http://www.itepnet.org/whopays/

While federally taxes tend to come through the income taxes, states tend to tax differently. This becomes a real world example of how regressive taxes play out in the real world. When relying heavily on sales and property taxes, the poorest of the poor end up paying 11% of their tiny annual income on taxes alone. And the people who pay the least under these tax structures, are the richest of the rich at 5% of their annual income.

Remember this the next time someone tries to encourage the idea that people “don’t pay taxes”. To me, this exemplifies what makes sense about the income tax. With the federal program, a family of four making approximately $25,000, is seen as un-taxable, because that is an amount the government supposes is required to reasonably get by. The government does not want to take that money, because the end result would only be an additional hardships that would cause more people to fall under poverty lines. There is even a cost/benefit analysis to be made, that by letting those people off the hook for federal income taxes, they are helping reduce those under the poverty level, who would then need to be enrolled in government programs, increasing the tax burden.

This is an important thing to know, since already about half of people working are paid at such a meager wage, that they still are eligible for and receive food stamps. We shouldn’t be adding to those who need assistance, through extra sales tax burdens.

I really do believe, it’s these kinds of policy decisions being made, that help shape what the country we live in, and what we want it to look like.  

“Let’s take this one guy’s idea of tolls and private businesses being awesome, and the other idea that income tax is evil robbery and take it to its conclusions.

First off, let’s say I’m a single parent with one child recently unemployed because of the recession, at no fault of my own. First thing to note, is that everything is more expensive because there is no income tax and the bare minimum of funding is coming from a higher and broadly implemented sales tax. That means, buying food, buying clothes, buying every day things we take for granted, become more expensive every time I make a purchase. These point of sale surcharges get added to my bank, to my telephone, to my utilities, to roads, to parks, to libraries,…

It’s harder for me to juggle feeding my child, while paying for clothes for job interviews, paying bills and rent, while buying just the every day crap that I need to get by. And the people with jobs, who are able to, but not paying income taxes, are being charged at relatively the same level as people who can’t pay the bills or have a hard time feeding their children (aad the wealthy pay 1% or less of income on essential items).

As one person suggested, since toll roads are awesome and in this scenario take over instead of direct taxes. That means it becomes increasingly cost prohibitive of me to go to interviews, and even think about daily commuting to a job because of tolls. Now, I’m  paying $10 a day or $2,600 a year. That’s in addition to any increase in taxes on gas which is currently really relatively cheap in the US.  So, what if that’s too much money?  Then I have to look into jobs that are only along bus routes, if public buses still exist or if they are more expensive since privatizing (which is why taxi’s are more expensive than public transportation). Since jobs tend to be located away from poorer areas, you can probably tack on an extra 2 hours of commuting time…away from parenting…if I can afford it.

Now again, with this new “private companies are better” idea,  libraries get turned over to Barnes & Noble. As someone who doesn’t have a computer or internet service because it’s too expensive, I have to go Barnes & Noble, which now has computers set up for internet access, for $15 an hour of internet. I also now am forced to pay for books, that previously I could check out, limiting the reading my child is doing while growing up.

Then, parks also get turned over to private companies, which then require me to pay a toll every time I want to take my kid there.  Whatever, maybe reading and parks should be accessed depending on your wealth.

Speaking of which, since public schooling was too expensive to maintain at its current level, there are mostly private schools with only a few public schools which have gone down the crapper. Now the education my child is receiving is even worse, and of course with the ballooning cost of education, there is no chance he will  be able to afford college, and he can also look forward also to a future of poverty. YAY! I guess that’s for the best, since I need my kid to work so that we can pay the bills.

So what happens when you take this situation and spread it across the estimated 20% of people actually out of jobs? So what happens then? There are more people who end up going bankrupt, more children going hungry, crime becomes more attractive and easier than finding and then maintaining a job, the already exploding prison population just gets worse, there are more kids with absentee parents, if there is any sort of welfare left, (probably not), then that would explode it all leads back to the same poverty. And truthfully, that just makes our system less fair. It creates a system where children are not educated, people are in poverty, it becomes harder to get out of poverty, people in poverty are not even really consumers at this point let alone innovators, either way they would need to reply further on resources such as health care/emergency room costs, homeless shelters/programs, rehabilitation programs, soup kitchens, huge foster child programs. That’s hoping these non-governmental institutions were able to step up to the challenge, which I think is next to impossible. You and I will help foot the bill no matter what or live in a place resembling a third world country.

