Moment, Linger On

Light posting continues

Stuff (including computer) is in transit. We fly on May 3. Expect light posting into the first week of May.

Single/parent wars

Today Laura asks if there is a war going on between single people and people who have kids. She claims to have only been aware of tension between the groups "since last fall," which leads me to wonder where she has been the other decade and change of her adult life. Of course there is a war going on. A bitter and protracted war where people periodically switch sides based on various life-altering events in their lives. And it isn't just the young and middle aged always-childless on the side of the singles, either. Randomly sample a group of empty nested seniors on the subject of property taxes and schools and you may (or may not) be surprised at the results.

Laura mentions a typical attitude on the part of the singles:

Many single people didn't think that they should have to make any sacrifices to support another person's kids. Kids are their own reward, they said. I believe one guy compared having a kid to choosing to have a puppy.

I have to confess that I used to have this attitude back in my callow youthful (and even not-so-youthful) days. I can admit this only because it is mitigated by the fact that I changed my tune long before I had kids or even got married.

My question is why the fools who feel this way can't see their own self-interest is at stake. We all have a stake in seeing that this generation of children is raised well. The future economic well-being of our country is directly on the shoulders of these kids. Getting old isn't something that only happens to the unlucky and, unless you work until you die, you are eventually going to cease to be a productive member of society. No matter how well you have saved, your quality of life is going to depend on living in a country with a healthy and vibrant economy. The way these kids are brought up now is going to have a tremendous impact on your life later, whether you have kids or not.

I view it as my responsibility to raise my kid to be a good citizen and a productive member of society and I am going to go through a considerable effort and expense to do so. He will benefit from this, of course, and I will benefit somewhat less, but if I do a good job then everyone else will also be a bit ahead of the game as well. I'm not saying that singles should discover altruism here, but rather enlightened self-interest. We would all be better off than if we were fighting the whole "who is responsible for what" wars.

Dishonest. And lacking in common decency as well.

If you were following politics in 2000, you might remember Real Clear Politics. They were the clowns (I say the although there were probably others) who were predicting a >400 electoral vote sweep by Bush the weekend before the 2000 presidential election. Despite their lack of prowess in electoral predictions, they have somehow acquired a reputation as serious political bloggers on the right side of the spectrum. Don't ask me how; it must be some sort of an affirmative action thing for intellectually challenged conservatives. Personally I prefer Tacitus, who at least manages to occasionally temper his intellectual dishonesty and actually write something thoughtful. But that's beside the point.

Let's look at this post from yesterday by Tom Bevan, which goes by the descriptive title "Kerry's meet the press lie." Mr Bevan starts with a quote of Kerry's that Russert presented:

You "voted to authorize military action but has accused President Bush of rushing into war, [but he] said he will cease his complaints once the shooting starts. `It's what you owe the troops,' said a statement from Kerry. `I remember being one of those guys and reading news reports from home. If America is at war, I won't speak a word without measuring how it will sound to the guys doing the fighting when they're listening to their radios in the desert.'" Are you concerned that you're sending the wrong message to the troops by not showing solidarity in terms of the war in Iraq? And have you broken your pledge?

So far, so good. Kerry promised that he wouldn't criticize the president about Iraq while the troops were fighting. And, in light of Kerry's recent (justifiable) criticism of Bush's post-war policy, Russert wants to know if Kerry has broken his pledge. Kerry's response:

No, I haven't. Because, number one, I did adhere strictly to that through the period of the success of the war, when we finally had taken control of the country.

Fair enough. He couldn't hold off forever and, given that he is speaking out months after Bush was prancing around on the Abraham Lincoln celebrating the end of hostilities, you can't really say that he broke his promise. But let's see what Mr Bevan has to say:

Yeah, right. This must be a different John Kerry than the one who said on April 3, 2003 that ""what we need now is not just a regime change in Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but we need a regime change in the United States."

But wait a minute. Let's track back up to Kerry's first quote where he says he won't criticize the president about Iraq. Now let's look at the second quote. Do you see anything about the war in there? Of course not. In fact, it could even be construed as support for the war: seeing as how he would view a Bush loss in 2004 as a positive thing, it is hard to imagine how he could see regime change in Iraq as a bad thing. Apparently nothing short of an endorsement of Bush's reelection by the eventual Democratic nominee would satisfy Mr. Bevan.

But that's splitting hairs. The important thing is that Mr. Bevan somehow sees this as going back on his pledge to support the war. But Kerry didn't violate his pledge unless you conflate a lack of support for Bush with a lack of patriotism. Hmm. Let's scroll further down to a post from a couple of days earlier in which Mr Bevan writes:

In the four years we've been running this site neither John nor I have ever said that disagreeing with or criticizing the President means you aren't patriotic.

