tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20484137757354402362024-03-19T16:01:37.156-07:0021st CentristNew Ideas, New Century, New ConsensusRod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-37398877542103454322013-04-15T12:21:00.001-07:002013-04-15T13:32:01.762-07:00Can Tax Cuts Beat Global Warming? My Tax Day Interview<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Most people hate paying taxes, especially today, Tax Day. So p</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">lease check out and share my Tax Day interview below with <a href="http://nobleprofit.org/nobleprofit-moment-with-rod-richardson-green-energy-tax-cuts-can-they-help-beat-global-warming/" target="_blank">NobleProfit</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">'s awesome CEO, Amy Seidman, for thoughts on how to save the planet by giving taxpayers a break on green energy investments.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/7B3pfmgdb5Y" width="560"></iframe></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Here is the YouTube Link: <a href="http://youtu.be/7B3pfmgdb5Y" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://youtu.be/7B3pfmgdb5Y</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Here is the CSRwire link: <a href="http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/801-noble-profit-can-green-energy-tax-cuts-help-beat-global-warming">http://www.csrwire.com/blog/posts/801-noble-profit-can-green-energy-tax-cuts-help-beat-global-warming</a></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;">Here is a version of the accompanying <a href="http://nobleprofit.org/nobleprofit-moment-with-rod-richardson-green-energy-tax-cuts-can-they-help-beat-global-warming/" target="_blank">NobleProfit article</a>:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><b>NobleProfit Interview with Rod Richardson: Can Tax Cuts Beat Global Warming?</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;"><br />Most people hate paying taxes, especially today, Tax Day. In this video interview, Rod Richardson, the blogger behind Green Energy Tax Cuts, puts forward a planet-and-taxpayer-friendly idea: fight global warming by eliminating all taxes on green energy investments. Rod argues this will lead to a massive influx of new investment in clean energy, and produce less pain and more prosperity than any existing policy alternative, with an appeal across party lines... because it won't cost taxpayers a dime.<br /><br />The Green Energy Tax Cuts proposal fuses a traditionally liberal passion about global warming and clean energy with a traditionally conservative love of tax cuts and supply side economic policy. In this interview, Rod explains some of the barriers to liberals and conservatives coming together on this issue, and shows a possible avenue toward political consensus. He also explains why it is painless and far more effective to grow the clean energy sector rapidly by eliminating all investment, capital gains and estate taxes on green energy. Doing so would attract billions in new investment to successful business models, while other more punitive and costly approaches ultimately promote failure and attract opposition.</span></span>Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-77762625357789170052012-12-12T11:45:00.001-08:002012-12-12T11:45:39.516-08:00Why We Are (Probably) Leaping Off the Fiscal Cliff<br />
It seems to me highly likely that both Republicans and Democrats will, by design and mutual agreement, allow the federal government to go over the fiscal cliff. <br />
<br />
It won't be by accident, or because they could not agree on a deal.<br />
<br />
It will happen (probably) because doing a deal will be easier AFTER we fly over the fiscal cliff.<br />
<br />
The reason is simple. Most Republican's have signed <a href="http://www.atr.org/taxpayer-protection-pledge" target="_blank">Grover Norquist's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge"</a> to never raise income taxes. Tax rates today are lower than they will be on January 1, 2013, if we go over the fiscal cliff.<br />
<br />
Therefore, if a deal is made and signed into law today that involves setting tax rates at a rate anywhere between today's rates and the Jan. 1 rates, it is a tax hike, and violates the pledge.<br />
<br />
However, if the exact same deal is made on January 2, 2013, then it is a tax cut, and does not violate the pledge.<br />
<br />
No Republican wants the stigma of having violated the pledge. Yet they realize that the Democrats and Obama simply will not agree to a deal without some tax increase, and the Republicans will take a large share of the blame if they do not find a compromise that raises some tax revenue. They can dodge both bullets if they wait after Jan. 1 to sign any deal into law.<br />
<br />
Obama, I believe, realizes this, and prefers to have a negotiating partner that can more easily agree to a tax increase above today's rates. So he too may be more than willing to let the New Year pass without signing a fix into law.<br />
<br />
Mind you the deal may happen before the New Year. But I doubt anything will become law until January 2 or later.<br />
<br />
But what should the deal be? Stay tuned for the next 21st Centrist post, where we lay it all out...Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-69963879664725455672012-12-02T20:34:00.000-08:002012-12-03T00:33:58.116-08:00So-Called "Balance" and the Fiscal Cliff<br />
Here at 21stCentrist, balance matters. <br />
<br />
So I pay attention when I hear folks talk about balance. It comes up a great deal with the fiscal cliff. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://bangordailynews.com/2011/07/10/opinion/balanced-budget-amendment-needed-now-more-than-ever/" target="_blank">Some deficit hawks insist we need to balance the budget</a>. President Obama and the Democrats disagree, and instead insist on a "balanced approach" to deficit reduction, meaning, per their latest proposals, $1.6 trillion in tax hikes, plus $400 billion in yet-to-be-agreed spending cuts. (Apparently, there is a new definition for "balanced:" utterly lopsided.)<br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
It seems both sides use the word "balance" to give an appearance of prudence and fairness. But they are not saying the same thing. In fact, they are at opposite extremes.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Balance is not such a simple thing. It requires a real grasp of complex forces pushing against each other. A sailor, for instance, has to intuitively balance wind, water, helm and sails – each against the others, each with unique force characteristics – in order to keep a true course and even keel. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Taxes, spending, debt and investment flows are all like the various forces and physical systems a sailor faces at sea, each with different strengths, effects and characteristics. The effect on the economy of $1 of tax does NOT equal the effect of $1 of spending. Government debt has an effect on private investment, but not 1:1. So balance in fiscal governance and economics consists in understanding the differences in these flows, how they act on each other, and applying that knowledge with finesse, trimming taxes and spending, as a sailor trims sails and heading, to keep the national finances and economy on a even keel.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Economists are only just beginning to understand the interplay of these forces. New research is reversing text-book economics on some key points, and refining our understanding of the impact of debt, taxes, and spending.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
Three key pieces of new research in particular have a lot to say about how these forces play out, and how we should best handle the debt/fiscal cliff problem. Here they are in brief, with links and a headline each:<br />
<br />
<b>1) Set a Safe Debt Target: Keep Debt Well Below 90% of GDP At All Costs.</b><br />
<br />
Economists <a href="http://www.reinhartandrogoff.com/" target="_blank">Reinhart and Rogoff, authors of This Time It Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly</a>, have produced <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/kenneth-rogoff-carmen-reinhart-sovereign-debt-2010-8" target="_blank">compelling evidence, based on centuries of economic data, that debt levels over 90% of GDP either trigger or are associated with shrinking GDP</a>. That means hardship for everyone. There is some debate about which causes which, or if it is a vicious cycle. That hardly matters, says Rogoff. The risks of something going wrong are just too great at that level, so it is prudent to stay well below it.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoVu2n1diVB0gzdMA7DjDhYPg0NnHuIONW0wpiaGbWw9Yns4F9e1aMLr5h-hqR5_2IHHbSNwaIZAwopJsk2CxD2UsoH9SWCoAZWrgR5GYNTOI0rrQNVT9hEB5CI0RICkpe1Q3KR_FbgbE/s1600/90%25+debt+to+GDP+Chart.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoVu2n1diVB0gzdMA7DjDhYPg0NnHuIONW0wpiaGbWw9Yns4F9e1aMLr5h-hqR5_2IHHbSNwaIZAwopJsk2CxD2UsoH9SWCoAZWrgR5GYNTOI0rrQNVT9hEB5CI0RICkpe1Q3KR_FbgbE/s320/90%25+debt+to+GDP+Chart.png" width="291" /></a></div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.theburningplatform.com/?tag=kenneth-rogoff" target="_blank">Total US Federal debt stood at about 97% of GDP in 2011</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Measuring_debt_relative_to_gross_domestic_product" target="_blank">Wikipedia reports as of Feb. 2012, total public debt for all levels so government stood at 115%</a> of GDP... and still growing! (Yikes!!) So we are definitely into and above the 90% danger zone with our debt levels, however you want to look at them. And, as predicted, no surprise, we are now experiencing slowing growth.