"Gee, Where'd All the Money Go?"

I get tired of all the theatrical hand-wringing on the right about “How is Obama going to pay for all of this?”

If Bush had not destroyed the structural surpluses that were originally projected for the last 8 years, the government would not be paying almost a half trillion dollars a year in interest on the (vastly expanded) national debt. I’m enough of a cynic to believe that was actually deliberate: utterly destroy the country’s fiscal standing, so that the next time a Democrat is elected, there is a smooth transition to theatrical hand-wringing and bleats that “Gee, we’re too broke to be able to afford to help all those people…”

But the thing is, as a matter of math it is actually fairly simple to pay for everything Obama wants and more, AND pay down the debt, if you make the income tax resemble what if was in the Eisenhower administration: the top marginal rate hovered between 91 and 94 percent, and there were more brackets.

Another thing I’ve heard proposed is a 13% asset tax on all assets over 10 million dollars. This would apparently pay off the entire national debt, more or less instantly. That would then free up tons of money to make our fellow citizens’, and our own, lives better through investments in things like job training, better schools, social workers and so on, to finally tackle in a comprehensive way the economic and social decay in our inner cities; upgrading and modernizing our inter-city train system to standards that obtain in the rest of the developed world (a project whose need will become more apparent in the coming world of ever-costlier oil); government-subsidized day care to ease the path of single mothers out of poverty; new incentives and even direct investment in green energy sources and a smart grid.

I think if you ask most Americans if they want those things, they’ll say “yes.” If you propose a much more progressive tax system to pay for it, they’ll be fine with that, too.

EWTN: the Splendor of Conservatism

I watch EWTN occasionally, and enjoy “the Journey Home” and Daily Mass and Exposition and Benediction, among other programs; that said, I have noticed that when EWTN speaks on issues that intersect politics, the issues they choose tend to be conformed to the narrative that American conservatism uses.

There is plenty on abortion, for example. I have no complaint with that, per se, of course; but where’s the voice for workers, say, or against corporate greed and exploitation? Where’s the voice for the poor, for the distraught residents of our ghettos? Against torture, or unjust war, or racism?

To the extent that EWTN even addresses those other issues, they do so from pretty Republican premises and frames of reference.

It would be nice if there was a “Social Justice hour,” say, or some program highlighting people who are working for non-violent social change in Latin America and elsewhere.

It seems to me that EWTN speaks to and is aimed at Catholics who are politically conservative, rather than the full spectrum of Catholics in America.

Minimum Wage a Bad Idea??

My fellow Catholics continue to disappoint me with their regressive economics:

Yesterday the federal minimum wage was raised from $5.85 an hour to $6.55 an hour. Perhaps you didn’t notice. Minimum wage laws are a strange sort of thing. They’re quite popular, yet the arguments used to support them are often of the sort that, in other contexts, hardly anyone would find persuasive.

Suppose I were to argue as follows: Homeless is an injustice and a tragedy, and no one should have to beg on the streets for food or money, or to sleep on the streets. Therefore, we should make begging and vagrancy illegal.

Presumably few people would find such an argument convincing. They would recognize that, bad as it is to have to beg for money in order to be able to eat, simply taking away your ability to beg while doing nothing about the circumstances that led you to beg in the first place isn’t going to make you any better off.

Or suppose that, instead of a ban on begging, I propose a law whereby anyone who wants to give money to a homeless person has to give at least $10. That way the amount of money a homeless person will be able to collect from begging will increase, and he or she will soon have enough money to get off the streets. Again, I doubt that many people would find such an argument convincing. They would immediately see that while some people might give more money to the homeless under the new law most people, if forced to choose between giving at least $10 and giving nothing, would choose to give nothing. Nor, I might add, would I be able to win many people over to my proposals by talking about how rotten it is to be homeless. The worse homelessness is, the worse my ideas are.

Yet when it comes to so-called minimum wage laws, i.e. laws making it illegal to hire someone for less than a set amount, many people do fall for precisely these sorts of arguments. It is assumed that if the minimum wage is set at $10 an hour, everyone who would have made less than this absent the law will now make $10 an hour. What people seem to forget, however, is that the minimum wage is always zero. There is no law that says an employer must hire anyone or continue to employ them. If a worker is worth $7 an hour to an employer, and the law says he must pay him $10 or nothing, then the worker will be paid nothing. The law has not improved his situation. It has only made it worse.

Leaving everything up to the market results in wages falling to “what the market will bear.” If that level is below a living wage, should we as a society address that?

If it could reasonably be demonstrated that a minimum wage improves the lives workers, what would be a reasonable substitute (not “in principle” but in actual, concrete fact - some other means besides a legal minimum wage that will actually, you know, work?)

Take away the minimum wage, and McDonald’s would pay its labor 2 bucks an hour. Maybe less if they could get away with it. We’d be back to “I sold my soul to the company store.” (Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickeled and Dimed” gives a good look at a world where companies have all the power.)

One role of the government, of the law, ought to be to protect the weak. This is Godly and Catholic.

If we lived in a medieval world of craft guilds and peasant farmers, all this libertarian garbage might make some sense. In an industrialized world where large corporations wield immense power, I just can’t see the sense in it.

Darwin Catholic Answers my Challenge...

...that I put out in a previous post asking for an explanation of why conservative Catholics oppose universal health care. I'll respond to his response in the next day or so.

[UPDATE: Zack pointed out in the comments that he responded as well.]

Calling All Conservative Catholics

What alternative do you propose to universal health care, on the European model? Whatever the problems there, everyone is guaranteed basic care, no one there is bankrupted by medical bills, and everyone seems (by and large) happy with it.

How, as a Catholic, can you oppose that?

Just...explain to me why it would be so horrifying to just have universal health care in the United States. Yes it would cost money, and yes, taxes would go up - but so what? Isn't working people not being bankrupted by hospital bills ever again worth a few more percent at tax time? Isn't a society where everyone can go to a doctor when he's sick better than a society where he delays going because then he won't eat or won't be able to buy gas, or can't pay his car payment or whatever?

Give me a good, solid reason to oppose it - not a picking-around-the-edges, "particular statistic 'x' suffers in comparison to America..." reason, but simply-stated summary of why, in principle, it would be so horrible.

The reply, "we ought to care for each other in the community" sounds good - heck, I even agree with it. But the price of modern health care is too much for that kind of community-provided care. I have no idea what an MRI machine costs, but I can't imagine my local parish can fork over than kind of cash.

As Catholics, we can either, 1. Wring our hands and dream piously of New Jerusalem, or 2. Come up with a plan B.

I'll go first: "Millions of people having either no health insurance or junk insurance in a country as affluent as the US is a scandal. Universal health care, modeled on Western European systems, is practically achievable and would be good because it would guarantee basic health care to every citizen."