Income taxes spread out the burden of taxation, so it’s not an overly financial burden to any one person, it’s having more people group up and pay less. As opposed to the idea of sales and toll taxes which  just makes you pay more money at every single instance of life. Every time I want to walk down the street, they would nickle and dime me.  The result is, your average person can end up paying a higher percentage of their income, just because they wanted to walk outside for a day, and had to pay tolls and extra taxes. Making life more expensive and difficult for people who are already having a rough life. It’s the same kind of influences that make getting life out of poverty nearly impossible.

This is what it means to have regressive taxation and to support those policies…and why we don’t do it.

In this story, a white, probably financially stable, conservative, college-attending female, worked in retail, used bad retail experiences (unheard of!), at Wal Mart and its lower income customers (another surprise!) to justify her political ideologies and class stereotypes of “poor people”. Surprisingly, this story has appeared beyond Facebook and has traveled as far as the Associated Press.

Food Stamps

Now, our author Christine, throws in various welfare programs so it’s hard to discern what she is directly criticizing. Yet, let’s start with food stamps. There are distinct restrictions in place about what can be bought using “food stamps”.

And as Politifact points out, there are restrictions on the purchasing of edible versus inedible gourds, so obviously there are strict restrictions against all non-food items: So if you’re a conservative worried about someone using foodstamps to buy evil household goods, shoes, or any non-food item…fear no more!

Concerning, the purchase of steak, cake, and lobster, these items are explicitly listed as available. Yet, if you were worried that the government simply did not know people could purchase these things, there is a ten page paper on why they simply allow all food without dietary/cost restrictions for what you can purchase.

A little bit of research goes a long way in talking about things beyond anecdotes  The reports details how the feasibility for dietary restrictions on food items is complex, and difficult to implement nationwide , how it would increase the cost of the program, how it could accidentally put grocery stores under further strain with increased chance of violations.

TANF

Speaking of which, in her tales of “things that happened today at work”, there is very little substance in terms of numbers or facts. She lists one conservative website, which seems to have a slight agenda against welfare.

I’ve looked into the top results for Maine and the TANF program to get better picture. Since there is very little actual information provided int his article.  I found this report by the Maine Equal Justice Partners, the state’s website, and TANF‘s website:.

Here they point out that people in the program are required to do work related activity for 30 hours a week, must have children, there is only 2% or less of fraud, much lower than the national average (from people who actually investigate fraud). That since the program was implemented, the amount of people enrolled has been reduced.  That families in the program stay in for an average of 21 months. There is a 5 year maximum. That the amount given through these programs is comparably low. That the max payout for a 3 person household is $485 (which if this is accurate, wouldn’t cover rent ).  I’m not saying that there are not real problems with Maine’s spending in welfare, just that Christine and the anti-welfare website, tend to ignore numbers that don’t adhere to their purposes, and don’t paint an accurate picture.

JUDGEMENTAL JUDGE JUDGE

My biggest gripe with this piece, besides the relative lack of sources or program research, is the judgments made on other people and their lives. Only one of the things she listed could be construed as fraud, the rest are just assumptions based on stereotypes. I find it plausible that some lower income people, would not have a computer, internet, or land line, and instead have an iPhone in order to make their day to day emails and phone calls. I haven’t written a physical letter to land a  job in probably five years, and definitely only communicate with my work through email. Or maybe they had the phone before going on welfare. Or maybe it was given to them by a family member to help out. But I’ll acquiesce, maybe none of these things are the reason the person has an IPhone.  Yet the point is, Christine, being someone most likely has never been in a remotely similar situation, probably has lived relatively comfortably, just thinks that these mean unemployed people are greedy/lazy! But the truth is, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t really know anything about these people. Yet, she sat there and made a fictional narrative based on products on a Wal-Mart scanner, made broad assumptions about “poor people”, wants to make policy changes based on that.

