between a rock and a hard place, the final chapter

While the discussions I had about Measures 66 and 67 on MyOregon didn't really go anywhere (besides a couple more worthwhile contributions by VastRightWing), I had a much more enjoyable discussion on Facebook with my libertarian-leaning friend, James. He started off with the comment:

I gave you my personal take on this - I do genuinely believe that the State of Oregon has a budget deficit and like all of us, they must take a pay cut. That means cutting government programs.

However, I firmly believe that they target the high profile things first with paycuts because they can get the biggest sympathy vote. They can "cut the fat" like the rest of us without cutting off the arm. They're telling us all they can do is cut off the arm.

It's typical government propaganda.

The Oregon tax system is messed up. Oregon badly needs a sales tax but will never have one; we cling fervently to our status and I don't see that will ever change. Drop the income tax like Washington, go sales tax - I'd vote for that (and have).

To me the sales tax is the ultimate in fair tax. It's a consumption tax - the more you buy, the more you pay. Who buys the most? The rich. Who will pay more? The rich. But not because they make more; because they BUY more.

I realize the argument that sales taxes hurt the poor but there are ways around this, the most obvious being that you don't tax the things that the poor buy the most of (groceries).

While eating my Cheerios before work, I replied:

A.) You make some good objections, but cutting programs will hurt the people that depend on them. If you cut social programs for elderly care, for example, who's going to take care of them? If you cut school programs and social workers, then [you're] hurting kids and their education. If you cut the DEQ, as one person suggested, that will negatively impact the the environment and workplace safety ,

There are not easy answers because many of these programs are important, even essential. We could do those things, but the question is, should we?

B.) It's not the government's fault that Oregonians have voted down a sales tax 9 times.

C.) According to a study done by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which focused on Washington's tax structure, data suggests that sales taxes are regressive because "they fall more heavily on poor people, who typically spend nearly all their money on everyday necessities."

Exempting things like food and medicine can ease the burden, but it doesn't fix the problem. Poorer people still tend to spend all of their income, living paycheck to paycheck, and are unable to save very much.

Plus, fairness is a pretty subjective thing.

Later on, James countered my three points with:

A) It just goes to prove my point. Those are high profile things that people care about because no one wants to hurt the kids, the environment (in Oregon) or the elderly. Just because you have to reduce spending does not mean that you have to cut the programs. You can cut unnecessary administrative overhead, reduce the layers of the bureaucracy, etc. The first response is always to cut teachers because they don't want to reduce their jobs/expenses. Knowing several teachers, there is a lot of waste in the system that could be eliminated without having to cut teacher jobs.

B) I never said it was. In fact, I believe the opposite. Oregonians themselves are at fault. They constantly vote it down and will forever I think. It's a point of pride at this point.

C) If may not fix the problem but it does virtually eliminate it. Necessities are food and medicine. Sales tax isn't paid on rent, electricity use, etc. Sales taxes to me are consumption taxes; you pay more if you use more. With removal of taxes on food and medicine, you eliminate a lot of unnecessary tax burden on the poor. Taxes are, by their nature, a burden on everyone. With a sales tax structured similar to Washington (I've been poor in Washington), it ensures a more stable tax base. It also simplifies the tax system itself, which is a huge bonus for everyone.

I do agree with you, however, that fairness is subjective. I do not believe it is fair to fleece the rich - they already pay their fair share (if not more) of taxes. There's no need to tax them more. I'm not willing to pay a larger percentage of my income in taxes, why should they have to simply because they're successful? I find it appalling. I will be voting no on 66. But I'm not sure yet on 67. I do think a $10 minimum corporate tax is pathetic and everyone can afford to pay a minimum of $150. I will have to research the other point regarding C-corps though to see how burdensome that is.

And despite the fact that I'm getting pretty burned-out talking about taxes, I managed one last reply.

In response to A, all I can say is that education, human services and public safety take up the majority of the state's General Fund, and most of that is spent on salaries and benefits for public employees.