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ6v26A-8LJpqaZ31IeelS-n7jYcg9gGdKS6y8US4T2oeo5Xa5W55f5-ASzU65buKyyTtHkmyMyv_iDzWyz6aCYp4udaJLu0qH5yIcm2wRQ8t4UILujNCBHNcDNWc61YxiYZt1mro2YPU/s1600/Total+Public+Debt+to+GDP.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZ6v26A-8LJpqaZ31IeelS-n7jYcg9gGdKS6y8US4T2oeo5Xa5W55f5-ASzU65buKyyTtHkmyMyv_iDzWyz6aCYp4udaJLu0qH5yIcm2wRQ8t4UILujNCBHNcDNWc61YxiYZt1mro2YPU/s320/Total+Public+Debt+to+GDP.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Rogoff and Reinhart's research presents a compelling, evidence-based middle ground between those who argue for balanced budgets, and those who say debt does not matter, so spend freely. But as the above chart shows, even "safe" levels of debt can expand rapidly, given the right mix of wars, recessions and financial crises... and that is nothing compared to what could happen if interest rates begin to rise above 15% as they did in the 1970's. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In the short term, we need to get back under the 90% mark as soon as possible, say within three years. But that is achievable, and reasonable. In order to fix our debt problem permanently, Congress needs to pick a target 10 years out for Federal debt as a percent of GDP, probably ≤ 50%, so that in the event of a national emergency, there is room to take on debt without going into the danger zone. The US need to adopt a 10 year debt/deficit reduction plan to reach that goal, and thereafter stay in that zone where debt ≤ 50% of GDP (or a rolling average thereof) absent a national emergency.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<b>(2) Do What Hurts Less: Cut Spending, Because </b><b>Tax Hikes Hurt 3x More</b></div>
<br />
So if a balanced budget is not necessarily the only path to stable prosperity, what about Obama's "balanced approach" to deficit reduction? The argument sounds reasonable: since the spending cuts we need hurt the poor and middle class most, we must tax the rich more, to be fair, so they share some of the pain.<br />
<br />
The problem with this argument is the assumption that taxes on the rich only effect the rich. Is that true? And if there is an effect on everybody else, is it really a toss-up between tax hikes and spending cuts as to which is more painful?<br />
<br />
Those questions were answered decisively <a href="http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/11/which_hurts_mor.html" target="_blank">by a recent IMF study. Tax hikes reduce GDP 3x more than spending cuts. As reported by Garrett Jones of George Mason University</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px;">"</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 16px;">The economists looked at 173 "fiscal consolidations" in rich countries, times when governments decided to reduce the long-run deficit. They then checked to see whether consolidations based mostly on tax hikes turned out better or worse than ones based on spending cuts (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 16px;"><i>Inside baseball: </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 16px;">They followed a version of the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 16px;"><a href="http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10964.pdf" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #4444be; text-decoration: none;">Romer and Romer</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 16px;"> event study methodology, but applied it to exogenous-looking fiscal tightening instead of exogenous-looking monetary tightening)</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; line-height: 16px;"> </span></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Here's my favorite graph...[] It shows what happens to consumer spending and real output after the two different kinds of fiscal tightenings. Time in years on the x-axis, percentage changes in spending on the y-axis:</span><br />
<span class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;"><img alt="ExpansionaryAusterity.JPG" class="mt-image-none" height="394" src="http://econlog.econlib.org/Jones/ExpansionaryAusterity.JPG" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial;" width="466" /> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image" style="display: inline;"></span>"Both GDP and consumer spending tell the same story: Spending cuts are the less painful path to fiscal rectitude. When countries tried to get right with the bond markets, this IMF study found that nations that mostly raised taxes suffered about twice as much as nations that mostly cut spending. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We might want to meditate on Figure 9 out here in the reality-based community, since both the U.S. and Europe will be spending some time this fall wrestling with how to get our fiscal houses in order. A benevolent social planner would like to take the least-cost path to solvency, a path probably based on spending cuts and loose money. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>"Keynesian Coda: </b>Notice that the graphs are saying that the tax multiplier is<i>bigger </i>than the spending multiplier, at least in these settings. Quite the opposite of undergraduate Keynesianism. This isn't the final word on the matter, but if you'd like to see another study of multipliers that doesn't fit neatly into the Keynesian box--and written by top New Keynesians--check out the abstract and conclusion of <a href="http://www.terry.uga.edu/~last/classes/8130/readings/blanchard_perotti.pdf" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial; color: #4444be; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;">this paper</a> by Blanchard and Perotti." </span></blockquote>
<div>
This is just one of several recent empirical studies suggesting that taxes are actually the strong fiscal force, and spending the weak fiscal force, either for stimulus or debt reduction. The new evidence finds tax cuts give the economy a bigger lift than the same amount of spending, and tax hikes depress the economy more than spending cuts, which is the opposite of textbook Keynesian theory. (<a href="http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/search?q=tax+multiplier" target="_blank">Greg Mankiw, Chariman of the Harvard Economics Department, gives a good overview of the new research here.</a>)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>3) Do What Works: Cut Spending... It Works, While Tax Hikes Historically Fail.</b></div>
<div>
<b><br /></b></div>
<div>
If tax hikes significantly hurt the economy, it is possible that GDP and tax revenues will actually fall despite – or because of – a tax hike. In which case, an attempt to reduce debt via tax hikes would fail, while the nation suffers more and more. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<a href="http://mercatus.org/expert_commentary/give-spending-cuts-chance" target="_blank">In fact, this is pretty much the sad truth, as economist Veronique de Rugy points out</a>:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"></span><br />
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"><img src="http://cdn.washingtonexaminer.biz/cache/w620-e803e3ff1b759d28b7f6ca401cd0ad32.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;">
</span>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; line-height: 17px;">"Over the years, many economists have looked at what other countries facing our current debt problems have done. A review of the academic literature on this issue shows that successful debt reduction measures are mostly made of spending cuts rather than a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. For instance, in a new paper, “The Design of Fiscal Adjustments,” Harvard economists Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna provide yet new more evidence that fiscal consolidation based mostly on the spending side are more likely to lead to a permanent and long-lasting reduction in debt-to-GDP.</span> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"As Kevin Hassett and Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute have shown, a staggering eight of every 10 attempts by countries to reduce their debt-to-GDP ratios are failures. This means that even in a time of crisis (or especially in a time of crisis), lawmakers prefer politics over solid, pro-growth policy. The United States seems poised to do the same. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"What is the impact of spending cuts or tax increases on the economy? First, agreement among economists on the impact of budget cuts on growth is far from being settled. However, a few lessons have emerged. Fiscal adjustments achieved through spending cuts rather than tax increases are less recessionary than those achieved through tax increases. Alesina and Ardagna's research also reveals that private investment tends to react more positively to spending-based adjustments. Thus, they argue that spending cuts are more sustainable and effective in reducing debt and raising economic growth; thus expansionary fiscal policy becomes possible again. </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The bottom line is that Obama's "balanced approach" more closely resembles the historic failures -- the fiscal adjustments that don't successfully reduce a nation's debt-to-GDP ratio. What's more, history reveals that the balanced approach generally results in tax increases but rarely delivers on the spending cuts. That's unfortunate, considering that if the government could actually collect $1.6 trillion over 10 years from tax increases, this amount still wouldn't be enough to fill in the projected $6 trillion cumulative deficit over the period."</span></blockquote>
