Why not take this one step further? Why shouldn’t taxpayers make direct decisions about how much money they want to spend on other government programs, like paying off the national debt, the war in Iraq or the National Endowment for the Arts? This would force the federal government to focus time and resources on projects citizens actually want, not just efforts that appeal to special interests.
They're all "a republic, not a democracy" until it comes to money -- and of course Boaz isn't for letting the moochers use the tax system to loot the makers (as they do now -- ask Mitt Romney!), but rather for the makers with the most bucks to decide what services will be available to the little people:
Entitlements would be the biggest problem. About 60 percent of the federal budget now goes to entitlement programs. Medicare and Medicaid make up more than 20 percent of spending, and most of that comes from general revenues. Should taxpayers be able to withhold their hard-earned dollars from such programs? In a free society, they should. So how do we handle a shortage of funding? Congress could change the spending parameters to fit what the taxpayers are willing to supply.The more money you have, the more dollar-votes you have on this. Like it is now, in other words -- but with no need for subterfuge, because that's the difference between libertarians and conservatives: Libertarians don't feel shame, so there's no need to be sneaky about it. (h/t Brent Cox.)
And why shouldn't we be able to sell people? It would solve so many poverty problems and the producers could open new markets in organ selling, sex slavery and child labor.
ReplyDelete"This would force the federal government to focus time and resources on projects citizens actually want, not just efforts that appeal to special interests."
ReplyDeleteWhat happens if no-one checks the box labeled: "Funding the army of accountants and auditors and IRS sleuths needed to administer this insanely stupid system"?
Anyway, this is your typical libertarian "solution", something that will often end up costing more than the "problem" they are trying to fix. I guess freedom isn't free or something something argle bargle.
it'd work up until the Pentagon only got $50 million a year, at which point the Libertarians would suddenly support coercion in this one oh-so-important area.
ReplyDeleteHa ha, yes, liberals are fools for spending money on wasteful programs that save peoples lives through medical procedures. True conservatives know the best way to save American lives is to take the lives of others through military spending.
ReplyDeleteThe depths of their inhumanity -- and the levels it is accepted a pole in the debate -- still shocks me.
Thoughts as I read this:
ReplyDelete1.) This guy isn't even pretending that he wants anything other than a neo-feudal system.
2.) Aren't these the same assholes who keep going on about how our tax system is too complicated? Wouldn't this make it way worse?
3.) In light of recent events, the prospect of wealthy local interests creating a police force accountable only to them should trouble a libertarian. But those people were mostly blahs, and it's not like they donate to Cato.
4.) And extending on that, it seems like this would actually kill democracy by ensuring that most people would have little or no say over the laws they have to live under. But again: Neo-feudalism.
There would be football stadium building boom that would rival the manufactuing effort of World War 2.
ReplyDeleteThey usually say similar things about foreign aid - Actual amount, <1%; Typical voter estimate, around 10%. People go with their gut, and their gut lies to them.
ReplyDeleteNPR, foreign aid, and studies on duck mating and obesity in lesbians, account for fully half of federal spending. No wonder, "get rid of government fraud and abuse" is still brought up as a way to cut the budget.
ReplyDeleteFrom teh comments :
ReplyDeleteDear Washington Post editors,
Please remove $0.15 off my my monthly subscription. In return, I would like you to remove any op-eds that amount to demagoguery, supported by half baked arguments. I'm sure you'll know which ones I'm referring to.
Sincerely,
Broprah Winfrey
Gosh, I don't need to check this box labled "CDC"; there hasn't been any outbreaks of Ebola lately!
ReplyDeleteDERP.
Why should *I* have to pay for the government to collect *your* taxes? I make $20,000 a year and the IRS can process my forms in under 3 seconds. Damned if I'm going to subsidize the review of Mitt Romney's no doubt encyclopedic compendium of forms and write-offs.
ReplyDeleteLiberty!
Throw in funding for CRAZY OFFENSIVE modern art exhibits and you're well over 60%.
ReplyDeleteThat's why we need the line-item veto.
ReplyDeleteSurely the fact that I cannot sell my left kidney for a case of whiskey is evidence of my lack of freedom in this jackbooted government tyranny.
ReplyDeleteLibertarians don't feel shame
ReplyDeleteNeither do scorpions.
About 60 percent of the federal budget now goes to entitlement programs. Neat slight-of-hand! I wonder how much the paid-for Social Security system, which has nothing to do with income tax or deficits or the debt accounts for that 60%? IT'S A FUCKING MYSTERY I TELLS YA. And, of course, if the government already spends 20 percent on health care to make sure people don't have to die, it would be an even better argument to spend more and cover everyone, than rely on the decency of people to screw over the poor and the elderly on their tax forms.
ReplyDeleteOwns.
ReplyDeleteOr someone else's kidney.
ReplyDeleteThe more money you have, the more dollar-votes you have on this.
ReplyDeleteI suggested this very thing 4 years ago on this American "Thinker" thread. Clearly, my prescient putrescence is finally going to be appreciated.
"You knew what I am."
ReplyDeleteMaybe our national emblem should be a frog instead of an eagle.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone know who exactly was the first asshole to use the word "entitlements" in reference to Medicare, Social Security, etc?
ReplyDeleteHmmmm...
ReplyDeletecoercively or non-?
