Nontrivial Pursuits

Important links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

Nontrivial Pursuits. That’s what I decided to call my new website. I think it captures reasonably well the fact that I spend a lot of time thinking about nontrivial matters, like political threats and wars and economic injustice and the ultimate basis for morality. My thinking on these various topics is what I will be putting on this website. The old website concept, Taxwisdom.org, defined my interests much too narrowly.

Why Taxwisdom.org? Well, when I first started putting my stuff on the Internet, the first thing I wanted to share was my analysis of the economic theory that current tax policy is based upon. I put it on a website I called Taxwisdom.org because I entertained hopes that it could lead to an internet-based organizational effort to enlighten the public regarding the ultimate price that we pay—-or don’t pay—-when the government taxes the incomes of its citizens in a certain way.

I still entertain those hopes. But since that early effort, the 2004 election came to its disappointing climax. Like others, I decided to put down my analysis of why the Democrats lost and entitled it The Republican Nemesis. Apparently a lot of people liked what I had to say in that article. It soon became clear to me that far more people were interested in what I had to say about political matters than were interested in what I had to say about economic policy. After all, economic theory can get pretty complicated pretty quickly.

I’m still entertaining hopes for the tax policy advocacy effort, but it is no longer the priority in my mind. Right now, I’m focused on an effort to articulate my ideas on how we can achieve an ‘almost ideal’ level of economic justice in America: economic security and prosperity. I know, I know, that’s the kind of language that convinces many orthodox-types you are a crank, but I really don’t know how to modify it. I really believe we can make great improvements in our economic lives and that it’s just not that difficult a thing to do.

The vast majority of professionals have been conditioned to believe that Painful Imperfection is something we just have to accept in our economic experience. They are unenthusiastic about efforts to eliminate poverty because they are convinced that they would have to give up some of their ‘standard of living’ in order to make poverty go away. They hold this view because they don’t keep their attention focused on the real economy.

If you reduce the economy to its most essential elements, you will be looking at the real economy. Forget about the numbers. The ultimate thing that determines how many rich people and middle-class people there are in a society is relative scarcity. Generally speaking, you will have as many rich people in your society as you have scarce “experience opportunities.” Nothing you can do with ‘money’ is going to change that.

That means that you can tax the hell out of the rich and it will change nothing for them for they will remain just as rich as they ever were, in real terms. None of the mansions or yachts or beach front property would disappear. Everything that the rich normally buy would continue to be just as affordable to them as before because prices would drop to levels that they could afford. The Marketplace guarantees that this will happen.

No matter how much you take away from the rich through taxation, if they continue to have more money than everybody else, they will still be the ones who end up with the scarcest things. Indeed, it is not possible to deprive the rich of any of their purchasing power through heavy taxation, as long as they are taxed in a way that preserves their ‘rankings’ within society’s total distribution of disposable income (or money wealth, to be more precise).

You can get a more complete idea of the economic agenda I am proposing if you work your way through some of my articles on the Economics Justice pages of this site.

I am currently trying to share the basics of it with those those who are paying attention to the SEIU’s “Since Sliced Bread” contest. I decided to enter the contest with my economic ideas because I could sure use the $100,000 that the winner receives.

My chances of winning the contest are probably very slim. It seems unlikely that I’d make the final rounds because my proposals are not easy to explain in only a few words. It is impossible to communicate their full significance in only 175 words, the limit that all idea submissions must adhere to. Still, I must make the attempt.

The contest organizers say that they want “...ideas that will strengthen our economy and improve the day-to-day lives of working men and women and their families.” Nothing that the other participants could possibly offer would be able to fulfill that goal as well as the proposals I am submitting. I have to participate for that reason alone. I happen to have precisely the answer that they are looking for.

We’ll see what happens…

James Kroeger

Well, it appears that the time I invested in the Since Sliced Bread ‘new idea contest’ was all for naught. I rather expected that none of my ideas would be among the final 21 chosen—they’re a little too complex for most people to handle—-but I did not expect that the SEIU would handle the whole thing in a way that would end up tarnishing its reputation. When the 21 semi-finalists were announced last week, the public response—as expressed through the SSB blog—-was overwhelmingly negative.

I’d estimate that at least 90% of those who had been regularly expressing their interest and enthusiasm for the contest in the SSB blog were bitterly disappointed by the results. Not just disappointed, outraged. Yes, a certain amount of ‘sour grapes’ grumbling and nit-picking from the losers was expected, but not the nearly universal outcry that exploded onto the SSB blog. Instead of being the public relations winner that the SEIU had hoped it would be, it has turned out to be a disaster, instead.

About a month ago, the contest’s Official Voice on the blog asked visitors to make suggestions on what could be done to maximize the popular appeal of the contest. What the contest’s organizers apparently did not realize back then is just how important it would be for them to go the extra mile to persuade the losers that they had lost fairly. Now, because they didn’t, they have an outcome where the very people they were counting on to help popularize the contest have become the contest’s most vociferous public critics.

The single most compelling argument voiced by critics was that virtually all of the final 21 ideas were stunningly lacking in originality. Why should this be such a big deal to them? Well, perhaps it’s because the name the SEIU picked for their contest—-”Since Sliced Bread”—-loudly implied that, above all else, they were interested in ‘new’, ‘fresh’, ‘outside-of-the-box’ ideas. Very few of the finalist ideas possessed this quality.

