So it seems like you're tacitly arguing for social stratification. At least if you want the end goal to be happier citizens. And that's interesting because I've never really heard an argument for social stratification couched in terms of personal happiness, even for those at the bottom. As for the public policy lesson... it's mind-bending that the issue, as you describe it, seems to be that people don't see tax dollars being spent in a way that's benefitting them, so they assume assholes in charge are up to no good, and then get more distrustful of government. Your point being that people are mindful of what government is and is not providing for them. Yet, Sam Brownback and the GOP got to run their Republican experiment for the people of Kansas without their hands being tied in any way by no-good Democrats, the result of which is the state is imploding, businesses and residents are fleeing, social services are being cut, people are being kicked off Medicaid, the sky is falling... And yet, these people still vote Republican (Brownback was reelected in 2014) As you’ve probably guessed, that model collapsed. Like the budget plans of every Republican presidential candidate, Brownback’s “real live experiment” proceeded from the hypothesis that tax cuts for the wealthy are such a boon to economic growth, they actually end up paying for themselves (so long as you kick the undeserving poor out of their welfare hammocks). Backers of the budget touted projections from the Kansas Policy Institute, which predicted it would generate $323 million in new local revenues by 2018. But marginal gains at the municipal level were dwarfed by the $688 million loss that Brownback’s budget wrought in its first year of operation.* Meanwhile, Kansas’s job growth actually trailed that of its neighboring states. With that nearly $700 million deficit, the state had bought itself a 1.1 percent increase in jobs, just below Missouri’s 1.5 percent and Colorado’s 3.3. (There's more in that article about the GOP experiment in Louisiana led by Bobby Jindal -- more aggravating analysis about the state legislature giving the largest tax cut in its history while the rest of Louisiana disintegrates.) My point in bringing that up is: the public policy lesson you mentioned, where socialism is doomed to fail because people can't objectively evaluate its impacts, seems doubly doomed to fail. Evidently, a strikingly large percentage of Republicans not only don't want help in the form of a socialist safety net, but also are eager for rich men to get richer at their expense. So Democrats trying to take credit for helping the poor? Visibly and vocally connecting the taxes people pay with the improvement of society around them? It would fall on deaf ears.Because the observation that they're all relatively happy is contingent on where they're anchoring their self-worth. If the barback gets to hang out for a day with the CEO he's going to realize that he's working hella harder for a fuckton less money and it's not going to make him pleased. Meanwhile the CEO is going to realize that poor people make him uncomfortable because goddamn it, Jerry down the street bought a Viper so it's not like he's a bad person and he doesn't think he should feel guilty for wanting a Tesla because it's zero emissions, for god's sake!
In 2010, the tea-party wave put Sam Brownback into the Sunflower State’s governor’s mansion and Republican majorities in both houses of its legislature. Together, they implemented the conservative movement’s blueprint for Utopia: They passed massive tax breaks for the wealthy and repealed all income taxes on more than 100,000 businesses. They tightened welfare requirements, privatized the delivery of Medicaid, cut $200 million from the education budget, eliminated four state agencies and 2,000 government employees. In 2012, Brownback helped replace the few remaining moderate Republicans in the legislature with conservative true believers. The following January, after signing the largest tax cut in Kansas history, Brownback told the Wall Street Journal, “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, 'See, we've got a different way, and it works.' "
I'm not arguing for social stratification - I'm arguing that the question "are you happy?" carries an implied "compared to what?" with it. Social Studies 101 demonstrates that the larger your middle class, the more "happiness" markers you will see in that society and that the less visible unfairness, the less unrest. Check it - simply making coach passengers walk through first class increases the likelihood of an air rage incident by a factor of four. And let's be honest - "air travel" is an upper-middle class thing to begin with. Those in-flight magazines are not selling to people in lower tax brackets, period. You can structure a society such that the disadvantaged never meet with the advantaged. That's what we end up with absent external controls. Serfdom and kinghood is our natural state. Market forces predict that. Which is exactly what Kansas and Louisiana demonstrate - when you let the rich dictate where the money goes, the rich get richer and the poor get destitute. THAT'S my point - the barback is more likely to be "happy" these days because the opportunity to be anything but a barback is becoming more and more abstract. My broader point is that the socialists/liberal democrats have been letting the Republicans and neoconservatives drive the narrative on "taxes" for so long that it's taken as gospel truth that we have always been at war with Eastasia. When your taxes are literally negative and you think you're paying too much, you've been completely indoctrinated into a mindset that touches reality in no places.
I think this helps to highlight a big problem in tax policy though. Namely, that almost every state, including all the Bluest Blues (including in CA, where they're set to increase tobacco taxes once again), have regressive tax structures. Therefore, even when the fed is only charging you payroll and you're getting the EIC, you might still be paying as high as 15% at home. What does a rate payer care where the money is going. They only see that their paycheck isn't going as far as they think it should, because it's getting eaten up at an incredible rate by The State.When your taxes are literally negative and you think you're paying too much, you've been completely indoctrinated into a mindset that touches reality in no places.
That's an excellent point. Regressive taxation, even if those funds are efficiently redistributed, still does a fair amount of damage to the perception of taxes as a means to level the playing field for the dispossessed. Now we just have to convince rich people to take on a larger share of their income as a tax burden! That should be simple. /s
It's not so simple though. Sin taxes kill the poor, but how do we eliminate them without encouraging the behavior once again? Smoking has decreased a lot since taxes have been raised and raised again, which, although shitty for the welfare recipients who smoke, is probably a net benefit to the economy, since smoking is such a public health boondoggle. There's no way to make those taxes not hit poor people. The key is finding a way to reinvest the money in the communities who need it. Unfortunately, that's not how we've chosen to allocate resources. The lottery situation is well known, where legislatures promise big gains, but then just end up cutting the general fund in response to higher revenues; that has happened across the board in every region and political persuasion. I think sin taxes are only effective if the money is specifically earmarked for reinvestment in communities. It's a terrible shame that it's just so easy to raise revenue by upping the tobacco tax, or introducing a soda tax or whatever. These are real problems that taxes can help solve, but only if they're applied in a way that helps the people that are paying the tax.
An unlocked copy of the paper was mentioned on StatsBlogs.simply making coach passengers walk through first class increases the likelihood of an air rage incident by a factor of four
You're right that it's taken as near gospel that taxes serve pretty much no function but to impede job creation. How could socialists/liberal democrats change that narrative? That seems like a mighty important chore.
I honestly don't know. Obamacare hasn't done much for Obama's approval rating even though it's provided health insurance for a giant chunk of the country. On the other hand, Bush gave $300 to everybody in June 2001 and it didn't do much for him either. Something did, though. http://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/cvfspjk4hesmzts2bc0brg.gif I'm afraid there's a much bigger policy lesson there.