Nice exchange reported in an AP story in today's Houston Chronicle:

Eric Schoenberg, from a group called Americans United for Fair Economy, who complains that he personally does not pay enough income tax:
"Do you think this is reasonable, that somebody in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?"

Senator Orrin Hatch: "There's still time before the filing deadline for [him] to give Uncle Sam more money."

Schoenberg: [incoherent babble]

Funny how unwilling Schoenberg is (and, from what I can tell, virtually all other tax advocates are) to put his money where his mouth is. One wonders if what he really desires is not the practical benefit of Federal revenue (e.g. more money for weapons, or abstinence education, or ethanol subsidies, or school vouchers, or other unvarnished positives that we all uniformly support), but simply the perverted joy of vicariously taking from others.

(04-18-2011 03:20 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  Nice exchange reported in an AP story in today's Houston Chronicle:
Eric Schoenberg, from a group called Americans United for Fair Economy, who complains that he personally does not pay enough income tax:
"Do you think this is reasonable, that somebody in my circumstances should only be paying 1 percent of their income in tax?"
Senator Orrin Hatch: "There's still time before the filing deadline for [him] to give Uncle Sam more money."
Schoenberg: [incoherent babble]
Funny how unwilling Schoenberg is (and, from what I can tell, virtually all other tax advocates are) to put his money where his mouth is. One wonders if what he really desires is not the practical benefit of Federal revenue (e.g. more money for weapons, or abstinence education, or ethanol subsidies, or school vouchers, or other unvarnished positives that we all uniformly support), but simply the perverted joy of vicariously taking from others.

What people don't seem to grasp is that this is a textbook example of why "taxing the rich" does not work. The truly "rich" don't pay higher taxes--they find shelters, or get congress to enact new ones, or move overseas. Like John Kerry's boat, they find some way to evade.

Who gets hit by those tax increases are the people at the lower end of the "rich" bracket, who aren't rich yet but are trying to get ahead. Of course that suits the elites at the top just fine. The tax code erects significant barriers to entry that will keep the local entrepreneur from rubbing elbows with the Buffetts and Gateses and Sororses of the world. That's precisely the way that the really, really rich want it.

I could maybe live with that, if on the flip side the money was being spent to do some good. But however well intentioned they were to start with, most social welfare programs have turned out to be anything but in practice. The Great Society has destroyed the African-American family. I wouldn't have thought that possible a generation ago, but obviously I was wrong.

(04-18-2011 03:45 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  The Great Society has destroyed the African-American family. I wouldn't have thought that possible a generation ago, but obviously I was wrong.

How did the Great Society destroy black families? What should have been done to address the historical inequalities against African Americans instead?

Back to Schoenberg, what I find ironic is not that he doesn't want to add something to his check unless forced by law, it is that he obviously worked very hard to get his taxable income down through the use of (perfectly legal) tax shelters, deductions, reclassification of income and other means. So all year long, he has tasked his accountants and lawyer to shelter his income and reduce his taxes, now he is complaining about it.

(04-18-2011 04:41 PM)LAOwl Wrote:  

(04-18-2011 03:45 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  The Great Society has destroyed the African-American family. I wouldn't have thought that possible a generation ago, but obviously I was wrong.

How did the Great Society destroy black families? What should have been done to address the historical inequalities against African Americans instead?

Probably a reference to some of the phenomena noted in the famous Moynihan Report. Here is some background on that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_F...nal_Action
Moynihan was an old-school liberal, but (as you will see) not an ideologue.

Quote:What should have been done to address the historical inequalities against African Americans instead?

The point is that it is not clear that economic subsidies actually did anything to address historic inequality -- and that by the law of unintended consequences, they may actually have made it worse. Intentions are not the same as results.

(04-19-2011 04:24 PM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  Back to Schoenberg, what I find ironic is not that he doesn't want to add something to his check unless forced by law, it is that he obviously worked very hard to get his taxable income down through the use of (perfectly legal) tax shelters, deductions, reclassification of income and other means. So all year long, he has tasked his accountants and lawyer to shelter his income and reduce his taxes, now he is complaining about it.

Yes indeed. He want to a lot of effort to put himself in a position from which he could (self)righteously complain.

(04-19-2011 04:49 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  Probably a reference to some of the phenomena noted in the famous Moynihan Report. Here is some background on that:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_F...nal_Action
Moynihan was an old-school liberal, but (as you will see) not an ideologue.

Funny you should bring up Moynihan. The main point of his report was that high unemployment was contributing to the disintegration of the black family. In fact, he was one of the major architects of the Great Society, as he argued the way to combat this family breakdown was through economic and social empowerment through job training and creation programs, educational aid, etc.

Here's a quote from the report:
"In a word, a national effort towards the problems of Negro Americans must be directed towards the question of family structure. The object should be to strengthen the Negro family so as to enable it to raise and support its members as do other families. After that, how this group of Americans chooses to run its affairs, take advantage of its opportunities, or fail to do so, is none of the nation's business."

Both liberal and conservative critics like to point to Moynihan's statistics about the breakdown of the black family to either discredit his report or confirm their beliefs that the black family is permanently flawed. However, his report was really a "case for action" (it's in the title) to empower blacks through government intervention.

Deindustralization, which spelled the end of many blue collar jobs in the inner city, increased incarceration rates among African American males, and the re-segregation of urban schools have contributed to the tangle of pathology that Moynihan alluded to in his report.

Quote:The point is that it is not clear that economic subsidies actually did anything to address historic inequality -- and that by the law of unintended consequences, they may actually have made it worse. Intentions are not the same as results.

Not all African Americans continue to struggle economically. In fact, the black middle class grew tremendously after the 1960s thanks to an expansion of economic and social opportunities. The problem now is engaging the black lower class, which continue to suffer from the same problems and isolation Moynihan discussed in his report.