The way I see it, reduced spending means something's got to be reduced in terms of services. Since most of the money goes to public employees who provide these services in the form of their wages and benefits, that's what usually gets put on the chopping block since the state can't run a deficit. Plus, the state is always growing, and more people means a greater need for services, regardless of how well the economy is doing.

I imagine that the state could reduce some of its overhead without hurting essential services, but I sincerely doubt that administrative overhead is the main problem. I'll even concede that some public funds are used to shield public employees from normal economic cycles, but I think that's a good thing in certain cases, e.g., kids don't need less education just because the economy is bad, or less protection from abuse (as in the case of social workers); our need for police protection doesn't just go away when state revenues fall, etc.

But if you honestly think the government's just using kids and the elderly get its way, what more can be said? We'll just have to agree to disagree, I suppose.

In regard to B, I wasn't implying you said that. I was simply making the point because Measures 66 and 67 are what we're talking about here. You'd mentioned "government propaganda" and the fact that Oregon's tax system is a mess, and I was just trying to make the point that it's not entirely the government's fault.

It was the citizens who passed Measure 5, which reduced property tax rates and shifted much of the responsibility for funding public schools to the state’s General Fund. It was also the citizens who rejected a sales tax 9 times. In my mind, the government's just trying to do the best it can with what it has.

Finally, in response to C, the study I mentioned earlier suggests that exempting food and medicine doesn't "virtually eliminate" the problem of sales taxes falling more heavily on poor people. In fact, it concluded that even though Washington exempts food and medicine from sales taxes, it still has the most regressive tax system in the country, mainly because of its heavy reliance on sales taxes.

The study found that people earning less than $20,000 a year In Washington paid 13.1% of their income toward sales and excise taxes, and 17.3% including property taxes. People making between $99,000 and $198,000, on the other hand, paid just 5.1% of their income toward sales and excise taxes, and only 7.6% including property taxes. And the top 1% (those making $537, 000 or more) paid an unbelievably low 1.8% in sales and excise taxes, and just 2.9% including property taxes.

You might think that sales taxes are the "ultimate in fair tax," but I think the numbers speak for themselves.

So after careful study and debate, I've decided to grudgingly support both measures, but it was definitely not an easy decision for me to make.

To me, it isn't about whether or not I think these measures are fair, it's about whether more people will be hurt if they pass or fail. In the end, I came to the conclusion that the percentage of people who'll be negatively impacted by these measures if they fail is far greater than if they pass, and I gave the government the benefit of the doubt that they'll spend the money wisely. I just hope I made the right decision.

between a rock and a hard place, part deux

I posted an earlier version of my blog about Measures 66 and 67 on My Oregon yesterday, and as expected, I've gotten a lot of responses from opponents of 66 and 67. Unfortunately, most of them don't seem to know what they're talking about. For example, someone calling themselves myearth wrote:

My husband and I have an LLC and run a small business. Our income dropped 25% in 2008 and we estimate a 35 to 40% drop in 2009. That is a LOT more than the percentage public employees are losing. So why do you think it is fair to take my money to pay them? I made $39K in 2008 and worked 55 to 60 hours a week to get it. I have no dental or vision insurance and my health insurance costs $6K a year and is far worst than they get. Explain why it's fair for this to come out of my hide! Since you care so much, hy don't you volunteer some of your hide? This is a tax on gross business income NOT on profit.

To which I responded:

A.) The main reason I'm leaning towards a yes vote on both measures is that it's not just public employees who'll be hurt by the $4 billion hole, but also kids, the elderly, and everyone else who depends on these social services. The percentage [of] people who may be negatively impacted be these measures if they fail is far greater than the [percentage of] people who'll be negatively impacted if these measures pass.

B.) I think you should reread both measures. Unless your personal income is over $125,000, I don't think you'll be affected by Measure 66. And unless you own a C-corporation with over $500,000 in sales, I don't think you'll be affected by the tax on gross sales either. From what I understand, LLCs (along with LLPs, partnerships and S-corporations) will simply have to pay the corporate minimum of $150.

C.) I never said it was fair, and I expressly state that I'm not happy about either choice, but I do think the money has to come from somewhere, and the Oregon Legislature has decided that the needed revenue should come from the people who they think can most likely afford it while so many other Oregonians are out of work or underemployed. If you disagree, vote no. But if I made more than $125,000 a year or owned my own business, I'd gladly pay a little more.