And I find this overreach by conservatives strange and menacing. Should there be a list of things that poor people should not be allowed to purchase when they are receiving welfare? Who should decide? This girl? A research team? Are toys for kids on the “Do not buy” list when you are poor? Do people give up all autonomy and rights while on welfare? Should they wear collars that sound an alarm if someone on welfare buys something not on “the list”? (After hearing the debate on drug testing welfare recepients, I’m afraid the answer could be yes).

BIGOTS & PREJUDICES

Then, the whole character judgment thing. Any one, who has worked a day in their life in retail, knows that customers can be assholes. And the “Retail Warriors”, do their best to go through their days and not let it get them down. Just because, for example, I have had a rich housewife in a fur coat yell at me and asked for her money back, doesn’t mean I write a blog post about how all rich people are stingy, and rude, as Christine concludes about “poor people”. It’s a human thing, not a class thing.

There are some in retail, who do their jobs and come to disgusting generalities about: “poor people, Asians, blacks, old people, teenagers, rich people, Muslims”, or any other demographic. I know in my time waiting tables, I’ve heard racist assumptions of who would tip well and who would not. These people I’ve met, who tend to promote and propagate stereotypes based on race, age, clothing, income level…they just tend to be bad human beings.

The idea that a whole article could be primarily oriented around the idea that, “poor people are rude and lazy”, is what initial interested/enraged/annoyed me about this article.

REPUBLICANS & POVERTY

This whole debacle reminds me of this article I read yesterday, that generally just discussed conservative policies, it’s lack of concern with poverty and demonizing of those who are in it. This strikes me as odd, particularly as we are in the middle of one of the longest recessions of our time, of which people are hurting due to no fault of their own, but are at the whim of an economic downturn.

…there has been no serious proposal by the GOP to address poverty and revive the American middle class. Conservatives are prisoners to a set of ideas whose only purpose is to serve capital. Addressing poverty would require conservatives to break with those ideas.

Poverty has always been a difficult subject for conservatives. The only way they know how to talk about it is to scold, demonize and stereotype the poor–and their advocates (witness the savaging of ACORN). But the louder the calls for “personal responsibility” for the poor, the lesser the willingness to demand accountability from corporations

“Layoffs too often became permanent, not part of the business cycle. And these changes didn’t just affect blue collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the internet,” – President Obama

It’s all the internet’s fault!

This is an old quote from the summer, but reading it yesterday on The Facebook made me want to resurrect it once again.After doing some research, the references towards this line are primarily conservative blogs mocking Obama for ‘blaming’ the economy on ATM’s and the internet. Which is just a cheap political shot and distorting what he said. To break it down, first Obama is not blaming unemployment on anything in particular. He is discussing one hurdle among several, that need to be addressed when facing a depression and a series of massive layoffs. He didn’t say, “This is why the unemployment is high”, he said “This is one issue we need to address to handle unemployment”. I think this is something we would want our president to discuss and think about when trying to decide policy.

What he is referencing, is something I believe higher schoolers taking Economics 101 could agree with:

1. The demand of the job market is constantly in flux.
2. Technology affects the demands of the job market.
3. People who are laid off, won’t necessarily be rehired in those same jobs.

This is why whenever you read any decent article on economic recovery or lowering the unemployment rate, you’ll often hear about “retraining”, as one way of helping recovery to meet the changing demands of the job market. With technology, many jobs are obsolete, move to different sectors, or require different training.

I know that several of my previous positions, no longer exist or the demand for them has gone down dramatically. In college, I worked as an operator for the deaf and hard of hearing, a job that’s more frequently being replaced by the common usage of smart phones and technologies using webcams to help ASL users sign directly. When cuts are needed, it’s obvious that the operating staff will be the first thing cut.

In another position, I used to do a lot of paperwork for expense reports, trip itinaries, typing and printing physical letters, all of which been replaced somewhat by processing through the internet and email. When I left that position, since efficiency in is the new priority, they decided they didn’t need to hire someone to fulfill this role any longer.