</div>
<div>
So Obama's approach is not only entirely unbalanced, it is exactly the wrong thing: hiking taxes a lot and cutting spending a little sets us up for failure and disaster. We need to do the exact opposite, at least in broad outline, if we want to reduce suffering, raise the general prosperity and erase the debt successfully.<br />
<br />
But that is just a broad outline. None of this, by the way, is to say we can't raise some taxes and some revenue, but it is a question only of how to do it in a manner that most promotes prosperity and not contraction. So too, how one cuts spending will make all the difference between cheating millions of vulnerable poor out of promised benefits, and reforming the structure of those benefits so they become sustainable, reliable and an incentive to responsibility and prosperity. True balance in cutting the debt -- balance between maximizing prosperity and expanding our humanity -- is going to be in the details.<br />
<br />
But more about that in a future post...</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"></span><br />
<div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;">
</span></div>
Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-82560132382597393342012-11-05T08:48:00.000-08:002012-11-05T08:48:29.280-08:00Obama vs Romney: Why We Need a Centrist Party<br />
This presidential election offers America two possible paths: the road to serfdom or the road to plutocracy.<br />
<br />
That at least is the fear that Obama and Romney spark in their opponents... and yes, the risk really is there.<br />
<br />
For Obama, it is a textbook case: the path he is on -- bigger government programs, bigger government debt -- are possibly the early stages of the sort of statism that was described by von Hayek in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom" target="_blank">The Road to Serfdom</a>. His policies certainly seem to lead to widespread unemployment, government dependency and European style economic anemia.<br />
<br />
For Romney, the government-by-and-for-the-rich suspicion is warranted by the candidate's famous inconsistency, by his lack of the common touch and by the huge amounts of money he has raised from extremely wealthy individuals... which leads to a suspicion that his real core principle is to say whatever gets him elected, and that he has a class interest in protecting and expanding the power and privilege of the extremely rich.<br />
<br />
Not a great choice for the apprehensive centrist.<br />
<br />
Personally I keep hoping for a better choice, for a centrist candidate and party that manages to blend concerns for liberty, humanity, the environment and fiscal responsibility better than either candidate or party are doing now. I believe there are a huge number of Americans who would support a party that was fiscally conservative but socially liberal, that addressed problems like the environment and health care with better more efficient solutions that work well, take care of everyone's needs, but keep government small and local, and do not bust the bank.<br />
<br />
That third party may not presently exist. But it should.<br />
<br />
I don't want to vote for Obama or Romney. I want a better choice.<br />
<br />
<br />Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-65795642423426261142012-11-02T22:14:00.002-07:002012-11-02T22:16:19.696-07:00Centrists Worth Supporting!<br />
John Avalon has <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/02/opinion/avlon-centrist-candidates/index.html?hpt=hp_c1" target="_blank">a great article about centrist candidates worth supporting</a>.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">But let's put our finger on the crux of the problem, the real reason why centrists are better for the country than conservatives or liberals: between them, right and left, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">Republicans and Democrats, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">have ripped the Declaration of Independence in half. The right has grabbed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as its rallying cry, the left has grabbed the appeal to justice, fairness and equality. The two party system creates a standoff: it's liberty vs. humanity. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;">But America needs ALL these founding values if it is to thrive and survive as the founders intended. Only Centrists care about these values equally. They put humpty-dumpty back together again.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All these guys really should get together and form the American Centrist Party, and expose Republicans and Democrats for the unbalanced extremists they are.</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span>Also, while reading up on centrism, David Brooks has <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/opinion/brooks-rules-for-craftsmen.html" target="_blank">a great article about what it takes to lead and make laws that win support across party lines </a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/02/politics/irpt-independent-voters/index.html?hpt=hp_c1" target="_blank">CNN iReporters describe why they call themselves "independent."</a><br />
<br />Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-54950881870501460502012-11-02T19:18:00.000-07:002012-11-02T19:19:59.901-07:00How About a NYC CleanUp Marathon?<br />
Instead of just canceling the NYC Marathon as he just did this afternoon amidst a growing chorus of criticism, Mayor Bloomberg should seize the opportunity to declare a "New York City CleanUp Marathon."<br />
<br />
All the Marathoners have made plans to come here anyway. And now they suddenly have a free Sunday on their hands. So why not just host a huge Clean Up Party on Sunday instead?<br />
<br />
Heck, <a href="http://gonyc.about.com/od/photogalleries/ss/marathon.htm" target="_blank">we have 35,000 superfit runner jocks hanging around doing nothing, plus 12,000 well-organized volunteers, and another 2 million spectators</a>. Add on to two-thousand overtime police offices assigned to the Marathon. Why not repurpose that whole efforts to aiding the folks in Staten Island, Queens, Brooklyn and other stricken communities?<br />
<br />
What our hurricane victims really need is a thousands or millions of fit, well-organized, disciplined folks, with a combined life experience of some 50 million years, coming to their destroyed homes and saying: "How can we help? What can we do? Clear that debris? No problem. Let's go, guys, heave-ho!"<br />
<br />
That's how it is done. I know. Because I was a 9/11 guerilla volunteer, and that is how we did it. Helping is not rocket science. You just need to find out what is needed, and get the job done.<br />
<br />
9/11 and Katrina proved that guerrilla volunteers fix problems fast, and and get in where help is needed most, while rule-bound organizations like the Red Cross and FEMA are generally slow to fix immediate problems, and too rule-bound to be flexible. That is why guerilla volunteers were among the most important first responders on 9/11, and why their help is needed now.<br />
<br />
Ever since 10,000 Athenian private citizens defeated and army of well over 100,000 invaders, the name Marathon has been synonymous with heroes, and volunteer heroes, at that. We need those heroes now. And thank God, we have them here, right now, when we need them.<br />
<br />
All the Mayor needs to do is give them a clear invitation to help, and make sure the police help, and do not hinder, the efforts of hordes of private volunteers.Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-63949960924676329862012-05-10T11:52:00.000-07:002012-05-11T08:50:36.412-07:00Bullseye! Obama & the Equal Freedom to Marry<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;">Yesterday, for the first time, President Obama <a href="http://www.barackobama.com/stand-with-the-president?source=em12_20120509_bo_act&utm_medium=email&utm_source=obama&utm_campaign=em12_20120509_bo_act&email=rod%40nyc.rr.com&zip=10025&keycode=d0c7b26cb0b293da3209298504cf83ae9539dbd8585f58801c81275ce0c11381" target="_blank">announced that he now fully supports same-sex marriage</a></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;">, moving beyond his previous partial support limited to same-sex civil unions</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">. </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">Some analysts see this as a move to the left, playing to his Democratic base.</span></span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">In fact, this is a move to the American center. Just consider the core values at issue here: liberty, claimed by the right as their most cherished principle, and equality and social justice so dear to the left. At the end of the day, we are talking about the <i>freedom</i> of two consenting adults to enjoy the same <i>equal rights</i> as everyone else to marry and use the word "marriage" legally, regardless of their minority group. So liberty and equality are both at issue</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">. </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">Religious taboos and prejudices aside, in terms of political values, this falls smack in the middle.