Oh really? Perhaps this is technically correct in that Mr. Bevan doesn't use the word "unpatriotic," but in comparing Kerry's general criticism to a lack of support of the troops one is left no doubt about how he feels about the issue.

And that's why these conservatives don't deserve to run the country. They are not only completely dishonest, but also lacking in common decency. If someone has the gall to have an honest disagreement with them about what is best for the country then they are painted as unpatriotic. I've noticed that people tend to project their own faults onto others and, in light of this mantra of "unpatriotic" and "dishonest" coming from their side, my advice is for them to look in a mirror.

Light posting may occur...

...for the next couple of weeks as we move ourselves and our consumer durables back to North America.

That is all.

More on neutral reasoning

Russell Arben Fox wrote a long, thoughtful, informed, informative, and quite generous response to my post yesterday regarding Newman's Dissent article. While agreeing with some of my points on one level, he disagreed with others on another, more abstract level.

This is neither surprising nor unfair, because I was really responding to a different argument than he (and Newman) was making. I agree with his point that a pure Rawlsian would be compelled to reject, at least in the long term, alliances with people such as Riley. But I, at least, am not such a purist. In fact, I call myself a Rawlsian only because his philosophy broadly encapsulates my own beliefs, rather than believing what I do because I am a follower of Rawls. I therefore don't feel any need to avoid deviating from his principles or to come up with a justification when I do. If I were making a career as a political philosopher then I would feel a need to be more precise, but I'm just a regular guy with an interest in the world around me, so I don't. I suppose I am guilty of putting words into other Rawlsian's mouths in presuming to know what sort of arguments they would or wouldn't accept and I shouldn't have been so careless about that.

I remain convinced, however, that it was sloppy on Newman's part to drag Riley and his tax reform proposal into this as an example in the absence of any real evidence that Riley suffered from widespread lack of secular support. Russell points out that he suffered from more lukewarm support than he might have expected from secular liberal groups, but I think that pales in comparison to the widespread desertion that he suffered from his own fellow Christian travellers, who should have been much more receptive to the arguments he was making. It may be, as Russell puts it, that "the procedural Rawlsian claim which Newman and I disagree with isn't fully present in any actual real-world debates," but it hardly does their argument any favors if this is the best example they can come up with.

Neutral reasoning

Last week Russell Arben Fox wrote about the propensity for "secular liberals" to demand purity of motive in their arguments:

Newman goes on to dissect the liberal hostility to public arguments which do not fit the criteria of "public reason": that is, "one[s] that can be affirmed by all citizens, whatever their conception of the good." He criticizes this Rawlsian obsession with "neutral" reasoning; distinguishing between motivations and ends, Newman argues that "so long as the policy objective is within the scope of the state's authority, its sponsors' motives are irrelevant..."

...

It should go without saying, of course, that I basically agree with him.

The Newman that he was referring to was the author of this article in Dissent about (Republican) Governor Bob Riley's courageous and well-intentioned attempt to reform the highly regressive Alabama tax code on the grounds that such an inequitable system went against Christian teachings. Newman claims that Riley was viewed with suspicion by those of us on the secular left because his motivations were not the public reasons that we use to support progressive taxation.

Well, Newman and Fox are essentially talking about me and this doesn't jibe with my recollection of how I felt about this. My opinion, as well as the maybe two or three like-minded people who I might have talked to about this, was (and is) that not only was Riley objectively doing the right thing, but that he was also accurately representing the teachings of his Christian faith (as I understand them) and deserved respect for that as well. I was initially a bit suspicious of his efforts, but that had more to do with the fact that his position as Governor was a complete reversal from his time in Congress, where he was one of the hawkiest of the anti-tax hawks. This suspicion was initially shared by the state Democratic party and other liberals (or what passes for liberal in Alabama), but once they got over this distrust, they joined Riley to move his tax bill through the legislature in the face of opposition from, among others, the Republicans and the Christian Coalition.

In fact, I don't recall any criticism of Riley because he was motivated by his Christian beliefs rather than secular reasons. And apparently Newman doesn't either, because he provides exactly no evidence to support this in his article. No quotes from secular liberals denouncing him because he is doing things for the wrong reasons. No voting records suggesting that the more liberal legislators deserted him when his tax bill came up for a vote. No polling data suggesting that secular Alabamans didn't back him when the referendum came up for a statewide vote. The only sort of attempt Newman makes to do this, in fact, is when he suggests something completely contrary to this thesis, which is that Riley failed not because he was deserted by secular supporters of progressive taxation but because he was abandoned by his own fellow religious Republicans, to whom his argument should have appealed. In short, Newman does nothing but set up a "hostile secular liberal" strawman and then knock it down.

