debitage

16.6.07

Egalitarian Environmentalism

Kevin Drum says that the theme that ties together all of the liberal issues (particularly social liberalism and economic liberalism) is egalitarianism. All of them, that is, except for environmentalism:

Environmentalism, for example, is something that I suspect everyone naturally supports unless they have some reason not to, and the main reason not to is that it interferes with business interests. So opposition to environmentalism comes mostly from conservative, pro-business parties, while everyone else supports it. It has nothing much to do with egalitarianism.

But in fact environmentalism has a lot to do with egalitarianism (and with intra-human egalitarianism, not just giving equal rights to nature versus dominating it). In very crude historical terms, there was an initial wave of anti-egalitarian environmentalism followed by a pro-egalitarian wave.

Anti-egalitarian environmentalism is the conservation movement of the late 18th and early 19th century, the domain of Teddy Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and John Muir. To such men, environmentalism was associated with class privilege (preserving nature for the hunting and other recreational pursuits of the gentry and as a resource base for future industry), race privilege (getting rid of those filthy Indians who mess up our pure wilderness), and male privilege (wilderness pursuits as a school of tough manly virtue, a la the Boy Scouts). Indeed, there was significant crossover between supporters of early environmentalism and anti-egalitarian causes like eugenics (Hitler was, after all, a vegetarian and a conservationist). This anti-egalitarian strain explains the initial hostility of the socialist left (the infamous "red-green" battles). It wasn't just (as a common green view similar to Drum's holds) that socialists were aiming at an industrial communism that would be equally threatened as private enterprise by environmental protection.

The second wave of environmentalism -- which came to prominence as "environmentalism" in the 1970s, though it has a much longer history -- started down a more egalitarian path. Pollution issues disproportionately impact oppressed people. Increased respect for other cultures brought with it a valuing of their comparatively more sustainable lifestyles. On the far left, recognition of the destruction caused by capitalist development programs began to note the environmental factor, as third world peoples' livelihoods are undercut by degradation and loss of resource access. Rhetoric of "exploitation," "rape," and "dominance" convey the egalitarian thinking in modern environmentalism. Indeed, even the environmentalist conservatives of today -- notably "sportsmen" (hunters and anglers) and "creation care" evangelical Christians -- generally hold a comparatively egalitarian/populist outlook (today's hunters focus on preserving access to wildlands for the people against the depredations of big government and big business, and the new wave of evangelicals are more concerned about poverty and less concerned about homosexuality than their forebears).

This is not to say that egalitarianism is a complete explanation for environmentalism (or any other social movement), or that modern environmentalism is fully egalitarian (the environmental justice movement still has complaints against the big green players). But it does challenge the view proposed by Drum (and by a number of green theorists) that environmentalism is unique from other political issues.

Stentor Danielson, 17:57, |

14.6.07

Salex Tax Redux

In the comments to my previous post, Joel Monka brought up another argument for a national sales tax that's worth commenting on because it's structurally similar to my rebuttal to the "reduces complexity and bureaucracy" argument. Monka says that the sales tax will reduce under-the-table payments:

There is a huge underground economy that does not pay income tax- services, from nursing to yardwork, drug dealers,etc.- every time you've ever been asked to pay cash it was probably because it wasn't being reported; none of these people pay income tax. But they all buy things, which means they all pay sales tax.

In my previous post, I said that it doesn't matter where in the economic cycle you withdraw your tax, politicians will still load it down with complexity. Similarly, I would argue that it doesn't matter where in the economic cycle you withdraw your tax, people will still be motivated to create a black market to evade paying the tax. A 23% tax is pretty good motivation to look for someone willing to sell it to you on the sly.

The examples Monka gives of under-the-table income -- yardwork and drug dealers -- are particularly bad ones, because they're not likely to change under a sales tax system. In both cases, the same transaction is being taxed under either system, it's just redescribed from "income for the yardworker/dealer" to "sale of yardwork services/drugs." I don't see why changing the description would change people's motivation to report the transaction and pay a tax on it. This is particularly true for drug dealing, which is illegal independent of the taxes paid on it. People engaging in a drug deal are highly unlikely to want to advertise that fact to the government.