Other complaints about rule violations were also expressed, but I somehow think that if the final 21 had at least shared the quality of being truly original, most of those now complaining would have been able to accept them as legitimate, even if they judged most of them to be ‘wildly impractical.’ At least then attention would have naturally focused on which of the final 21 original ideas ‘had the best chance of practical success.’

In spite of the magnitude of the outcry, the contest sponsors have remained almost utterly unresponsive. They have made no attempt to fix what was perceived to be wrong with the contest, or to even try to explain and justify the outcome they produced. This only seems to feed the sense of outrage that people are feeling. One articulate critic raised the possibility that some soul out there could end up winning $100,000 for simply writing down an idea that they had heard mentioned before. How could the contest sponsors tolerate such an injustice?

It really saddens me when unions do things like this because I am a ‘natural cheerleader’ for the working class and for those who invest themselves in the effort to advance the interests of the working class. I just wish they’d ‘smarten up’ and get a better grasp of what they are dealing with in the world of public relations. Who is advising these people, anyway?

James Kroeger

Nontrivial Pursuits links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

What do I think about Bin Laden’s latest taped message?

I think it has been misinterpreted.

Yes, on the surface it sounds as though Bin Laden is trying to get the attention of the American people. His purpose seems to be to persuade them to stop supporting Bush’s war. Of course, the Bush administration is promoting this interpretation in order to portray any who might oppose the war (e.g., Michael Moore) as allies of Bin Laden.

I think something far more sophisticated is going on.

Let’s remember that we Americans have underestimated Bin Laden and his cohort before. We did not think them capable of sophisticated thought, of being able to plan out and execute the Nine Eleven attack. I think we are still a little too eager to believe that Bin Laden is just a foolish Arab murderer who can’t possibly have a good grasp of motivational psychology.

We laugh at the mad man’s foolish attempts to terrorize the American people with words and scare them into submission, but I submit that Bin Laden’s message was constructed with one audience in particular in mind, and that audience was not the American people. Rather, I think his message was intended for (A) his followers, and for (B) those whom he is trying to recruit to his cause.

I’ll grant that he might have held out a little bit of hope that his message might somehow inspire a few dim-witted soccer moms (his perception) to rally to his cause, but I don’t read the man as being quite that incredibly stupid. I would suggest, instead, that his real purpose was simply to produce a public statement that would serve to fortify the morale of his “troops in the field.” If you’ve read the text of Bin Laden’s message, read it again with this possibility in mind.

Notice that throughout his message, he is defining the holy warriors of Al-Qaeda as not only virtuous [in their eyes], but also as reasonable and willing to call an end to the fighting on ‘just terms.’ Such words may not be persuasive to Americans, but they are likely to be effective in encouraging Bin Laden’s ‘mujahideen’ to perceive their actions and sacrifices as supremely noble.

Bin Laden’s primary target audience is his devoted followers, and then also those whom he hopes to recruit to his cause. Young Arab males who are feeling incensed by the injustice they perceive could conceivably be persuaded by Bin Laden’s words to see the Al-Qaeda cause as both virtuous and reasonable instead of just driven by blood lust and xenophobic hatred, as the American-backed government in Baghdad portrays them.

Perhaps that is the main purpose of this latest Bin Laden tape, to answer the criticism of Al-Qaeda that has been expressed in certain quarters of the Arab world lately. Achieving that purpose through a speech supposedly directed at the American people is not an inspiration that requires cleverness as much as it does intuition.

I would like to suggest that we try not to underestimate this man’s methods and purposes again.

James Kroeger

Well, if it wasn’t for the deadly seriousness of everything that’s going on in the Middle East, it would almost be funny. George Bush, the world’s most notable champion of Democracy, got his wish this week. He had been pressuring the Palestinian people to embrace democracy for years and they have finally responded by giving a great electoral victory to Hamas, a political group that our government has identified as a terrorist organization.

So instead of seeing Democracy transform the Middle East into a land of helpful allies who might be eager to assist us in our war on terror, it has instead helped to legitimize the stature of Islamist militants in the region. Like it or not, it is now far more believable that Iran’s current ‘radical’ President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was elected in a fair and democratic manner.

Bringing democracy to Muslim nations has simply served to add greater legitimacy to their complaints about us. What kind of foreign policy is that? Please help me to understand, George. I’m having difficulty grasping why a policy (the ‘Bush Doctrine‘) that ends up enhancing the stature and reputation of radical Islamic militants is supposed to be helpful to us in our efforts to protect ourselves from the actions of Islamic militants?

(Some would say your actions are those of a traitor. I’m simply accusing you of the kind of incompetence that gets people killed unnecessarily.)

So tell me again, George, why it is so important for us to sacrifice American lives and treasure to bring Democracy to the people of the Middle East? Was it to help the Muslim nations in the region to become democratically united in expressing their contempt for the role we have played in their affairs? This was to help further American interests how? If your magic elixir ‘Democracy’ doesn’t work, then why are we letting you continue to embarrass us before the world?

Except for his early strike into Afghanistan, almost every foreign [Middle East] policy decision George Bush has made has served only to help the recruiting efforts of Al Qaeda. His idiotic regime-change war in Iraq was supposed to ‘send a message’ to states like Iran that they’d better help us in our fight against terrorism, or we’re coming in to impose our will on them. Sadly, the message they received was quite the opposite.