And that's all he can do, because he completely misrepresents the position of secular Rawlsians like myself. We don't reject arguments for things that we agree with because they aren't public arguments but rather arguments for positions which can't be supported by any public reasons. This is not even a subtle distinction and I'm surprised that people of Newman's and Fox's intelligence and education fail to see it. As an example of how this distinction plays out in real life for me, I can easily make common cause with Riley on his issue of tax reform (although my involvement here is limited to moral support since I'm not from Alabama) or Catholics on the issue of the death penalty in spite of the fact that our reasons for taking these positions might be different. But on issues where I am in disagreement I can only be persuaded by these public arguments and any position which can't be so supported, such as being against gay marriage, won't earn my support or even my respect.

From my point of view, Newman's article seems to be self-indulgent complaining about how people of faith don't get the respect that they deserve. Or perhaps, in the abstract world of academia where Newman and Fox live, there are actually people who demand such secular purity. But in the real world, where I support real policy positions and want to see them implemented, I'm perfectly happy to work with people whose motivations are different than mine.

The supposed myth of the student athlete

The NCAA filed a brief yesterday in support of the NFL in their effort to prevent players from entering the league until they are three years out of high school. Well, no surprise there. The NCAA certainly has an interest in seeing that their supply of revenue generating free labor doesn't dry up.

But doesn't that strike you as just plain wrong? These players go to college to get an education. Not the type of education that you would immediately think, since their scholarships are all but worthless. These football players are, in many cases, underprepared for the rigors of college and, even were their preparations adequate, the demands that athletics makes on them makes it impossible to take advantage of their opportunity to study towards a college degree. NCAA regulations to the contrary, most of them work more than 40 hours a week on their athletics with a demanding travel schedule thrown in half the year to boot. But that doesn't mean that they aren't in college to get an education. Most of them, unlikely as their prospects might seem, are there to be trained in the vocation of football. And why not? That's the career they've chosen and to pursue it they have to go to college. I wouldn't begrudge them their ambitions any more than I would those of an aspiring artist or musician or history professor.

What's wrong is the NCAA, which should be looking out for their interests, undermining them. Can you think of any other discipline where colleges conspire with employers to prevent their students from getting jobs?

More taxing thoughts

It's that time of the year again. Not the time where we fill out confusing forms and panic over where that other 1099 went to or the time where we complain that Turbo Tax isn't working correctly or the time where we just say f*** it and pay someone $250 to take the whole mess off our hands. No, I'm talking about the time where greedy conservatives dishonestly try and take advantage of our frustration with the whole mess to push for a flat tax.

It sounds so enticing. One card, they say. You can figure out your tax and file on one side of a 5x7 card. Except that figuring out your tax isn't the problem now, is it? I mean, there are tables in the book custom designed for the most dense of us that allow us to do that. You figure out your taxable income and bang, there you go. Look in the table and there's your tax. The hard part, of course, is figuring out what part of your income is taxable and the flat tax does nothing to help you there. The way you move to a 5x7 card, of course, is by ending almost all deductions and credits, but there is nothing forcing you to embrace a regressive flat tax while you are doing this. You could have a progressive graduated tax rate with a table and achieve exactly the same goal.

And the flat taxers know all this. They're not stupid, but rather dishonest. They are depending on the rest of us to be stupid and fall for their little ploy. But we're not. Or ar we?

Taxing thoughts, part 2

On our Maryland taxes the marginal tax rate for our final 50 cents of income was more than 400%. That's because we were 49 cents above one of the $50 income divisions on the tax table and the difference between brackets was $2 in taxes.

I wouldn't mind so much except that to figure out the actual percentages is a simple math problem that anyone should be able to do. It galls me that I have to shell out $2 extra because people refused to pay attention in my college algebra classes a few years ago.

Taxing thoughts

I did my taxes today. I don't really mind doing them so much because it is a chance to remind myself just how above average I apparently am in terms of intelligence and analytical skills, in that while most people I know seem to find it a time-consuming and tedious task I find it relatively easy to figure out which numbers go in which box and add them all up.

Our household is comfortably above average in terms of both average US household income and per-capita income. Yet our total income tax this year was 6.1%. That's right, 6.1. If you add in the social security and medicare it still comes out to 13.5%. My marginal tax rate is 15%. And yet people claim that the middle class is overtaxed. I am the middle class and I'm paying 13.5% of my income in taxes with a 15% marginal tax rate and I have some right to complain? I don't think so. If I need to pay a bit more to balance the budget to that my kid doesn't have to pick up the tab, then I'm all for it.