The Use of Taxation

A W-2 form.

I know people fret over taxes – from the hassle of the process to the actual payment – but we can all agree that at some level taxes are important: we all drive right?  And taxes always show up in debates around political campaigns – they decide the way we live.  But lost in the shuffle of all the 1040s and 1040EZs, the W-2s, etc. there are a couple interesting topics.

Taxes so we can have nice things like this sick cloverleaf.

One is the concept of marginal tax rates – “as your income rises, the additional money you make is taxed at progressively higher rates. The last dollar you make is taxed at the highest rate, which is called your marginal tax rate”.  Below $16,000 per household no tax is paid at all.  Then, increasingly, different chunks of your income are taxes at higher rates (Hank will break it down for you with some topical political tie-ins.)

Marginal tax rates are more interesting to me in how they relate to tax protest.  Yes, while some people complain about simply having to pay their taxes, others complain about their money going to certain branches of government.  One branch in particular is the military.  The story of David Gross typifies: he asked to be paid under the lowest income tax level in order not to pay taxes:

“I was having a hard time looking at myself in the mirror.  I knew the bombs falling were in part paid with my tax dollars.  I had to actually do something concrete to remove my complicity.”

He was talking about the post-9/11 war with Iraq.  The idea is that our tax payments make us culpable.  (The book Twelve by Twelve by William Powers really explores this.)  And, fortunately for this purpose too, flat tax rates only start above a certain income level (take it away John).

David Gross - and this his blog

This leads to the concept or question: are taxes themselves a kind of vote?  Sure, they appear non-partisan, but the fact that you pay, to me, seems to condone the status quo.  Your say is that you can vote for politicians whose policy positions you agree with vis-à-vis reform, etc.  It is there that your say, to a significant degree, ends.  Although you may vote for peace candidates you don’t get a democratic vote on how much money is allocated to different government branches.  Taxes also go to pay off the debt, the existence of which you only have your say in a roundabout manner.
Upcoming I would like to dig into the idea of debt – what are the implications of having it and ask if debt, too, reinforces the status quo

The Lion of Idaho series: Borah, the settlement of the West and the Jeffersonian Ideal

Sen. William E. Borah

Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God – Thomas Jefferson

 

During the second session of the 62^nd Congress (March 4, 1911 – March 4, 1913), Borah worked on and got passed an improvement to the Homestead Act of 1862.  A homestead is quite simply “a house with surrounding land and buildings, especially on a farm”.  This further increased the favorability of the Junior (at the time) Idaho senator, The Idaho Statesman (newspaper) having a headline that read: “Passage of Homestead Bill Makes Idaho Say: ‘Thanks’”.  And this from the Democratic Caldwell News: “If we did not feel that Borah is doing good wok for his constituents we would not use these columns to commend and endorse his work”. 

Wees Bar homestead, Idaho

Borah’s bill reduced the number of years that a homesteader had to live on their homestead.  Originally it was five years; Borah saw it reduced to three.  This was one in a series of improvements to the 1862 Act.  The amount of land was also doubled a few years before Borah’s bill:

Because by the early 1900s much of the prime low-lying alluvial land along rivers had been homesteaded, the Enlarged Homestead Act was passed in 1909. To enable dryland farming, it increased the number of acres for a homestead to 320 acres (1.3 km²) given to farmers who accepted more marginal lands (especially in the Great Plains), which could not be easily irrigated.

There was demand for western lands and that demand was accommodated.  In fact, giving people land to farm was ingrained in strands of American thought going back to Revolutionary times.

Thomas Jefferson’s thought provided the model for much of this opening up of government lands.  It is interesting to note the influence of Jefferson’s thought had on Borah’s.  Farming was a fixture in Jefferson’s ideals:

Jefferson's stature as the most profound thinker in the American political tradition stems beyond his specific policies as president. His crucial sense of what mattered most in life grew from a deep appreciation of farming, in his mind the most virtuous and meaningful human activity. As he explained in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), "Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God." Since farmers were an overwhelming majority in the American republic, one can see how his belief in the value of agriculture reinforced his commitment to democracy.

Thomas Jefferson

So too would Borah hold the rural population of Idaho in high esteem and fight for their needs.  Idaho was rural at the time, the cities at the time crystalized hubs that aided rural work.  I love this snapshot of Boise from Johnson’s book:

Boise City, as it was called when Borah first established himself there, was the capital of Idaho.  It was the second city in population with some 2311 inhabitants, while Pocatello could boast of 2500.  These figures are somewhat misleading from the commercial standpoint, for all frontier towns of this type served a fairly wide area and had much more trade and did a greater variety of business than the number of their inhabitants would indicate.  Within the spacious Boise Basin were some farms and large cattle and sheep ranches.  Within relatively easy access of Boise were valuable silver mines.  Railroad connections made Boise a distributing center (27).

