Everything seems to be up for debate in the current budget discussion, with the tax code at the center. President Obama proposes creating a fair tax system that gives less money away in loopholes and itemized deductions, creating a flatter playing field. Republicans have decided, however, that the issue of fairness argues against having a progressive taxation system at all. From a comment thread on the Reality Based Community blog, here's the flat tax argument in a nutshell:“Fair” is that you get what you pay for, and pay for what you get. I walk into a McDonald’s, a billionaire walks into McDonald’s, we both order a cheeseburger, we both pay 99 cents. THAT is fair. We both walk in, I pay 1 cent, and he pays $5000, just because he’s got a lot more money? No, not remotely fair. No matter how much I might appreciate a 1 cent burger. Not even if I’m really hungry, and don’t have 99 cents.
Ludicrous figures and CAPS in the original.
This commentator, whom we'll call Brett Bellmore, presumes that the super wealthy and the middle class both receive the same 'cheeseburger' from the government. If the government provides the same service, the customers should pay the same price.
Republicans are up in arms about something or other that the President said, so they're taking to the internet to complain about it. They want to tell you what happened at a Presidential town hall at the NOVA community college. We could go ahead and debunk some of the more ridiculous blogagandist claims and manufactured outrage, but here's an idea: read the damn transcript.
In any debate, it's a shortcut to jump to the first response to see what the debate will be about. But if you actually want to know what the President said, that shortcut isn't useful. So save yourself the headache of figuring out what paid conservative bloggers are harping about and read the transcript. Maybe there's something objectionable in there, or maybe there isn't. That's really your judgment call, and not Ed Morrissey's. As an example of why it's important to actually go to the original speech, let's turn to the Hot Air infrastructure flair up:
I just wanted to pass this Atlantic article on the super-elite of the global economy. I found it fascinating, and think that you will too.
There are a few main points:- Many of the super elite already recognize that the economy which created their wealthy is dependent on a functioning, open society. This recognition creates incentives (including social incentives within the global elite community) to engage in large-scale philanthropy.
- Ayn Rand's utopian withdrawal of the superman from society is a fiction. The global elite is a product of the market; even the gifted cannot transcend their origins entirely, especially when the mechanism of their elevation (wealth) is a social fiction.
- Transnational elite are looking beyond the borders of their home nations for problems to solve. America is not the primary beneficiary of American business success, though it certainly enjoys ancillary benefits. The resource allocation decisions especially among metrics-oriented philanthropy will tend to cluster around the low hanging fruit: drinking water, immunizations, and other public health concerns where infrastructure can be built from the ground up. Reform is a tougher nut, so don't expect many philanthropists to follow the Gates' Foundation attempts to tinker with American schools.
The competitive nature of philanthropy from the global capitalist set will be targeted into the same regions that make business investments attractive. They keyword is "emerging markets." Societies that require the least investment for the largest, most visible, and best measured returns are the most attractive.
Previously privileged groups (e.g. the American middle class) are not going to like this shift, but from a utilitarian standpoint, it seems like a necessary one. Charity dollars will be evaporating from American shores in order to assuage the guilty consciences of the global elite, funding more exotic projects abroad. Maybe American governments (local, state, and federal) will step into the breach and demand the resources to provide a higher standard of living to their constituents from the super wealthy.
Washington State is in the middle of a massive budget crisis, which prompted Governor Christine Gregoire to announce big cuts in education, medical care, and various programs in the state. The Washington State Department of Revenue, on the other hand, is looking to fill in some loopholes. They have sent a letter to 90 medical marijuana dispensaries that they identified in internet searches which demanded that they pay state sales, business, and occupation taxes. There's no estimate given for the amount that Washington State expects to raise from the 90 patently illegal (even under state law) businesses. Medical marijuana law exists in Washington state, but it requires that either a patient or a designated caregiver grow the medicine. The law did not provide for the sale of marijuana.
The revenue-collecting agency just happens to be ahead of the legislature on this issue. Some former medical marijuana advocates are against the move, but really, any move which normalizes marijuana sales is a positive step towards ending prohibition. Of course, as was true for the proposed tax-marijuana-when-prop-19-passes stance, this taxation could expose distributors to federal (or even state) criminal penalty. The legislature needs to follow the tax agency's lead here if it wants to support the Department of Revenue in plugging the budget hole from every conceivable source.
The most eye-poppingly ridiculous claim by Proposition 19 supporters is that the ballot measure legalizing cannabis would create tax revenues for the state and municipalities if they set up such regulatory schemes. There's a variety of reasons why this probably won't happen while 'marijuana' is still a Schedule I drug under the federal Controlled Substances Act. The reason that it California won't tax cannabis is, however, certainly not the one provided by the U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and LA County Sheriff Lee Baca in the Mercury News.
In the article, they claim that taxing marijuana sales is unconstitutional because the Supreme Court said so in Leary v. United States 395 U.S. 6 (1969). This is emphatically not what the Supreme Court said.
