best system for whom?

So, the Atlantic published an article today by Marty Nemko, who suggests that simply dropping federal, state, and local income tax in favour of a national sales tax in conjunction with existing state and local sales taxes would not only generate enough revenue to fund the government, but "ensure the poor pay relatively little," as well.

In general, I think Nemko presents some OK arguments for having a national sales tax instead of an income tax. And while I like the idea that consumer spending could be shifted from taxable products to not-sales-taxed services such as new mom aide, homework helper, elder companion, etc. as a result, which would potentially help improve our national quality of life overall, I have my doubts as to his assurance the poor wouldn't be punished in the place of the so-called 'innovators and job creators' he seems to really be more concerned about. For example, according to a study done in 2009 by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, data suggests that sales taxes are ultimately regressive because "they fall more heavily on poor people, who typically spend nearly all their money on everyday necessities"—something even Thomas Paine understood back in 1791:

Men of small or moderate estates are more injured by the taxes being thrown on articles of consumption, than they are eased by warding it from landed property, for the following reasons: First, They consume more of the productive taxable articles, in proportion to their property, than those of large estates. Secondly, Their residence is chiefly in towns, and their property in houses; and the increase of the poor-rates, occasioned by taxes on consumption, is in much greater proportion than the land-tax has been favoured. (Rights of Man)

The study also suggests that exempting food and medicine doesn't eliminate the problem of sales taxes falling more heavily on poor people. So exempting 'basic items' like 'non-luxury' food, clothing, and cars (which is most likely doublespeak for cheap, shitty, and used consumable and durable goods, anyway) can ease the burden, but it certainly doesn't fix the inherent regressiveness of consumption-based taxation. Poorer people still tend to spend all of their income, living paycheck to paycheck, and are unable to save very much, if anything at all.

In fact, the study concluded that even though Washington, which lacks a personal income tax and relies highly on sales taxes for revenue, exempts things like 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. Just to for comparison, 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.

Another issue that's not addressed in the article is other forms of consumption, particularly consumption on the part of the all-too-often idealized "innovators and job creators." For example, if you're going to tax consumption, what about employers who consume their workers' labor-power, which is a pretty unique and, in a capitalist economy, necessary commodity? While people rarely think about that aspect of production, it shouldn't be ignored, especially when doing so would essential exempt employers who consume the time, energy, and productivity of their fellow citizens.

Nemko concludes that replacing the income tax with sales tax would be the best fix for our tax system; but after reading the article, I find myself asking, Who'd truly benefit the most by such a 'fix'? Because it certainly wouldn't be average, working-class citizens, let alone the poor. If anything, it'd only succeed in shifting the burden more towards the people who can afford it the least.

random nonsense at 30,000ft

Somewhere between Seattle and Detroit, after being slightly delayed due to some poorly distributed oysters in the lower-half of our plane that were destined for Boston, I finally finished Dostoyevsky's final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. As soon as I'd read the last words, I felt at once both joy and melancholy, something quite typical for me after reading any of his works—works that seem to touch the very core of my humanity, and unleash all the contradictory thoughts and feelings that lay buried within my soul. But this work, in particular, dug so deep as to make me want to sing a 'hymn' rivaling that of Mitya himself. And at Alyosha's touching and heartfelt words to Ilyusha's schoolmates, I wanted to, for at least a moment, hug someone, anyone, out of the insufferable miasma of joy and sorrow and camaraderie and emotions indescribable that I felt; just because I could, because they were simply there and a part of the same wonderful and terrible world as I. And this shouldn't be at all surprising, because even a wretch such as myself, who most of the time despises the world and the people in it for their inevitable faults and sins, or even for no reason at all, can feel the warmest and sincerest of feelings towards all of humanity, even if only for the blink of an eye. Especially when looking at humanity in the abstract, from an intimate distance (if that's possible); but particularly when their multitude of failings, their collective sufferings and torments, become my own, and I see these contemptible and pitiable creatures not as separate individuals, but as myself. And their joys and accomplishments, too, I see as my own, being swept away with delight and reveling in our collective happiness. If only for a moment, it's as if I can truly love, and am loved in return.

the 'prodigious coach' vs. 'the masses of humanity'

Today, a friend of mine wrote on Facebook:

Romney estimates he paid 15% income tax. I paid 25% in 2011 to federal. I'm not a millionaire. He justifies it because it's mostly from investments... so if you make millions by sitting on your ass you should pay less than someone who works 6 days a week and barely gets by.