A person going by the name of wurzburg offered this little gem:

NO ROCK! NO HARD PLACE!
They did the crime now they can do the time(As they say)!!!!
The only reason the school year or our children would be shorted in any way would be due to the public sector wanting to hurt those that insisted on fair and equitable spending. It's there way of getting even if they don't get their way. Nothing would be worse than attacking our children. That is why they are threatning us with #66 & #67.
WE NEED TO LET THE EXTORTIONISTS KNOW THAT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED!!! Just look around and think for example, "Do we really need what DEQ provides or could the money better be used for schools? If you look at the matter with an open mind I'm sure you can think of at least a dozen other depts that could use a haircut other than schools.... DON"T FEEL THREATENED!

To which I replied:

Actually, wurzburg, I think the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is important. Not only do they help protect the quality of Oregon's environment, but as part of my company's safety committee, I can tell you that my workplace is a lot safer due to their inspections and recommendations.

After thinking long and hard (or maybe not at all), wurzburg came back with:

OK,jmerritt I quess you are the typical public employee(You got yours, the heck with education). I just don't know what got into me thinking the DEQ was less vital than education.

P.S. After reading some of your earlier post, I believe your Co. is the State of Oregon... Imagine That!

But you know what they say about assuming:

Actually, wurzburg, I work in the private sector for a local manufacturer. And for the record, I've never been a public employee.

As for the DEQ, I never said it was more important than education, I simply said that I think it's important. I'm very concerned about working-class issues, and working in factories most of my life, environmental quality and workplace safety are important issue to me. I think the DEQ provides a valuable service to the community, as well as working-class people who deal with hazardous materials.

VastRightWing, on the other hand, actually attempted to make a decent point:

Before you accept Jeff Mape's math, you might want to remember that he wasn't a math major. Nor apparently a journalism major but that is a story for another day.

The public employees that he tells us are taking a PAY cut, are also going to get a WORK cut.

As in they won't be paid ten days wages for the ten days they won't be working. And this, in the minds of the mathematically challenged, is a pay cut.

If they make $50k per year for 50 weeks of work, they make $1K per week. If they work two weeks less, they will make $48K for 48 weeks of work, or $1K per week.

There are many private sector workers who have taken actual 10% or more $$$/Hr pay cuts, and are still working the same number of hours or possibly more to take up the slack for the other workers who have lost their jobs completely.

That is a pay cut. To claim the public employees are taking a pay cut, one must completely discount the two weeks or more that they are not working. Of course, dealing with facts and reality isn't a popular activity among the left.

But the point was fairly irrelevant:

VastRightWing, I think I agree with you about the pay cut thing (I think it was kind of silly for him to say that), but whether not receiving any cost-of-living increase and having to take 10-14 unpaid furlough days constitutes a "pay cut" is beside the point I was trying to make. The point was that public employees aren't getting a pay raise as the Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes ad claims.

My hours have been cut from 40 to 24-32 a week, and my company has instituted a pay freeze. I haven't had a raise in a year, and I'm not eligible for another one until December of 2010. On top of that, they've had two rounds of layoffs and I'm forced to do the same thing I used to do with less people. Is that a pay cut? I don't know, but I'm definitely not getting a salary increase. And as far as I know, the same applies to public employees, i.e., they're not getting raises either.

What I don't understand is, there are a lot of legitimate arguments against these measures, as well as taxes in general, but opponents of 66 and 67 don't seem to be using any of them. Instead, they act as if teachers and social workers are blood sucking fiscal vampires trying to bleed taxpayers to death. And I thought I hated talking about taxes before...

between a rock and a hard place

Oregonians are faced with a tough decision this January with Measure 66 and Measure 67, and to be honest, I don't really like my choices. A no vote on both will hurt public sector employees (as well as shorten the school year and cut social services), while a yes vote on both will potentially hurt private sector employees, especially those who work for C-corporations with high volume sale but low profit margins. Either way, it's the working class who's probably going to feel the pinch in the long run.