You can see this with almost any industry. Look at the car industry, poor profits (which turns out happens during a recession), lead to layoffs, and the increased use of robotics in car manufacturing, means that many of those people will never be hired back. These are all standard economic concepts, of which, suddenly conservatives want to mock as a non-issue?

Now, I will agree with The Economist and Marketwatch, that the ATM example (which is all it was, an example to a larger point), is a rather poor one, but the logic beyond that is quite sound.

p.s. I also agree with The Economist that, voters, particularly conservatives will cheekily blame him regardless of economics or facts.

“It’s a symbol to show we have the right to be here,” said Ball. “It’s the people’s land. Also, for political reasons, it’s a slap in the face of the people in power to be here. We’re not above the law here, but we don’t agree with a lot of the laws here. Trespassing. All the little things—you can’t put your bike on that fence.” – Occupy Wall Street: Why protesters just don’t want to leave. – Slate Magazine

I’ve been arguing a lot on websites (and facebook), about OWS recently. Putting myself in anxious tizzies. What I don’t understand, is that the most recent push in conservative circles has been libertarianism, in these situations, there are so many libertarian arguments.

Yet, so many conservatives because they disagree with the content of the speech, are willing to make excuses, and to instead championing free speech…champion parks? The right of government to make people go away? Curfew laws? Anti-camping regulations? Safety (while seemingly supporting rough treatment by police)?

Protests in this country, have a nostalgic pride, not always for Vietnam, but definitely for civil rights. In hindsight, people always act like, sure, that was a-okay. In actuality it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t popular to hold a sit in, it wasn’t legal, they were arrested. Yet, that was the method they used to bring attention to their cause. In this day and age, when you have protests every minute (at least in NYC), the OWS found a method that garnered attention to their cause and helped it spread. I’m certain, the conservatives during the civil rights movement, echoed something very similar to what they’re saying today, “Protest all you want, but really imposing on a private businesses! How dare you! I’m not against free speech but…you know, private business. Protest, but can you find a way to do it that’s easier to ignore?”.

It’s not capitalism when the system is plagued with incomprehensible rules…Add to this centralized federal mismanagement of farming, education, medicine, insurance, banking and welfare. This is not capitalism!

To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political spectrums. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names – Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.

-Ron Paul

I always find Ron Paul to be an idealogue and far too theoretical. Whenever I read this argument, I read it as saying, “The only way you can blame capitalism, is if it’s my drafted version of capitalism, which obviously will result in a near utopian society, and if you don’t do what I say, we are doomed.” It’s a conjectured and I believe a distorted view of economics in actuality.

First and foremost, no country has ever succeeded on establishing a pure capitalist or socialist economy. It has never worked. I don’t believe there is a single perfect system, yet most countries have established economic policies as a reactions to real problems that happen in an economy. When problems arise, each borrow ideas from the other spectrum in order to address them.

In our country, we started with very few rules. Children are put to work in factories, governments say, you can’t do that, have some human decency. People work and die in hazardous conditions, government says, you have to establish safety procedures to prevent this, you have to compensate people who get hurt because of your actions. These things happen and try to avoid future problems. That’s not to say that governments never intrude too much, it’s not saying that sometimes people will get around rules established, but to take an absolutist view of government intervention as the problem to everything, seems to be an outlandish claim.

While we can look at the monetary and fiscal practices the government has taken over the years and debate them (although, we have seemed to have an increasingly stable economy in the past century), and look into ways to reform practices, I have never seen a business act very responsible in an area without government supervision. That can be how it treats workers, what it puts into products, how it counts and uses money.

What Ron Paul suggests is that, even though we have a myriad of examples of these wrongs of businesses, he’d much rather put ideology in front of practicality. When you say, corporations and the government did things to cause the recent recession, yet only the government is to blame and we should tie their hands at reform to try to prevent future malfeasance. This just seems beyond impractical.

Since no country is purely capitalist or socialistic, out of every developed country in the world, you can’t deny that The United States has the strongest set of capitalist principles at play. So, on many levels, we are a living breathing example of what happens in a country that establishes a practical form of capitalism. If everything that Ron Paul said is true, then you should be able to look at Europe as the opposite, as a country with stronger ties to practical socialist economic theories. They should be the epitome of the horrible things that happen with government intervention.