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">In this respect, same-sex marriage is much like the more severe issues of slavery and civil rights, in that, what was at stake at the heart of those issue too, were the core American values of both liberty and equality. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">Now, obviously slavery and the wide-spread suppression of civil rights for a large minority appear far more violent and heinous abuses, harming far more people in a more bloody and pervasively damaging manner, than the denial of just one set of rights – marriage equality – to a small minority. But the principles and dynamics are similar.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">Like same-sex marriage, slavery and civil rights were both highly contentious issues at the time they came to a head (1860's and 1960's respectively). In each case, Christians were vocal leaders on both sides, with the distinction that reforms were opposed by traditionalists who looked to the Bible and past social traditions of inequality to support slavery and bigotry, while reformers similarly looked to the Bible, but also, most importantly, to the message of freedom and equality in the Declaration of Independence to support their cause. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">Despite the violent controversy, within just a few years after each crisis, the center of American opinion had entirely shifted to a new consensus on these issues. The center shifted so quickly for one simple reason: the new consensus in each case (anti-slavery and pro civil rights) was indeed entirely in line with the basic values of the Declaration of Independence: freedom, equality, humanity, justice.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">Same-sex marriage is also entirely in line with these basic values from the Declaration of Independence, the ur-text proclaiming core American principles. Christians are on both sides of this issue as well. Again, it is also opposed by the same kind of traditionalists, who look mainly only to the Bible and social traditions to support the notion that some folks are inferior, and do not deserve equal rights. Here too, the reformers look both to the Bible and the Declaration of Independence in support of the equal freedom to marry.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">The outcome, predictably, will be the same as in the struggles over slavery and civil rights, because the values behind the equal freedom to marry are core, central, American values. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_of_same-sex_marriage_in_the_United_States" target="_blank">Year by year, support for marriage equality is steadily growing</a> for the simple reason that it is already well centered in the core American values of liberty and equality. Therefor, it will see growing support, year by year, from courageous, clear minded people, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/09/opinion/hoover-gop-support-gay-marriage/index.html?hpt=hp_c1" target="_blank">not just on the left, but crucially, on the right, too</a>.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">By taking a stand for FULL freedom of marriage equality for same-sex couples, not just the neo-equality of civil unions, Obama has just stepped away completely from the forces that oppose freedom and equality for minorities, and placed himself squarely in line with the founding fathers, Lincoln and Martin Luther King in advocating the extension of freedom and equality even to small, historically despised minorities. That is right at the center of American values.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">Further, he has done so in nuanced way that fully respects the principles of Federalism and religious liberty. In an email yesterday, he fleshed out his new position a bit more: </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">"<span class="Apple-style-span">I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them."</span></span></blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">So Obama is not proposing a federal law creating federal gay marriage, which would be an overreach, but merely respecting the rights of states to decide the issue without being overridden by the federal government. That is, in fact, a more moderate, federalist position – clearly more in line with the wishes of the founding fathers – than the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act" which rides roughshod over states rights</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">. </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">Reader's of this blog will know am a certainly no member of team Obama, and <a href="http://www.21stcentrist.com/2012/04/fake-centrism-buffet-rule.html" target="_blank">quite willing to take him to task for fake centrism and bad policy</a>. But let's give the man his due: he just hit the bullseye on this one, dead center. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">[Pause here for a moment of appreciation.]</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"> </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">Too bad however, he does not do this, for real, more often. Too often Obama's policies do not balance American core values, but rather push equality, humanity and social justice at the expense of liberty. Republicans often do the exact opposite. Both would do well to craft new policy options (such as <a href="http://www.greenenergytaxcuts.com/2011/12/why-green-energy-tax-cuts.html" target="_blank">Green Energy Tax Cuts</a> or <a href="http://www.21stcentrist.com/2009/09/super-pro-bono-best-new-idea-in-health.html" target="_blank">Pro Bono Health Care Reform</a>) that balance and promote liberty, humanity and equality all at once, without sacrificing one for the other</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">. </span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times,'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: large;">During its short history, the United States has faced four major political showdowns over the question of individual rights where liberty and equality were both at stake: the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Suffragette and the Civil Rights movements. In each of these cases, forces that favored traditions opposed the logical extension of core American values were soundly trounced, shown the door and ultimately rejected as essentially un-American. This next showdown, over the equal freedom to marry, tho' on a smaller, less violent scale, is not going to be any different.</span></div>Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-1949137526632690092012-04-15T13:19:00.000-07:002012-04-15T14:17:25.669-07:00Fake Centrism: The Buffet RuleI know no one who considers CNN a right-wing network, and many would say it is perhaps slightly to the left of center. So kudos to CNN for producing a <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/09/pf/taxes/buffett-rule/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2" target="_blank">balanced FAQ on Obama's Buffett Rule legislation</a> that exposes it for the partisan political theater that it is.<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with the principle behind the Buffett Rule: the idea that the wealthy should pay at least as much in taxes, as a percentage of income, as the less wealthy. Even <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/10/03/333912/reagan-tax-loopholes-crazy/" target="_blank">Ronald Reagan supported that proposition</a>, as the <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/04/11/buffett-rule-aka-reagan-rule" target="_blank">White House is quick to point out</a>.<br />
<br />
The problem is, the legislation Obama supports to embody the Buffett Rule is simply bad legislation. Here is what CNN has to say:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The Joint Committee on Taxation, which analyzes tax legislation, has estimated that the "Paying a Fair Share Act" would <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/20/news/economy/buffett-rule-analysis/index.htm?iid=EL">raise $47 billion</a> over 10 years, or an average of less than $5 billion a year, assuming the Bush tax cuts expire. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
That
wouldn't do much to help reduce federal deficits. In recent years,
annual deficits have ranged from several hundred billion dollars to more
than $1 trillion. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And if the rule were to serve as a replacement
for the AMT, as Obama has proposed, it wouldn't come close to making up
for the $1 trillion-plus in revenue that the AMT is expected to generate
over 10 years. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>What do independent tax experts think of the Buffett Rule?</b>
Tuning out the partisan rhetoric on both sides, tax experts say the
Buffett Rule would further complicate an already complex tax code by
adding a new minimum tax on top of the old AMT. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
What's more, the evidence that the <a href="http://www.cnn.com/video/?iid=EL#/video/politics/2011/09/21/explain-it-to-me-buffett-rule.cnn">Buffett Rule</a> is correcting a big disparity in the tax code is not so clear cut. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
For example, even without a Buffett Rule, most millionaires <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/18/news/economy/Romney_effective_tax_rate/index.htm?iid=EL">already pay more</a>
in taxes as a percentage of their income than those in the middle
class, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.
