis

My first reaction upon reading your comments was, "He took my posts out of context. Really, I meant them for the RIL and Angry Clam crowd." Funny thing though, I remember being extremely dissatisfied with the exact same response when it called Angry Clam on similar issues couple months back. I always thought that the whackos on either side of the spectrum antagonize and feed off each other but I never thought I'd would be pulled ever so slightly by its whirling vortex. I apologize for offending you and I will try to be less flamboyant in my prose from now on.

I thought I was being careful not to lump all kinds of conservatives and Republicans together but reading it over it’s not so clear. This is why for example, kept typing "anti-immigration conservatives" over and over again. Clearly, this was insufficient. Other than the RIL crowd, Republicans do not want to stop immigration because they are racist. My guess is that it’s either political (immigrants tend to vote Dem), protectionism for labor (a reasonable although I think flawed position), or not wanting to pay for their social services (also reasonable although I think surmountable). Many Democrats I’m sure share the same concerns and hold similar beliefs. I was trying to make a joke with the mariachi stuff but it was crass.

As for affirmative action, in my self-righteousness I argued my point poorly. Allow me to expand on my premise: even when you control for parents income black students don’t do as well as white students. Why is this? Well, a rabble-rouser would say it’s all just prejudice. (I remember being shocked when a co-worker’s friend who worked in insurance recounted a story of having to hide a client family’s blackness in order to cover them at a price they could afford). I don’t think prejudice is that big a factor.

You can probably blame it on a cultural problem forged in a history of oppression but again, we can only guess. That said, if two students are otherwise indistinguishable then chances are the black student has had to work harder to overcome those extra obstacles. This is not true in every case but it’s ok to think probabilistically. We do it when we assume that people who scored high on their SAT are more deserving of college admission (although it’s certainly not true in every single case). My opinion on affirmative action jives with the Supreme Court ruling stating that race can be a factor in admission, but not an overriding concern.

As for Clinton, he inherited the first honest peace dividend after the cold war and used it to pay down the debt, rather than fund more programs. Yes, the economy was good, but it was good under Reagan when we had record deficits. Now let me address the next two counter arguments: 1. Reagan’s budget proposals were always only 2% or so lower then the Democratic ones so you can’t blame congress. 2. Yes, congress ended up spending more than they originally proposed but that’s standard operating procedure. We can see the same thing from the current Republican congress.

Granted, Clinton’s hands were tied by moderate Democrats in Congress and the Senate. But that’s exactly the point: the last time Democrats held the Legislative and Executive office spending and taxes wasn’t nearly as out of whack as it is now that they are Republican controlled.

If Republican politicians want to cut government programs while cutting taxes that’s a legitimate policy goal. On the other hand, enacting permanent tax cuts for a temporary stimulus program while adding permanent and inefficiently administered Medicare benefits is just irresponsibility. Compare Clinton’s plan to fix healthcare by employing a system more efficient than the current one to the boondoggle recently passed through congress. Yes, Clinton wanted to increase taxes so the program wouldn’t throw us into deficit. Also, he wanted to make healthcare cheaper. This is a tradeoff and there are arguments to be made on both sides. If we disagree then we should discuss. But we certainly shouldn’t say that Clinton wanted to take over 1/7th of the economy and pretend like the argument is over. What is he? A James Bond villain?

Again, I apologize for lumping reasonable people like you, Kenny and LaFata in with right-wing kooks like RIL and the Angry Clam. In the future, when I mean Angry Clam and the RIL boys I will say “Angry Clam and the RIL boy” or just “right-wing kooks”. However, I can’t apologize for holding liberal positions any more than you can apologize for being conservative.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 9:47 AM
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Tuesday, February 24, 2004

David Brooks: Not a total retard

I'm an avid reader of the New York Times editorial page and my favorite conservative writer there is David Brooks. Though he sometimes lowers himself to spinning the standard conservative talking points, I was relieved this morning to find that Brooks had written a very thoughtful article.