Yet, when you look at several of indicators, Europeans outperform in levels of education, health, general happiness and I’m nearly willing to bet they have less fraud as well. You can’t have such a simplistic viewpoint as GOVERNMENT BAD when there are so many examples to the contrary. The world’s a more complicated place, that can’t always adhere to flights of theoretical fancy.

First, let’s quit the whole, “conservatives are worse” or “liberals do the same thing” that I keep seeing: That will just put everyone into a defensive mode and close themselves off. Instead, we should quit the overinflated rhetoric over the subversion/takeover/destruction of America and references toward violence. Let’s just make that a general rule across the board, without trying to place blame on conservatives or liberals.

Second, conservatives have been responding that, “This guy, if he was conservative, was troubled and not indicative of all conservatives nor are they all to blame”. I agree. There have been other examples this past decade of political violence, and we should know and understand that it is not indicative of what it means to be a conservative. Yet, I really hope that this point is internalized. That you can use this same logic and express it towards other human beings.

Just as every violent anti-government individual doesn’t define conservatism, the 9-11 terrorist attacks do not define Islam or Muslims. We don’t need to treat every Muslim that wants to build a mosque in New York City with hatred and suspicion. We don’t need to look at the Fort Hood shooting as a sign that Islam is inherently violent.

Although, as individuals whether we be conservatives, liberals, Christians, Muslims, we should stay aware, and urge our peers, colleagues, acquaintances, members, political figures, tv hosts, authors, who are also within these social groups, to rebuke those who would use inflamed and violent language. Because in a way, we are attached to the groups we identify with, we do help define what it means to be these labels, and we are invested in them. So instead of acting defensive when bad shit happens, we should actively be working to prevent it.

I was looking over the New York Times article over 9 year old Christina Green who was caught in the shooting and it’s tough reading the whole thing: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10green.html?ref=us

No human being can truly think that winning elections ,changing a policy, defense of an ideology, or vanity is worth a life of an innocent.

There is a liberal “facebook friend”, that I cringe whenever I see his status update. Since, I, your humble narrator, is liberal, you would assume that we would get along, have things in common, and that we would give each other high fives whenever there’s movement on liberal policies.

Instead, he’s the type that revels in conspiracy, hate, doubt, cynical, picky, ultra divisive liberal. The type that doesn’t vote, because “Man, both parties are the same, they’re all out to get you. Corporations! Money! Keeping the people down!” The type who updates his facebook using the term AmeriKKKa. There are things he posts, that I would agree with, that immediately turn me off to them, because he posts them. He doesn’t want to support anything mainstream Democrats work for, because to him they are part of the problem and never do enough.

He posted this Bill Maher video concerning “Rally to Restore Sanity” video today:

While, I agree, I wish we could have Jon Stewart flagrantly on the side of liberal policies, using his power to defeat Glen Beck and his ilk….yet that doesn’t mean that Stewart’s message of cooperation is useless or non pertinent. We shouldn’t see conspiracy and enemy in every one. We should participate, be reasonable, and get things done.

So seeing this video, from the one liberal, who in my life is the mirror image of rabid conservatism…depresses me. This is the liberal Jon Stewart referenced in his speech. This is probably condescending towards this friend’s views, but just realizing that he will never even consider that he’s part of the problem, that he will watch this video and feel vindicated and right, saddens me on the future of the discourse I spoke about in the last post. And kind of just undermines Maher’s whole point in my eyes.

We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is — on the brink of catastrophe — torn by polarizing hate and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done, but the truth is we do.