Borah knew his constituency and appealed to them.  His Jeffersonian political philosophy was in accord with the nature of the state.  How different Boise is today.  The United States and the American farmer is quite different today, as well.  It is interesting the connection of farming to government.  As Johnson describes:

Borah has always been a Jeffersonian on the matter of local self-government.  He has always been opposed to “bureaucrats” in Washington or from Washington regulation the local affairs of the people in the states.  He has been opposed to it, if for no other reason, because it weakens the fiber of the people.  In the matter of conservation he felt that the people of the several states could conserve many of their resources much better than could the national government.  This government, he thought, was conserving them for decay and retrogression.

Times have changed

Creeping normality: the impact of work on our lives

Dr. Harriet Fraad

In the slow march of time, what indicators does one use to recognize change?  Jared Diamond has employed the term “creeping normality”.  This is the idea that “a major change can be accepted as the normal situation if it happens slowly, in unnoticed increments”.  How does that relate to the world of work and happiness?

Dr. Harriet Fraad looks at connections between the political/economic life of the United States and the psychological life of the individual – how what happens on the large scale effects what happens on the small, individual-person scale.  There have been significant changes over time – whether you want to call it creeping normality or “creepy” normality, well I’ll get into that below.  Simply stated, though, Fraad’s thesis is this:

Capitalism, in its relentless search for more profit, has abandoned America and American families – the family of right-wing nostalgia is something that is destroyed by the capitalist system in the United States.  What has happened is American jobs have been computerized, mechanized, robotized and outsourced.  So instead of a scarce population that had to be paid well, particularly since the best jobs were given to white men, you now have the entire globe to exploit.  And wherever the ecological protections are the weakest and the wages are the lowest, and the protections of the workers is the lowest, you have capitalism going.  So most of our goods are now from China.  Everything is precarious: people’s jobs are precarious in this economy and their personal lives are utterly precarious.

So, yeah, there is this

The result is a laundry list of ills such as higher divorce rates, men feeling dislocated in society, women facing structural impediments to equal wages, longer work hours for all with lower pay, increased suicide rates, etc.  Today is definitely not the same a yesteryear.  But it goes unnoticed, or at least not commented upon in the mainstream (lamestream) media.  Dr. Richard Wolff describes more of the problem and perhaps a means of stopping people from thinking too much about the past:

According to the OECD, American working people do more hours of paid labor than the working class of any other country on the face of the earth. . .  The cost of this to our health, to our mental health, to our interpersonal relationships, to our sense of exhaustion and irritation with one another, is stupendous.  We are 5% of the world’s population; we consume 65% of the world’s psychotropic drugs.  Now either you explain that by saying the United States is a population of drug addicts, or, if you reject that because it really is silly, then you have to look at what might make a perfectly reasonable population, which I think we are, function this way.  Well I think I’ve give you a clue – we work ourselves literally to death.

A difficult thing for me to grapple with is that some of the marketplace pressures (e.g. women feeling the need to join the workforce) at the same time overlap with movements for social justice (women on their own seeking the rights to access to jobs and equal wages).  Things get complex and influence each other.  What follows is a complex paragraph but it is how I conceive of things “working” together:

I view these changes over time taking place on sliding scales that run parallel to each other.  Like bars of a graphic equalizer – over time – they shift up and down.  For example, on one, women the opportunity for more freedom: employers have offered more positions and accept women working in their organizations. On another (keep in mind parallel) scale, there are the economic factors that have driven this move of women into the workplace, the need for one household to have two incomes in order to compensate for the flat-lining of income over time.  And on yet another scale is the social movement of women seeking their independence and getting their place at the table so to speak. Through their demonstrating and lobbying, women have more choices for work now and they are no longer narrowly constrained by socially-acceptable mores dictating that being a subservient, stay-at-home wife is the most legitimate life choice.

Our graphic equalizer bars go to 11

These graphic equalizer-type bars move up and down in relation to each to other: they are not locked together, though they do influence each other.  This, to me, is what is so fascinating, how things are related and influence each other.  How things change over time.  And that last bar is the most interesting one. And the most perplexing one.  This is how anyone – man or woman – may take control of their life.  Things don’t take place in a vacuum so taking control of one’s life must take into account what is going on in society and how things got to be that way.  Guess we’ll see what happens.

The Lion of Idaho series: Borah the progressive Republican

Sen. William E. Borah

Civilization is not a flower of Eden, it blossoms amid the storms and tempests of life, where men have been made noble by affliction, independent by toil, brave by the thrill of conquest, where brain and sinew wrestle with the realities of existence. – William Edgar Borah

 

     Progressive and Republican: how are these words employed today if not in opposition?  But they were used together – in a unity – to describe one of Idaho’s most famous politicians . . . William Edgar Borah.  By the time his political career was in full swing, Democrats would endorse him and fellow Republicans – wherever they were on the Party’s spectrum – would, well, leave him alone.  Borah would follow his ideals even if it meant running contrary to his Party and even to the wishes of his home state’s populace.  The term Progressive Republican was used to describe him, a term enigmatic to me.  Let’s take a closer look at this concept to better understand the man, Borah, and perhaps gain some insight into today’s political landscape.