But trying to get accurate information about the potential effects of each measure in order to make an informed decision hasn't been easy. Both sides are really going all out with their ad campaigns. The proponents, for example, constantly portray Measure 67 as simply an increase in the corporate minimum tax, but they often fail to point out that it also creates a new tax on gross sales for C-corporations. As Carol VanHouten explains: "Measure 67 says that C-corporations will pay the greater of the income tax on their net Oregon taxable income OR a minimum tax computed as a sliding-scale percentage of their gross Oregon sales."

I'm fine with the increase in the corporate minimum from $10 to $150, but employers who'll be affected by the tax on gross sales won't simply absorb the tax increase themselves—they'll either pass the increase onto the consumer by raising prices or make up for them by cutting employee benefits, bonuses, hours or employees.

The opponents, on the other hand, are making all kinds of wild claims, such as: "Politicians increase personal and business taxes to pay for their higher spending, including $259 million to fund state employee salary increases." However, according to Jeff Mapes from the Oregonian, "... state employees will not receive any cost-of-living increases in the 2009-11 budget and they must take between 10 and 14 unpaid furlough days. The state also deferred step increases for one year. The net of those changes is a $27 million pay cut for state workers." But what else would you expect from a group who calls themselves "Oregonians Against Job-Killing Taxes"?

As for the measures themselves, 66 would basically raise the personal income tax of individuals making over $125,000 and households making over $250,000, while 67 would raise the corporate minimum tax, corporate income tax (gross sales or other revenue minus deductible business expenses) and certain filing fees. I'm most likely going to vote yes on both, but I'm definitely not happy about it, mainly because I think Oregon's tax structure is a mess. In my opinion, Oregon relies too heavily on personal income taxes for revenue, which makes up about 87% of the state's General Fund (corporate income taxes account for just 6%). On top of that, in 1990 voters approved Measure 5, which reduced property tax rates and shifted much of the responsibility for funding public schools to the state’s General Fund.

Due to the recession and the state's high rate of unemployment (including underemployment), however, state revenue has declined significantly leaving a $4 billion hole in the state's $15 billion 2 year budget. But the money needed to fund things like firefighters, police, teachers, social services, etc. still has to come from somewhere. Unlike the federal government, the state doesn't have the luxury of running a deficit, so it has to have a balanced budget. And rightly or wrongly, the Oregon Legislature has decided that the needed revenue should come from the people who they think can most likely afford it while so many other Oregonians are out of work or underemployed.

For its own part, the Oregon Legislature has already cut $850 million from the 2007-09 budget and $2 billion from the 2009-11 budget while using "state reserve funds and federal dollars where possible." The state has also had to layoff social workers, teachers and other state employees. Not only that, but they've been forced to shorten the school year while packing even more kids into already crowded classrooms. Less revenue means more cuts, less days and even larger class sizes.

As far left as I am on the political spectrum, I don't like the idea of raising taxes in the middle of a recession, but I like the idea of laying off more teachers and social workers even less, especially considering how badly they're needed right now. And despite what some of the measures' critics are saying, I don't think it's just fear mongering on the part of the Oregon Legislature, I honestly think the state's in real trouble; and if we don't find a way to fix it, we're going to end up just like California. Measures 66 and 67 may not be the perfect solution, but frankly, I think it's better than the alternative.

avatar

Last night, I went with a group of people to see James Cameron's new film, Avatar. My initial thoughts: only James Cameron can take Pocahontas, throw in a dash of FernGully and a pinch of Dances with Wolves, and turn it into a wicked 3 hour anti-imperialist, pro-environmentalist sci-fi epic.

That's not to say the film's great — Cameron's formula is tired to say the least — but it's still pretty damn good despite its unremarkable plot. Make no mistake, the movie's a visual masterpiece. Cameron takes CG filmmaking to an entirely new level with his revolutionary VFX, which are nothing short of stunning. And believe me, the 3D helps a WHOLE lot.

