The liberal tantrum, and an idea for short-circuiting it
Via Insty, Arnold Kling:
Everyone agrees that the Republicans are just throwing sand in the gears of good government and not offering any ideas. What that means is that they are not offering ideas to enlarge government. Congressman Paul Ryan’s ideas do not count, because those would cut back on government, particularly Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
My point here is not to champion Republicans. It is not to champion democracy. My point is that the ones throwing the temper tantrum right now are the Progressives. They think that the 2008 election gave them the right to operate like China’s autocracy, and they are lashing out hysterically at those they perceive as preventing them from doing so. On the one hand, the villains are a small minority in the Senate. Or maybe the villains are the incoherent majority of the people.
The important point is that Progressives are never wrong. Top-down reform is the only way to fix the health care system. Anthropogenic global warming is scientifically proven, and its solution requires strenuous exercise of political control over individual behavior. Deficit spending is necessary and sufficient to create jobs. Technocrats can make banks too regulated to fail. Markets without technocratic control are like adolescents without adult supervision. Individual happiness can be improved by political authorities using scientific knowledge. Concentrated political power is the wave of the future, and it is good.
I am not a populist. I fear the mob. But how can I fear the Progressives any less?
Kinda OT, perhaps, but speaking of Paul Ryan, and the party that has “no ideas” on how to fix the government that Obama says out one side of his mouth is dysfunctional and broken, but out the other says is the answer to all our problems:
To make the economy — on which all else hinges — hum, Ryan proposes tax reform. Masochists would be permitted to continue paying income taxes under the current system. Others could use a radically simplified code, filing a form that fits on a postcard. It would have just two rates: 10 percent on incomes up to $100,000 for joint filers and $50,000 for single filers; 25 percent on higher incomes. There would be no deductions, credits or exclusions, other than the health-care tax credit (see below).

Today’s tax system was shaped by sadists who were trying to be nice: Every wrinkle in the code was put there to benefit this or that interest. Since the 1986 tax simplification, the code has been recomplicated more than 14,000 times — more than once a day.At the 2004 Republican convention, thunderous applause greeted George W. Bush’s statement that the code is “a complicated mess” and a “drag on our economy” and his promise to “reform and simplify” it. But his next paragraphs proposed more complications to incentivize this and that behavior for the greater good.
Ryan would eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends and death. The corporate income tax, the world’s second-highest, would be replaced by an 8.5 percent business consumption tax. Because this would be about half the average tax burden that other nations place on corporations, U.S. companies would instantly become more competitive — and more able and eager to hire.
Ace says the whole thing is good, and he’s right. Ryan’s plan would seem to address everything we need to address, and does so in all the right ways (lots more info on the plan here and here).
Ryan is onto something here. The only problem I can see with it — which, were we still anywhere near the kind of country the Founders envisioned, would be a feature, not a bug — is that it doesn’t increase the size and power of the federal government, and empowers individuals by increasing their range of choices. That’ll make it anathema to Democrat Socialists, no matter how well it might actually work. If more people start taking notice, look for them to begin demagoguing the living shit out of it, toot sweet.








