Are You a Moderate/Centrist?
Many of us visit The Moderate Voice because the rhetoric and performance of the party extremes do not seem to be a comfortable fit. We are looking for a different community with which to belong. Most of us like talk and performance that is moderate in tone and balanced in application. And it is a useful exercise to continually reflect on what we mean by moderate, extreme and balanced.
It seems to me that each issue can be laid out along a spectrum from one extreme to another. e.g. Nationalized businesses on one end and unfettered markets on the other with gradations of regulation in the middle. I am drawn to the gradations in the middle. For me the compelling debate is about what kind of regulation and how much.
Similarly on Taxes: Socialism on one end and Libertarianism on the other with various philosophies of taxation in the middle. For me the attractive debate is about how much taxes are necessary to provide some agreed upon level of wellbeing for our citizens. I think it is a canard to talk about any significant reduction in overall tax burdens. Even with scrupulous management, our Federal budget might only shrink from $3 Trillion to $2.5 Trillion. The real issue is how the burden is shared by those to whom much has been given.
Few of the central controversies in our society can be resolved by simple extreme answers: they do not reduce to: power versus finesse, carrot versus stick, civil liberties versus security, and it certainly isn’t liberal versus conservative. It is almost always a balance and blend. And it is the leaders who are willing and able to speak to that Centrist sensibility who attract many of the folks who turn to The Moderate Voice.
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108 Responses to “Are You a Moderate/Centrist?”
The problem is that I don't really disagree with you about the problem of corporate money in politics, but I disagree (with you, I presume, and with the quote from Teddy) about our ability to control it by prohibiting it. McCain Feingold has made the problem worse instead of better, for example (though I realize it's not a ban on corporate money- but it attempted to put some restrictions); as a result, we now have 527s for which the candidates have plausible deniability, so the ads just skirt around the intent of the law and sling mud in the most scurilous manner (as if the stuff approved by the campaigns isn't bad enough.)
It's like you're arguing with a libertarian that drug use is bad and that's why we need to continue the war on drugs, and the libertarian is responding that he doesn't want drug use to increase but his position is based on the evidence that prohibition doesn't work and leads to negative unintended consequences. Continuing to argue with him about the evils of pharmaceutical recreation isn't going to convince him- so if you want to convince me on this issue, show me how it is that you believe that an abolition of the concept of corporate personhood with regard to First Amendment could possibly work.
I think we have already passed the point at which any politician will have the courage to take on these powerful pseudo-citizens. It is probably up to us. How?
Citizen's petition to amend the constitution of the state of ______________
“For all purposes under _state_ law, “person” shall be defined as a living human being.”
It may need a clause to keep it from becoming a pro-life/pro-choice argument:
“Nothing in this amendment is intended to define the point at which human life begins.”
CS, I think enough people are outraged by corporate malfeasance that enough signatures could be amassed to put this on the ballot of most states. I know, corporations may leave the state, but there aren't many headquartered here anyway. And besides, each would need to abide by local laws to do business in the state, just as all food companies have to label food in accordance with California's prop 65.
As to your first amendment issue, it's not an issue for non-persons. The Bill of Rights clearly was not written for companies, but for humans. All corporate speech is “commercial speech” not “free speech”. They are not “individuals” entitled to speak their opinion, though all actual persons in the company are. Commercial speech, as opposed to free speech, must be “truthful and not misleading”. Let's see them adhere to that standard for a change.
BTW, I read it all, and I'm impressed with both the tone and content of this thread. To cosmo's points about Exxon, the case is an emphatic proof that “the invisible hand” of the market does not correct for corporate misbehavior. Exxon fought for 25 years to avoid ANY consequence at all for its negligence. They did not suffer at the hands of consumers and their business has thrived while shirking their responsibility.
