Welfare For The Wealthy

My wife works in an upscale restaurant these days. We are fortunate that Washington does not allow the draconian wage of $2.13/hour established by federal law. $8/hour, while certainly not generous, makes it easier to endure a slow shift and the miserliness of some patrons. Rich patrons, in particular. She recently had the pleasure of serving, on two different occasions, members of a family that owns a large, well-known, national winery. At the end of one meal, the patriarch pulled her aside and slipped her what he clearly thought was a very generous tip. With a wink and a big-spender smile, he discreetly handed her $20 on his $110 check. Just to be clear, that's 18%. That's not a rude tip, by any means, but it certainly isn't worthy of any ostentatiousness. 


While the tipping behaviors of the wealthy are worthy of much discussion, I have a different point to make. The same gentleman I mentioned above was also treated to complimentary drinks, appetizers, and desserts by the owner of the restaurant. This is customary. A nice couple sitting across the room noticed that night. They were "nobodies" for whom this was probably their big splurge of the month. They were sad to have had their own insignificance affirmed by the comparative treatment of the elite. The still tipped my wife 20%.


Wealth and status are rewarded with free stuff everywhere they go. The more you have, the more you get. This is the great, hidden welfare doled out to the wealthy. Or, if you prefer, it is a tax on the rest of us, as our hard-earned dollars are redistributed upward in the form of complimentary swag. Consider the well-known Oscar bags tucked under the seats of the rich and famous each year. That's just the most conspicuous example. Even when they're not getting shit for free, they're paying less for it. Your mortgage broker is charging you a higher rate of interest so they can charge the rich less. 


I don't point this out because I think this petty little practice should or will stop. I simply want to call bullshit on the notion that wealth is every truly redistributed downward. It isn't. Corporate welfare - in the form of subsidies, tax breaks, and bailouts - has long dwarfed social welfare. The taxes of the middle class have built the infrastructure that has made commerce possible for the "job creators." The small retirement investments of regular people have made it possible for millionaires to make money with money.


Enough pretending that the unwealthy are a drain on wealthy. They have what they have because of us and only because of us. 

Thoughts on the Execution of Troy Davis

The following two observations have been made frequently in the hours leading up to last night's murder of Troy Davis by the state of Georgia.

• It is profoundly hypocritical for "pro-lifers" to be so pro-death with regards to the death penalty.
• Conservatives seem to think that government is terrible at everything except killing people.

It occurs to me that each of these arguments is vulnerable to a simple inversion from the other side of the debate. I think it is worth pointing out why such reversals would not be potent.

A death penalty advocate (the sort that might, for example, cheer at the mere mention of executing 234 people) might ask "How can someone be against the execution of a cold-blooded killer but for the murder of innocent babies in the womb?" This sounds like a valid question. It is not. Here's why: Opposition to abortion is rooted in a mystical belief that a spiritual being is created the moment egg meets sperm and that only God Almighty has the right to take the life of that being. This explains their concomitant opposition to euthanasia, but leaves open the question of why mortals are permitted to make an exception in the case of capital punishment.

Some of us are not burdened by such otherworldly gobbledy-gook. (I won't get into a protracted argument about the ethics of abortion here, but if you're interested, you are invited to read a paper I recently wrote for a course in Biomedical Ethics - The Inherent Mysticism of Arguments Against Abortion.) While there are certainly those who oppose the death penalty on spiritual grounds, one need not have any religious belief to oppose the practice. In the case of Troy Davis, opposition was rooted primarily in concerns about justice. There was simply "too much doubt," as to whether Troy Davis had actually committed the act for which he was ostensibly being murdered by the state of Georgia. Note that in the case of abortion, there is no question of justice. No claim is being made against the fetus that may or may not be true. 


So while it may be incredibly heart-wrenching to consider the possibility of Troy Davis's innocence, legitimate opposition to his execution can be as mechanical as a procedural concern about the functionality of our justice system - or even a selfish desire to protect oneself from a similar fate. One cannot protect oneself from abortion retroactively. One can, however, work to protect oneself from ultimate injustice by opposing the imposition of death by a capricious and fallible system.


The second argument is simpler. A death penalty advocate might wonder "If liberals think the government is so perfect, why don't they trust it to execute murderers?" Whereas today's conservatives argue that government is uniformly incompetent and oppressive, liberals simply believe that government CAN do good. We no more believe that government is perfect than that all corporations are uniformly evil. Government gets lots of things wrong - and we want to fix those things. Corporations do a lot of things well - and we think that's just great. We have no orthodoxy dictating universal truths to us. We just want things to work well and fairly. Many individuals have been convicted of crimes for which they were later exonerated. Some of them have been on death row. Yes, the death penalty takes a life. More importantly though, it eliminates the possibility of righting a wrong.

9/20/11 Miscellany

I'm going to try something new here. In my efforts to absorb as much information as possible, I read a lot and stumble across a lot of great material. My tendency in the past has been to either share full articles via Facebook/Twitter or try to develop one particular thought into a full essay for this blog. Unfortunately, that allows a lot of interesting stuff to slip through the cracks. I would like to try compiling excerpts and miscellaneous personal thoughts into posts and see where that leads. Let me know what you think... 