Not always as much as 30%, but a higher percentage of their income than
the vast majority of the middle class. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b> </b><br />
And the
Congressional Research Service notes that today's tax code doesn't
violate the Buffett rule as egregiously as Warren Buffett and others
have asserted. Using 2006 data, the CRS found the average tax rate among
millionaires is almost 30% -- with about a tenth of them paying a rate
higher than 35% and another tenth paying a rate below 24%. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Lastly, <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/27/pf/taxes/tax-reform/index.htm?iid=EL">tax reform</a> done right shouldn't create a need for a Buffett Rule, an AMT or any other accessory to the tax code, Williams said. The
only reason policymakers call for such measures is when they don't like
the outcomes of the system they've got. Tax reform is their chance to
design a better system. And if one goal is to tax the rich more, they
can do that in a simpler, more effective way than the Buffett Rule.</blockquote>
So, bottom line, Obama is promoting bad tax legislation that complicates the code further, raises little revenue and possibly increases deficits, to address a problem that does not generally exist, except for a few statistical outliers. And if anyone does not support this bad legislation, Obama and his supporters are quick to denounce them as extremists.<br />
<br />
So this is fake centrism, ginning up a fake issue in an election year, because it could make Obama appear a reasonable centrist and his Republican opponents appear extremist. While there could be, in my view, far more principled centrism from both sides, there is no extremism in opposition to bad legislation such as the "Paying a Fair Share Act."<br />
<br />
What is especially disingenuous here is invoking Ronald Reagan in support of legislation he would almost certainly oppose. Reagan's support of the principle behind the Buffett Rule came in the context of a campaign for tax reform, code simplification and tax cuts for all, and definitely not in support of efforts to complexify the code and raise tax rates on only a few.<br />
<br />
If Obama were truly centrist, he would not deceptively quote Reagan in support of policies Reagan would never actually support. He might rather consider following Reagan's example: promote overall tax code reform and simplification, with an eye to fairly reducing the burden of taxation on the economy and on all Americans. That would be legitimate centrism and good policy, not just political theater.<br />
<br />
<br />Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-25474345464326976672012-03-27T10:04:00.000-07:002012-03-27T10:08:45.523-07:00Why Don't Liberals Understand Themselves?Interesting <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/opinion/kristof-politics-odors-and-soap.html?_r=3" target="_blank">article by Nicholas Kristof</a>. About a study on "The Moral Stereotypes of Liberals and Conservatives" that shows liberals understand conservatives worse than moderates or conservatives understand them, and explains why. I won't repeat Kristof here, so check out his article.<br />
<br />
What is even more curious to me, if you read the study abstract itself, it shows that not only are liberals most inaccurate about conservatives, they are most inaccurate about typical liberal views! In other words, they overestimate the liberalism of typical liberals, as well as the conservatism of conservatives. Typical liberals also probably view themselves as more moderate than "typical" liberals, when they are in fact not.... it is just that typical liberals are less extreme than most liberals think.<br />
<br />
Odd, that conservatives and moderates are better at predicting "typical" liberal responses than liberals themselves! The study does not explain why this is so. I don't have a good answer off the top of my head, but it sure is curious. Anybody have any ideas?<br />
<br />
The study is better at explaining why liberals don't get conservatives: again, look at the article.<br />
<br />
Funny. I have long felt that I understood liberal concerns and positions far better than most liberals could understand conservative (or libertarian or my own centrist) views. The study shows that this is in fact so, and sheds some light on the matter.<br />
<br />
However, I think the study may be a bit flawed in that it ignores libertarians, and also the large numbers of folks who may be fiscally conservative but socially liberal or libertarian. For these groups, who are somehow bundled into the rest of the data, I would think they might value loyalty highly, but would have more nuanced views about authority and sanctity than typical social conservatives. <br />
<br />
The fact that this group is hidden in the data probably means that it was harder to predict what a "typical" conservative thinks, because the study probably misidentifies a lot of folks as conservatives who are not quite pure conservatives.Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-59615765202836265542011-12-10T16:18:00.001-08:002011-12-10T16:42:22.950-08:00Mario Vargas Llosa: A Neo 21stCentrist?I have just discovered that I feel perhaps a smidgeon smarter when a Nobel Prize winner says things that sound like me.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">A little over a month ago, Nobel Prize winning author Mario Vargas Llosa gave a brave </span>and perhaps unexpected speech, especially considering his audience. He was asked deliver the keynote address at The Freedom Dinner, an event celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, an organization dedicated to spreading free market and classical liberal ideas around the globe.</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Most attendees probably expected a celebration of Atlas and the liberty movement it promotes so well. But while he did that, he did <i>more</i> than just that.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Vargas Llosa served up an insightful and surprising critique of today's capitalism-in-practice, a warning that slammed leading capitalists for excessive greed, for lack of moral conscience, and for damaging the foundations of democratic capitalism itself. He even went so far as to suggest that the liberty movement should spend more time defending social justice, and find ways to make liberty and social justice work together. Keep in mind he was addressing an audience, some of whom at least, following Ayn Rand, think greed is a virtue, altruism a vice, and social justice the deceptive rallying cry of the enemy. Some attendees I spoke with went so far as to opine that - not just the welfare state - but even charitable tax deductions should be eliminated.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">So for at least <i>some</i> of this crowd, his arguments, I'd think, might be a tough sell.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">But I keep thinking, jeez, this guy sounds like me. Not exactly, not the style, but rather the ideas, <b>especially the parts in bold</b>. Consider these excerpts:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">The crisis striking Western Europe and the United States ... has done the most harm to morality. It has revealed, at its core, an essential lack of ethical values and a egocentric spirit in which the fervor for profit has blinded esteemed executives and business owners, bankers and financiers, to the point to which they act with a complete lack of vision and scruples, to make decisions that hurt their clients and the very system to which they owe their power and fortunes. ...<b>[I]f the origin of the moral decline in the system of free enterprise and open markets that this crisis revealed is not corrected, the damage will keep corrupting it from within, undermining its sources of support and depriving it of that favorable consensus –the trust and solidarity of the majority of citizens– without which no institution can survive in the long run.</b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>The altruistic, philanthropic concept of capitalism of the American forefathers does not correspond to the spectacle that this system has offered the world in recent times...</b> [C]apitalism develops an appetite for material goods –consumerism– and for accumulating wealth which, within the confines of a respectable and respected legal system, is not necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, as long as they do not go beyond the law, these are excellent incentives to keep the system functioning since they encourage invention and creation of new products, boost competition and create models and paradigms which the young will... emulate. </span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>However, there is a certain limit, which is hard to pinpoint, where virtue becomes vice, and the legitimate yearning for success and benefits at work turns to greed, hunger for profits, a passion so exclusive that it blinds whomever it dominates, driving them beyond the limits of decency and law, to act in a way that harms others and the system itself.</b> Our culture has become tolerant of those who, driven by a wild desire for profit, break the law and, instead of being punished for it, remain immune and are sometimes even rewarded by a state that rescues businesses from financial ruin triggered by their excesses. This is not the capitalist system but rather a profound distortion of what it was and what it still needs to be if we are to avoid moving backwards from civilization to barbarity.</span></div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Throughout its history, the free enterprise system has shown an extraordinary capacity to renew and reinvent itself. This is the time to do so again, following the familiar path. First, a radical, constructive self-criticism of the roots of what went wrong. In this case, the complacency and tolerance of those who have overstepped the rules of the game that the law establishes for markets and free competition. These people should be tried and punished for it. <b>Second, an ongoing demand and effort –no holds barred– to return to the system that ethical dimension which is its strongest justification.</b> This means defending the idea that more than just a system of economic rules, capitalism is a culture inspired by values –since it is based on respect for liberty, justice and legality– which have led to progress in human life, in the domain of the material as well as in terms of dignity, compassion, opportunities, respect for others, solidarity and generosity.<b> It has been said, and with some truth, that liberty and justice –the latter particularly in terms of its social dimension– repel each other. Throughout its history, the great accomplishment of the classical liberal doctrine has been to replace this discord with harmony between the categories, since what we call civilization depends on their reconciliation and coexistence.</b></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>This is a difficult but not impossible task</b>. What must gear up for it with the knowledge that the system we defend, despite its imperfections, is better than all the ones that have tried to replace it, promising paradise on earth but instead turning the societies that fell under their spell into a living hell. <b>Let us return to political democracy and economic liberty the moral conscience it had in the best moments of its history, when progress and culture reached their greatest heights.</b></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">