Stentor Danielson, 14:49, |

13.6.07

Sales Tax Bureaucracy

I think there are a lot of things wrong with the idea of exchanging our income and payroll taxes for a national sales tax being floated by a number of people, most notably presidential candidate Mike Gravel. The most important one is that it's regressive* (albeit with an artificially introduced kink at the bottom through a rebate system). But the one I want to talk about now is the vacuousness of its claim to reduce bureaucracy.

A key selling point of the national sales tax is that it would free us from the gargantuan bureaucracy of the IRS. No more filing tax forms with complicated schedules and deductions, and having some percentage of your money go to pay accountants to process them. The problem is, the tax bureaucracy is a function of having a tax system, not of the point in the economy at which the taxes are extracted.

The income tax is extremely simple in concept as well. You take in X dollars over the course of the year, so you pay Y percentage of that to the government. (And it is that simple in practice for those of us who just earn a wage and take the standard deduction -- most of my federal tax-filing time is spent clicking the "does not apply" buttons in H&R Block's online filing system.) The complications come as politicians add various conditions and hitches for different types of income and different types of taxpayers. Over the course of 94 years, our tax system has accumulated a lot of cruft.

So the national sales tax will start out simpler and less bureaucracy-ridden simply because it's new. But slowly and surely, conditions will be added. At the link above, Steven Puma already proposes lifting the tax on "used" items (whatever the legal definition of that winds up being -- the used versus new distinction is not self-evident), production inputs (ditto for needing a complex definition) and education expenses. The experience of states -- who have been charging sales taxes for many years -- shows some of the ways a sales tax can be made more complex. Many states exempt food and clothing from their sales taxes. And of course gas, cigarette, and hotel taxes are essentially extra sales taxes on certain items. And in addition to varying the tax rate on certain items (either as a favor to their producers/users or to encourage/discourage consumption), there's the option of varying the tax rate for different producers or buyers. For example, nonprofit organizations are often exempt from sales taxes. Then there's the question of how to handle the rebate that sales tax proponents rely on to round off the worst edges of the system's regressiveness. Just sending the rebate will require a substantial bureaucracy (and use of paper), and a check being sent to every citizen every month is a prime target for politicians to add various complexities with respect to the size and eligibility requirements. All of this complexity creates the need for more burdensome reporting and bureaucratic processing and enforcement.

Sales tax advocates may not support these additions and conditions. But the point is that in the political process they will happen. Just getting a sales tax bill through Congress will doubtless require the first load of porkish conditions and complexities. Charging the tax at the point of purchase rather than the paycheck is no proof against tax system complexity.

We should certainly simplify our tax system. But that can be accomplished within the income tax paradigm just as easily as by switching to a sales tax that has many other flaws.

*Sales tax advocates like to point out that the Social Security payroll tax is regressive too -- but the simplest way to fix that is to roll it into the progressive income tax.

Stentor Danielson, 23:39, |

12.6.07

Just File A Complaint

The latest coverage of the troubled relationship between Casa Grande's police and black community opens with a bit of bureaucratic blindness:

The board is hampered in its progress because most of the complaints - some presented calmly, others to the point of screaming - have not been filed with the Police Department and then investigated, giving both sides of the picture.

As board member Jim Rhodes told those attending the May 10 meeting at Len Colla Recreation Center, "It looks like we have an issue, a problem, from the eloquent statements that have been made, but it looks like there's a breakdown in getting those in writing so they can be considered.

"One of the problems that we run into is that you've all done a great job of talking tonight, but when we leave I don't have your words to take with me to look at."

Some of those speaking to the board that night were asked if they had filed complaints against officers. Their reasons for not doing so ranged from not knowing the process to not knowing how to put it down on paper to "this happened in December, but I have still not filed a complaint out of fear of retaliation from the department; I don't trust the Police Department, that's why I'm here tonight."

This is a common refrain any time an agency encounters an unhappy public. Bureaucratic organizations all have formal procedures for registering complaints. So what's the problem with using them? Essentially, that complaint procedures are set up for the convenience of the bureaucracy. They serve to transform issues in the outside world into a form that can be processed internally in a way that does not threaten the agency's organization.

For example, the written complaint process deals with discrete incidents. Complaints take the form "on X day at Y place, Z member of the agency did such-and-such." The agency can then collect evidence about the given incident and see if it's clear that Z did something substantially contrary to some relevant guideline. Then the file can be stamped "closed."

