Happy Cost of Government Day to all

[digitalpoetry]

Today, July 16th, is Cost of Government Day - for the average american worker, all the work you've done up until today has gone to pay your share of government spending for the year. The next two months, you'll be working to pay off the cost of government regulation of markets

Comments

[lmpshd]

First of all, I should be clear that this is directed solely at the federal government, not state and local - states have the right to tax their citizens according to their own internal laws. The vast majority of road maintenance and public transportation funding happens at this level, and that's fine.

OK... the issue of state vs. federal is one that I've never been able to get very worked up about. There are cases where I think it's clear cut: many issues are fundamentally local and one shouldn't have people in DC deciding what's best for everyone. On other issues there are universal questions that supercede states' rights, e.g. clearly the US Surpreme Court should be able to tell the state of Texas they can't outlaw sodomy. And I have no problem with the federal government imposing taxes that apply throughout the country to use (at least in theory) for the general good: we're all one country, and some responsibilities should be shared. As an example (while this may be a bit of a stretch): Alaska has a lot of oil and therefore a lot of money... it is, despite the difficult climate, naturally richer than the rest of the country. It's citizens (even those who don't work in the oil industry) benefit from that financially but still have to pay some amount of taxes for the rest of us, and I don't see any moral justification to let them not do that: what could they say, "we have all this oil and you don't, so we don't have to worry about your problems?" No, they're part of the United States, so they share some measure of collective responsibility. If that weren't so, what we'd have up there would be sort of a colder, bleaker United Arab Emirates, where everyone's rich and it's hard to see exactly why. (Yes, a stretch... I'm writing this off the top of my head without any research, so I'm doing my best.)

Here's what you also have to keep in mind about the Constitution: not everyone agreed in the late 18th century that America should all be one big country at all. They tried and failed with the Articles of Confederation to produce a workable union with less central authority. So the delegates at the Constitutional Convention had learned that a federal government was necessary, but they still had some inate suspicion of the very idea, resulting from the fact that they'd only recently broken free from the authority of a much larger and less democratic central government (i.e. Britain). We always must view and interpret the Constitution within the context in which it was written, and with a healthy dose of skepticism -- it isn't a holy book. Those were different times... for a simple illustration of how different, I only need mention the way the Constitution deals with slavery.

As for scientific research - we've only taxed incomes in the modern sense since 1913 (there were income taxes used in the last half of the 19th century off and on, but they applied to a small percentage of the population) so how did any research get done before then if it requires government funding?

Much less research did get done then... society was less advanced, there were fewer scientific directions to pursue, and we didn't have pressing issues like global warming or AIDS (there were other pressing issues, we just usually had no hope of doing anything about them). Aside from that, a far larger proportion of the American populace in 1913 lived in abject poverty with substandard (for the time) medical care, had no hope of getting a decent education and basically didn't have the economic means to enjoy the freedom they had. I hardly think it was a better world. A lot of those problems didn't begin to look any brighter until FDR's New Deal.

Oy... it seems I'm already over the length limit, I'll have to divide this into two comments.

[digitalpoetry]

The issue of federal vs. state is an important one because our country is set up as a federal republic - a collection of states under a single central government. You're exactly right that the writers of the Constitution wanted to grant as little power as possible at the federal level because they were only recently out from under the heel of an authoritarian state, but also because of the lessons of history. They specifically designed the Constitution to strictly limit the powers of that government because they'd read of countless examples throughout history of governments gathering more and more power to themselves until the people had no freedom left. They wanted the citizens of this new country to have the power of self-determination - the federal government is important to hold the states together and provide for common defense, but government at the state and local levels is important precisely because the moral standards in Texas aren't the same as those in Massachusetts. Instead of forcing our values on them, or vice-versa, our system allows us to live in a society that best reflects the views of the people in each area.

As for interpreting the Constitution, it's pretty straightforward. There's not a whole lot of room for contention about the meaning - people generally speak of the Constitution as if it's a complex document full of arcane legalese, but it's really pretty clearly laid out. Some of the highlights include Article 1 Section 8, which enumerates the powers granted to Congress, Article 4 Section 4 which is a "guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government", and especially the 10th Amendment, which I will include in its entirety:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

That's pretty plain - any power the Constitution doesn't explicitly grant to the federal government is reserved for the states or the people. If you read Article 1 Section 8, you'll see how limited a set of powers are explicitly granted.