</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Vargas Llosa's argument is compelling, that capitalism in practice, which historically fostered human rights and social progress, has gone astray, ignored the importance of ethics and public spirit, while leading capitalists have given them selves over to excessive, sometimes criminal greed which threatens to shame and destroy capitalism itself.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Where Vargas Llosa and I overlap in our writing is the recognition that classical 18th - 19th Century liberalism combined concerns, not just for liberty, but for moral conscience, social justice, altruism and humanity, and that capitalism and its leaders have gone off the rails because they have forgotten this. It is somewhat revolutionary for a defender of liberty and free markets to take this position in 2011. For at present many on the right, some of whom call themselves classical liberals, esteem only liberty and self-interest as the highest values, and social justice, altruism and conscience set them on edge, as if these were code words for enemy ideologies.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Still, I would encourage Llosa to take his analysis farther than he does. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">At 21stCentrist.com, I discuss this fundamental problem: </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Long story short, we have ripped the Declaration of Independence in half: the political right now champions the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the left champions the overall call for social justice and appeal to equality. Llosa is right to point out <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_573295903">(</a></span><a href="http://www.21stcentrist.com/p/what-is-21st-centrist.html">as we have here)</a> that liberty and social justice were both abiding concerns of classical 18th -19th C. liberalism. But the 20th C saw the rise of a right and left that concern themselves with liberty or humanity respectively and sometimes exclusively. While communism and socialism have shown little respect for liberty, some 20th C. philosophers on the right, like Rand, have turned self-interest into a virtue and demonized altruism. Both sides (but not Vargas Llosa) have forgotten the classical Aristotelian concept of virtue: moderation, a healthy balance of opposing qualities: liberty and humanity; self-interest and public spirit. When Vargas Llosa points out that an excess of "virtue becomes vice," he is really quoting Aristotle, and reviving the old notion of virtue as moderation, without which modern politics becomes unbalanced and extremist.</div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Aristotle's ethics informed Classical Liberalism and informs 21st Centrist and Vargas Llosa, but has been largely lost by both right and left. Is it any wonder then that some capitalists, raised on immoderate 20th C libertarian thought, have taken greed to criminal excess? </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
Vargas Llosa calls on defenders of capitalism to portray it as a culture of values. That is fine and true, but if it is all talk, and policies, ethics and outcomes don't improve, it amounts to eyewash. Therefore, to avert the decline and fall of democratic capitalism, he should not stop there. He should also call upon capitalism's defenders to put the values of liberty and humanity on an equal footing in their hearts and minds, because the failure to do so is at the heart of our present troubles. Then, they should turn to the nuts and bolts task of creating actual policies that that embody the core values of BOTH liberty and humanity, policies that make that vision of liberty with moral conscience a reality.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> Those who do so will claim the center, and help forge a new free market humanitarian consensus.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">If the financially unsustainable, perpetual-deficit welfare state is to wind down happily and not end in a nightmare of chaos or tyranny, capitalism's defenders must have good solutions to the humanitarian concerns left high and dry. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That is why 21st Centrist strives to incubate new ideas such as <a href="http://www.greenenergytaxcuts.com/2011/11/over-subsidy-or-wrong-incentive.html">supply side tax cuts for clean, renewable energy</a> and <a href="http://www.21stcentrist.com/2009/09/super-pro-bono-best-new-idea-in-health.html">pro bono health care reform</a>, in order to </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">solve pressing humanitarian concerns while expanding and defending liberty</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> By way of further example, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">other more well know proposals that combine the concerns of liberty and humanity</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> would be educational choice, or tax free retirement and health savings accounts, among others. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Now is a unique moment when such ideas can take center stage, and pull democratic capitalism out of the present quagmire of unsustainable debt and unaffordable entitlement programs. The present humanitarian programs of the left cannot continue. What will replace them? Whoever has the best answer, wins.</span></div>
</div>Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-81819096134074743332011-11-16T22:02:00.001-08:002011-11-16T22:18:49.153-08:00What is a 21st Centrist?<br />
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Well, me for starters...</span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">But it could be you too, if you are fed up with left/right extremism, if you think both liberty and humanity should inform 21st Century governance, not just one or the other. Generally, we're shooting for something a bit more interesting here than just some blowhard holding opinio<span style="font-size: 16px;">ns ranging from middle of the road to undecided. No, that won't do. Rather let's define a 21st C</span>entrist as anyone who seeks to heal the most basic rift of our time, the left-right divide... largely by crafting new solutions, through balance and understanding, <span style="font-size: 16px;">that blend the concerns and core principles of both right and left.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Sounds like a tough job? There is hope. For originally, those concerns were joined. Once, long ago, Liberalism, Libertarianism and Conservatism emerged as offspring of a single grand movement: 19th Century Liberalism, the great consensus opposing the twin tyrannies of monarchy and slavery, and as a result responsible for the founding of most modern constitutional democracies. Proof of the shared roots of left and right is found in shared heroes: our founding fathers, Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Abraham Lincoln, the early abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and Frederick Douglass, and so on. Heroes of both right and left, all.</span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">But 19th C. Lib</span>eralism broke apart even as it triumphed, with right and left preferring respectively either the principle of liberty or that of social justice. Many now consider that division immutable, eternal... the lopsided pendulum swings of unbalanced governance so part of our landscape that it is beyond our power to change. But really, this epic donnybrook is only a blip in human history, as liable to mutate, vanish or evolve as anything else. Left and right may fight like cats and dogs now, and we think of them as poles apart, but in fact they are intellectual cousins, mere inches apart in the wider scale of human politics. This rift can and should be healed by balancing and rejoining these two key principles, liberty and social justice, now unbalanced and separated by 20th Century ideologies.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;">The Centrist Tradition</span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Centrism is sometimes given a bad name by folks who call themselves centrists, but either are really only interested in gains won through politics, or are undecided, or perhaps have no guiding principles at all.</span></div>
</div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">But principled centrism – grounded in a common sense appreciation of balance, moderation and the middle way – is itself a conservative, compassionate tradition with a long lineage stretching back to the balance of the Tao, to the middle way of Buddha and Aristotle, to the moderation of Confucius, Jesus Christ, the Stoics and more recent conservative philosophers such as Edmund Burke. It is the core strategic principle of sophisticated martial arts such as Tai Chi or Aikido, which emphasize the power of moving from ones center, of instinctually perceiving and controlling the center of any system of flowing forces. It is the principle that allows surfers to surf, to balance and ride upon complex forces much bigger than themselves (with zero government assistance or intervention, I might add).</span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Lastly, it is the principle behind most successful conflict resolution, where a skilled mediator will help the warring parties work things out through a process rooted in balance, moderation and the quest for a middle way.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;">A Matter of Principle</span></span></span></span></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">That last example comes to mind, because, as a trained mediator, I have had the opportunity to resolved a few conflicts. At some point, in nearly every mediation, at least one of the parties will push back from the table and declare, "No, I'm not budging. It is a matter of principle!" Well, one thing you learn when you mediate conflicts is that everyone has a principle. And often, both parties are right, and their principles are equally valid. Sadly, good, just and right principles can often conflict. But it is not right that one valid principle should necessarily run rough shod over another valid principle. Finding a balanced middle way that preserves both principles is the best outcome, but incredibly tricky, and more of an art than a science.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in with left and right in America. Like stubborn parties to a mediation, both sides have their principles, and they are sticking to them, by gum! Yes, both have good, virtuous principles. But each proposes solutions that really only satisfies their own concerns. And both are running out of ideas.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Right now, there is no center to American politics. There is only an increasingly polarized right and left, with a void in between. But that is the way it usually is at the start of any mediation. Mediators know the void is good. It creates a vacuum pressure, drawing the parties in. It creates a space that allows room to maneuver and find new solutions. The void and the current stagnation are a signal that a new consensus is possible, that better solutions may be found by incorporating the concerns and principles of all sides.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px; padding-top: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">On a practical level, that means that right and left will need to agree on NEW solutions that take each other's concerns seriously. But why should they do that? Because whomever advances this first – Libertarians, Conservatives or Liberals – will take control of the center of American political thought, and lead the nation and possibly the world into a new era of consensus. Doing so will also lead to a renaissance of new policy ideas, as wonks stretch their minds to incorporate the other side's point of view. That will mean more grants, more media attention, a broader political base – all good things. So what is the alternative? Stagnation, intellectual bankruptcy, irrelevance.