First, a few interesting tidbits from the October 2011 issue of Harper's: 


Harper's Index 
Percentage of the current U.S. debt that was accumulated during Republican presidential terms: 71
Portion of debt-ceiling elevations since 1960 that have been signed into law by Republican presidents: 2/3
Percentage of profits American corporations paid in taxes in 1961: 40.6 
Today: 10.5


Findings
Narcissists appear to be good leaders but aren't.
That finding was not sourced, but I did a little digging and found this study which says:

Those who love themselves and have vast self-confidence often impress others with their self-belief, dominance and authority, leading them to climb the career ladder effortlessly.

However, scientists have discovered that while narcissists are convincing leaders, they are so consumed by their own brilliance that it actually cripples their creativity and often causes them to make bad decisions.

Pennies From Heaven
There's also a terrifying essay by Chris Lehmann on the influence of the Mormon church on GOP economic policy, particularly with regard to the worship of precious metals. It includes this reality check:

By 1992, in fact, the economy was in a deep recession. In response, the Reagan Administration taxed and spent its way out of that slump via Keynesian-style deficit outlays for ballooning defense budgets and a 1982 tax increase - measures that would make hard-money conservatives woozy with acute cognitive dissonance, if they could bring themselves to acknowledge that they ever took place.

Nausea
An excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre's seminal novel:

Something is beginning in order to end: adventure does not let itself be drawn out; it only makes sense when dead. I am drawn, irrevocably, towards this death which is perhaps mine as well. Each instant appears only as part of a sequence. I cling to each instant with all my heart: I know that it is unique, irreplacaeble - and yet I would not raise a finger to stop it from being annihilated. This last moment I am spending - in Berlin, in London - in the arms of a woman casually met two days ago - moment I love passionately, woman I may adore - all is going to end, I know it. Soon I shall leave for another country. I shall never rediscover either this woman or this night. I grasp at each second, trying to suck it dry: nothing happens which I do not seize, which I do not fix forever in myself, nothing, neither the fugitive tenderness of those lovely eyes, nor the noises of the street, nor the false dawn of early morning: and even so the minute passes and I do not hold it back, I like to see it pass. 

All of a sudden something breaks off sharply. The adventure is over, time resumes its daily routine. I turn; behind me, this beautiful melodious form sinks entirely into the past. It grows smaller, contracts as it declines, and now the end makes one with the beginning. Following this gold spot with my eyes I think I would accept - even if I had to risk death, lose a fortune, a friend - to live it all over again, in the same circumstances, from end to end. But and adventure never returns nor is prolonged.
...
I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

Questions
And now a few of my own thoughts:


There was an uproar this week over Dr. Oz's revelation on his show that there is arsenic in apple juice. First, millions of moms all of over America who no longer have Oprah to turn to in the afternoons freaked the hell out and swore to never buy apple juice again. (Kids rejoiced at the replacement drink: Mountain Dew.) Then, the FDA struck back and said they'd been testing apple juice for years and that there is no danger to anyone from drinking the stuff, whether it be from China or the U.S.


This seems to me a striking inversion of the typical government vs. free market debate. After all, Dr. Oz may well, in his capacity as a capitalistic television personality and entrepreneur, have unnecessarily hurt the juice industry, which could easily cause financial harm and job losses. It was the FDA - a government agency - that rose to the defense of the industry, possibly staving off those losses. So what say you, conservatives, to this interesting little switcheroo? Is the government always the bogeyman? Can it, on occasion, do some good and actually help the economy? Can the free market sometimes shoot itself in the foot without the guiding hand of government regulation and oversight?


Also...I was thinking about patents. I can't pretend to understand the system well, but I know that patents do expire, at which point generic imitators are free to storm the barricades and start reaping profits from the ingenuity of others. I'm sincerely wondering how capitalists justify this. Do all of you tea partiers out there refrain from saving money by buying generic products? Ayn Rand would certainly frown upon such looting. Still, it is probably good for the economy, in the sense that jobs are created and money is made by the plagiarists. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the capitalists behind these mimicking corporations are died-in-the-wool fiscal conservatives, in direct contravention of their actions. In any event, I think that all Ron Paul-style conservatives should immediately cease purchasing any product that is not manufactured and sold by the originator of that product. 

The Real Death Panels

There may or may not be atheists in foxholes, but I'm quite sure there are no Republicans among the ranks of the sick and uninsured. Watch this:

Okay, a few things...

First, I'd like to know how it is exactly that churches "take care of" those who are uninsured and sick. Do they use magical Jesus dollars? Do they skip the health care system altogether by performing miracles? No. They use cash that has been tithed by their congregations. A sort of "church tax," if you will. One way or another, cash money is required to provide for those who are in need.

It simply does not make sense to deride the risks taken by someone like the man in Wolf Blitzer's example and say that the government shouldn't take care of them...but churches should. Ron Paul usually has the courage of his convictions, which in this case would dictate an answer of "Yes, he should be left to die." It is the only intellectually consistent position to take. Either fellow citizens should pick up the tab for those who can't or we should not. Churches, governments, whatever. Live free or die. Right?