*sharpens scalpel*
Just asking for a friend, mind you.
But that's just part of the overall budget allocated to the cultural pogrom against old white Christian bigots.
ReplyDeleteThat brings it solidly into the 70%s, and I think a full accounting would bring it right up to about 82%.
Should taxpayers be able to withhold their hard-earned dollars from such programs? In a free society, they should.
ReplyDeleteIntriguing idea. But capital gains should be taxed at Eisenhower era rates, at the very least.
Probably FDR. An entitlement is something you're entitled to, like clean water. After decades of Republican propaganda, this now seems petty of us to expect.
ReplyDeleteMedicare, medicare. lessee, that's what I pay for through my payroll taxes. Hmmm. Why should the Makers get to tell me what they want to do with my taxes?
ReplyDeleteI know we currently subsidize Medicare because it has been underfunded and some Drs get to drive MBs, but still
Yeah, I guess it wasn't always derogatory.
ReplyDeleteThis all makes perfect sense once you understand that 60% of the budget goes to entitlements, another 50% goes to welfare, about 76% goes to foreign aid, with another 115% going to food stamps. Now, if we can just start chipping away at the 80% that goes to disability cheats, and maybe take a chunk out of the 40% that goes to those layabout retirees, we could really make progress on whittling down the tax bills of billionaires.
ReplyDeleteDefense? Only accounts of a fraction of a percent of federal spending, so it needs to be at least doubled, if not tripled.
The great thing is that it doesn't matter either way. Poverty will do the coercing for you.
ReplyDeleteNeo-feudalism is not a problem for libertarians because each and every one of them will be royalty. Like the woman I used to work with who is an extreme libertarian. She's currently working part-time for minimum wage, which is just barely enough to keep her single-wide trailer in heat and electricity. But man! In the libertarian paradise, she's going to be on top!
ReplyDeleteExactly! These people are not free!
ReplyDeleteIt's a tragedy, I tells ya!
Sadly, this is especially coming true of clean water. In modern American, nobody is "entitled" to anything they can't pay for, and that includes clean water. (The Koch brothers are also working on a program to make sure the air is so dirty you can't breathe it, but that's gonna take a few more years.)
ReplyDeleteI think I remember reading that the word originally meant something like "having a legal claim or right to funds, property, or privilege." Social security is an entitlement in that sense because it is legislated by Congress that workers who pay into it have a legal claim to the benefit. The meaning from the legalese has been subverted by a completely opposite pejorative idea that an entitlement is something that moochers don't deserve and have no right to.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if my mother still has this. I might need it ere long.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.historylink.org/db_images/Snohomish_29_fergusonCanOfAir1962WorldsFair.jpg
*shhhhhhhhh* - the environment we live in. Carbon dioxide,
ReplyDeletefluorocarbons, and methane have increased since 1958. Earth is being
acclimatized. They are turning our atmosphere into their atmos- *shhhhhhhhhhhhh*
Global warming--it's . . . it's a cook book!
ReplyDeleteAnyone seen my copy of Hans Herman Hoppe's book?
ReplyDeleteWhat I was getting at was when did it get twisted into a pejorative? Does it predate Reagan? Goldwater?
ReplyDeleteI'd think you were kidding, but this is the same pair that dumped tons of money into a campaign in Tennessee to convince the local wingnuts that a broadly popular mass transit proposal was a SOSHULIST plot, so who the hell knows.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen some of the bonkers high school stadiums these days?
ReplyDeleteSounds like something post-Reagan. Probably part of Gingrich's "language project".
ReplyDeleteThe shoes...needed to fully anthropomorphize the bird so that people know, "hey, this natural air is for people" or an artist who thinks bird feet are tough to draw?
ReplyDeleteThat's the stupidest idea I've ever heard! I am just shaking my head. Who is this idiot and why does he have a job?
ReplyDeletePeople feet are tough enough to draw, much less bird feet, but I'm voting for anthromorphization.
ReplyDeleteHmm, well that was supposed to go...somewhere else. With the neo-feudalism stuff.
ReplyDeleteSo I guess that fuckwit is planning on never getting old or sick...
ReplyDeleteWe will not be free until Goldman Sachs and Citibank can set up the "Kidney Exchange™³²®©!!!"
ReplyDeleteBuy 'em, sell 'em, rent 'em, short 'em. One stop for all your needs!
~
Pete Peterson, as early as 1981?
ReplyDeleteQuick google doesn't confirm, but I remember that at least.
~
"You guys, I have a great plan to collapse civilization. I think we could do it in a single April 15."
ReplyDeleteThe Kochs are Bircher fundamentalists. They probably think the interstate highway system is socialism, too.
ReplyDeleteI've often wished wistfully that American tax payers could allot some of their taxes to programs they favored. With me it would be NASA, but the EPA might collect a nice dividend, and just think what the Weather service would get! I thought it would be a fun little experiment in the "no such thing as failed research" point of view
ReplyDelete.
Conservative-Libertarians can turn any idea into their twisted "survival of the fittest" credo.
I would like to wholeheartedly embrace the new Libertarian tax restructuring as soon as I can check off the box that says "My body is a temple and and churches don't pay taxes.", and get a full refund.