In bogging us down in Iraq, Bush has sent an unintended message to ‘our enemies’ that our current military resources are stretched so thin, the only way the Americans could successfully pull off a regime-change invasion of Iran is if the American people consented to a military draft. Thanks, George. You were supposed to be scaring them into submission, weren’t you? Instead—-because you and your cohort are incompetent—-you have given them encouragement to ignore our threats. Your actions are what made us vulnerable in this way.

Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and the Iranians do not need a crystal ball to see that the American people are quite unlikely to support a military draft for the invasion of Iran. All they have to do is read the poll numbers that show that around 70% of the American people are opposed to a military draft. It would take an attack worse than Nine Eleven to get the American people to support a draft now. Why worse? Because after Nine Eleven, George Bush got the benefit-of-the-doubt from the press. He had not yet had a chance to display his incompetence in defending our nation from terrorism.

Now time has revealed to us that his reasons for invading Iraq were not just illegitimate, which is bad enough, but they were also catastrophically foolish and damaging to America’s interests. The sad truth is that, instead of speaking for us in a way that earns the world’s respect and gratitude, George Bush has done more to damage America’s reputation than any other President in modern history. His incompetence is killing us…literally.

James Kroeger

Nontrivial Pursuits links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

In my previous blog entry, I ranted at length re: President Bush’s incompetence in developing and executing Foreign Policy. I don’t think any honest individual can deny that Bush’s Middle East policy is a miserable failure. But politically, it’s usually not enough to simply express biting criticism of the President’s failures. Inevitably, Bush apologists would begin to ask: What would you have done differently? What do you say the answer is? If you’re so smart, tell us how you would deal with Iran’s attempts to produce nuclear weapons?

Here’s my answer: Solve the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That’s how you bring an end to the threat of nuclear war between Israel and the Muslim nations. I know, I know…generations of negotiators have tried and tried to resolve that conflict, and all have failed. Just ask Bill Clinton. But you know what? There is one approach that our leaders have not yet tried: Extreme Generosity.

Instead of endlessly hoping that Being Tough will eventually persuade the Palestinians to give up their dream of one day getting their land back from the foreign invaders, we could use an approach that the United States once followed in the 19th Century when our leaders decided to force the Mexicans to give us their land at gunpoint. You can offer the victims of your exploitation money in compensation for their loss.

There is no doubt in my mind that the Palestinians would happily give up the fight and embrace Israel’s existence if they were (1) given an extremely generous cash settlement for their loss of land, and if (2) the United States were to officially recognize that the Palestinians had been victims of a great injustice for all of these years. Today I just want to focus on #1.

How generous an offer could we put together? Well, how about if we start by giving back to the Palestinians all of the land that was taken from them during the 1967 war? Remember, the goal is to come up with as generous an offer as you can think of. The Israelis need to ask themselves: if it would enable us to enjoy an enduring peace with our Arab neighbors wouldn’t it be worth it to simply accept borders that were accepted by most Israelis prior to 1967? Some land-swapping could be negotiated, but only if the swap offers were perceived to be generous by the Palestinians.

Jerusalem would probably have to be established as an International City (what’s wrong with that?) that is supported by the city’s inhabitants and the international community. If the Israelis ended up with an equal voice in the decisions that are made in Jerusalem, then what would they have to complain about? Remember, we’re trying to put together as attractive a package as we can in order to win the good will of the Palestinian people.

Seriously, if it would bring about an enduring peace within the region, wouldn’t it be worth it to take all of the money that both the Israelis and the American people have been spending on the protection of Israel in recent years (and that would include the cost of the Iraq War and all of our Homeland Security spending since Nine Eleven) and simply give it to the Palestinian people instead as part of a comprehensive settlement?

Extreme Generosity. Offer the Palestinians a settlement so generous, they’d all feel like they had won the lottery. Perhaps $30,000 per Palestinian family would be generous enough to win their good will if a massive amount was also spent on the construction of job-creating businesses and on creating a modern infrastructure. That’s how you can end the animosity, so long as commitments are made by the Israelis to continuously help the Palestinians to become a prosperous people.

Contrast this approach with the approach that successive Israeli governments have pursued in peace talks that the United States has sponsored over the decades. In brief, their negotiating posture has been essentially this: We’ve got your land. We’re not going to give it back. Resistance is futile. You can’t do anything about it so you might as well give up the fight and simply accept any deal that we feel like offering you. The Palestinians feel as though they are being asked to sign a deal with a gun at their heads that promises only to make them feel humiliated. Such humiliation does not seem to be an option for them.

The Israeli people have to decide whether they want to continue to fight forever, perhaps even with nuclear weapons some day, or come to the peace table with an earnest desire to live in true peace with their Arab neighbors. I’m quite sure that most of the Western world would be willing to help contribute to an Extreme Generosity Peace Settlement, if for no other reason than to see if enlightened expressions of good will might not have a chance to bring an end to the suffering.

In my next blog entry, I’ll explain why I think it would be a good idea for the U.S. to ‘officially recognize that the Palestinians had been victims of a great injustice for all of these years.’