If times have changed, and the Constitution is no longer relevant, then we have a mechanism to change it - and if it's that clear cut, then that amendment should be ratified with no trouble. If, instead, (as we're doing now) we just wave aside the Constitution by saying that it was written in a different era, then what limits are left on the power of our government? None - and look at what happens when that's the case: a government that continually nibbles away at the edges of the rights of its citizens. The more accustomed that that we become, the faster they can remove those rights, until soon enough we don't even have the right to stand up and complain about it.

And it's not a one-party problem - getting a Democrat into the white house won't change things as much as we'd all like, because both parties are primarily interested in maintaining the status quo.

[lmpshd]

This has all gotten rather abstract, and I'm confused. In what specific ways would you say the federal government has expanded its powers beyond what the constitution allows? I can certainly think of some things -- Bush's tendency to tell Congress to fuck off and put things through by executive order is a good example -- but what's it all got to do with income tax and corporate regulation?

[digitalpoetry]

Didn't notice this comment when I was replying yesterday - I agree with you that using executive orders the way this administration has (and I'd include signing statements and line-item vetos as well) is pretty clearly outside the Constitutional boundaries for the executive branch. As for the legislative branch, Article 1 Section 8 enumerates the powers granted to Congress. A large number of the bills passed by Congress deal with issues not on that list. A bill called the Enumeration of Powers Act has been put before Congress every session for over 10 years now, and it's never even made it out of committee - all the bill says is that any bill coming before Congress needs to include a clause explaining where in the Constitution Congress derives the authority to pass that bill. I'd say that's a pretty clear indication that even the members of Congress are fully aware that they're working outside their limits, and don't want to have to deal with being restrained.

That's related to corporate regulation, but not to income tax. Despite some people arguing to the contrary, I do think that a federal income tax is perfectly legal, thanks to the 16th amendment - I just don't think it's necessary or right.

[digitalpoetry]

To the issue of research: there's always a solid incentive to innovate because inventors reap the rewards of their work - materially and societally. When the government helps fund research, they can decide which causes are worthy and which aren't, which sounds fantastic - but people are notoriously bad at determining which inventions will provide the most benefit to society. Who could have predicted the discovery of penicillin, for instance? It was a surprise even to it's discoverer.

An AIDS vaccine surely would be of incalculable benefit to the entire world - but we don't need the government to tell us that. On the other hand, the government is doing what it can to prevent stem cell research, which also might provide amazing benefits.

Surely private/corporate investment can do the job being done by the government here just as well as in other areas - if for no other reason than that the National Science Foundation is one of the least-funded government agencies in existance - they just barely edge out the Corps of Engineers, the Office of the President and the Legislative Branch. It's somewhere around 1% of the funding given to the DOD. I don't have numbers on hand, but I suspect that's dwarfed by corporate and private funding.

[lmpshd]

(I'm so glad I get to use this icon now!)

The NSF doesn't seem so small to me because at the moment that's where more than half of my income originates. I do pure math, you see... no private investor will pay for it. But fortunately it doesn't cost that much (I don't need much equipment, only books, food and housing.)

Yes, there always is incentive to innovate and you're quite right that usually no one can predict from what direction the greatest advances will come... that's actually precisely why I'd argue that government support for research is crucial. To put it bluntly, private investors don't have much incentive to invest in projects whose outcomes they can't predict -- there may be a few visionaries among them who can, but that's the exception. Without some amount of investment that's disconnected from any concern about profit (which can come from the government as well as philanthropic sources), there'd be very little "pure" research, i.e. research that's designed to advance knowledge without a specific practical goal in mind. It's a natural thing for the government to undertake because it's something that's for the good of us all and basically wouldn't get done otherwise. Here again: private investment and market influences can sometimes play a beneficial role, but they're very far from being the answer to everything.

[digitalpoetry]

I see you point - I'd agree that there are benefits to government funding in cases like this, just as there are drawbacks. The benefits probably do outweigh the problems, but in the end, we don't actually need income taxation to fund this. We could very easily pay for programs like this even if we completely got rid of the individual income tax, by reducing our military budget (among others). We have troops stationed in over 130 countries right now, and it costs a lot of money to keep them there.

[lmpshd]

No argument from me on the last part, certainly.

Of course, I won't easily go along with abolishing the income tax, as there are plenty of other things I'd love to use it to pay for. :)

[digitalpoetry]

And yes, that's a great icon :)