     What is a Republican?  Republicans, at their core, trace their lineage back to ancient Rome, to when the Republic was founded.  Tarquin – the despised monarch –  and his family were exiled.    Approaching Deep Time, this happened in the 6^th century BC.  But the importance of overthrowing a king and the liberty it brings is something that has reverberated through time.  Consider this intro of one of Borah’s speeches:

“It is said of a famous Roman statesman that before going forth to the Senate Chamber to combat the alluring corruption of his people he would visit the tomb and study the life of the elder Brutus, whose sturdy virtues nourished anew the patriot’s manhood.  This is the real worth of today’s celebration . . . We should upon this occasion view as intelligently as we can the questions of the present.”

Lucius Junius Brutus

     An appeal to patriotism and an homage to the “Elder Brutus” – Lucius Junius Brutus, who led the revolt to take down the Tarquin.  This is the core of the concept of Republicanism – a break from the rule of kings.  The importance of education is represented in that statement as well.  As Borah further states (in a manner that is kind of lost on this modern reader): “The republic which neglects the education of its subjects is the monarchy which disbands its standing army and leaves its men-of-war to rot upon the sea”.

     The Republican Party proper rose in 1854 from the ashes of the Whig Party which enjoyed a heyday in the mid-1800s (four presidents, though).  The Whigs were the party of Lincoln – later, the first Republican President – who freed the slaves.  Whigs were a party for entrepreneurs and “planters” and advocated for “economic protectionism to stimulate manufacturing”.  They provide a template for the Party in Borah’s time: 

The Whigs celebrated [Henry] Clay's vision of the "American System" that promoted rapid economic and industrial growth in the United States. Whigs demanded government support for a more modern, market-oriented economy, in which skill, expertise and bank credit would count for more than physical strength or land ownership. Whigs sought to promote faster industrialization through high tariffs, a business-oriented money supply based on a national bank and a vigorous program of government funded "internal improvements" (what we now call infrastructure projects), especially expansion of the road and canal systems. To modernize the inner America, the Whigs helped create public schools, private colleges, charities, and cultural institutions. Many were pietistic Protestant reformers who called for public schools to teach moral values and proposed prohibition to end the liquor problem.

     The Whig Party disintegrated over the slavery debate and other issues.  Northern Whigs were anti-slavery and came to dominate the Republican government of the Civil War.  Interestingly, the opposition Democrats felt that Whig policies would create an undemocratic, aristocratic class.  In broad strokes, the Democrats were for the farmer while the Whigs were for the newly created business entrepreneurs/elites.

     But in the late 1800s there seemed a clearer link between one’s personal interests – being a banker, farmer, entrepreneur, etc. – and one’s political affiliation.  In his book on Borah Claudius O. Johnson writes:

But the Populist party, the flower of agrarian distress in the ‘nineties, advocating the direct election of Senators, direct legislation, woman suffrage, postal savings, income taxes, severe cubs upon corporations, was being hear from.  Its ringing declarations that “the fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for the few, unprecedented in the history of mankind” was a saying which the many small-income Idahoans kept and pondered in their hearts (42).

This is the climate that Borah and other politicians had to operate within.  The Democrats happily joined with Populists to form a “fusion party”: the fourth Governor of Idaho, Frank Steunenberg was a fusion candidate.



Gov. Frank Steunenberg, a Democratic-Progressive fusionist



     Indeed, the Republican Party was again not immune to breakaway elements.  In 1912 Taft saw competition from Teddy Roosevelt (president 1901-1909) running on a progressive platform.  When party insiders saw to it that the incumbent was their man, Roosevelt left the party and formed The Progressive Party (aka the Bull Moose Party).  Borah was asked to come along.  He refused, stating:

“If you ask me if I am a Republican I answer, ‘Yes,’ as I understand Republican doctrines I am.  If you ask me if I am a third-party man I answer ‘No,’ I have not joined the third party.  But inside or outside I propose to urge the Progressive measures for which I, with others, have stood.”

     And what are those doctrines?  He continues, refuting his critics:

“I ask those who say I am not a Republican to meet me upon the record.  Where is the Republican who will defend upon the rostrum free trade for the farmer and protection for the manufacturer, free trade for all you grain and farm produce and protection for the blanket which you buy to protect you from winter’s cold?”

He goes on to mention his support of a homestead law, an 8-hour workday law, the Children’s Bureau bill and support of creation of a department of labor.

     Taft and Roosevelt ended up losing to the (more) progressive Woodrow Wilson.  Wilson focused his attentions on attacking Roosevelt, “arguing that Roosevelt had been lukewarm in opposing the trusts during his presidency, and that Wilson was the true reformer”. 

Taft v. Roosevelt, a party divided

     To conclude, Borah found himself defending his progressive strain – a strain that was founded in his moral outlooks, his views of what was truly just and good for the people.  The terms progressive and Republican are not mutually exclusive and there employment to describe a politician reflects someone coping with an ever-changing economic/political/demographic/etc. landscape.  I’ll let Claudius O. Johnson finish:

[M]easured by the votes of all senators who call themselves Republicans, Borah falls distinctly in the progressive group on all important mattes save the tariff, where he was not far below regular.  But Borah was not interested in the progressive organization as an independent organization.  He regarded himself as a progressive Republican rather than as a Progressive.  His interest was in making the Republican party progressive.