Andrea Neal’s editorial in the Indianapolis Star yesterday was a reminder that evidence is no match for strongly-held beliefs.
Neal seconded Governor Pence’s ill-considered call for a ten percent reduction in Indiana’s income tax. Even the Republicans in the General Assembly have recognized how harmful such a tax cut would be in a state where cities and towns are already strangling, thanks to the even more ill-considered tax caps Mitch Daniels managed to enshrine in the Indiana constitution. Neal made a familiar argument: lower taxes will lead to more economic growth and more job creation.
This argument sounds logical. Leave businesses with more cash and they’ll spend it to expand and hire. I remember being persuaded by that theory myself when I first became involved in policy and political life. The problem is, the evidence refutes it.
States that levy personal income taxes, including the states with the highest top rates, have seen more economic growth
per capita and less decline in their median income level over the last ten years than the nine states that do not tax income.
As any economist will confirm, the factors facilitating economic growth and job creation are varied; despite the almost religious belief in the supernatural power of tax policy, most studies suggest that tax levels are only one of a large number of factors that influence business decisions. The availability of an educated workforce, a location near suppliers or large customers, the existence of a market for one’s goods or services, cost of living, and the general quality of life all play a part.
For many employers, the availability of public transportation so that employees can get to their place of work is extremely important; indeed, decent public transportation would do far more for the Indianapolis economy than a tax cut that further erodes public services and the quality of life.
Think about it: how low would taxes need to be before you’d move your business to Mississippi?
Warning: if you are in a good mood, skip this post, because I’m finding it very hard not to be depressed by the constant reminders of of American institutional dysfunction.
Everywhere you look, there are people who should know better engaging in self-defeating behaviors and magical thinking, fiddling while America burns. I’ve tried to examine the unease I’ve been feeling–the growing anxiety that I’ve been experiencing. Until yesterday, however, I couldn’t put my finger on it–couldn’t find an analogy that fit.
Yesterday, it came to me: we’re on the self-destruct countdown.
Those of you who are Star Trek fans will understand the reference. Spaceships in science fiction always come equipped with a self-destruct sequence, to be used as a last resort to keep the ship from falling into enemy hands. Typically, the captain and first officer will enter their codes into the computer, signaling their agreement to begin the countdown; the dramatic tension comes as the computer’s disembodied voice counts down the minutes until the ship will explode and kill all the crew and passengers.
On television, of course, the bad guys are thwarted in the nick of time, and the destruct sequence is aborted (usually with mere seconds to spare).
We’re not on television, however, and a real countdown clock is ticking. Unless we do something pretty soon to change our trajectory, we stand a good chance of destroying the America we’ve known–the America with a robust middle class, a functioning government and a belief in its ability to meet daunting challenges like those posed by climate change, technology and globalization.
Yesterday’s post was a pretty graphic demonstration of the way in which wealth is currently distributed in the U.S. There’s ample evidence that disparities of this magnitude are profoundly destabilizing–that left unaddressed, they are inconsistent with a functioning democracy. Too many lawmakers in Washington and state capitols around the country are partisan, inept, or lightly tethered to reality–and the result is government that is so broken that no one trusts it anymore.
This paralysis–this inability of American government to act on behalf of the common good–is our self-destruct countdown.
It’s maddening, because there are so many positive elements of American society. I look at my students, and I’d be proud to turn the country over to them; they are thoughtful, inclusive, determined to contribute to their communities. I look at what science and technology have accomplished, and I marvel at the human ingenuity that has made life better for millions of people. Our arts communities are vibrant. Our universities are adding to the sum of human knowledge.
The thing is, all of those social goods require a functional infrastructure: government. And ours is on self-destruct.
While we wait for the impact of sequestration to hit, we might ponder this: In an interview with Spiegel Online, a Harvard economist insisted that we could save an amount equal to the sequestration cuts every year just by ending the War on Drugs.
“The prohibition of drugs is the worst solution for preventing abuse,” said Professor Jeffrey Miron. “Firstly, it brings about a black market that is corrupt and costs human lives. Secondly, it constrains people who wouldn’t abuse drugs. Thirdly, prohibiting drugs is expensive.”
The direct costs of our counterproductive drug war have been estimated at more than 60 billion dollars a year. And yet, in all the years we have pursued this war, we have not reduced the percentage of Americans using hard drugs. Instead, that sixty billion dollars a year has destroyed lives, incentivized criminal activity, increased police corruption, laid waste to several South American countries, and decimated inner city neighborhoods.
If our elected officials are really so intent upon reducing the national debt, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop spending enormous sums for a failed policy, and use at least some of the savings for treatment? Better still, we could legalize marijuana–which medical experts tell us is less dangerous than booze–and tax it.
I don’t know whether we’d save more than the sequester, but abandoning a failed, horrifically expensive program would be a far more rational approach than taking an indiscriminate, meat ax approach to the budget.
I finally got around to reading “Healing the Heart of Democracy” by Parker Palmer yesterday, and was struck by his observation that it isn’t disagreement that makes our politics so contentious–it is demonization.
Back in the day, as they say, I remember Dick Lugar responding to challenges by saying “That’s an issue upon which people of good faith can differ.” By the time he was attacked by Tea Party purists, that simple recognition–that otherwise good people can differ in their analysis of a situation–had become heresy in some precincts.
When we de-humanize those who disagree with us, we make conversation–and conversion–impossible. I’ll grant that some folks are so rigid, so afraid to consider facts that might be contrary to their own worldview, that reasonable debate is not possible. (As a friend of mine used to say, you can’t reason someone out of a position they never reasoned themselves into.) But those tend to be folks on the fringe. When we write off everyone on the other side of an issue, we abandon any possibility of productive discourse.
Alexander Hamilton addressed this very human tendency in Federalist #1: “So numerous indeed and so powerful are the causes which serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society. This circumstance, if duly attended to, would furnish a lesson of moderation to those who are ever so much persuaded of their being in the right in any controversy….In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.”
Later in that same essay, he points out that partisans are unlikely to sway others to their opinions or to increase the “number of their converts” by the “loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invective.”
As difficult as it may be in an era positively dominated by invective and loudness, those of us who care about the conduct of public affairs need to work on substituting vigorous but respectful disagreement for demonization. Otherwise, the public square will be entirely dominated by the “true believers” of all sorts who are so vested in labeling and attacking that they cannot participate in anything remotely resembling democratic discourse.
In an era where every ideologue claims fidelity to the Founders, maybe we should actually listen to one.