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Where Are The New Ideas?</span></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Actually, the dearth of new ideas on right or left (with a few notable exceptions) is rather shocking. The left peaked in mid-century, with Keynes, FDR's New Deal, the Great Society, and the civil rights and anti-war movements, but seemed exhausted thereafter. During the 1970's and '80's, free market thinkers fueled the Reagan revolution with bold new ideas and approaches at an astonishing clip: these included neo-conservatism, two major schools of economics (monetarist and supply side), school choice, "broken windows" policing strategy, SDI, new strategies of superpower confrontation and engagement, the economic empowerment ideas of Hernando de Soto, the think tank and student journalism movements, and so on. But now, I am hard pressed to name a single new idea of equal stature from right or left in the last fifteen years.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Perhaps the greatest movement in recent years has been the advent of infotainment and the rise of political clowns on both sides: Coulter, Franken, Limbaugh, Moore, Stewart, Maher, Colbert, Jib-Jab, etc. That, it seems to me, is a sure sign of intellectual stagnation and exhaustion... however witty they may be.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">So, when you read this blog, expect unexpected new ideas and heretical-but-delicious left-right blender-thinks. For instance, why not use supply side tax cuts to reduce global warming and produce abundant clean energy? Why not provide reliable free health care for the poor, without big government programs or new cost to the taxpayer, by repairing and supercharging the old pro bono system with fair value tax deductions for service? These are the kind of new ideas we need. Ideas that incorporate both liberty AND justice.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">For all.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Do you have a 21st Centrist proposal? Let me know through the comments feature, and if it fits, I will post it.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">BTW, 21st Centrist is an evolution of my old blog, <a href="http://www.greenenergytaxcuts.com/">The Green Energy Tax Cuts Betablog,</a> where you can find information about the application of supply side economics to environmentalism.</span></div>
</div>
</div>Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-27112413303267033822009-09-15T20:54:00.000-07:002011-12-10T16:33:47.411-08:00The Pro Bono Health Care Solution<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc; font-size: large;">21stCentrist Medical Reform: Free Care, Tax-Free</span><br />
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span><br />
As Congressional health care reform stalls and sputters, as angry accusations fly over aisles and airwaves, perhaps now is a good time to recall one reassuring fact:</div>
<div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br />At one time, we had a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> system in this country that worked.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">My granddad, Dr. E. Victor Littauer, worked as an OB/GYN surgeon in Brooklyn from the 1920's through the 1960's. During all those years, especially during the Depression, he took on many patients who could not pay. All his colleagues did too... it was practically part of the medical ethic. But the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> system has vanished, done in by subsidized insurance, medicare and malpractice liability. No coincidence then that the loss of the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> system and its ability to treat the poor coincides with the rise of our current health care woes: millions of the poor and uninsured jamming emergency rooms; medical costs out of control on both personal and federal levels and everything in between. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">To fix our current health care mess, the Obama administration proposes massive new programs, new public insurance, and enormous new federal spending. But the most effective, least intrusive fix for our health care woes may be simply to repair the traditional American <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> system that once worked well. Much of our current problem would be greatly reduced if we could simply increase and regularize the supply of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> care for those who cannot pay. </span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">In fact, we CAN do that. Increasing the supply of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> care is essentially a supply side problem, amenable to supply side solutions. If you want more of something, tax it less. So if you want doctors and other health care providers to supply care to those who cannot pay, then simply reduce their taxes to zero for doing so.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">This would require a law providing that documented <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> service to a qualified patient should reduce a doctor's taxes by the fair value amount a paying client would pay. (Current rules allow no deductions whatsoever for donated time.) The law should also include reasonable "good samaritan" liability protections for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> service, to make good deeds risk free. Together, these two simple reforms would create a Super Pro Bono system, capable of treating 100% of poor and uninsured patients for free for all primary, specialist and preventive care.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">So if a doctor (or lab, clinic, drug company or other for-profit health care provider) pays a 30% tax rate (for illustration purposes) then if he treats 30 patients <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> for every 100 paying a fee, his taxes go to zero. What is more, his after-tax income rises. To demonstrate and simplify the above scenario, let's assume the doctor gets $1 fee per patient, and he has a maximum capacity of 130 patients a year. If the doctor treats all 130 patients for a fee and pays 30% tax, his after tax income would be $91. But with 100 fee-paying patients and 30 <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span>, the doctor's after-tax income rises to $100, a 10% increase for the same amount of work -- while his taxes decrease to zero. That provides a powerful incentive to plan for a regularized provision of <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> care to a very large population, if need be. Importantly, that includes <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> primary and preventive care.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Such a Super Pro Bono system would thus be less expensive for taxpayers than the current system where the uninsured get the most expensive possible treatment at overwhelmed emergency rooms. It would take pressure off those emergency rooms, lowering hospital costs, bad debt expense and intergovernmental transfers to cover the costs of treating the uninsured. It will also be cheaper than proposed new programs which would entail shouldering massive new heath care taxes and insurance fees, paying providers to care for the poor, paying bureaucrats to shuffle mountains of insurance paperwork, and then taxing the providers and bureaucrats – a convoluted tax-spend-and-tax system with lots of overhead that makes little sense when cutting providers' taxes for <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> service does it better in one step – without any of the insurance paperwork overhead. Super <span class="Apple-style-span">Pro</span> Bono simplifies everything and cuts out layers of bureaucracy, government and overhead.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">No Incentive To Over-Treat</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">One related benefit of such an approach it is attacks the core reason US health care costs have spiraled out of control: overuse of emergency rooms by the uninsured, plus system-wide over-treatment, driven again by medicare, insurance and liability considerations, all of which reward over-treatment and the practice of defensive medicine. By contrast, there would be no financial incentive to over-treat a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> patient, and no legal reason to practice defensive medicine with good liability protections for <span style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> care. Without such distractions, most doctors are driven by a desire to improve their statistical outcomes, their batting average, if you will. Optimally treating more <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> patients without over-treatment would improve a provider's stats. Good statistical outcomes (not defensive medicine or reimbursement considerations) will drive <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> care norms system-wide, driving down over-treatment, and lowering costs across the entire health care system as treatment protocols follow best practice.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">One foreseeable objection may be that the tax incentives of Super Pro Bono would not influence non-profit health care providers and hospitals to provide more <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> care. But this challenge could be overcome by extending Super Pro Bono tax incentives to insurance companies that provide <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> catastrophic medical insurance to those who cannot pay. Following the same after-tax logic illustrated above for doctors, medical insurance companies could similarly reduce their taxes to zero and increase after-tax profits by providing free insurance to the poor. That way direct <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> service from doctors and other for profit providers would cover primary, specialist and preventive care for the poor, while <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> insurance would cover hospitalization and catastrophic care.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">Under the traditional American <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">pro bono</span> system, those who could afford to pay were really covering costs for those who could not. Super Pro Bono repairs and builds on that American tradition, and is a good private alternative to public insurance, which would inevitably require more and more taxpayer subsidy, and (many fear) more rules, rationing and long waits for needed medical care.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;">But Super Pro Bono is not a panacea. For the rest of us, steps still need to be taken to reform US medical insurance, a protected, subsidized semi-monopoly that is too expensive and delivers low customer satisfaction. The Obama administrations plans to open up interstate competition among insurance providers is a good start here, as are calls to make private insurance coops more widely available. Even so, Super Pro Bono repairs some of the fundamental distortions that have thrown our medical system off balance, and would be a good starting point for health care reform.</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;"><br /></span></div>