ReplyDelete[blockquote]This would force the federal government to focus time and resources on projects citizens actually want, not just efforts that appeal to special interests.[/blockquote]
ReplyDeleteWhat an unintentionally revealing way to formulate the categories of "citizen" and "special interest"
As a garnish, maybe.
ReplyDeleteAwww, Mommmmm!
ReplyDeleteObjectivist jerky, again?
(And when, inevitably, Goldman Sachs and Citibank have to be bailed out when the Kidney Exchange [KIDEX] fails, they'll be able to blame it on all those low-income minority kidneys they were forced to buy and sell and that clogged up the market.)
ReplyDeleteProbably. ('Cause nothing's more entitled than Conservative White Guys.)
ReplyDeleteHoly shit, this Boaz guy has been fucking this chicken at Cato since at least 1982:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa013.html
People around the country seem to understand what no one in Washington will admit: The budget is out of control. The growth of government is out of control. We seem to have lost our perspective in the last 20 years, as government has taken on more and more functions, and members of Congress have made more of the budget "uncontrollable" in an attempt to absolve themselves of blame for its growth. The program proposed in this paper is not just a list of budget cuts. It is something that needs to be done to solve our national crisis.
...
It might seem surprising that so much of the federal budget would go to the poor -- politically powerless as they are. The answer, of course, is that most of it doesn't. Many of the recipients of transfer payments are not poor. The largest programs, social security and Medicare, go to the elderly at all income levels, a group noted more for high voter turnout than for poverty.
...
It might seem surprising that so much of the federal budget would go to the poor -- politically powerless as they are. The answer, of course, is that most of it doesn't. Many of the recipients of transfer payments are not poor. The largest programs, social security and Medicare, go to the elderly at all income levels, a group noted more for high voter turnout than for poverty.
Then he gives away the game at the very end:
The third and probably most important reason to support budget cuts is more sweeping. The total impact of government on society is not measured just by taxes and spending. Indeed, some cynics have suggested that Americans would be better off if the government simply taxed them at the present level and then burned the money, or spent it on personal consumption for the members of Congress. Instead, government spends the money in a myriad of ways, all designed to force or encourage society in a particular direction. The programs suggested for cutting do the following: subsidize ineffi- cient businesses at the expense of those that satisfy consumers, narrow consumer choice, increase consumer prices, violate the personal liberties of Americans, restrict the First Amendment, allocate resources to the uses favored by special interests, protect businesses from the need to assume responsibility for their actions, encourage the overuse and misuse of natural resources, stifle the development of consumer-oriented technologies, discriminate against unskilled and minority workers, create unemployment, nationalize and centralize countless activities better served by diversity, create an intergenerational cycle of poverty and dedendency, freeze the poor out of the economic system, involve the United States in foreign conflicts, and increase the risk of nuclear war.
Even if all those "services" were provided free, we would be better off without them. And that is the final point of this paper: Aside from the obvious savings in taxes, government spending, and deficits, America would be better off without many or most of the functions the federal government currently undertakes. This analysis offers a guide to identifying those functions and, hopefully, to eliminating them.
Cos it's totes not coercive if the MARKET dictates your (kidney's) place in (Dick Cheney) the Great Chain of Being!
ReplyDeleteThis made me curious, so I looked up the estimated cost of the Iraq war. It pointed to me to an exhaustive study published in 2013 by a team of researchers at Rutgers, which concluded that the total cost of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan amounted to 3.7 trillion (this includes the estimated future cost of medical treatment for veterans of those wars).
ReplyDeleteThe I divided that by the estimated population of the US in 2014 (318 million).
The result is that those wars approximately $11,650 per person.
Even if you think those wars provided you personally, or society generally, some benefit, how does it measure up.
If you are part of a four person family, would you rather have those wars, or would you rather have $46,600.
Myself, I only had a family of three. Until this Cato jerkoff personally hands me a check for $34,950 he should be shutting the cake hole about making life miserable for this country's poor, sick and old people.
Test questions for David Boaz:
ReplyDelete1) How is this substantially different from letting only white male property-owners vote?
2) Do you think letting only white male property-owners vote is a good idea? Show your work on this one.
3) Have you ever considered the possibility that there's a reason your idea is not in operation, given that one very much like it used to be?
4) What are the chances that your idea will ever be proposed, considered or enacted?
5) Given that (spoiler alert) the correct answer for Question #4 is "zero," how has your commentary contributed to the overall good of the nation, or of any individual person in it?
6) How much money are you paid?
Extra credit: Do you even understand the point I'm making here?
protect businesses from the need to assume responsibility for their actions
ReplyDeleteHaw haw, the FUCKING IRONY.
Gosh, I can't IMAGINE what Mom and I could possibly do with $11K each, given that we're such poverty lucky duckies.
ReplyDeleteSnerk.
gosh, not sure how my autocorrect messed that up. I meant to say "...against Real Americans".
ReplyDeleteFilet mignon, right?
ReplyDeleteHa! Everything old is new again. This is from a 1994 screed from the "National Center for Policy Analysis:"
ReplyDeleteProposal A: Competition and Choice.
Proposal A involves partial privatization of public charity. Under the proposal, individuals would be able to allocate up to 20 percent of their per-
sonal federal income taxes to qualified private charities and then deduct the 20
percent from their total income tax payments. Alternatively, individuals could
instruct the U.S. Treasury (on their income tax returns) to pay up to 20 percent of their taxes to specific private charities. Such private charity allocations
would be deducted from the federal government's poverty budget. In other
words, for each tax dollar allocated to private sector charity, public sector
charity would be reduced by a dollar.