James Kroeger

In my last blog entry, I asserted that the Palestinians would happily give up the fight and embrace Israel’s existence if (1) they were given an extremely generous cash settlement for their loss of land, and if (2) the United States were to officially recognize that the Palestinians had been victims of a great injustice for all of these years. Today I want to address condition #2.

If the Palestinians were offered only an extremely generous cash settlement, it still might not be enough to win Israel the true peace and good will of the Palestinians that we want. Fortunately, there is an additional something we could do that would cinch the deal. We could give them something that would finally enable them to bury all of the bitterness they’ve carried around for all these years. Interestingly, it is something that Israel cannot give them, but the United States can. Also, it is something that would not cost the American taxpayers a cent. What is it? A formal admission by the United States government that we had been ‘wrong all along’ in getting ourselves involved in the dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Why would we do such a thing? Let’s ask John Edwards.

In “The America We Believe In”, John told us, “…the foundation for moral leadership is telling the truth. While we can’t change the past, we need to accept responsibility, because a key part of restoring America’s moral leadership is acknowledging when we’ve made mistakes or been proven wrong—and showing that we have the creativity and guts to make it right.” Of course, John was not talking about the same issue that I’m now addressing, but I think his wise words also give us guidance on how to end the Israeli/Arab conflict.

Mistakes made in the past are responsible for the fear we currently have of one day suffering a nuclear terrorist attack. It was good old Harry Truman who first got us involved in the Arab-Israeli dispute and it was his decision that put us on the side of the Israelis. At the time, the American people were feeling a lot of sympathy for the Jewish people after the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed, so it was easy for them to consent to a plan to ‘give them a homeland’ where they would be free of persecution. Unfortunately, everyone in the press conveniently forgot that the land the U.N. decided to give to the Jews happened to belong to someone else.

To understand how the Palestinians (and some Jews ) see the creation of the state of Israel, imagine a similar thing happening here, in America. What if the Indians who lived in New Jersey 300 years ago fled by boat to Europe instead of becoming assimilated into the developing American culture? What if, over the years, those Indians educated themselves and kept their sense of ‘nationhood’ alive and maintained a dream of some day returning to their homeland? What if they started emigrating back into New Jersey 50 years ago and made it clear that they intended to get their land back? What if the majority of European nations supported their cause and sent them military hardware and financial support? How do you think the modern inhabitants of New Jersey would feel about the claim that the land really belonged to the Indians because they had once lived there 300 years ago?

I’m pretty sure I know how most property owners in New Jersey would respond. Outraged? You bet. Militant? You can count on it, if the seizure took place at gunpoint, as it did in Israel in 1948. The truth is that it is impossible for the United States to justify its support for Israel while declaring loudly to the world that it is outrageous and immoral for one country to invade and annex another. It’s theft at gunpoint, any way you look at it. This is why the Palestinians and their Muslim sympathizers are so crazy angry at the United States, because they see the incredible hypocrisy of our political leaders and are outraged that we do not see the injustice and sympathize with their plight.

Yes, it’s true. Our sympathy for the Jews is the thing that led us to make an incredibly stupid decision to approve of an illegal and immoral act. Maybe we weren’t guilty of malevolence, but we are nevertheless paying the price now for the moral/intellectual lapse we had back then. Since Nine Eleven, we have been spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Homeland Security and on the Iraq & Afghanistan wars and we will be spending trillions more in the future if we cannot get ourselves on the right side of history. Does this mean that we are supposed to start hating the Israeli Jews now? Of course not. But no longer can we play favorites.

John Edwards is right; if we could only start to admit our past mistakes in this area and demonstrate some ‘creativity and guts to make it right’, we would be able to restore our moral leadership in the world and actually bring an end to the long nightmare that has tortured the Middle East. We need to admit to the Palestinians and their Muslim sympathizers that we were wrong to see them as mindless “haters” and not recognize that their anger and outrage have been justified. If we were to give the Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims of the world this apology, there would not be a dry eye anywhere in the Muslim world.

If you think about it, the Arabs have always wanted to like us and for us to like them. That’s why they’ve always tried to reason with us and explain why it is that they are the victims in their dispute with the Israelis. They can see that there is good in the American people, but they can also see that our sense of loyalty has clouded our judgment. With an American mea culpa, we would finally be able to use our leverage to bring an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict. (It would probably work out for the best if it appeared to the Palestinians that we had pressured the Israelis into committing themselves to the Extreme Generosity Settlement plan).

There is, of course, a heckofa lot more that can be said on this topic, but I think I’m going to end it right here for now.

Oh yeah, here’s another link to some Jews who are not Jew-haters, in spite of the fact that they don’t support modern Israel’s ‘right to exist.’

James Kroeger

Nontrivial Pursuits links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

After my last Dailykos blog entry (also seen here below), I received a number of the comments that I responded to. Still, I thought it would be a good idea to answer a couple of the questions in this blog entry…

One commenter, dvo asked me: Why should not Arabs apologize first? ... What makes you think Israel and the US should be the ones apologizing?

I don’t think it would make much sense to ask the Palestinians to apologize first since they were the original victims in this whole feud (that now has Americans facing a risk of nuclear attack). That’s like asking a victim in a self-defense case to apologize to the attacker for hurting him while she was trying to stop him from killing/raping her. None of the violence that the Palestinians have directed at the Israeli Jews would have occurred if the Zionists of 1948 not wronged them by taking their land. That simple truth explains everything that has happened since.