I think this is true for the most part, yet unfortunately I tend to wallow in the dregs of the internet, where the idea of having “animus and not be enemies“, can be lost in empty talking points and name calling.  Recently, I’ve felt like I spent two days fighting an argument that was inevitably fruitless.  It all started with this phrase about the Health Care Recovery Act: “The end-goal is to destroy the American health insurance industry and create a public entity to do the same. Isn’t that socialism?”. Instead of discussing, whether or not the policies created would help or hurt the insurance industry, whether it would be effective at lowering prices, offering alternatives, it ended in an argument on the hypothetical goals/desires of the people creating the bill. Away from policy. Instead, it was an endless argument that truthfully had nowhere to go. People can’t argue against a belief that begins and ends on an opinion.  My opinion that, it’s not the aim of Health Care Reform, versus the opinion that it is.

The ideas that drive us apart, incapable of fixing our problems is a mindset that thinks of each other is an enemy. As untrustworthy. As having ulterior motives than the ones we express. Be it, if you think conservatives are out to dismantle Social Security when they say they are trying to fix it, or to as I said liberals are trying to destroy parts of the health care system instead of help it. Instead of thinking of each other as politicians, citizens, activists, all with the sincere and authentic desire to make things better for the country, we treat each other as trying to go out and maim and hurt what we value. While I agree with John Stewart’s hypothesis, and blame on “The Media” for magnifying anger and dissent, it’s been around for a while in our political discourse. While arguing against that previous hypothesis about Democrats out to destroy, it probably didn’t help that I referenced the always pertinent “The paranoid style in American politics” where in 1964 Hofstadter references an almost identical argument, typical of historical conservative mindset “

The basic elements of contemporary right-wing thought…[is that]…there has been the now-familiar sustained conspiracy, running over more than a generation, and reaching its climax in Roosevelt’s New Deal, to undermine free capitalism, to bring the economy under the direction of the federal government, and to pave the way for socialism or communism.”

As a side note, I’m not trying to vilify and simplify conservatives for always being this way. In the article, Hofstadter does mention that this historical pattern, “is far from new and…is not necessarily right-wing”. Yet it’s a real problem that’s evident, especially on the internet and the media. Outside of those spheres, each of us needs to have a mindset that stays away from paranoia.

Paranoia , suspicion, leave us where we can’t talk about results, possible solutions, instead we have to speak to our fears and biases. What you fear liberals are out trying to do, what you fear conservatives are out trying to do. That doesn’t leave room for anything substantial.

What conversations can we have? The liberal, instead of calling Tea Partier’s racist, possibly speak about the ramifications of policy on minorities.  The conservative, instead of calling people ”socialist” we can talk about specifically how private industry would be better in a specific field. Then we can talk about the tangible of what we want, how policy affects people, and eventually what policy choices we think would benefit everyone involved.  Possibly getting  pass the biases we hold for “the other side”.

That’s the other part of the rally. While The Media is culpable in encouraging these sort of divisions, we all should be cognizant on whether or not our political discourse is caught in the dregs or producing a conversation worth having.

I hope that was enough Kumbaya for everyone.

Is that really what listeners or the general public want? A token liberal radio station? Or maybe a station that is just based solely on getting listeners and sponsors? Those are not the factors that have driven NPR nor do I see a reason that they should. Myself, I am appreciative that the “conservative right” gets all riled up at NPR every now and again. That should be part of the deal with receiving government funds. That you are then held accountable for what you do, by the government, politicians, and the general public. Shouldn’t people of every political ideology want there to be pressure for NPR to be as unbiased as possible?

Honestly, NPR does not like this publicity. They don’t want millions of dollars retracted, and they don’t want people criticizing them. So actually, what keeps conservatives complaining, keeps NPR unbiased and focused on their mission to, “…create a more informed public – one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.”

One thing I’ve noted about the detractors, is that they simply do not care what NPR airs. Conservatives are content with Fox News Radio, and Schafer flatly says, “Public radio’s extinction would suit me fine”.

They’re obviously not the people that want or care for NPR’s programming. Yet, it’s something unique in it’s field. Look at where radio has gone when completely at the whims of ratings and commercials. We get Morning Zoo Shows and the conservative talk punditry. Yet, if NPR ever went even slightly in that direction, they would not have an argument for government funding.

To keep NPR tied to it’s mission, to provide a valuable, unbiased, intelligent content, it’s important to support it’s government funding.

Although, if you don’t buy my NPR praises, read this great take on their evolution as a source of news and content.