But sadly, the film falls flat in almost every other area. Don't get me wrong, I love a good old-fashioned action/romance once in a while, but a film as visually groundbreaking as this deserves an equally groundbreaking script. Instead, Cameron appears to have played it safe with cliche after predictable cliche, presumably to make it appealing to as wide of an audience as possible.

And while I appreciate its centre-left politics, I feel Cameron does them a bit of a disservice by disseminating them through simplistic stereotypes that almost ridicule themselves, e.g., idealized natives with, as a my friend once quipped, "a utopic level of peace and harmony with nature and each other," over-the-top American-style imperialism, a greedy corporate exec who cares more about his company's quarterly earnings than his conscience, etc.

Nevertheless, the movie as a whole has such an incredible impact that it mostly makes up for its unoriginal storyline and one-dimensional characters, as does the solid performances by Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and the rest of the cast. As many faults as this film has, they didn't stop stop me from enjoying it, and that's what I think makes it worth seeing in the theatre.

how are you oppressed by the capitalist system of production?

Today I was asked by a young house painter, Can you tell me how I'm being oppressed by the capitalists who run the company? That's a difficult question to answer, but I told him the short answer is, (1) the capitalist — or employer if you prefer — profits far more from your labour than you do (exploitation), and (2) the product of your labour doesn’t legally belong to you (alienation).

Labour creates wealth (surplus value). But in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, the product of your labour becomes a commodity that's divorced from the labour expended on its production, thereby obscuring the social relationship between producer and consumer (commodity fetishism).

Furthermore, the employer has the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from your labour into their company while you, the labourer, are forced to spend your meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.

So from one perspective, an individual might look at it like, "Wow, some guy will pay me a few bucks an hour to paint houses; now I'll have some money for rent, bills and food." But from another, wider perspective, there’s an entire class of people who’ve been created by the capitalist mode of production who must sell their labour in order to survive while others thrive by exploiting that labour.

This doesn’t mean, however, that the employer is necessarily the "bad guy," or even consciously in charge of this exploitation, since, as a friend of mine points out, "... the logic of the system seems to force the hand of the bourgeoisie as much as that of the proletariat" due to what Marx calls the "coercive laws of competition."

That's why some people want to see a radical economic transformation in which the exploitation, alienation and commodity fetishism of the present system are gradually eliminated via a more socialized mode of production. The question is whether such a system exists, and if so, how it can be successfully implemented.

the war (read "blunder") in afghanistan

Listening to President Obama explain how he's going to fulfill his promise to win the war in Afghanistan by sending 30,000 additional troops reignited my political activism. I couldn't disagree more with the decision to send in more combat troops to support one of the most corrupt governments in the world, nor do I see how escalating the war in a country that's practically stuck in the stone age will make us any safer from global terrorism.

First of all, we can't simply occupy every unstable country with ties to al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations. What about Somalia, for example? Or the border regions of Pakistan? Should we invade them too? And what about stable countries who're openly hostile to the U.S., or at the very least, harbour extremist groups who are? Military might alone can't win a war of ideology.

Secondly, while I can appreciate the argument that just pulling out of Afghanistan now will allow the Taliban and al-Qaeda to once again turn Afghanistan into safe haven for terrorism, what has our occupation achieved in the last 8 years? We've failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, we've pushed the Taliban and al-Qaeda into Pakistan, further destabilizing it, and we're arguably escalating a decades long civil war with our support of what's widely seen as a fraudulent government.

As Malalai Joya, a former member of the Afghan parliament, has repeatedly pointed out, the tribal warlords and drug lords in parliament are one of the main problems facing Afghanistan. Add to that crushing poverty and you have a situation that no amount of foreign troops can solve, especially in a region where foreign invasions are commonplace. I'd love to go into all the instances where we've created bigger problem with our meddling (e.g., Project FUBELT, Operation Ajax, Operation Cyclone, etc.), but the bottom line is that we should be helping to rebuild their society instead of supporting a corrupt government and expecting them to do it for us.

My thoughts about this are summed up best by a friend of mine who said:

But as to the current troop surge, my point is that until we start to address the essential criminal nature of the regime there, we can't "win". But I suppose that depends on what winning is. Right now I don't think we are on the way to a stable [Afghanistan] with a thriving civil society where there are schools and opportunities to build a life, make art fall in love, raise a family: to make dreams come true.