No, I think Boaz is fit for only ground chuck at best, with LOTS of ketchup.
ReplyDeleteGives a lot away that he considers social spending "public sector charity".
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I guess I need to pick a cause as even with loose rules they might not qualify "The DrS Whiskey Fund"
ReplyDeleteYes, vegetables are important
ReplyDeleteDefense is one of few thing libertarians do support as legitimate government activity, so yes, I'm sure paying taxes for the military will also be considered legitimate. Get ready to pay lots and lots of taxes for nukes in every precinct.
ReplyDeleteAlso, maybe we should consider making murder legal.
ReplyDeleteFirst you don't pay taxes, and you gripe about being poor. Now you don't have to pay rent, and you still gripe about being poor. Maybe if you stopped buying food, you'd have some money in your pocket.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, is there any way you can set up a PayPal or such? I'm out of work myself, but I'd be happy to toss you a few bucks.
I'm working on ceasing breathing now, for when the Kochs get around to commodifying that as well!
ReplyDeleteAs this system presumably assumes government will only spend the revenue it raises, no deficits, it would be impossible for the Pentagon to operate. So I'm sure if anyone adopted this system it would be "military and intelligence are funded separately"
ReplyDeleteWhy not take it a few steps further than that? Fer instance, give me some checkboxes that allow me to deny SNAP, unemployment benefits, social security & Medicare for anyone who is a registered Republican, and I'm in.
ReplyDeleteWait, did you learn economics from Thomas Sowell, by chance?
ReplyDeleteHey, if they're registered Republicans, they're already partway there. They're only getting the inferior, stingy versions of those programs, not the gold-plated versions reserved for lazy urban minorities and illegal aliens.
ReplyDelete" In a free society, they should. Oh, I guess we're not a free society then, quelle surprise, now pack your bags and fuck off back to Randistan.
ReplyDeleteBecause donating guns to the cops first is so time-consuming.
ReplyDeleteIt would actually be kind of nice if we could have a non-binding vote on that every year with our income tax filing. Perhaps a vote on the top 10 things we'd like to see our money allocated for every year when we pay income taxes. Non-binding because it might turn out to be really ridiculous, but at least there would be an official poll of taxpayers on what they'd like to see their money supporting.
ReplyDeleteWeird, their definition of a free society, seems a lot like a 'Grand Theft Auto' style sandbox of impunity.
ReplyDeletebut with no need for subterfuge, because that's the difference between
ReplyDeletelibertarians and conservatives: Libertarians don't feel shame, so
there's no need to be sneaky about it.Eh, I'd suggest that it's more that they're oblivious. Case in point: Ted Cruz isn't a libertarian. Ted Cruz knows that he needs to lie if he somehow gets a shot at the presidential general election. My father has spoken admiringly about Cruz has apparently condemned the way the "little guy" keeps losing out, while the banksters rake in millions. This from a guy who wants to eliminate taxes for rich people entirely, and is married to a goddamned Goldman Sachs investment banker. I would say that wins a fucking award for shamelessness ... with a solid brass ball cluster.
Gee, I thought this was already happening in a little dynamic called voting.
ReplyDeleteSilly me.
Because absolutely no one would allocate 100% of their taxes as going towards tax cuts...
ReplyDeleteTake me, for example: I don't have kids in school. I don't have grandchildren in school. Why should I pay taxes so that the kid across the street can go to school? It is a way to create a kind of sociopathic society in which there's subordination to concentrated power: I think that is what lies behind the attack on the public schools and also the attack on social security, which has no economic basis. It is a way to concentrate power and authority, to impose subordination on the population in the name of liberty: it kind of reminds me of Stalin's proclaiming that we have to defend democracy against the fascists and so on. A way to privatize the system is, first of all, make it non-functional: underfunded, so it is not functional, and then people don't like it so it is handed over to what are called charter schools, which, actually, are publicly funded and don't do any better than public schools, even though they have a lot of advantages. That way you get rid of the general commitment of the public to solidarity and mutual support: the thinking that I ought to care whether the kid across the street can go to school, or whether the disabled widow across town should have food. For these guys, the « Masters of the Universe »...a phrase from Adam Smith, incidentally, that is the right attitude. You should only do things that benefit yourself, and I think the attacks on the public schools are like this. The main problem of the public schools of the U.S. is, first of all, the very high level of poverty, which is scandalous in a rich society and getting worse. Kids come to school under certain circumstances where it is going to be extremely hard for them to even sit in a classroom: they haven't eaten breakfast, they walk down the streets where people are fighting... It is very hard to teach a class on conditions like that. So the problems are partly socioeconomic conditions and partly underfunding of the schools. A large part of it is also disrespect for teachers. My wife, who taught at the Harvard School of Education for about 25 years, went to international conferences, Europe and so on. One thing that she noted very quickly, in Canada too, is that the attitude towards teachers is very different from here. They respect teachers. It's considered a respectable profession. Here, it's like somebody who cleans the streets.
ReplyDelete--noam chomsky
I'm going all in on Collateralized Kidney Default Swaps.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing the first thing to happen was the word "entitled" becoming a pejorative.