I should make it clear that I don’t think there’s much the Israelis could say in the form of an apology that would be effective in moving the Palestinians toward real peace. They took the land and don’t intend to give it [all] back. The only thing the Israelis can really do is express their apologies through actions that seek to `make amends’ for the suffering they put the Palestinians through. If/when an extreme generosity peace deal is brokered, the Israelis would have to invest themselves in efforts to build the Palestinians a modern economy. It might be helpful if they said things like, “I’m sorry that this whole thing happened and I hope we can be friends now.” Ultimately, just being kind and helpful to the Palestinians would be all the apology they would need in order to go forward without bitterness.

The apology that the Palestinians need to hear is from America. We are the ones who enabled the Big Theft to happen. Because we are the most powerful and influential nation on the earth and also because we have often presented ourselves as defenders of victims and as outspoken proponents of justice, the Palestinians have been especially incensed by our failure to recognize their victimization in this whole affair. We inserted ourselves into their dispute with the Israeli Jews and we made it impossible for them to obtain justice through their own efforts. What makes the idea of a U.S. apology especially poignant is the fact that the Palestinians have long nurtured a hope that if only they could get us to listen to them, we would be able to see the injustice that had been imposed on them.

The extreme generosity approach I am recommending would still allow the Israelis to ultimately get away with theft, but it should still be successful in eliciting the Good Will of the Palestinian people because it would be suddenly generous. They’ve been fighting for scraps of dignity without success in their negotiations with the US and Israel over the past 30 years because they’ve had absolutely no leverage in their negotiations. From that gloomy perspective, the prospect of finally getting everything they’ve been asking for [at the negotiating table] plus much more and then, to top it off, a U.S. apology, is the kind of thing that can produce a cathartic change within all parties.

LarryInNYC asked for a clarification on whether or not I am “...advocating peace between Israel and Palestine, or the wholesale eradication of Israel.” I want to make it clear that I am not advocating the eradication of Israel. I regret that the conflict between the Israelis and the Arabs has been so bitter and profound that one cannot express any amount of sympathy for one of the parties without being accused by the other of harboring ‘disguised hatred.’ Please understand that my earnest desire is for the Jews in Israel to live in peace with their Arab neighbors.

As far as my own personal experience is concerned, I have only known Jews who have been kind and appealing in various ways. But the fact that I have liked the Jews I’ve met does not mean that I can ignore historical facts. I know that the Jews were victimized horribly in the last century, but that does not make them—-collectively—-a Sinless People for all time. It almost seems as though they have become—-in the minds of some—-the world’s only true Victim Race. Whenever they hear that the Israelis are involved in a dispute with some other people, they naturally assume that it must be because they are again being victimized by people who have a pathological hatred of Jews. It can’t possibly be because these Jews might have done something wrong.

Like it or not, because human nature is what it is, it is always quite within the realm of possibility for a tribe of people who were once victimized to turn around and become victimizers of others later on. It’s something that happens. Believe me, I’m not saying that we need to start hating the Jews; I’m just saying that we need to get them some peace and the only moral way they’re going to be able to achieve it is by agreeing to an extremely generous settlement in favor of the Palestinians.

James Kroeger

The Democratic Party has been victimized by Republican Party strategists in a number of different ways. One of the things they’ve done in recent years is “brand” the Democrats as ‘pro-gay’ and ‘pro-abortion.’ Today I am going to argue that it is both possible and desirable for the Democratic Party to separate itself completely from the divisive abortion rights and gay rights issues. How might it do such a thing?

Well, formally, by declaring in its platform that the Democratic Party has no identification whatsoever with either the pro- or anti-abortion positions, or the pro- or anti-gay rights positions. It should also formally state that Democrats welcome opponents of abortion and gay marriage into the party as long as they sincerely identify with the Democratic Party’s historic mission to pursue economic justice and improve economic security. We want them to feel free to express their opinions on these hot topics as individuals, but not as Democrats.

If we can do this, the Democratic Party will succeed in becoming a true Big Tent Party, since it will become more inclusive than ever before.

It should not be a secret any more that there are gay Republicans who like the GOP’s anti-tax policy, and anti-abortion Democrats who believe passionately in the goal of economic justice. In distancing itself from any specific position on the most polarizing of social/moral issues, the Democratic Party would be telling the American people that it recognizes (1) that these divisive issues cut across party lines, and (2) that none of the positions on any of these moral issues is necessarily connected to either the economic agenda historically pursued by the Republican Party or the economic agenda historically pursued by the Democratic Party.

Yes, Values Liberals who currently identify with the Democratic Party can be expected to scream and yell and protest this proposal vehemently, but nothing is stopping them from focusing their energy on building up a strong, passionate non-partisan Advocacy Movement that would promote their agenda across party lines.

After all, we have to ask why those who are passionate advocates of, say…gay rights…would want to intentionally alienate those Republicans who might be sympathetic with their cause? There is a reason why there are Gay Republicans. It’s because they do not agree with the economic agenda that the Democratic Party has historically pursued.

If gay rights advocates were to separate their cause from the Democratic Party and make it `non-partisan’, they might even find that their funding would improve substantially. Why intentionally alienate potential financial contributors by unnecessarily connecting your cause to a particular economic philosophy?