Unlike some rightist crazies Brooks is willing to look at the evidence about Latinos. Being first generation Italian myself, I’m sensitive to the issue of how immigrants are perceived. I’ve read sickening articles that ran in the very same New York Times 100 years ago, denouncing the brown wave of Italian immigrants and see parallels with how Latinos are portrayed by conservatives today. Nowadays, the anti-immigration laws the conservatives could only dream of then are the law of the land, so anti-immigrant conservatives can dress up their xenophobia as a simple desire for punishing law-breakers.

A lot of the “they’re talking away our jobs” rhetoric you find on the anti-imm right-wing sites is reminiscent of the anti-scab talk they criticize Unions for. Of all the unexplainable logical contradictions these conservatives hold, this is the most glaring. Allow me to step through it:

1. Closed shops (shops where the only people allowed in are the ones that join the Union and maintain its standards) are bad because they prevent competition. Competition is good because it makes for cheaper products.
   
2. Closed borders (borders where the only people allowed in have similarly high standards of living) are good because they prevent competition. Competition is bad because it makes for lower wages.
   

In general, I’m against barriers to economic competition like collective bargaining. So theoretically, I’m against Closed shops and Closed borders. Problem is, big businesses are already collectively bargaining. If you don’t like the pay you are making at Wal-Mart it’s not like you can threaten to work at some other position in the same Wal-Mart. All the jobs they offer are being controlled by the same entity and I see no problem organizing back. This is why I hold 1 and 2 to be false. I have yet to see any convincing arguments from anti-immigrant conservatives as to why they simultaneously hold 1 and 2 to be true. My guess is, that they just… well… they just don’t like mariachi music and that’s that.

Now, nobody is arguing that we throw the borders open and let every malcontent and ne’er-do-well in. But what I am suggesting is that we go back to the old system of immigration our land had for nigh 200 years: if you are able-bodied and can contribute to society, then you can be granted citizenship. I would probably favor something like Bush’s plan with the major change of allow working non-citizens in good standing a fast track to citizenship. But as it stands now, Bush’s plan is just a fancy indentured servitude that doesn’t ever end.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 8:58 AM
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Sunday, February 22, 2004

The Liberal ethos of merit and equal opportunity

Two things got me thinking about the philosophical underpinnings of modern Liberalism. One was an article by my favorite economics professor, Paul Krugman. The other was a CalStuff comment discussion where the Angry Clam was left stuck, unable to compute the arguments I was presenting him much like a stereotypical robot after being shown an unsolvable logic puzzle. Liberalism is based on the idea that merit should be the prime reason for advancement in a society, not luck.

Unlike conservobots, who assume that government intervention is the only source of unfairness, liberals understand that inequities can come from multiple sources. And let me be clear, by inequities I do not mean unequal income. If a person works hard and wisely, that person deserves more money than a person who is lazy and foolish. By inequity, I mean forces that reward or punish people randomly. For example, an inheritance from your super rich parents (say, one worth more than $675,000) is not deserved money in any sense. Basically, giant outsized inheritances are randomly assigned to a number of children born each year without any meaningful competition.

The founding fathers understood the problems with unearned wealth whether it be inheritance or the naturally outsized political influence of money. They had escaped a land of aristocracy and class privilege to a comparative paradise of equal opportunity and merit. They aimed to keep it that way and so, among other things, they instituted estate taxes (first at the state level and later on the federal). This ingenious means of ensuring fairness was noted by no less than Alexis De Tocqueville in his book Democracy in America.

The founding fathers didn’t have to deal with corporations or wild income disparities. If they did, you can be sure that they would have tried to mitigate the unfairness through collective action. It’s that tradition that modern day liberals are carrying forth. Whereas one of the first actions undertaken by our Republican government was to remove the estate tax (which at the time only applied to inheritances larger than $675,000) liberals are looking for ways to make sure corporations pay their fair share. While conservative thugs go to poor neighborhoods to intimidate people into not voting, Liberals are advocating expanding suffrage to former felons who have paid their debt to society. While Republicans in congress spend our children’s money on political pork, Liberals like Bill Clinton are advocating making good on our national debt.