ReplyDeleteOED sez:
Chiefly N. Amer. Believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment; spoilt and self-important.
First cite is 1977. OED on "entitlement" as in "sense of entitlement" dates to 1952 and has as its second cite... 1977, the Annus Mirabilis of "entitlement," apparently.
Once those meanings are in place, "entitlement" in a financial context (itself apparently a WWII-era phenomenon) can connote same, creating a sort of rhyme logic that affiliates the right to social welfare programs with spoiled brat-ness.
And step 2: The word becomes married to "reform."
ReplyDeletePertinent: With Ryan's Ascent, A Few Thoughts on Entitlement.
ReplyDeleteAnd they still refuse to give Somalia a try. It's odd how that sort of conveys the impression that they're actually quite fond of living under a government after all.
ReplyDeleteIt would be better if you could deny yacht deductions and specialty tax rates to hedge fund dudes. The new video that is making the rounds of the crazy tea partier video guy who is saying he will vote for Hillary because "he wants to keep his obamacare" is a case in point. Its better to have right wing lunatics receiving clear benefits from the government than to deny them and let them imagine that ending those benefits hurts no one but black/poor people.
ReplyDeleteWhut??? You mean you're NOT supposed to get screwed by them? Who knew...
ReplyDeleteThe original problem is that only those w/ titles had "legal claims or rights to funds, property, or privilege."
ReplyDeleteNot a good association.
I wonder how many of the people who have benefitted from ObamaCare realize that's what benefitted them? For example Kentucky named their version KyNect or something like that, and Kentuckians are overwhelmingly in favor of it. Except, they voted in Mitch McConnell based on his pledge to do away with ObamaCare.
ReplyDeleteI'm in Florida right now, and I see people like my sister who has health insurance for the first time in 35 years thanks to Obamacare. She's thrilled to have the insurance, but she despises ObamaCare because it socialized our medical system, like those communists in Europe.
Right, but I presume its like the prospect of his own hanging--it concentrates the mind. She may hate Obamacare but when you tell her she is going to lose what she has she may feel differently.
ReplyDeleteI hate that locution more than anything. Roads, Bridges, Police, Fire, Social Services are not all "charity." They are things we have collectively decided to do with our money.
ReplyDeletePace John Scalzi, Objectivist jerky.
ReplyDeleteYes, but he mentioned Stalin therefore his argument is invalid. #libertariansociopathy
ReplyDeleteCareful -- you may have said too much already ....
ReplyDeleteTo the WaPo readership's credit, the comments smack this ass around much as he deserves. E.g. "This is a joke, right?"
ReplyDeleteYou'd think that people who claim to be economic geniuses would understand a simple concept like "only suckers pay retail" and yet ...
ReplyDeleteJust as, in past lives, every one of them was a Phoenician prince or an Egyptian queen. I know that in grade school we encourage kids--in class, on tv, everywhere--to "USE YOUR IMAGINATION!" I guess at Cato old habits die hard.
ReplyDelete"I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”
ReplyDelete-- Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
And inefficient. Abolish the police, eliminate the middle men, and pass the savings along to the Kochs.
ReplyDeleteSay it now, and say it loud
ReplyDeleteI'm a cow, and I'm proud
9) You, uh, white or dark meat? *sharpens cleaver*
ReplyDeleteBTW, gmccammon5@gmail.com if you're so inclined.
ReplyDeleteToo fine-grained. Just do it by state. What's Latin for "Out of many, one, but then out of one, back to many again"?
ReplyDeleteOh, he's pretty damn jerky as it is.
ReplyDeleteCarpe fuckulum
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm fucking firmly of the opinion that that's what the Kochs look like at home, where they can let down their perception filters and relax.
ReplyDeleteCOWS GOT LEGS!
ReplyDeleteThe more we spend on "defense," the more the wealthy believe their wealth to be safe from expropriation--from without and from within. They just don't want to pay for the service that soothes their anxieties. They want the poor and the middle class to do that for them. After all, you should feel proud that the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson and the Waltons have amassed so much money. That's proof that America works!
ReplyDeleteThe more we spend on "defense," the more the wealthy believe their
ReplyDeletewealth to be safe from expropriation--from without and from within.
From which follows the troubling conclusion that, at some point, they're going to want that power being presently projected outwards, to be projected inwards.
May I offer this comment a shit salad topped with peons?
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think the police were created in the first place? To protect us?
ReplyDeleteWell, when were police invented? Some argue it was really when there were too many poors that needed to be kept off rich people's lands. Property requires violence to back it up, and the libertarians are ultra-propertarians.
ReplyDeleteThe libertarian in me says that they're there to protect the privileges of the State, but he says a lot of stupid obviously untrue things that sound all troubling and anarchistic so I usually just jam him head-down in the loo next to my Conscience and close the door to muffle the yells.
ReplyDeletea shit salad
ReplyDeleteHint: Those aren't pine nuts.
I heard that same theory on some podcast I heard recently, but try as I might, I can't recall what it was.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we're listening to the same stuff.
Well, if The State=The People Who Own the Country Ought to Run It, the libertarian is probably correct. IIRC, the wealthy bought Chicago police Gatling guns to defend against labor demonstrations in the late 19th century. And how many times have National Guard units been called out to "quell unrest?"
