This is, more or less, the point I was trying to make in my first comment on the tax simplification post. Thinking of taxes rather than services as the way to address social ills or needs gets us into a lot of trouble, both as a matter of tax policy and as a matter of program politics. The taxes should be used to pay for those services; fairness is an important consideration in how we structure those taxes, but it would be foolish to think that they will, on their own, lead us into a truly fairer society. Government services allow us to build in fairness that is also value-adding rather than value-subtracting.

"There are lots of government services which are actually a good deal for middle income families and should be sold as something that Americans would be wise to invest in."

While this is certainly true, politicians like Barack Obama who lie about offering universal healthcare are selling out middle income families in a manner which will become fully apparent to them down the road.

Such politicians are setting up camp on the weakest ground imaginable.

When we look at Obama, we see who we want to be.

When we look at Clinton, we see who we are. And we're douchebags.

I agree, why can't politicians and administrative hacks just say- this is what you want this is what it costs to start up and then this is what it costs to maintain every year thereafter and this is how much more it will add to the budget, do you still want it? I do that with my son all the time when he wants something and even he gets it most of the time. Taxes pay for things that we have said that we want and need and the ongoing things that we have wanted and needed in the past and while it all needs to be looked at and revised every once in awhile it is more than just money out of the pocket, it is also the services that allow us to put money into said pockets like transportation, security, health and education. We can argue details but taxes aren't just money per say.

One cause of this is that people who make 200k mostly vote people who make 20k mostly don't.

They will lose the election if they say they'll raise taxes on middle income people. There is little trust in government out there, the perception is that the rich are making their money off a series of financial scams, and have gotten free ride off Bush in terms of taxes-- a line heavily pushed by liberals.

Dems can't turn around now and raise taxes on stagnating middle incomes without demonstrating their seiousness about spreading the fiscal burden back to the top of the income ladder.

This is just the political exigency of the matter, and more true now than ever with the current Wall Street bailout situation. I'm already paying for their profligacy, thank you very mich.

The grand liberal plans are going to be on hold, kids. There is a lot more financial shit yet to hit the fan. 10 to one odds say that what ends up happening over the next 10 years looks nothing like what got talked over in the election.

Meanwhile, Democrats should pander their way into office any way they can. This is a dumb reason to lose the election.

This is a huge point. Every time I get into a discussion about taxes with a conservative, I try to frame it towards what we are getting for our taxes. I don't care as much about how high my taxes are, as much as I care about how much of them go to no-bid military/industrial corporations rather than say high-speed rail service.

Always makes me think of the libertarian I ran into campaigning on my way to a major community festival in a beautiful and popular community park.

I just looked at him and said that I didn't see much point in cutting taxes if it meant the end to the community support of the very event I was going to. He looked confused.

Floccina, I'm sure that has nothing to do with the fact that voting is always held on a weekday, and overwhelmingly held durring the standard work day...

IF we were serious about Democracy, election days would be national holidays.

Anonymous, who is part of the top most 20% of income, will do anything to convince himself that he's in the middly 20% of income.

And, of course, Petey: Stop lying and claiming Hillary is talking about Universal Healthcare. She's not. She's talking about forcing people to buy ineffectual insurance.

Bullshit, soullite. I am an in the second quintile, in a really, really good year (not this one).

I just know damn well that if Democrats raise taxes on middle and upper-middle incomes, they will lose the election. Now, I could vote for Ralph Nader, again, this time on the notion that there really is insufficient difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties on economic issues, but I'm trying to control my own excesses in the hopes that the Democratic Party isn't completely terminally stupid.

If it is, then it gets fucked, right?

The major problem I see on this 200K+ thing is that the likely outcome of the Bush years is a very severe recession, lasting longer than the recent average of recessions (more like the 1930's), and the fiscal arm of government - the Congress - is going to have to pony up lots of cash in public projects (infrastructure, clean energy, housing assistance, higher education tuition, etc) that they can't fund without continued inflows of capital from the developing world. The Fed. Reserve is just about at the end of their rope to make an impact, so new revenues will be needed, and the upper 20% will need to be tapped or the recession/depression will be either longer or deeper - or both. Given that defense, social security, and all descretionary programs are each about a third of available income to the government (excluding national debt interest payments), something will have to give if discretionary spending has to increase - and defense and social security are off the table.

We are likely fucked no matter what, given the extent of the annual deficit and the longer term national debt, but the 200K limit just makes solutions more unlikely to be adopted: there's no there (money) there.

