The title links to the article that I am talking about so you can read it yourself.
I don't want to make my blog about attacking people, but sometimes smart people say dumb things and my blog can serve to straighten the issues out.
To be fair, the article I am referring to is a political editorial not a well formed research paper. But more people will read this editorial than will ever read a scientific dissertation on neurobiology.
A few quick bullets distilled from the paper...
EDIT: For clarity, what I mean to say is that these are points that Harris wants the reader to draw from what he says. What he said is meant to be taken as fact, so the reader thinks they are drawing conclusions logically from facts. What my blog post is meant to show you is that this is anything but the case. The real issues of taxation, education and national energy policy are not in question and I do not mean anything I say here to be a conclusive discussion of those issues. This is meant only to dismiss the smoke and mirrors so people are left to have an honest conversation about the issues.
- All our problems are the fault of conservatives, and when it's not the same thing, religion.
- He wants to give more money to help, but in typical leftist fashion he wants everyone else forced to do it too.
- More money will fix anything, including an already over endowed education system.
EDIT: By over endowed, I am revealing my personal perspective that as the third highest funded education system in the world, our children are not suffering from not enough funding. The bottleneck is not money but policy.
Now for some meat and potatoes. Quotes from the article will be indented and in italics. Ellipsis are used to truncate long diatribes without changing the meaning of the quoted texts.
The richest Americans have gotten off scott-free during the recession.
Now we are told that we will soon receive a large tax cut for all our troubles.
It makes Sam Harris feel guilty and embarrassed.
The tax cuts are not new. They are actually extensions to existing tax cuts. Sam is not getting anything that he wasn't already getting.
Most Americans believe that a person should enjoy the full fruits of his or her labors, however abundant.
Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute has gathered extensive polling data on this subject that goes back decades. What she found is that most Americans agree ... that upper-income households pay too little in taxes. However, what most Americans think is fair is about 25%, already lower than what the wealthiest actually pay.
...throughout the 1950's...the marginal tax rate for the wealthy was over 90 percent. In fact, prior to the 1980's it never dipped below 70 percent. Since 1982, however, it has come down by half. In the meantime, the average net worth of the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled (to $18.5 million), while that of the poorest 40 percent has fallen by 63 percent (to $2,200).
The gap in the distribution of wealth means nothing except to our sense of fairness. All across the board, Americans are richer now than they were in the 1950's. According to the National Poverty Center, in the 1950's 22.4% of Americans lived in poverty. Today, it is about 12.65% which is comparable to countries like France with 14%.
Not only do we have fewer people living in poverty, but the definition of poverty is far less severe. Poverty stricken Americans can be expected to have a roof over their heads, heat in the winter and AC in the summer as well as telephone service, Internet access, color television and access to health care. As a matter of fact, research by Robert Rector and Kirk Johnson found that almost 46% of Americans classified as poor owned their own homes.
Switching from percentages to hard numbers can be confusing. Historically, there have always been more children in poverty than adults. Although I cannot find appropriate data for the 1950's, it can be assumed that as more Americans were living in poverty, that also meant more children living in poverty.
Hitting the article point by point is tiresome and giving me a headache. Let me summarize some of it and then try to wrap it up with some more point by point.
Sam Harris next harangues Republicans after denouncing some political failures like the doubling of our national debt and the $40 million subsidy of a Noah's Ark theme park attraction...both directly the results of Democrats.
EDIT: I do not mean to imply anything at all about Democrats and Republicans. As was pointed out, they all have their failings. I am instead pointing out the dishonesty of trying to associate Republicans with Democrat policy failures. It would have been more honest and effective to discuss the issues on their own merits.
There is mention of the religious fetish "self-reliance" which he rails against as he does all things religious. The opposite of self reliance, which he doesn't seem to have a problem with is dependence. What conservatives largely have a problem with is rewarding dependence. Mr. Harris represents the conservative promotion of self reliance is as an abhorrence of assisting the disabled. Really? And you call that intellectual honesty Mr. Harris? Or maybe you can point to a C SPAN recording of Republicans railing against those with Down syndrome?