ReplyDeleteWe have the phrase "law `n order" because the law was always intended to preserve a certain kind of order, an order that, first and foremost, protected both the wealthy's persons and their sensibilities. We don't have, for example, draconian laws against marijuana use because it's supremely dangerous to human health.
http://studentsforliberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1356235730947489.jpg
ReplyDeleteGood question. Did the Romans have a police force of sorts? I have no idea.
ReplyDeleteThe Praetorian Guard?
ReplyDeleteWho doesn't want corn in their shit salad?
ReplyDeleteE Pluribus Moron
ReplyDeleteIt is a way to concentrate power and authority, to impose subordination on the population in the name of liberty...
ReplyDeleteWell, that and basic childishness, selfishness, and stupidity.
Four legs good!
ReplyDeleteI thank you, Mr. YrWhig.
ReplyDeleteI would favor cutting the food stamp budget down to 200 billion dollars or so.
ReplyDeleteAs Dr. Krugman is fond of saying, the government is mainly an insurance company with an army.
ReplyDeleteHe has a job because Cato is funded by the Kochs, among others, and they like what he says.
ReplyDeleteJ.K. Galbraith once said, "The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in
moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification
for selfishness." Cato was founded to further that search.
And they're still looking, high and low (mostly low).
I remember that not at all, but it's perfect.
ReplyDeleteI think the hyena deserves a bid.
ReplyDeleteWe should tax the poor more, give them more of an incentive to want to be rich just to avoid the tax. I fully expect Rand Paul to steal my idea soon.
ReplyDeleteFuck, we already have the incentive not to starve or die of exposure.
ReplyDeleteSteak Tartarus.
ReplyDeleteYou stole it from the Goodies Book of Criminal Records (1975) so it's all good.
ReplyDeleteThe tragedy of the commoners once again.
ReplyDeleteI agree with his statement, if you replace "society" with "-for-all kleptocracy". And "should" with "would, alas."
ReplyDelete"The answer, of course, is that most of it doesn't. Many of the
ReplyDeleterecipients of transfer payments are not poor. The largest programs,
social security and Medicare, go to the elderly at all income levels, a
group noted more for high voter turnout than for poverty."
Of course, our resident Cato genius slides right by the fact that without those "transfer payments," a notable majority of the elderly would be in poverty, as eighty years of data bear out decisively. This is even more true today, ever since the "free enterprise" system reiieved them of most everything except their Social Security benefits.
As sleight-of-hand goes, this stuff is pretty awful. He keeps dropping the props, along with those last two paragraphs. It is exactly the members of that vaunted "free market," individually and collectively, that have been lobbying government for all those things he finds so distasteful. And, as part of the Cato Libertarian Credo, he's managed to bury the fact that the "development of consumer-oriented technologies" he claims the government is stifling is actually promoted by the government and taxpayer spending. Microelectronics? Check. Computers? Check. Modern air travel? Check. Internet? Check. Digital TV? Check. GPS? Check. Digital photography? Check. Drug development? Check. Robotics? Check. Solar cells? Check. Basic R&D? Check.
Truth is, if Boaz's precious free market were left to fund the science necessary to create the current "consumer-oriented technologies," we'd still be using typewriters and snail mail (which the government also provides at low cost), and the knick-knacks and doodads flooding the shelves today would be available only to the wealthy.
What one should always keep in mind is that these are incredibly stupid people who would starve to death without the dedicated support of greedy assholes.
E Pluribus Moron
ReplyDeleteTo phrase a coin.
Another commenter a really liked who just evaporated into the blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteThey're not just things we've decided to do with our money--they are the very things that make civilization.
ReplyDeleteI can understand the longing for feudalism, since every single one of those people will be a prince or a king (naturally). But don't they understand that even the King lived in what would now be considered squalor?
Down here they believe they were all beneficient aristocrats before the Civil War, and the Yankees just burned their nice shit down, just out of meanness.
ReplyDeleteThis despite well preserved Confederate army records which indicate the overwhelming majority of combat soldiers were dirt poor people looking for a government handout. And for all the brutal combat deaths, most of the poor bastards starved or shat themselves to death because of the libertarian principles of their army's quartermaster corps and the West Point circle jerk heading up the whole mutiny.
Sorry, boys. Not that kind of government.
Oh, there's no question that Cruz is going to give Huckabee a real contest for the top spot in the P.T. Barnum School of Politics.
ReplyDeleteShit, Cruz is probably selling his mailing lists to burial insurance companies.
Boaz's suggestions sound like a recipe for "the 1% get to keep more money, everyone else gets more audits."
ReplyDelete2.) Aren't these the same assholes who keep going on about how our tax system is too complicated? Wouldn't this make it way worse?
ReplyDeleteWorse is the new better. The people they're aiming to benefit have People to do their taxes, and other People to fend off attention from the law, so who cares if it's a migraine-inducing mess?
This is what makes it so hilarious to me when righties go on about voter ignorance and how it's destroying the republic, as was the bitch du jour on Fox and Friends recently. Their agenda relies on voters not knowing what's what. It's hundred proof crocodile tears.
ReplyDeleteDo you know what it takes to sell shitty policy?
ReplyDeleteI can, because that's exactly what I get from Social Securitythe Central Government Ponzi Scheme. That I've been paying for since 1966...