But the concerns people have do not always take a form that can be easily reduced to complaints about discrete incidents -- and even when they can be, such translation empties the concerns of much of the force they have when experienced and understood as part of a larger pattern. Questions of distrust and disrespect can't be broken down into policy violations, and so bureaucratic organizations tend to be blind to them.

Police Chief Bob Huddleston doesn't seem to grasp the problem. We first encounter him in the article telling a woman concerned about DNA testing of suspects that proper procedures have been followed and that supporting documentation can be produced upon proper request. Later he lists the formal appeals steps that a questioner could take if they disagree with the police's violent arrest of a man charged with posession of narcotics.

In an accompanying article, members of the Police Advisory Board (which is presumably much less bureaucratically structured than the police department) take a much more productive stance. Rather than Huddleston's attitude of "come meet us on our turf and speak our language," the board members seem to recognize the need to take the black community's concerns seriously on their own terms, and to proactively seek resolution of them rather than waiting for them to be translated into bureaucracy-appropriate forms.

Stentor Danielson, 19:43, |

Two Questions About the Nature of Marriage

Jonathan Rauch's rebuttal of a new book by David Blankenhorn opposing same-sex marriage opens with a conflation of two questions about the nature of marriage. Rauch writes (my italics):

By marriage, I mean not just a commitment that two people make to each other. Marriage is a commitment that the two spouses also make to their community. They promise to look after each other and their children so society won�t have to; in exchange, society deems them a family and provides an assortment of privileges, obligations, and caregiving tools. (Not, mostly, "benefits.") Marriage does much more than ratify relationships, I would tell audiences; it fortifies relationships by embedding them in a dense web of social expectations. That is why marriage, with or without children, is a win-win deal, strengthening individuals, families, and communities all at the same time. Gay marriage, I said, would be the same positive-sum transaction. The example gay couples set by marrying instead of shacking up might even strengthen marriage itself.

Audiences received my gay-marriage pitch in predictably varied ways. What consistently surprised me, however, was how few people thought of marriage as anything more than a private contract. Particularly among groups of younger people, the standard view was that marriage is just an individual lifestyle choice. If chosen, great. If not chosen, great. I would leave such encounters with a troubling thought: Perhaps straights were becoming receptive to gay marriage partly because they had devalued marriage itself.

There are really two differences between Rauch's view of marriage and those of the younger people he mentions. Because I agree with Rauch on one point and with the younger people on the other, Rauch's conflation of the two jumped out at me.

Rauch first asserts the social nature of marriage, and I agree with this point. Marriage is not just a private agreement between two people, it's an institution to which society is a party as well. Married people take on certain responsibilities for each other (and for each other's wider relationships and affairs) and recieve support from society in doing so. I'm skeptical of the ability of people living in long-term romantic relationships to maintain an adherence to the parameters of a purely private arrangement without sliding into a form of unofficial social-marriage. (Which is not to say that such individuals necessarily ought to get formally married.) Thus I would side with Rauch in finding the "get government out of the marriage business" argument unsatisfactory.

But in the passage I italicized, Rauch opposes the social conception of marriage to the idea of marriage as just one among many legitimate lifestyles. I would argue, however, that the social-private question and the one-many lifestyles question are analytically separate. It is quite possible to hold -- and I do hold -- that marriage is a social institution, but it's also a social institution that isn't for everyone. Social-marriage is a way of recognizing and formalizing a supportive environment for people who structure their lives around forming a household with a romantic partner, with the particular vulnerabilities and responsibilities that such an arrangement entails. It in no way follows from this that forming a household with a romantic partner is a privileged lifestyle. People may choose a different lifestyle, and -- if that lifestyle is not intrinsically unacceptable -- society ought to examine analogous ways of providing a supportive structure for it.

The young people that Rauch cites likely see a connection between private-marriage and lifestyle pluralism. I would hypothesize (contrary to the last line of Rauch's quote) that the connection begins with a recognition of lifestyle pluralism. The commitment to private-marriage follows not as a logical entailment but as a defensive strategy. Contractualism has a strong resonance in our society, particularly since it seems to impose less on others ("just leave me alone to do things my own way"). And the combination of contractualism with privileging a single lifestyle, while logically possible, is implausible and hence highly unstable. Thus adherence to private-marriage constitutes an outer defense line against threats to lifestyle pluralism.

Stentor Danielson, 01:33, |