I do agree however than drawing the line at $120 K family income (twice the median income) is an election loser. So we are double fucked.

Mondale, Mondale, Mondale. Show us his honesty had nothing to do with the margin of his defeat, and then we can talk.

Too young to understand?

"Show us it didn't?"

Show us it did!

A) That's how this works: you don't ask people to disprove your hypothesis. You prove it. Sure, people said it did, just as people said all sorts of political gaffes cost people elections. But a lot of that is unverified media speculation. Mondale himself said the election was over with Reagan's "I won't take advantage of my opponent's youth and inexperience" answer to the age question. Which seems equally plausible to me. Or it could be neither. Or both.

But in April of 1984, Mondale was already losing to Reagan in the polls, even before he was the nominee. And the former two-term VP wasn't losing on name recognition: Reagan broke 50%, 52-44. The final results were worse than that, but it's not like he was cruising to victory before he was honest about taxes.

B) In politics, if we always took that cautious an approach, nothing would ever happen. "We can't prove this won't backfire politically, so we won't do it" would shut down the entire political world instantly. Except that people would keep calling for tax cuts when taxes were at zero, because everyone knows that issue's a winner.

"And, of course, Petey: Stop lying and claiming Hillary is talking about Universal Healthcare. She's not. She's talking about forcing people to buy ineffectual insurance."

We just differ on the policy, soullite.

You think universal healthcare would be a crime perpetrated on the American people.

I think universal healthcare is a crucial piece of good legislation we need to pass in the '09 - '10 Congress.

You've got General Electric on your side. I've got the Democratic electorate on my side. We'll see who has more power.

Thinking of taxes rather than services as the way to address social ills or needs gets us into a lot of trouble, both as a matter of tax policy and as a matter of program politics.

I might disagree--progressive taxation is easier to argue for than means-tested benefits, to the extent that reframing a means-tested benefit as a progressive tax cut (EITC) seems fairly popular. Taxes should be progressive and redistributive, services and benefits should be general improvements.

Sure, we should keep them linked in rhetoric, and arguably that means raising middle class taxes in exchange for middle class benefits, as Ezra seems to be hinting at.

But while the middle class is willing to exempt the lower class from taxes (more willing, I think, than we currently do), they aren't at all willing to pay taxes for benefits they don't get. (They're bastards like that, but you go to war on poverty with the voters you got, not the voters you want.)

OTOH since everyone seems to agree that upper middle class voters are values voters, I guess we should tax the hell out of 'em.

I agree that taxation should be put in a framework of cost of value. Here's what you get, here's what it costs. If you want the value you have to pay for it. If Congress won't reduce spending, I won't increase deficits. In reality, people do value many government services.

Democrats also have to explain why excessive structural deficits are bad.

Democrats need to explain that at the "optimal tax rate" reducing marginal tax rate does not stimulate revenue growth in excess of the lost revenues.

Finally, someone needs to make the point that besides all the other ills, deficit spending subsidizes the cost of government. This tends to drive up consumption of the commodity being subsidized, in this case government. So if you really want less government, under-taxing won't work.

There are lots of government services which are actually a good deal for middle income families and should be sold as something that Americans would be wise to invest in.

The overwhelming majority of government services that do some direct good for "middle income families" (police, fire depts., parks, sewage treatment, trash collection, etc.) come from state or local governments, and those state and local governments take a lot less of a bite than the Feds.

It would probably be impossible to convince a significant number of John and Jane Voters that federal tax increases are a good thing while so much money is spent on unnecessary things that have nothing to do with them personally (beyond the fact that they are asked to pay for them).

This isn't really a D or R issue, since Congress's true loyalties are to Incumbistan.

Case in point: Ted Stevens uses tax payer money to build a "bridge to nowhere" that sweetens the cost of some of his Real Estate holding. Republicans are replaced by Democrats. Rangel uses his party's new majority to take taxpayer money, name one wing of a private university after himself, and thusly massage his own massive ego at everyone else's expense.

Also, don't underestimate the degree of anger a party will create among middle income families when it raises taxes on them to bailout irresponsible people who took out irresponsible loans from irresponsible bankers.

Consumatopia, I actually agree with you 100% there. My point was that when we go from basics of progressive taxation to this targeted cut and that targeted penalty, we start to get ourselves into trouble. And making a program universal is still a way to achieve redistributive ends since those programs will cost the wealthy more than they cost the poor.

"We'll see who has more power.

Hey. Klein. Do you see that?

Stop your ignorant prattling about "awesome stuff", because it has almost nothing to do with that.