Skip to main content

Tax and Spend

Berkley MI
Friday

The phrase “tax-and-spend liberal” has always been a pejorative. It’s meant to be said with a sneer. With an implied middle finger. Ever since Bush 41, it’s been spit at anyone who thinks government might have an actual purpose beyond cutting taxes, eliminating regulation, and eviscerating the social safety net — the time-honored Republican agenda.
But I have personally adopted “tax-and-spend liberal” as a badge of honor. I actually believe in the potential of big government, as well as in paying my fair share towards its upkeep. I am not oblivious to its shortcomings and disappointments — if anything I expect them. But I get incensed when I see people in government who clearly don’t believe in government. Especially when they ruin it for the rest of us.
And damn, this is the moment where government should have shined. This pandemic is exactly what government is made for. This is why we pay our taxes. This is why we elect public servants in, presumably, good faith. It should have been government’s finest hour. Instead we’re being lied to, stolen from, and murdered.
Government was never supposed to make financial sense. Its job is to do what needs to be done. To protect us in a crisis, whatever it costs. To invest in the things the private sector does poorly — healthcare, basic science, infrastructure and, oh yeah, epidemiology. To oversee the financial and medical systems so they don’t break down under stress. To gather reserves of key resources in the good times because they might just come in handy in the bad.
Without a good, strong, well-meaning government, we are easy prey for diseases and bandits. And right now we have both at once.
If we’d taxed and spent the way we should have, we would certainly have handled this virus better. But ever since Reagan told us that “government is the problem,” we have been among the least taxed citizenries in the western world. Keeping it that way has been the life’s work of any number of Republican hacks (What rock is Grover Norquist under these days?).
But it isn’t enough that we’re under-taxed. Or that being under-taxed was already causing widespread and irreparable damage, even before the virus. Or that the treasury is being looted. Or that our people are dying in inexcusable numbers.
No, even that’s not enough for these bandits. Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, with characteristic wryness, “Always grab much too much or you’ll get nothing at all.” The perfect motto for the GOP.
Remember the tax scam? The two trillion in tax breaks? I know, that’s so 2017. But the coarse venality of what Republicans did then is typical of what passes for government these days. Most of that tax break went to large corporations who then used it to buy back their own stock. A huge windfall for much-too-muchers, and a pittance for those with never enough.
In a desperate effort to make up for this colossal stupidity, we got a $2.2 trillion “stimulus.” Misnamed. It’s not a stimulus, it’s a rescue, and not much of one. Then last week, we got $350 billion or so for small business, however that gets defined. Apparently, the states will still have to twist in the wind — they won't get help paying their bills until Moscow Mitch heaves up another trillion or so. Add in the $2 trillion from the 2017 boondoggle, and we’re looking at roughly a $4.5 trillion down payment on a pandemic response that’s just getting started.
And all the while, tax revenue is falling through the floor. Unemployed people don’t pay taxes.
So by now it should be quite evident that tax-and-spend liberals are exactly what we need more of. Much more. The question is whether we can vote them into office before the much-too-muchers leave us nothing at all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If You Were Putin, What Would You Do?

  S o let’s say you’re Vladimir Putin. Scary, I know. But let’s just say you’d been trained by the old KGB to hate the United States with a white-hot passion that you’ve had on simmer since long before you became dictator. It’s a hate you were taught in the Brezhnev years, which were almost as bad as Stalin’s but with mass death ruled out, more or less. You nursed the hate through the convulsions of the early nineties, when your beloved Soviet Union was scrapped and replaced with economic chaos and widespread privation, which the Russian people somehow endured, as usual. Then finally, in 2000, you got your shot. You took over the whole country, and your hate was given room to breathe. Still you took your time. Fourteen years till you “annexed” Crimea and moved on the Donbass. Two more years before you engineered Brexit and the self-destruction of the UK, the same year you stole a U.S. presidential election for a pliable con man you’ve owned for three decades...
2 comments
Read more

DEI-Bashing and the Battle for the Soul of Big Law

  T here was a time, not long ago, when a major corporate law firm would look to burnish its “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” credentials in the marketplace. At which point that firm might hire a writer like, say, me. It was a given that Big Law firms needed to become more diverse, at least if they wanted to stay relevant in a work environment that was no longer male, white, straight, and old. Firms everywhere invested real money in the recruitment, training, and promotion of lawyers from widely varied backgrounds, and they paid people like me to brag about it to the world. Every firm needed a DEI page on its website. Some wanted printed brochures. Some wanted advertising. Most wanted the legal community, especially law schools, to know about their diversity efforts. Law schools were by then rating firms by their DEI “scores,” and the firms with the best scores were getting the pick of the litter from the graduating classes. What I liked about the work was...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Sort of Pro Bono Work is Big Law Signing Up For?

  B ig Law is on the hot seat. Major firms have unexpectedly been thrust into the front lines of the war against Trump, and all their options are bad. I wrote about this two weeks ago, and since then a slew of big firms have either made a deal with the devil or joined the side of the angels. On the minus side, all but one of the top twenty firms have either taken the “deal” or stayed silent. I personally think they’re playing a bad hand badly. On the plus side — beyond those top twenty behemoths — there are hundreds of very large firms who have taken a stand, of sorts, against the junta. If you’re interested in keeping score , you can do so, but the whole thing keeps getting weirder. As we watch these “deals” being made, the one common denominator — and the most publicized aspect — is the “pro bono” work these firms are committing to. About a billion dollars’ worth of lawyering is available to be used in “conservative” causes. What does this mean? What ...
2 comments
Read more