If they want the rights of persons, how about the responsibilities. Ford decided not to fix the exploding Pinto problem because it would cost more to fix than the wrongful death settlements that resulted from their reprehensible decision. That, for an actual person, is premeditated murder, and Ford should have been given the death sentence. Corporate charter rescinded, all assets to be auctioned off by the govt. Now that would be a powerful incentive against corporate “persons” willfully doing harm to actual persons. In fact, if we start terminating corporate charters for corporate crimes, the shareholders will do the job for us. They'd flee at the thought that Ford could simply cease to be.
I think your last suggestion is more along the lines of something I could support, GD. And I'm also not opposed to truly significant fines for wrongdoing, as cosmo suggested in regard to Exxon Valdez. But having corporations have to bear responsibility for wrongdoing is different than trying to punish them through the tax code for not paying their workers enough- that's the sort of thing that just doesn't work (for the reasons I've already stated- all of the companies in the industry will face the same pressures, so if their product is inelastic enough they'll pass costs to consumers- and they'll find creative ways around paying anyway.)
CS: ' Here is what I wrote: 'Expanding Medicare would be cheap, cost effective, and curtail the need for wasted billions in bureaucratic startups.' That is a comparison. Medicare ex
pansion would be FAR cheaper than all the needed bureaucracies needed to be created for a from scratch plan. It's always better to take a proven system and expand and improve than start from scratch with a system that has no track record. I can't believe you'd think otherwise. I thought you were smarter than that.
I thought it would have been obvious that I wasn't claiming that creating new bureaucracies would be cheaper or better than expanding Medicare. On the contrary, that would obviously be even worse, but what I argue for is doing neither.'
***It was obvious you were arguing for doing neither, but you offered no alternatives.
'Irrelevant to my point, because I was specifically talking about the demonstrable effect when Reagan lowered the top marginal income tax rate. The tax increases you're talking about had nothing to do with that, and even when GHB knuckled under and raised the top marginal rate, it didn't go up to the absurdly high level that it had been at prior to Reagan (to reiterate my main point: that was the overly confiscatory policy that had led to most income of the high earners being sheltered via loopholes.)'
***But the irrelevant point is that the tax cuts were behind the increases, for when GHB raised taxes at the end of his term, the early 90s saw tax revenues grow, too. When JFK cut taxes before he dies, it raised revenues, but W's tax cuts have seen less revenue. The lesson? That the tax rate really makes little difference on revenue- that depends on other things in the economy. The recession that Ford and Carter dealt with came to an end before Reagan's tax cuts took effect, and new bizes were sprouting. More bizes, more tax revenue. When Bush raised taxes, by the time they took effect, the recession he got from Reagan's voodoo economics was ending, and bizes sprouted. More bizes, more revenue from taxes.
You make the chronology is causality fallacy. And history shows that throughout out nation's life, tax revenues have not been dependent on the tax levels of the time.
However. the healthiest economies have had a parallel with the highest tax rates over extended periods.
'Instead, in that analogy, what I'm suggesting is akin to a parent realizing that if he/she takes too much freedom from the child, the child will rebel- and it isn't possible or desirable for the parent to do the things that would be necessary to prevent that (locking the child in his/her room 24/7, or having surveillance cameras, inspections, and the like.)'
***No, because that analogy only goes so far. Children do not poison wells, cook books, nor steal from their employees and customers at every opportunity. Too stay with that analogy, the child, in this case, is a young Ted Bundy. You have to box in the range of damage that can be done. In short, corporations are the most powweful and largest form of organized criminal enterprise going. Are all corps crooked? No, but most are, in the banal ways of cooking the books or forging customer signatures on contracts to outright grand larceny and market manipulation like Enron. I worked at the pre-SBC takeover SBC, and they did as bad or worse than Worldcom. They just knew when not to push it too far. They were better crooks.
'It's not that I think it's unfair for greedy economic behaviors to be controlled, I'm simply asserting that I don't believe they can be as controlled (or punished/incentivized to change) as you believe they can be. I think you'd agree with that argument for individual moral behaviors relating to sex or drug use.'
***The fundamental difference is that the state created corps, they have not created individuals, ad individuals have rights- civil and human, corps have no rights. Think of a corp as a moneymaking robot piloted by people. We have every right to disassemble a dysfunctional robot. And sex and drug bhavior are ethical choices that only become criminal due to others claims of morality. Accounting fraud and stock manipulation are clear crimes no one argues with, as well as affecting manifold more folk.