Conservobots like the Angry Clam don’t understand what all the fuss is about. What they get worked up about is some Mexican trying to make a better life for himself and his family. It never occurs to them that the very same concept of free trade that they say they believe tells us that an illegal washing their dishes is much less of a problem than a corporation using political influence to avoid paying its income taxes. But then, Conservobots aren’t like you or me. They can’t see what they aren’t programmed to see. Hell, they probably can’t even accept that Clinton’s economic boom was fuller and longer lasting than Reagan’s.

Update: posted the link to Krugman's essay I originally forgot.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 9:41 AM
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Saturday, February 21, 2004

A response to an Angry Rant

(this is a response to comments made here)

You are proceeding from the false belief that money is equitably distributed amongst students. If we lived in a world without good or bad luck and without nefarious and virtuous means of gaining and losing money, then your extreme rightist fantasies would be correct. In the regular universe however, the situation is markedly different. The amount of money a student has is if anything, an indicator of how well-off their parents are. (A realist would also argue that it represents undeserved good or bad luck). I don’t expect you to come out for awarding people on their merits so it is no surprise that you would argue for a system that would leave poor students powerless and rich students in control of all clubs and magazines.

Now, I suppose that you could put a voucher program in place: each student has $50 student dollars that must be donated to a student group. While there is some beauty in the simplicity of this idea, it would instantly cause a tragedy of the commons with popular, but cheap programs. Every student would say, “Hey, why should I donate some Student dollars to the class pass? It’s not like the program is going to go bust if I don’t give it $5.”

What we need then is some way for students to decide collectively which programs it will fund. Hmmm… I suppose we could have a hereditary leader who makes decisions for us. That might not work out to good. On the other hand, I hear that these British colonialists in wigs came up with this weird system where everyone “votes” for representatives. It’s called a “Democratic Republic”. I know the idea sounds far out, but Liberals like me love this kind of squishy thinking. I imagine crazy right-winger like you wouldn’t really go for it. I suppose anarchy (the absence of government) would really suit you much better.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 4:06 PM
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Friday, February 20, 2004

Nader to announce Sunday whether he will make the next four years of my life that much more difficult

Consumer advocate, little brother of Cal Anthropology professor Laura, author, 2000 presidential candidate, and 2001 Humboldt County Arm Wrestling Champion (I'll check my sources on that one later) Ralph Nader will announce on Sunday's Meet the Press if he will again be running for pres in 2004. If he does, I'll vote for him, even if it means another four years of trying to defend his actions (and mine) to my friends, family, readers, and millions of invisible, angry Democrats.

Matt Gonzales spoke to my Political Science 179 seminar on Wednesday and explained very eloquently his position on the so-called Nader Factor. In his words, loosely: Yes, Nader was the reason that Gore lost the election in 2000, but what have the Democrats done since then to remedy this problem? They've done absolutely nothing.

Instead of trying to reform the voting system (for example, pushing for runoff voting or IRV/rank voting), they simply harp again and again "Don't vote for Nader because Bush is such a terrible man." Instead of returning to traditional Democratic values, they reiterate "Bush: bad to leftists! Us: tolerable to leftists!"

Congressional Democrats in the past four years have done nothing to appeal to voters who, given the option, will vote for Ralph Nader. Further, they've done little to appeal to voters who still vote Democratic out of fear, but who deep down would rather vote for a third party candidate. Instead, they've appealed to The Center. (Bear in mind, too, that The Center twelve years ago was significantly left of The Center today. Thanks, Bill.) They voted in the PATRIOT Act, they gave Bush a blank check for Iraq, they granted the president the right to go to war unilaterally, and they've failed to push formerly "key" democratic issues like the environment, civil rights, health care, strong education spending, reproductive rights, and so on.