</div>Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-62492807103888207622009-09-14T22:24:00.000-07:002009-09-22T21:28:21.884-07:00Supply Side Environmentalism Goes Public!<blockquote> </blockquote><a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1942551"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Here is a video</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> of the first public discussion of Supply Side Environmentalism, as applied to current concerns about global warming and energy diversification. The talk took place last month in Canada at a fascinating annual conference of international think tanks convened by the <a href="http://atlasnetwork.org/">Atlas Economic Research Foundation</a>.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(25, 25, 25); line-height: 27px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The crowd in the video is predominantly free market libertarians, so I pitched the talk that way, emphasizing that clean energy tax cuts is a great way to get environmentally concerned progressives and liberals to appreciate tax cuts. Were I to address progressives or liberals, I would rather emphasize that my approach is a great way to get tax cut loving libertarians and conservatives to do and care more about the environment. *Ah-hem.* In any event, my clear intent is to bridge the gap between left and right on this issue, and whichever group does that first, will take the center and the lead.<br /><br />The Q&A begins at the 50 minute mark, and has some interesting remarks.</span></span><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(25, 25, 25); line-height: 27px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(25, 25, 25); line-height: 27px;"><embed flashvars="loc=%2F&autoplay=false&vid=1942551&disabledComment=true&beginPercent=0.0190&endPercent=0.2605" width="480" height="386" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" src="http://www.ustream.tv/flash/video/1942551" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><br /></span></div>Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2048413775735440236.post-10952536964246176572009-09-12T15:27:00.000-07:002012-12-12T17:15:28.834-08:00What is a 21st Centrist?<blockquote>
</blockquote>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"></span><br />
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Well, me for starters... </span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">But more generally, we're shooting for something a bit more interesting here than just some blowhard holding opinio<span style="font-size: 100%;">ns ranging from middle of the road to undecided. No, that won't do. Rather let's define a 21st C</span>entrist as anyone who seeks to heal the most basic rift of our time, the left-right divide... largely by crafting new solutions, through balance and understanding, <span style="font-size: 100%;">that blend the concerns and core principles of both right and left. </span></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">Sounds like a tough job? There is hope. For originally, those concerns were joined. Once, long ago, Liberalism, Libertarianism and Conservatism emerged as offspring of a single grand movement: 19th Century Liberalism, the great consensus opposing the twin tyrannies of monarchy and slavery, and as a result responsible for the founding of most modern constitutional democracies. Proof of the shared roots of left and right is found in shared heroes: our founding fathers, Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Abraham Lincoln, the early abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson, William Wilberforce and Frederick Douglass, and so on. Heroes of both right and left, all.</span></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 100%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">But 19th C. Lib</span>eralism broke apart even as it triumphed, with right and left preferring respectively either the principle of liberty or that of social justice. Many now consider that division immutable, eternal... the lopsided pendulum swings of unbalanced governance so part of our landscape that it is beyond our power to change. But really, this epic donnybrook is only a blip in human history, as liable to mutate, vanish or evolve as anything else. Left and right may fight like cats and dogs now, and we think of them as poles apart, but in fact they are intellectual cousins, mere inches apart in the wider scale of human politics. This rift can and should be healed by balancing and rejoining these two key principles, liberty and social justice, now unbalanced and separated by 20th Century ideologies. </span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-width: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;">The Centrist Tradition</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-width: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-width: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Centrism is sometimes given a bad name by folks who call themselves centrists, but either are really only pragmatists and deal makers, or are undecided, or perhaps have no guiding principles at all. </span></div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-width: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div face="Georgia,serif" size="3" style="border-width: 0px; font-size-adjust: none; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">But principled centrism – grounded in a common sense appreciation of balance, moderation and the middle way – is itself a conservative, compassionate tradition with a long lineage stretching back to the balance of the Tao, to the middle way of Buddha and Aristotle, to the moderation of Confucius, Jesus Christ, the Stoics and more recent conservative philosophers such as Edmund Burke. It is the core strategic principle of sophisticated martial arts such as Tai Chi or Aikido, which emphasize the power of moving from ones center, of instinctually perceiving and controlling the center of any system of flowing forces. It is the principle that allows surfers to surf, to balance and ride upon complex forces much bigger than themselves (with zero government assistance or intervention, I might add).</span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Lastly, it is the principle behind most successful conflict resolution, where a skilled mediator will help the warring parties work things out through a process rooted in balance, moderation and the quest for a middle way.</span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc;">A Matter of Principle</span></span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">That last example comes to mind, because, as a trained mediator, I have had the opportunity to resolved a few conflicts. At some point, in nearly every mediation, at least one of the parties will push back from the table and declare, "No, I'm not budging. It is a matter of principle!" Well, one thing you learn when you mediate conflicts is that everyone has a principle. And often, both parties are right, and their principles are equally valid. Sadly, good, just and right principles can often conflict. But it is not right that one valid principle should necessarily run rough shod over another valid principle. Finding a balanced middle way that preserves both principles is the best outcome, but incredibly tricky, and more of an art than a science.</span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in with left and right in America. Like stubborn parties to a mediation, both sides have their principles, and they are sticking to them, by gum! Yes, both have good, virtuous principles. But each proposes solutions that really only satisfies their own concerns. And both are running out of ideas.</span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Right now, there is no center to American politics. There is only an increasingly polarized right and left, with a void in between. But that is the way it usually is at the start of any mediation. Mediators know the void is good. It creates a vacuum pressure, drawing the parties in. It creates a space that allows room to maneuver and find new solutions. The void and the current stagnation are a signal that a new consensus is possible, that better solutions may be found by incorporating the concerns and principles of all sides.</span></div>
<div style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 3px; text-align: left; width: auto;">
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">On a practical level, that means that right and left will need to agree on NEW solutions that take each other's concerns seriously. But why should they do that? Because whomever advances this first – Libertarians, Conservatives or Liberals – will take control of the center of American political thought, and lead the nation and possibly the world into a new era of consensus. Doing so will also lead to a renaissance of new policy ideas, as wonks stretch their minds to incorporate the other side's point of view. That will mean more grants, more media attention, a broader political base – all good things. So what is the alternative? Stagnation, intellectual bankruptcy, irrelevance.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #6600cc; font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Where Are The New Ideas?</span></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Actually, the dearth of new ideas on right or left (with a few notable exceptions) is rather shocking. The left peaked in mid-century, with Keynes, FDR's New Deal, the Great Society, and the civil rights and anti-war movements, but seemed exhausted thereafter. During the 1970's and '80's, free market thinkers fueled the Reagan revolution with bold new ideas and approaches at an astonishing clip: these included neo-conservatism, two major schools of economics (monetarist and supply side), school choice, "broken windows" policing strategy, SDI, new strategies of superpower confrontation and engagement, the economic empowerment ideas of Hernando de Soto, the think tank and student journalism movements, and so on. But now, I am hard pressed to name a single new idea of equal stature from right or left in the last fifteen years. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Perhaps the greatest movement in recent years has been the advent of infotainment and the rise of political clowns on both sides: Coulter, Franken, Limbaugh, Moore, Stewart, Maher, Colbert, Jib-Jab, etc. That, it seems to me, is a sure sign of intellectual stagnation and exhaustion... however witty they may be.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">So, when you read this blog, expect unexpected new ideas and heretical-but-delicious left-right blender-thinks. For instance, why not use supply side tax cuts to reduce global warming and produce abundant clean energy? Why not provide reliable free health care for the poor, without big government programs or new cost to the taxpayer, by repairing and supercharging the old pro bono system with fair value tax deductions for service? These are the kind of new ideas we need. Ideas that incorporate both liberty AND justice. </span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">For all.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">Do you have a 21st Centrist proposal? Let me know through the comments feature, and if it fits, I will post it.</span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;">BTW, 21st Centrist is an evolution of my old blog, <a href="http://www.greenenergytaxcuts.com/">The Green Energy Tax Cuts Betablog,</a> where you can find information about the application of supply side economics to environmentalism.</span></div>
</div>
Rod Randolph Richardsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15347412633097611934noreply@blogger.com0