So let's say you want to take that respectably consistent, hard-line position. There's still a problem: It just doesn't make economic sense, even if it comports with your deepest convictions about liberty. The U.S. now ranks 36th in life expectancy. For that distinction, we pay a whole lot more than countries with higher life expectancies.

Source: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (2010), "OECD Health Data", OECD Health Statistics (database). doi: 10.1787/data-00350-en (Accessed on 14 February 2011).

EVERY country on that chart ranks ahead of us in life expectancy. EVERY country on that chart has a universal health care system of one sort or another. The first four (those who spend the least per capita) have single payer systems. Seven out of the fourteen have single payer systems. So while I understand the foundational principles that form the basis of your ideology on this issue, I cannot understand your willingness to let every single American throw away thousands of dollars each year to uphold those principles.

Then again, maybe I do understand it. Those voices shouting "Yeah!" in response to Blitzer's question about letting the uninsured man die explain everything. The Tea Party movement is not so much about freedom as it is about making sure that no one gets anything they haven't earned through blood, sweat, and tears. They can't stand the thought that anyone is getting anything for "free" - especially people who don't go to their church. In order to make sure that no freeloading son-of-a-bitch ever sees a dime of their hard-earned money, they are actually willing to pay a premium. They would rather go on paying almost three times more for health care than the Japanese, for example, just to guarantee that some downtrodden waste-of-life doesn't get emergency care for free. In a sense, they are willing to pay the health care industry to let needy people die. Their steadfastness would be admirable if it wasn't so fucking stupid and self-defeating.

The Great Republican Victory

Can we all agree that Republicans have had unprecedented success in preventing the Obama administration from achieving most, if not all, of its loftiest aspirations? Even before the 2010 midterms, Republicans were remarkably successful in getting health care reform watered down to a point that one might question whether it was worth the struggle in the first place. Since then...well, we all know what things have been like since then.

Now this all probably sounds a little obvious, but I want to make sure that I'm not making any unilateral presumptions. I don't know many Democrats who aren't frustrated by the repeated capitulations: the abandonment of the public option, the debt ceiling deal, the scheduling of an address to Congress, and so on. So I can only assume that Republicans are proud of their string of defensive victories. After all, John Boehner said he got 98% of what he wanted in the debt ceiling negotiations. It is hard to imagine greater success in blocking the agenda of any president. Right? So, congratulations to the GOP on defending their ideals and preventing President Obama from enacting any meaningful policy during his first term!

So, here's my question for Republicans: How exactly do you get off blaming Barack Obama for the continued stagnation of our economy? After all, none of his socialistic, job-killing ideology has actually been imposed upon the nation. You defended America and made sure of that, right? You've gotten almost everything you've wanted out of nearly every major legislative debate. Of the very few bills you haven't killed outright, you've successfully negotiated the terms down to a version that you might as well have written yourselves. Hell, you even forced a deficit reduction bill by holding the debt ceiling hostage. So how can it possibly be Barack Obama's fault that unemployment remains above nine percent while the economy flounders?

Even if you want to argue that we'd be better off if we passed a conservative's wet dream proposal for pulling us out of this crisis, you cannot rationally argue that liberal policy has failed - because you have successfully prevented the implementation of liberal policy. You have, at the very least, put us in neutral by preventing meaningful action of any sort. It could be argued, however, that you have effectively actuated what would have been the conservative response to this economic crisis, in which case it is your economic policy that has failed, not Barack Obama's. If John Boehner got 98% of what he wanted from a negotiation your party forced, it is hard to draw any other conclusion.

So the best you can do at this point - if you have any interest in remaining the least bit intellectually consistent - is to argue that Barack Obama should have allowed the GOP to guide the ship of state through this crisis, writing all of the pertinent legislation, cutting whatever taxes you deem necessary, eliminating any regulations you deem cumbersome, guiding us to the promised land of renewed economic prosperity. I'm sorry to tell you that government simply doesn't work that way - unless, of course, you want to allow Democrats to take the helm when you're in the White House. You cannot expect an elected Democrat to act like an orthodox Republican (unless he's Ben Nelson). As I often tell my four year old, you don't get whatever you want whenever you want it. Sorry.

In this case, not only have you not gotten whatever you wanted, you have ultimately guaranteed that no one has really gotten anything they wanted. While you may be proud of that, since you imagine liberal policy to be an unimaginable evil that America must be protected from (election results be damned), you have held us in this economic purgatory. Maybe Republican ideals would have improved the situation, but Republicans don't hold the White House or the Senate, so that's a null point. Maybe Democratic ideals would have improved the situation. Who knows? Better yet, maybe true negotiated compromise would have improved the situation. We'll never know. In any event, the one thing you cannot argue is that Barack Obama's policies have failed. What policies? His policy of not letting the GOP rule by fiat?

Again, congratulations on your remarkable political success these last few years. You have spared America the horror of liberal rule. The continued economic calamity being suffered by millions of Americans is a bright, shining testament to your steadfast courageousness.