If Ralph runs this year, undoubtedly that cute moniker "spoiler" will on everyone's lips before the election even happens, and the equally attractive phrase "Bush voter in-er" will be stuck to my forehead and the forehead of anyone else who votes their conscience instead of their fears. I encourage you would-be name-callers to consider some points:

- The political process suffers when there isn't real debate. When Bush and Kerry spend two-thirds of their televised "debate" time on the gay marriage issue (that is, civil unions v. anti-civil unions) and zero of it on health care or the environment or education, console yourself with the fact that people like Ralph Nader even exist to present an alternative dialog.

- Kerry, not Nader, can decide who votes for Kerry.

- Nader doesn't just "steal" votes from Democrats, kids! Republicans like him, too. Back in the ol' days, conservatives used to stand for balanced budgets and keeping the government out of personal affairs. According to 2000 exit polls, about 25% of Nader voters would have voted for Bush in a two-man race. (Thirty percent would have stayed home altogether.)

- We live in California, and so long as the assonine, antiquated electoral college is in place, I could vote for Rip Taylor and it wouldn't make a damn difference.

I won't try to tell you that on every issue the Democrats are the same as the Republicans. In the past four years, however, the two groups have been disturbingly similar on the issue of war. No issue this year is more important than the war. The war is the reason our nation is near a $7 trillion deficit. Indirectly, it's the reason our fees and tuition rose yet again. Very directly, it's the reason hundreds of American soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and civillians have been needlessly killed. Kerry plans on putting 40,000 more troops in Iraq. I will not trade a Republican war for a Democrat war.

Having Ralph Nader in the election will, in part at least, prevent the Democrats from forgetting their hand in our current international mess, and has to potential to prompt Kerry to remember what being a Democrat used to mean. At the very least, it gives me the option to not vote for two men who do not represent me, and instead vote for one who does.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 2:04 PM
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004

It's National Ignore All Political Polls Fortnight!

That's right, I've just made up a national two-week period of observance of not observing any polls. That means between today and March 2 (election day, for those keeping score) you should run out of the room screaming with your hands over your ears everytime your TV starts talking about a political poll.

Here's to letting the voters decide who can win an election! Wheee!

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 12:01 PM
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Friday, February 13, 2004

Hey wait.

I thought conservatives opposed government interference in personal decisions. I also thought they opposed gross spending of hard-earned tax dollars. Who knew?

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 1:33 PM
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Thursday, February 12, 2004

Catch Dennis!

Dennis Kucinich will be on Sproul (upper? lower?) tomorrow (Friday) from noon to 1pm. Be there or be like everyone else.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 2:50 PM
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Wednesday, February 11, 2004

Flat Tax breakdown

There is no reason for our tax system to be as complicated as it is. This causes loopholes that only rich people can exploit no matter what elected officials do.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, both previous sentences are wrong. What’s interesting about the above argument is how commonly this belief is held amongst conservatives. I’ve had to argue against it more than once. So, as a public service to moderates and liberals everywhere, let’s look at each claim individually.

Is there any reason to have a tax system so complicated? Short answer: Yes. Long Answer: Yes, sadly. Economics teaches us that taxes distort markets, almost always by making them less efficient. This can’t be helped since the government has to provide certain services for the economy to even work. The best the government can hope for is to levy taxes in such a way that the society benefits from the market distortions.

Case in point: Let’s say that there is no tax on catching tuna and they are close to dieing out. In a real sense, the fish left are infinitely more valuable as breeders than as sandwiches (even for the tuna fish sandwich eating population). The problem is that instead of valuing them correctly, the market asks of the fishermen only the amount they spend catching the fish. In effect, owner of the supply, US citizens, are not asking a good price for the fish they are selling. A tax on fish will fix this.

Although most tax issues aren’t as clear cut as this, most of the complexity of our tax system comes from trying to use taxes to properly value socialized ills. For example, the 401k tax program is designed to counter people’s natural difficulty with saving for their future. In fact, most of the complexity in our tax system comes from special breaks for people who deserve them. I’m not arguing that our current system is good. Far from it, it fails in the essential goal of financing the government. But it would be foolish to think that the best system would be any simpler.