The type of "win" we'd both like to see, which is ultimately what I think Obama's pushing for, is a stable and thriving Afghanistan; but like my friend, I don't think the current troop surge is the best way to achieve this goal. For whatever reason, Obama seems to be ignoring the real problems, as well as their solutions.

It can't be denied that Afghanistan played a major role by harbouring Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaeda’s leadership, as well as terrorist training camps, but is war really the solution? War might be able to bring about the necessary changes we'd like to see in Afghanistan, but let's be honest, positive change rarely comes from the barrel of a gun.

Al-Qaeda itself is an extremely mobile group of individuals and cells scattered throughout the world. Those who weren't already captured or killed in Afghanistan at the beginning of the war are thought to have fled to Pakistan or other neighboring countries and are still free to spread more of their brand of terror. On top of that, most of the resistance we're currently facing is from insurgents recruited (or conscripted) by the Taliban to defend Afghanistan from foreign invasion and occupation, not al-Qaeda. Many of these people are young, poor and often illiterate, and they see themselves as defending their homeland from yet another foreign invasion by non-Muslims (i.e., the Brits, the Russians and now us).

Although I think the Taliban themselves are a horrible, disgusting bunch (especially their views toward women), I can sympathize with the average Afghan who (deludedly) joins them to defend their country and their faith. That's part of the reason I think we need a different strategy. The more we fight, the more we're going to potentially radicalize the local population. I think building roads, schools and other infrastructure will do more to win them over than what we've been doing so far, but most of our resources are still going to counterinsurgency missions, often with innocent Afghans caught in the middle.

The way I see it, sending in more combat troops means a lot more good men and women are going to die for no good reason. When it comes to the "War on Terror" and fighting al-Qaeda, I think we should be focusing on intelligence gathering to find them and disrupt their plots, nation-building to help prevent places like Afghanistan from becoming havens for terrorism and specialized strikes, in collaboration with local governments when possible, to neutralize imminent threats to our security, not this gigantic military blunder.

all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players

It's complicated. I have all these thoughts and emotions swirling around inside my head that I can't get out. They haunt me with their feelings and ideas. They possess me with their relentless ferocity. I want to let them out, to set them free by giving them a voice, but they don't seem to want to leave. I confuse people with my words. I say things I'm not even sure I mean, or if I do, it's not quite like how it sounds. I want them to understand, but I'm not sure if they can.

Now I understand why I was the way I was in high school. I want to be that way again. To close myself off from everybody and express myself in other ways. My art. My poetry. My anti-social, self-destructive behaviour. To be as tormented on the outside as I am on the inside.

It's nobody's fault. I don't know why I'm the way that I am. I don't have some deep, dark secret about my childhood. No abuse. No real trauma to speak of. I'm not mentally ill (at least not medically speaking anyway). And yet, here I am, trying to give a voice to these ghosts of what once might've been my humanity. But then, I'm just being overly dramatic. Of course I'm human, whether or not I feel that way. I'm just like everyone else, except I don't have much of a stomach for this thing called life.

Life's a play (without much of a plot it would seem), and we're nothing more than actors putting on a show before the curtain comes crashing down. And most of us either think there's some big playwright up in the sky watching us and waiting to reward the good performances with heaven and punish the bad ones with hell, or we think the play itself is all there is and that we might as well have as much fun with our roles as we can before the curtain falls.

But what of those who think neither? The ones who throw away their masks in disgust? The ones who set fire to the stage and tear down the curtain with their own two hands? The ones who see the play for what it is and want no part of it? What of us and our bitter scorn?

And still my heart wages war against even this! It battles with love and compassion for all the actors on the stage, and with admiration for the beauty of the play itself. The turmoil just another act playing itself out on an internal stage, and wouldn't you know it, I'm playing my role despite myself! What a clever creation, so perfectly insidious in its designerless design. Maybe one day I'll find a way to exorcise these phantoms, these thoughts and emotions that won't give me any peace. Maybe one day I'll find a way to make people understand.