ReplyDeleteOh, indeed. In fact, recent Congresses have dropped funding overall and mandated the IRS to spend more time and effort on uncovering Earned Income Credit fraud. And finding that fucking pony.
ReplyDeleteI give nothing! Let all the other suckers pay!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
ReplyDeleteThe internet sure has shone a blinding light on the infantile ways that so many adult Americans think. I guess it comes from living in a culture where you never have to actually grow up.
Then he gives away the game at the very end:
ReplyDeleteAre we meant to take any of that last run-on sentence from Hell seriously?
"What does the Government do wrong with the tax money it takes in, David"
"Why, everything, Katie!" They pay this guy to scribble this grade school drivel? Ye gods and little fishes...
Microelectronics? Check. Computers? Check. Modern air travel? Check.
ReplyDeleteInternet? Check. Digital TV? Check. GPS? Check. Digital photography?
Check. Drug development? Check. Robotics? Check. Solar cells? Check.
Basic R&D? Check.
Actually, I think we'd have as much of that stuff as the 1% wanted. And at prices only they could afford. Just replace every item with "yacht", and you have the idea. The little people wouldn't be able to afford any of that, and deservedly so, because they had nothing to do with making it all possible. Under the current, relatively sane system, they can, because they did, and that may be what sticks in the craw of the fanboyz of the rich and famous.
Remember the National Driving Test? (On TV back in the '60s some time.) What I wouldn't give to have one of the Big Three nets do a National Budget Test. Never happen, because those in charge are probably smart enough to know what the results would be (and no inclination to change them): The average murkan has no fucking idea what the G spends its money on.
ReplyDeleteThe premiums on Medicare and Social Security have been too low from the start.
ReplyDeleteDude, this is no laughing matter.
ReplyDeleteRight on! Let's have some real welfare reform! Make them try and get by on the sort of pittance that Exxon/Mobil gets in government subsidies. They'll be pulling themselves up by their bootstraps faster than you can say "Welfare Queens driving Cadillacs!"
ReplyDeleteThere'd be a JumboTron in every sandlot in Texas.
ReplyDeleteAmong the clowns over at Cato, Boaz is a prince. After all their concern over "constitutionality", the prince comes up with
ReplyDelete"Why shouldn’t taxpayers make direct decisions about how much money they want to spend on other government programs...?"
Besides that U.S. Constitution business about how "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law;" there's those pesky budget laws, the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, and the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974,
This one, though. Holy shit!
"Should taxpayers be able to withhold their hard-earned dollars from such programs? In a free society, they should."
Yep, a government funded by the whims of its tax payers, now there's a government that'll last...
Not to worry. "Moronic" Matt Bevin (who primaried McConnell in 2014 and lost) is running in the Republican primary for governor here, and has clearly stated he'll "dismantle KyNect" in the first ad I've seen for him (because there are roughly 20 people in the R primary for governor KY-- all of them claiming to be O.G. hardcore conservative, Obama-hater number 1, etc.-- and there's not a dime's worth of difference between any of them. So I guess this is Matty's equivalent of the thing Walker said a while back where he effectively said he'd declare war on Iran five seconds after he takes his hand off the Bible if he's elected President).
ReplyDeleteHe's an exceptionally inept politician, who quite possibly doesn't actually want to win (or is just that delusional . . . or this state's electorate really is just that fucked up) . . . but there are people who presumably are giving him money and will vote for him (and have done in the past). Shudder.
"Why shouldn’t taxpayers make direct decisions about how much money they want to spend on other government programs...?"
ReplyDeleteNo need to say which Libertarian Lion would opt to spend all of his tax dollars on a DARPA sex robot development project.
Hyenas work in teams and live in matriarchal societies. Certainly not the libertarian ideal.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why I've been conditioned by reality to think "deform" when I read "reform."
ReplyDeleteAnd just think of all the derivatives that can be created! Betting big bucks on if the donor dies! Betting big bucks on if the recipient dies! Securitizing dead peasant insurance and betting if the insurance companies go bankrupt! Starting up an international version of Countrywide to take the money paid the peasants for kidneys as down payments on real estate they can't afford! Creating a whole new round of CDOs on the proceeds! Creating new default swaps to hedge the dead peasant CDOs! Reverse mortgages to pay for the kidneys! And the stock boom! Why, I'll bet the IPO of Organs `R Us would top $100 billion. Gun sales would go through the roof with people trying to protect their kidneys, so tapping into the arms trade would be a good idea. And there would be so many people without health insurance and in pain that you'd have to be a fool not to deal a little smack, too, and laundering drug money has been a staple of finance for, umm, uh, a long time.
ReplyDeleteHey, this libertarian capitalism... it'sall good, man.
Not that the situation ever was better, but the federal budget used to be a bit more straightforward and understandable. Reagan really began muddying the waters back in '82 when he reclassified huge chunks of federal spending to take them "off budget" (Social Security and Medicare were the two big ones). However, he kept the tax revenues associated with those programs on-budget so as to reduce the apparent size of the federal deficit (which, you may remember, exploded to unprecedented levels as trickle-down economics was instituted).
ReplyDeleteToday, of course, SS and Medicare remain off-budget--but are used to scare people about how we have to make seniors suffer because of the debt. And wars are always off-budget because reasons, and SHUT UP!!! is why.