The second point is even dumber: that the loopholes in our system are due to its complexity. Enron didn’t pay taxes for four years not because they hired particularly good accountants, but because they hired particularly powerful politicians. The loopholes are written specifically with tax evasion in mind. Why do European companies pay more taxes than US ones? It’s not because European companies are lead by altruistic philosopher kings. Republicans love corporate welfare and Democrats love agricultural subsidies (and ethanol, shamefully). But to think that they will suddenly sit up and be good because we passed some kind of flat tax is silly.

Not all conservatives believe in silly ideas about flat tax, but a lot of them do. Next time you run into one of these guys, have some with ‘em.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 2:35 PM
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Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Don't let Berdahl make an ass of himself and ruin student activities in the process.

In case you hadn't heard, in a last-ditch effort to make it appear as though he's accomplished something spectacular before his retirement, Chancellor Bob Berdahl plans to have Upper Sproul re-paved. This is a great idea in May. But not in March. Starting construction now would mean completely curtailing student group tabling, publication distribution, election campaigning, and basic foot traffic during the thick of the semester. Be a pal and sign a petition to prevent the construction until May. It only takes about 15 seconds, unless you still haven't memorized your SID and need to pull your ID out of your wallet, in which case it will take 25 seconds.

This plan will certainly end all student activity on the Plaza during construction and could cut off foot traffic altogether. Furthermore, it will render Cal Day ineffective as our campus's major recruitment tool by not presenting a complete, unified, whole campus to attract prospective students. Finally, and most importantly, it would cause a major hindrance to academic life in near-Sproul buildings as the hubbub normally confined to the Plaza as well as significant construction noise will spill out onto the campus to disrupt classrooms.
These problems can easily be prevented by postponing the project until after instruction ends on May 11, 2004.
Please take 1 minute to sign the online petition against this proposal located at http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~misha/
Also please forward this link to any Cal students you know because the current plan, if let stand as is, will prove a detriment to our campus life and to us all. When thousands of students speak up, the administration will listen and place student interests first!
Thanks so much and GO BEARS!

Misha Leybovich
Senator, Associated Students of the University of California

Yes, that's Misha of Bookswap fame.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 8:58 AM
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Monday, February 09, 2004

On Language (part 2 of 3)

(See below for part one)

In the previous section I discussed the differences (or more accurately the lack of differences) between a language and a dialect. However, this discussion is predicated on the idea that we can know the difference between one dialect and the next. This is not always as easy as you may think, as people seem to have a natural bias against differentiating languages.

A while back Oakland got into trouble for trying to implement bilingual education. At the time, other Californian school districts employed similar bilingual systems and Oakland hoped that the switch would help their children learn English. This would seem to be an internal matter which should hardly invoke discussion beyond Oakland’s borders. The only problem was that Oakland was implementing bilingual education for children who spoke Ebonics. The outrage this invoked (in areas outside of Oakland) was palpable: It was silly. A joke. Another liberal foolishness. “Clearly,” these non-Oaklanders though, “These poor black people aren’t speaking a different language. They’re trying to speak English but doing it wrong!”

Interestingly, the real issue received scant attention: is it a different language? Yes, Ebonics is very similar to English. Though Ebonics speakers probably speak English (as best they can) around English speakers, they could probably be understood anyway. On the other hand, Ebonics is very different. Ebonics has five tenses. It differentiates between “he been working” (he has been working on and off) and “he BEEN working” (he has been working but is no longer doing so). The word “to be” is conjugated differently, not to mention pronunciation and vowels. It would seem the question of whether Ebonics should be considered a dialect or a language was at the very least contestable.

Clearly, Oakland thought that operatively, Ebonics should be treated like another language. In the editorial pages of our press however, the question wasn’t even asked. This upset me because at least here the difference between a dialect and a language; and a slang and a dialect had at least one possible scientific definition: If Ebonics was too different from English, bilingual education would help the children; if it wasn’t, the children would do worse or no different.