It is certainly not dishonorable to promote a moral cause you feel deeply about in a non-partisan fashion. Indeed, doing so tends to give your movement a claim to moral superiority above partisan interests.

In order to successfully pull off this identity makeover, all Democrats—no matter what their persuasions—-would need to zealously defend the Party’s non-partisan stance on divisive social morality issues. Any Democrats who try to represent their personal views on these hot-button issues as the views of the Democratic Party should be zealously reprimanded by the party faithful.

We should encourage those who feel strongly about Abortion rights, Gay Rights, etc. to speak loudly for their causes—-not as Democrats—-but as advocates of certain causes who also happen to identify with the Democrats’ economic agenda.

What we’re talking about, people, is tolerance. Tolerance of differing opinions on `peripheral’ topics. Democrats already have to tolerate different viewpoints within the party on foreign policy and other issues. Why shouldn’t we be tolerating different opinions within the party on the issues of abortion and gay rights?

It’s a solution that I think almost all parties would benefit from. Gay Rights and Abortion Rights advocates would be free to directly appeal to sympathizers in both parties and the Democratic Party would be able to escape the branding that has worked so well for the Republicans for so long.

The only interest group that would really stand to lose from this kind of Identity Makeover would be—-you guessed it—-THE REPUBLICANS!

(Reposted from 8/12/05

Nontrivial Pursuits links of interest:
Republican Nemesis
Economic Justice

Democrats need to stop letting the Republicans get away with their constant efforts to associate income tax cuts with economic growth and prosperity. It’s true that Congress has the power to do certain things that will stimulate economic growth, but cutting income taxes isn’t one of them. The actual truth is quite the opposite of what Republican politicians have been repeating for years: income tax cuts, by themselves, only have the power to contract the economy, not stimulate it.

ECONOMICS 101:

The one thing all Democrats need to understand about the economy above all other considerations is the key relationship that exists between aggregate spending & jobs. It’s as simple as this: all jobs in the economy are dependent on the SPENDING of others. When unemployment is high, it is because an insufficient amount of aggregate spending is taking place. When economic growth occurs and unemployment drops, it is because a net increase in aggregate spending has occurred. Any time there is any level of unemployment, it is because insufficient spending is taking place. (Note: GDP is a measurement of spending.)

By themselves, income tax cuts cannot stimulate the economy because they cannot cause a net increase in aggregate spending to occur. This is because any money that taxpayers receive from an income tax cut is money that the government can no longer spend. Tax cuts reduce government spending by exactly the same amount that they increase taxpayers disposable incomes. So even if you were to pass an income tax cut that would go only to people who would spend all of it, the net effect of the cut would be no change in aggregate spending. No net economic stimulus.

If you have an income tax cut that is distributed primarily to the wealthy, then your tax cut is going to have a contractionary effect on the economy. That’s because rich people are far more likely to save a good bit of any tax cut they receive rather than spend it. When this happens, the result is a net reduction in aggregate spending because at least some of the money that would have been spent by the government is taken out of the economy by wealthy savers, instead. A net reduction in aggregate spending occurs. This causes a reduction in jobs.

If the government wants to stimulate the economy to achieve higher levels of economic growth, it should increase the amount of income taxes it collects from the wealthy, not reduce them. When you increase the taxes that the government collects from the wealthy, you are collecting money that otherwise would have been saved (removed from the economy) and are spending it, instead. Aggregate spending levels increase, unemployment drops. The economic value/disvalue of income tax cuts is exactly the opposite of what the Republicans have been telling the American people for decades.

The tax cuts that the wealthy received from George Bush and the Republicans over the past five years are the reason why the economy’s `recovery’ since the 2001 recession has been one of the most anemic on record. The only reason why Bush’s tax cuts did not throw the economy into a deep recession is because Congress also did something else that actually did provide a true economic stimulus to the economy. It maintained and even increased federal spending by using borrowed money instead of tax revenues.

So let’s make sure we understand what the Republicans have been doing. They have been promoting their ‘belief’ that tax cuts will provide a stimulus to the economy, in spite of the undeniable fact that it is not possible for an income tax cut to do any such thing. They’ve been able to cover up the failure of their ‘belief’ only because they combined their tax cuts with other fiscal options that actually did have a stimulative effect on the economy. Now they are trying to claim that their tax cuts are the special ingredient that has caused the economy to finally recover. It’s an outrageous misrepresentation of the truth.

It’s time for Democrats to start telling the American people the truth about the stupidity of Republican Tax Cut Populism. Tell them the whole story. Insist that credit be given to those initiatives that actually do improve economic growth. Explain why increasing taxes (on the incomes of the wealthy) is actually the best way to stimulate the economy and expand prosperity. Make sure that the media understand that the only way we’re going to be able to eliminate poverty is by SPENDING enough as a nation to employ all those who are in need of a job.

James Kroeger

Choosing Quality Over Cheap Alternatives

It is an objective truth that government organizations are usually less efficient than privately-owned enterprises (private enterprises that operate in price competitive markets, that is). We end up paying a premium for government services because of those inefficiencies. But as any savvy consumer knows, price is only one of the variables that one considers when making a purchase. One lesson we all eventually learn as consumers is that you get what you pay for. When government is our choice, it is usually because we can clearly see that the government can produce a higher-quality product that the private sector simply cannot match. Quality the private sector cannot match? Is such a thing possible?