The people they're aiming to benefit would simply not have to pay any taxes at all, so no need to hire anyone to "do the taxes."
ReplyDeleteGiven your personal experience, you should realize by now that the only possible way to incentivize you to work is to take even more of your money and possessions away.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, I was talking to a billionaire friend of mine just the other day, and he was remarking at just how indolent and non-productive he's starting to feel. "Ya know," he said, taking another shrimp from the vat of shrimp cocktail we were enjoying on the helicopter deck of his yacht. "Ya know, I haven't had a tax cut in two years. I don't know how anyone could expect me to work when it only gets me $20 or $25 million a year AND I have to pay out $500,000 in taxes on that. It's just so demoralizing."
Mitt Romney thinks the US tax code already works like that. Back during the "Romney never pays taxes" kerfuffle during the 2012 campaign, I distinctly remember him adding the 12% he paid in federal taxes to the 10% he sends to Salt Lake City and concluding that he had an overall 22% tax rate.
ReplyDeleteVery true. We could pay someone in South Philly to not grow corn just as efficiently as we pay some farmer in East Bugtussle to not grow corn.
ReplyDeleteSame as it ever was.
ReplyDelete"We need to bump up the tax rate .001% to cover basic classroom supplies."
VOTER: "Fuck no! Whadya think we made of money?!?!?!"
"We'd like to float a bond issue for $15 million to build a new stadium for the high school football team and boost coach's salary to $150,000."
VOTER: "FUCK YEAH!!!!"
"Broprah Winfrey"
ReplyDeleteI can't tell you how much I love this image!
ReplyDeleteReally sums it up, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteSo, this dude thinks that, given individual choices, people would vote to keep our hundreds of thousands of troops overseas while cutting/doing away with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, three of the most popular government programs ever devised even though they've been the target of shills for the One Percent from their inception.
ReplyDeleteSomething tells me David Boaz doesn't get out much.
Interesting. Not sure what podcast that was. I think it was economics blogger Matt Bruenig who turned me on to the idea.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I've tried to point out to rich people about health care. Even the top 2 percent would not be able to purchase the kind of medical care they want without the enormous sums, expended on large numbers of people, that have made medical trials possible. No heart transplants.No treatments at all for many diseases. Its harsh to put it this way but,in effect, we are allguniea pigs for future medical treatments.
ReplyDeleteSo the way they willfully destroy hospitals and overprice medical school is counterproductive. In order to have those doctors and hospitals--even high end ones--when you need them you have to have had years worth of research and treatment to make them effective when the rich need them.
Thanks for the history lesson!
ReplyDeleteThe military has always been the employer of last resort. If you're lucky, you join up between wars. Otherwise . . . See, crackers, we're not so different after all!
ReplyDeleteAnd then you realized, "Holy shit, that's not shrimp!"
ReplyDeleteI wonder if "yacht" is on the list of what Kansas welfare recipients are now forbidden from owning.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of robots, I had one of those flashes of brilliance last night that was so brilliant, it scared me. This needs a movie treatment at the very least, if not a full-blown religion.
ReplyDeleteOne word: RoboChrist
It's that sweet spot where the Ole Perfesser's and Rod Dreher's interests intersect, with appeal to the monster-truck rally demographic.
He's the Transformer of Transubstantiation!
The Voltron of the Vulgate!
The Mechanical Messiah!
He was crucified when his circuits were fried by a cross-circuit but now he's back and ready to KICK. SOME. ASS. And this time, he's never going away, bitches!
Makes me think of that disgusting investment-house ad where granny is hang-gliding on her 95th birthday because all of her life decisions worked out just fine ("Life well planned!") and nothing, obviously, ever went wrong. Good thing she wasn't ready to retire in 2007 or so (even given her dead husband's generous life insurance payout).
ReplyDeleteThey made that move twice and both times it was called Robocop.
ReplyDeleteUpvote for blasphemy.
ReplyDeleteHe died to forgive our Sims.
ReplyDeleteWhen the Zombie Apocalypse comes, you'll wish you had coverage.
ReplyDeleteHeh, indeedy!
ReplyDeletea government funded by the whims of its tax payers
ReplyDeleteWait, aren't Libertarians always squealing about taxpayers who vote themselves largesse from the public coffers and suchlike?
And yet on this scheme they would let their Enlightened Self-Interest prevail and fund the government fully?
SOMEONE is taking the piss here. Or maybe he just hasn't fucking thought through his own Great Idea.
Teh Google and his prophet Wikipedius are your friends.
ReplyDelete*sharpens cleaver*
ReplyDeleteHe, uh, white or dark meat?
???
ReplyDeleteDo you mean the taxes we pay? You do know that people on Social Security pay for Medicare Part B?
ReplyDeleteAmong the things I've noticed about libertarians, their grasp of reality is tenuous, and irony is a lost cause.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure that a significant portion of the electorate believes their tax money gets dumped into a general "paying black people to sit around on their asses" fund, while military spending simply appears out of thin air, the way the ancients once believed that fish were spontaneously generated by the water around them.
ReplyDeleteI'm seeing $500+ billion a year for dope and hookers.
ReplyDeleteThe cool thing is, there'd be a road from the Pacific coast to California's eastern border, and you'd have to walk the rest of the way to Maryland.
ReplyDelete