It got me thinking that, when people talk about class war or class struggle, this is partly what they're talking about. In this case, capital is treated differently than labour, which, due in large part to inherent contradictions fuelled by the 'coercive laws of competition,' creates an antagonistic social relationship between these two diametrically opposed classes.

For example, money made through the investment of money, regardless of how, is generally taxed at a lower rate than money earned through labour, even though human labour is arguably where most wealth actually comes from. But under the current system of production, capital, which also makes up the majority of the ruling class, occupies a deferential position in which it legally owns the labour it utilizes, as well as what's produced in terms of goods and services. So not only does it get taxed at a lower rate, but it receives the lion's share of the wealth created by labour in the form of surplus value (i.e., unpaid labour), which is the primary source of what we call profit in the capitalist mode of production.

Essentially, if you're part of the working class who's forced to sell your labour just to get by, spending your meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc., you're getting screwed at least twice; while capitalists, which have the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from your labour, and hold almost all the political power in society (especially when money equals social power), always have the upper hand.

This relationship is vividly portrayed by Edward Bellamy in his 1888 utopian science fiction novel, Looking Backward, by the parable of the 'prodigious coach' and 'the masses of humanity' toiling to pull it, and I think it's still applicable today:

By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way people lived together in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.

But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief when the specially bad piece of road was gotten over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats.

It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers' sense of the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than before. If the passengers could only have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those who dragged the coach.

I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of the twentieth century an incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts, both very curious, which partly explain it. In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in which Society could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the few rode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement even was possible, either in the harness, the coach, the roadway, or the distribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it always would be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.

The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singular hallucination which those on the top of the coach generally shared, that they were not exactly like their brothers and sisters who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher order of beings who might justly expect to be drawn. This seems unaccountable, but, as I once rode on this very coach and shared that very hallucination, I ought to be believed. The strangest thing about the hallucination was that those who had but just climbed up from the ground, before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon their hands, began to fall under its influence. As for those whose parents and grand-parents before them had been so fortunate as to keep their seats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the essential difference between their sort of humanity and the common article was absolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling for the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophical compassion is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I can offer for the indifference which, at the period I write of, marked my own attitude toward the misery of my brothers.

But what if another world is possible? What if we rethought our system of production altogether? What if we revolutionized methods of production, ownership, and distribution in order to alleviate or even eliminate some of these problems?

I believe that, just as feudalism, which was a step up from earlier, tribal modes of production, was transformed into capitalism, capitalism, too, can be transformed into yet another socio-economic system characterized by the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems where the producers/workers have no ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour.

golden rule

"Golden Rule"

The Golden Rule,
so simple a thing:
to treat others as we wish to be treated.
Or as Jesus commanded,
'love your neighbor as yourself':
an injunction that
even a child can understand.
Yet one as difficult
in actual practice
as the most laborious of physical tasks.
Particularly when,
in our heart of hearts,
we don't even love
ourselves.
The bête noire we see
whenever we look into the mirror
gets reflected back
onto the unsuspecting world.
And the all the suffering
we secretly believe
our birthright to be,
we unleash upon our hapless neighbor
in a desperate cry
for help.

breakfast at beulahland

"Breakfast at Beulahland"

Sipping on my third cup of coffee, now,
and feeling my guts begin to stir,
as a soccer game plays in the background of my favourite breakfast joint.
My thoughts
occasionally focus on the game
but are mainly directing towards proving people wrong on the internet,
a collection of mostly anonymous bastards and twats
including myself.
Never imagined that I'd be called
a 'far left extremist'
simply for arguing against the use of torture.
It's certainly a strange world, indeed,
where hawks swoop in and verbally disembowel
peaceful doves
in their insatiable lust for Thrasymachian justice,
and are applauded all the more as patriots for it.
Aston Villa scores again,
and my thoughts turn from patriots to arete,
the excellence of the individual in the face of all adversity
so well characterized
within the heart of American exceptionalism.
Ah, America,
that "shining city on a hill";
land of the free-range consumer,
home of the brave imperialist.
America!
Conquering the hearts and minds
of the world
with bombs made with loving-care and a tender-touch.
The nike of dike,
which is nothing but the "advantage of the stronger,"
as Thrasymachus eternally argues in Plato's Republic.
Another goal,
as if Aston Villa is punctuating the point,
driving it home
like a ball through the metaphorical net of neoliberal ideology.
And with enviable skillfulness,
the clever orators of our day,
turn freedom on its head
over and over again,
with sweet words that pay lip service to justice,
while secretly affirming,
in their heart of hearts,
that "unjust is what profits man's self and is for his advantage."
They beseech us to enthrone
our baser desires as kings,
triumphantly proclaiming, "We are all rational individuals now,"
or so they'd like us all to believe.