Well, consider what it would be like if we were to rely on the private sector instead of the government for our highways & sewer systems. We’d find ourselves having to put up with certain ‘inconveniences’, like toll booths every few miles. A Private Sector alternative to this would be a privately-owned monopoly, but privately-owned monopolies are no more efficient than government monopolies. If you want to have privately-owned highway & sewerage industries in order to reap great cost savings from them, then they are going to have to be price-competitive industries. But the only way that is going to happen is if there are multiple firms in those industries and they are all building parallel highways & sewer lines. This would result in an incredibly inefficient use of land resources. Worse, it would provide us with a quality-of-product that is far inferior to that which we now enjoy.

We could similarly rely on private fire-fighting companies to provide us with fire-fighting services. But competing fire-fighting firms would only provide their services to those who had been paying their monthly bills. What if your neighbor’s house caught fire one night but the owner had not paid for fire-fighting services? There is a chance that your house might also end up burning to the ground as a consequence simply because your neighbor was not able to pay her bill. Likewise, private sector police departments would not provide police protection to those who could not afford to pay for the service that they provide. If you called the police, they would first have to establish whether or not you had been paying for their protection before providing you with any of their services.

These examples show us that the quality-of-product that we seek when we ask the government to provide certain services is a special level of security and convenience that can be enjoyed only when universal coverage is provided as a right-of-citizenship. Yes, the private sector can produce a cheaper alternative that costs society less, but that cheaper cost can only be had if you are willing to accept an inferior level of quality. The great mystery of our day is why the citizens of wealthy, economically advanced nations settle for austerity-level services when they don’t need to?

Consumers demonstrate every day that they are quite willing to pay the higher prices charged at convenience stores because they value convenience that much. They become very annoyed whenever they have to wait in long lines. We expect to pay more for the higher-quality services that we buy from the private sector. So why should any of us be surprised to discover that it is necessarily going to cost us more to enjoy the higher-quality services the government can provide for us?

Underfunding Government Services

The security and convenience benefits of right-of-citizenship services are certainly desirable, but why is it that we still hear anti-government zealots insist that the government ‘naturally’ produces a poorer quality product than the private sector does? To make their point, they’ll remind listeners of the last time they had to wait in line to see some bureaucrat for a government service. They insinuate that the reason for the poor service is the inherent indolence of government bureaucrats and the inadequacy of government organizations in general. Are they right? No, not at all. While there is no denying the fact that many government agencies do not provide the quality-of-service that we would like to see, the reason for it is understaffing; not some kind of imaginary ‘government disease.’

When there is a chronic problem with long wait times for government services, it is always because there is a chronic problem with understaffing, given the level of demand that exists for services. Why are government agencies understaffed? Because they are under-funded. You can only hire additional staff if you have the funds to pay them. Ultimately, the primary blame for understaffed, ‘poor quality’ government agencies belongs with the elected officials who appropriate funds and raise the revenue that is needed. During the past several decades, anti-government politicians have been successful in tarnishing The Government’s reputation for Quality by denying them the funding that they need to provide quality services.

So even though government organizations have the potential to provide services of the highest quality to society, it is still possible for anti-government political parties to sabotage that potentiality through deliberate underfunding. Politicians who deliberately underfund are actively seeking to deny citizens the quality product they desire. They want people to be unhappy with the government’s quality-of-service. They truly are enemies of the public interest. They may only be guilty of managerial incompetence, but that incompetence deserves the public’s scorn. By failing to adequately fund, they are responsible for squandering the investment that taxpayers have been making.

Example: Socialized Medicine

Americans can learn a couple of important lessons on the trade-offs that exist between quality & efficiency from Great Britain’s experience with its National Health Service (NHS). The NHS is the purest example of Socialized Medicine that one can find among economically advanced nations. Throughout its history, economic conservatives have argued that the NHS is too costly, too bureaucratic, too inefficient, and too lacking in quality of care service. Now, 50+ years since its inception, we can see just how fat and bloated and costly and wasteful it has become. Well…maybe not. Instead of becoming a ‘money pit’ that continually sucked more and more taxpayer money into its ‘black hole’ bureaucracy, the NHS has actually become one of the least costly quality health care systems in the civilized world.

By most measures of ‘health’, the citizens of the UK are either healthier than Americans, or nearly as healthy. The Brits have a higher life expectancy rate and a lower infant mortality rate and almost as many doctors per thousand as Americans have (2 vs. 2.4). In spite of roughly equal ‘health outcomes’, America’s private health care system costs Americans more than twice as much as the NHS costs the citizens of the UK. In spite of everything you’ve heard, empirical evidence—-hard numbers—-tell us that Socialized Medicine in England is far, far more efficient* (see below) than America’s private sector alternative. If efficiency in delivering health care and cost control are more important to Americans than the quality of health care they receive, then they should definitely copy the Socialized Medicine model established by Great Britain.

Of course, efficiency & cost control are not the issues that matter to us the most when it comes to health care. Quality matters more. While the Brits enjoy a quality of health care that is superior to that enjoyed by Americans in many respects (no insurance policy headaches, no frustrating discussions of ability-to-pay prior to the provision of health services, no paperwork hassles) the quality of their health service lags behind America’s in one important respect: they must put up with far longer waiting times for elective surgery. Of course, part of the reason for this is that many poorer Americans are not on any waiting list for elective surgery because they cannot afford to pay for it. Even so, the excessive wait times are a serious quality flaw in the NHS. The good news is that it is (A) the only flaw of any significance in the NHS that one can point to, and (B) it is one that can be easily fixed.