We’ll never know the answer. To my understanding, the Oakland school board shelved the idea, and a year or two later California changed their bilingual education to a more immersion based system which ended up working a lot better than the old bilingual system ever had. The incident did illuminate some issues though: it showed how people categorize languages and how the burden of proof is leveled against dialects. In the case of Sicilian, history gives it a certain legitimacy that Ebonics lacks. The stigmas attached to speaking those languages in public however, are the same; as are the doubts about their legitimacy.

Tune in for the exciting conclusion to: Basic linguistics I picked up from my girlfriend who holds a degree in that subject.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 2:03 PM
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Friday, February 06, 2004

On Language (part 1)

A famous (though difficult to identify) linguist once said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. My particular heritage bears this out. As a junior member of the Sicilian speaking people of the world, I can appreciate how arbitrary the difference between a language and a dialect can be.

Some background: Two or three hundred years ago, when Italy was coalescing into a modern culture, it was arbitrarily decided that the language spoken in Tuscan would be the one everyone should learn. This is usually attributed to the fact that three famous Italian authors happened to be Tuscan. Of course, the choice had to be made. It simply wouldn’t do for a country to have several mutually indecipherable languages and Tuscan is as good a choice as any.

To clarify, most Americans (and English speaking people for that matter) fail to appreciate how vast the gulf between a “dialect” and it’s “language” can be. Sicily has been the scene of conquests which spans from the Greeks to the Moors to the Spaniards to the Napoleonic French. All left their mark on Sicilian. At this point you can’t just say it’s Italian spoken with a funny accent. It’s different. From the way they conjugate “to be”, to the word for “work”, to the shape of the vowels. Don’t think of it like you think of the American “Southern” dialect. Think about it like Gaelic English.

Now, there really shouldn’t be any problem with this situation except that, as progressively stronger governments spread official “Italian” around, the other dialects suddenly became, well… “Uncultured”. Mind you, it wasn’t just that the people who spoke only Sicilian were uncultured (to avoid the mandatory Italian language schooling you probably would have to be), but that the language was uncultured. It was crude, unsophisticated and really, probably not a language at all.

All this culminates in my having cousins who were born in Sicily, grew up in Sicily, heard Sicilian spoken all their lives, but refuse to speak it because they consider it nothing more than lazy slang speech. Is this characterization fair? Or is this just a normal process in language? More Importantly: What is the difference between a language and a dialect? I could go on, but I’ve written too much already. I’ll save my answers to these questions for later in the week.

Update: Chaged Gaelic for Welsh. Thanks Anon.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 5:08 PM
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Thursday, February 05, 2004

Dear New York Times,

I have been an avid reader of your editorial cartoons for quite some time now. I often read them from my computer with my morning breakfast. Today however, I saw something that greatly upset me though I hope it can be corrected.

The cartoon in question was drawn by Glenn McCoy who has dependably produced comics for your page since I first started reading. To put it quite bluntly, the comic fails to boost Republicans or conservatism. This alone would be bad enough but the comic doesn’t even manage to contain a mischaracterization of American or International politics. To me, this indicates that Glenn McCoy wasn’t even trying.

After the postwar situation in Iraq became grim and George W. Bush, who had previously spurned any kind of UN power-sharing, found himself desperately negotiating to bring the UN in, Glenn McCoy was there for us. In place of an ugly reality, he drew a picture of a muscle bound W. wrestling furiously with Saddam in a ring. In place of a reluctant and possibly hostile UN he drew a 98 pound weakling, begging to be “tagged in”. That’s what we followers of Glenn McCoy want to see; not reality but “reality”.

This most recent cartoon comes on the heels of a series of cartoons making fun of Bush for not being conservative enough. That kind of thing is ok, in moderation, but frankly, I want to see some good old fashioned falsehoods of the “plausible deniability” kind. Remember, saying it in drawings means you can never be called on a lie, and the way things are going, the only place for decent conservative lies will soon be the cartoon panels where no one can attack them. Liberals have Ted Rall, we want our Glenn McCoy.