EDIT: I mention Down Syndrome because Harris does. When I mention what conservatives have a problem with, I speak as a conservative. Do not be confused by this issue. Promoting self reliance does not mean you cannot help other people. Conservatives, Christians and other people who carry such negative labels all believe (generally speaking) in charity...the voluntary giving.
If Washington State's I-1098 was still up for a vote, I would say it was worth mentioning. I have mixed feelings myself. The state's tax system unfairly burdens the poor. It could use some tweaks. The suggested proposition was unfair though. It would create in income tax (Washington does not have one) but only for 2% of the citizens. Mr. Harris suggests that the only reason someone would want to defeat this unfair legislation was because they sought an environment teeming with poor and uneducated citizens. He also misrepresented how the increased revenue would be spent saying that all revenue would go to the education system. Part of the income tax would be used to offset the lost revenue from decreased property taxes and small business taxes, then 70% of what is left would be used in the education system.
He then slides into irrational intellectual chaos. He admits that government is wasteful. He admits that the education system is already one of the best financed in the world. He admits that the wealthy are already voluntarily giving extraordinary amounts of money to solutions that can indeed be financed constructively.
He implies that if the money is not redistributed to be spent by others, it simply sits there. It's no wonder that Mr. Harris has only 1/1000th the wealth of Buffet. Mr. Buffet doesn't just let his wealth sit idle. If he did, he would have no taxes to pay.
EDIT: Regardless of whatever else Harris said about Buffet, he also said they he should do more. What you should think about here is that Harris said he would not do anything on his own because it would be ineffective. Buffet has taken the opposite stance and run fund raisers and voluntarily promised 99% of his considerable wealth...money that is itself not taxable. He and his whole family volunteer not only their considerable wealth but their far more precious time to those less fortunate.
He then suggests two top priorities for spending other people's money disproportionately.
The first is education. I doubt that anyone would argue that education is a top priority. At least everyone with children want a top notch education for children. Mr. Harris' solution to a well funded but failing education system? Throw lots more money at it. Even the article that he links to says that more money does not help. Smaller classrooms don't help. Wealthier or more educated parents don't help. Better teachers help.
EDIT: My own position is not so easily summed up. However, I do believe that money is not the bottleneck with education. I personally believe, as do most people that I know who think more money will not help, is that teacher protection is our most serious bottleneck. Many of our teachers perform horribly with no fear that their performance will lead to loss of their job. Maybe that should change.
His second priority is alternative energy. Here, the only useful expenditure of money would be to fund special interest lobby groups. We already have great green technologies like liquid fluoride thorium reactors. Subsidies for solar and wind generators will never allow us to dispose of fossil fuels. Because solar and wind are not always providing power, they require backup plants (yes, coal or other fossil fuels) to be idling at all times. To 'go green' you must have a power source that can always generate reliable power. So why are we not liberating our energy dependence from fossil fuels? Because of legislation against nuclear power. No matter how much money you spend, you cannot resolve this issue without a change in legislation.
EDIT: I suggest that money would be better spent on lobbying instead of educating the general public for two reasons. One, it costs less to get the same results. Two, public servants have demonstrated that they do not consider the opinion of their constituents of any value.
Some wealthy people, like Buffet and Gates, are wealthy because they invest their money wisely. To suggest that the masses will do better with their money is ridiculous. But nothing has changed since the first western democracy. The masses were promised cheap food and material comforts while politicians vied over who gets to control all the wealth.
EDIT: I was speaking of Athens when I spoke of the earliest western democracy. However, that may be a distraction. The point is that Buffet is giving billions charitably, Gates gives billions, the new wealthiest man in the world, Helu gives billions because they were smart with their money. When he was 26, Helu had $400,000 to his name. If he had given it all to charity (or had it all taxed away), we would not be getting the billions in charity that we are today. Whether we can all agree or not that this system is the best, we can at least see that it works. We let the individual build his own wealth and share it as he sees fit.