The problem is not that British bureaucrats are inefficiently running their health care system. The statistical evidence mentioned above (available from the OECD) tells us that the opposite is true. The real problem is that the NHS is underfunded. In 2002, UK citizens spent only about 8% of their GDP on health care ($2,160 per citizen). This compares to the approximately 15% of GDP that Americans spent on health care that year ($5,267 per citizen). It doesn’t take a genius to see that if the British were to double the amount of money that they spend on health care, they would be able to dramatically increase the quality of the health care that the British people receive by increasing the supply of health services.

Reducing wait times for elective surgery is simply a matter of paying for more surgeons & operating rooms & equipment & recovery facilities. If the Brits started spending as much of their national income on health care as Americans do, their Socialized Medicine health care system would be the model and envy of the world. Their health care product would not only be the highest quality product in the world, it would also be the greatest value in health care in the world (quality produced with optimal efficiency).

Lessons

So what lessons do we learn from Britain’s experience with Socialized Medicine? First, that we don’t have to worry about government right-of-citizenship services becoming ‘too costly’ because conservative politicians can be counted on to always act to keep government programs underfunded. We also learn that because this is true society should always be far more concerned about the quality deficiencies caused by understaffing than the ‘waste’ caused by overstaffing.

We also learn that opponents of Socialized Medicine are flat out wrong when they suggest that a Private Sector Health Care Industry is needed in order to control health care costs. This is essentially because (A) cost-controlling price competition does not exist in America’s private health care industry for clearly identifiable reasons (private insurance, patents, & restricted entry into the ‘doctor’s guild’), and (B) the private sector alternative is not desirable because it puts constant pressure on providers to compromise the quality of health care in the name of efficiency and cost control (see Managed Care in America).

Ultimately, the opponents of Big Government do not really care about the poor quality-of-product generated by government programs they have underfunded. In fact, they like it that way because poor-quality government services are cheaper, and that means that they pay less in taxes to the government. Then, after they’ve succeeded in degrading the quality of government-provided services, they have the political opportunity to say, “Look!, I told you that the government always provides lousy service compared to the private sector!” Blaming government institutionalism for the poor results that they are responsible for, themselves, is a favorite political stratagem of anti-government zealots. A great example of this in economic history occurred during the Great Depression.

In the mid-term elections of 1938, Republican politicians pointed out that the Roosevelt administration had failed to end the depression in spite of the dramatic increase in government spending that had occurred during the previous five years. They pointed to this ‘failure’ as evidence that increases in government spending will not fix an economy that is mired in recession. Only a few years later, the inanity of that argument was revealed. When government spending skyrocketed during World War II, the Great Depression ended almost overnight. The reason why the Great Depression dragged on as long as it did was not because fiscal stimulus initiatives failed; it was because the dedicated efforts of the Republican opposition succeeded in limiting federal government spending increases to levels that were insufficient to restore the economy to full-employment spending levels. Today, we can see clearly that it was the Republican Party that was responsible for both the length and depth of the Great Depression.

If you happen to be a politician who believes in the virtues of government, it must be a matter of the highest priority that you not accept inadequate levels of funding for government programs. The time to throw down the gauntlet is when economic-conservatives start calling for a reduction in spending levels in order to combat government wastefulness. Those individuals need to be forced to admit then that what really bothers them is having to pay significantly higher taxes in order to fund government efforts intended to benefit others (and not themselves). That is when you can reveal the stupidity of their concerns about higher taxes and focus their attention on the very real benefits that accrue to them when they choose to heavily tax themselves. When they do this to provide the less-well-off with a wonderful government-provided service like Socialized Medicine, they are actually doing themselves a tremendous favor.

After all, when they look out at the international community, they would be able to brag [indirectly, of course] to the rich people of other countries about what they have done for their poor people. Rich people everywhere have to ‘deal with’ the poor, one way or another. They can either settle themselves into a siege mentality, where they worry constantly about the poorer classes ‘storming the gates’ or they can bring peace to the ‘class warfare’ battlefield by simply committing themselves to initiatives that earn them the deep gratitude of the lower classes. It might take some getting-used-to, but I think they would find it rather enjoyable to notice that the lower classes do not begrudge them their wealth, but actually view them with approval and appreciation. That is an enhancement of the quality-of-life of rich people that is worth paying for. And the truly amazing thing about it is, it wouldn’t really cost them anything!

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(Efficient*: Even though price-competitive industries have lower ‘bureaucratic inefficiency costs’ than governments do, much of that cost is compensated for by cost-reductions obtained through various economies of scale. Lower total costs are achieved through volume aggregation, reduced duplication, and cost-sharing practices. It may even be true that these cost savings are more than enough to compensate for increased bureaucratic inefficiency costs. The lower overall cost of health care in England seems to suggest that this is true. But even so, it must still be acknowledged that bureaucratic inefficiency is still is one of the necessary costs that taxpayers must pay for if they want to enjoy the enhanced quality-of-product that governments are able to provide via universal coverage.)