'When the govt regulates corporate behavior, it's still regulating individual behavior. The moral issues of liberty may be negated by having the corporate entity as the one that's subject to regulation- but the laws of human nature that lead individuals to find ways to do endruns around the rules still prevail.'
***Wrong, you do not grasp group psychology. I just read and will be sending Joe a review of The Lucifer Effect by Philip Zimbardo, who did the famed Stanford Prison Experiment, and it's a book where he dissects Abu Ghraib and shows it was not a few bad apples, but a rotten barrel that infected the guards. In short, all corps are rotten barrels and the fact that there are decent folk working there says alot. But the win at all costs attitude corrupts, and government can do something about it, if people like you actually did not take the copout so often.
'That's the meat of my argument- that when rules become too restrictive, people find a way to get what they want/need, and they rationalize the behavior instead of acting on more ethical principles.'
***And my point is that the rules are not restrictive enough, which is why deregulation has been a disaster. You claim they're tight. Sorry, you're crazy, and when was the last time you worked in a major corp? The gov't can make the rules and should, so that your and my money is not wasted bailing out the Chryslers or assorted pension plans that many Corps are legally required to fund, but did not.
BTW- forget SS or Medicare- the pension bailout that is not even spoken of dwarfs both as a problem- and all this while CEO salaries were obscenely increased.
CS: Your 527 and drug comparisons are not even remotely tangential to the issue. Some great quotes, GD.
You still buy in implicitly to the fiction that corps are somehow the same as a person. They are not, and even run by a person, they have legal protections a person lacks.
GD: 'Corporate charter rescinded, all assets to be auctioned off by the govt. Now that would be a powerful incentive against corporate “persons” willfully doing harm to actual persons. In fact, if we start terminating corporate charters for corporate crimes, the shareholders will do the job for us. They'd flee at the thought that Ford could simply cease to be.'
Exactly. If they wanna leave the country? Great. Fuck'em, and ban their products as we shd all Chinese toys. Think another entrepreneur will fill the vacuum and play by the rules, even if it means making only a great, and not obscenely great, profit? Damned straight. CS simply does not get this. Corporations are expendable! People should not be.
'But having corporations have to bear responsibility for wrongdoing is different than trying to punish them through the tax code for not paying their workers enough- that's the sort of thing that just doesn't work (for the reasons I've already stated- all of the companies in the industry will face the same pressures, so if their product is inelastic enough they'll pass costs to consumers- and they'll find creative ways around paying anyway.)'
***High taxation is not a punishment, for that to be true one would have to grant that low taxation is a RIGHT! It is not. Again, the very basis of your assumption has no factual reality. A society can tax as much or as little as it wants, on whom it wants. But, as I demonstrated, that tax can be used as great incentives- pay your CEO 100 mill a year when the median worker makes 30k, but allow the corp to only write off ten times the median amount- 300K. The rest is counted as legit profit and taxed accordingly. wanna bet you'll see CEO salaries and bens plummet to realistic levels? They don't like it- get a real idea that innovates and own your own non-corp co. And, again, there will be plenty of folk willing to work under the terms outlined.
There's simply no evidence against this because it has never been tried, and your analogy of the tax rates, even if one bought your argument, is a no go since enforcement is all- w/o it great legislation can fail. We need more IRS auditors, not less.
Go back in 25 year increments, and ask yourself, is 2008 better than 1983 better than 1958 all the way back to 1608 and the founding of this nation. Unquestionably, all that progress has been 'liberal'. Now, even cons like you would not support slavery, but conservatives did. Cons like you are against child labor, but in the day they did not. Cons like you are against Jim Crow, but not back when. Cons like you get sick when hearing of experimentation by the government on blacks and forced sterilization of the mentally ill years ago, but conservatives supported it then. Consevratives opposed Suffrage. Do you?'
So, history has spoken.
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