coffee at bare bones

Watched Howl last night, which inspired me to write a poem this morning instead of the usual political rant. Thought I'd share it here for the hell of it.

"Coffee at Bare Bones"

Sitting at Bare Bones
alone, in the brisk, winter afternoon.
Coffee to my right,
Dostoyevsky lurking around somewhere in my bag
resting comfortably in the other chair.
Ginger makes an occasional appearance from the back,
chatting up the customers
and intimidating them
with her tattoos and handsome features.
Short, black hair
matching her black, button-up shirt.
Less goth and more post-punk culinary, if you can imagine that.
Thoughts turn to daggers
like the tattoos on her arm,
piercing through the melancholy of the moment
and into the unknown future.
Hope and fear, love and loss;
life is such a holy and tragic thing.
Souls forming and taking shape,
like Fiddler Crab larvae
carried upon the currents of choices,
mistakes,
and circumstances beyond their control.
Washed far out to sea
to sink or swim,
or be eaten;
the lucky ones being washed back into shore.
Sometimes I feel like a leaf
caught in the wake
of souls bigger and more important than I.
I rise and fall
and am pushed aside by their passing.
Always in a hurry
with no place to go.
But at least they'll get there on time.

the 'war on drugs' is bullshit

The Utica Phoenix recently obtained a video allegedly showing two white police officers in Utica, NY, planting evidence in a black couple's SUV (you can see one of them pulling out a bag from his back pocket at 1:02):



While the video itself isn't 100% conclusive, I think it's safe to say that racism still exists in our society, with blacks being disproportionately discriminated against, especially within the criminal justice system (as Katheryn Russell-Brown persuasively documents in her book, The Color of Crime), and with studies suggesting that many Americans, particularly white males, still have unconscious biases against blacks and the poor (e.g., Discrimination Against Blacks Linked To Dehumanization, Unconscious Race and Social Bias Among Medical Students, etc.).

And surprise, surprise, the majority of people arrested and sent to prison for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately black and poor, who often have little-to-no access to treatment options or even a competent defense. Looking at the statistics, my immediate suspicion is that the 'war on drugs' is little more than a war on minorities and the poor used mainly to funnel massive amounts of people and money into an increasingly privatized, for-profit prison system, as well as into federal and state run institutions that siphon off taxpayer dollars. It's a big business, and many communities are actually building their economy around local prisons.

In my opinion, drug use should be treated as a health issue rather than a criminal one. For one, prohibition exacerbates the problem by creating a black market that generates obscene profits for those involved in the production, transportation, and sale of these 'illegal' substances. We've seen it with alcohol in the 1920s; and drugs are no different. In addition, decriminalization policies elsewhere have shown positive results. In Portugal, for example, their decriminalization policy has led to a dramatic drop in street drug related deaths from overdoses, as well as in the rate of new HIV infections from sharing dirty needles. Instead of going to jail, these people "are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely."

The evidence is clear: the 'war on drugs' is bullshit. As a recent report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy concludes:

Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won. Governments do have the power to pursue a mix of policies that are appropriate to their own situation, and manage the problems caused by drug markets and drug use in a way that has a much more positive impact on the level of related crime, as well as social and health harms.

Update (5:20pm, 1/3/12): A local news report from WKTV in Utica has some additional footage showing an officer taking drugs out of one of the suspects' pockets just before the bit in the video above:

Video of Utica Police traffic stop goes viral alleging drug planting; UPD says 'watch the full video'

Seeing that extra bit does make me think the drugs we see him pulling out of his pocket when he goes into the car is possibly what he's already taken from one of the suspects, assuming it's the same officer. Still seems a little odd to me, but maybe he was simply combining the evidence instead of planting it. I may very well have it all wrong; and if that's the case, I sincerely apologize to the UPD and to the two officers involved.