Thank you.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 4:53 PM
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Wednesday, February 04, 2004

A vast conspiracy to make a bigger deal out of something that is ultimately terribly unimportant.

Just try running an image search on google, yahoo, or altavista for "janet jackson super bowl." All three, at least for the time being, will yield zero (0) results. I wonder who decided this was the most appropriate course of action.

As Jon Stewart duley noted, it takes the FCC 10 hours to launch an investigation into Janet Jackson's breast exposure, but the Bush administration won't launch an investigation into faulty WMD intelligence until after the election.

Speaking of which, I encourage any of my Republican readers, if in fact they bear contempt for George W. Bush's decidely "un-republican" (immigrant legislation, NEA endowment, whatever) or decidely shifty policies (openly and unapologetically lying to Americans and everyone else, whatever), to NOT vote for him. Or at the very least to not vote for him in the primary. Vote for someone whom you actually trust or agree with, like Tom McClintock. Or write someone in. Write yourself in. Votes speak louder than disgruntled mutterings. The California primary is March 2.

posted by Rebecca C. Brown at 3:57 PM
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Monday, February 02, 2004

Unicorns, magical gnomes, and sound fiscal policy derived from the Laffer curve

For those of you who don’t know, the Laffer curve is a graph showing total revenue collected by the state vs. the tax rate. The basic idea is that at a 0% tax rate, the country receives $0 revenue and at a 100% tax rate the country also gets $0 revenue. The state can only get money by setting the tax rate in between (duh) and it also implies that higher tax rates are inefficient in that a 1% tax rate increase could yield less than a 1% increase in revenue.

The standard Republican canard since the Reagan years has been to point at the graph, way your hands in the air, pronounce us to be on the far (inefficient) end of the Laffer curve, and prescribe a decrease in tax rates. Now, there’s an interesting thing about the Laffer curve. Go ahead, Google it. Don’t all the pictures show a wonderfully curvy little curvy curve, curving from the 0 to the 100. So smooth! (and curvy). Why? Because no one knows what it really looks like. For all we know the curve could go up and up till 95% and then plummet.

One of the popular Republican beliefs (which I’m not implying they all share) is that 1. Reagan’s tax cuts showed that we were on the inefficient end of the Laffer curve in the 80’s and 2. We are on still on the inefficient end of the Laffer curve and 3. The Laffer curve is a useful device for predicting tax revenue.

First, even the wall street journal’s Bruce Bartlett (relentless, remorseless pusher of supply side economics, the Laffer curve and such) will admit that Reagan’s tax cuts didn’t increase revenues at all. In fact, even Bartlett’s rosy scenario only had the economy increase enough to offset one third of the revenue loss.

Second, to believe that we are still on the inefficient end of the Laffer curve is to ignore that not only are taxes lower than in Reagan’s day but our taxes are lower than almost any other industrialized country.

Lastly, the Laffer curve is just too simple to be of any use. It ignores potential efficiencies that would make our country more competitive. For example, let’s say the US population is spending X dollars on health care and further let’s suppose that other countries experiences show that nationalized healthcare would cost less than X (because of savings on administrative costs). Then, no matter where you are on the Laffer curve, increasing taxes to provide universal healthcare would be the way to go.

Why is this? Because in the case described above, socializing that activity would make the economy more efficient. Don’t believe it? Look at how we socialize national defense and even personal defense (army and police). These are activities for which market forces don’t work (like possibly the incredible insanely inelastic healthcare market).

Now, there are other possible arguments for decreasing taxes that don’t involve the Laffer curve. And if you believe that government should be small (as opposed to “exactly the right size” like I do) there is no reason to stop shrinking taxes just because you’re past some “efficient” point on a fictitious graph. But if someone’s argument rests on the Laffer curve, keep in mind that they have built there house on sand.

posted by Tommaso Sciortino at 9:47 PM
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