Tag: Politics

Taxation: The First 10,000 Years — Part 3

Although it’s relatively new and still not universally accepted, you don’t need a PhD in political science to understand the concept of taxation without representation.  It’s quite simple, really.  All you have to do is remember taxpayers are people.  Yes, corporations pay taxes, but that’s a whole different bunny rabbit.  Believe me; the corporate world is well represented in government circles.  I’m talking about the fundamental building blocks of democracy – ordinary people.  To understand taxation without representation, you find an average person, and as Deep Throat said to Woodward and Bernstein, “Follow the money.”  Here’s how it works.

Jane is an ordinary person.  She works for an ordinary company and earns pretty good money.  She has a car, lives in a tidy one bedroom apartment and has a boyfriend named Joe.  She takes the bus to work because gas and parking are expensive, and she’s trying her best to be green.  Jane is not particularly political or socially active, but she votes, knows the issues, did the Find A Cure Fun Run and volunteers Thursday night at her mother’s After School Drop-in Centre.  You could pass Jane on the street forty times and never know she was there.  Jane pays her taxes.  Actually, aside from income tax once a year and big item sales tax, Jane isn’t even aware she’s paying taxes; she just does it.  It’s part of Jane’s ordinary life.

The reason Jane gives the government her money is to provide for the common good.  However, should Jane desire a few things from her government — like more buses in the rain or perhaps a streetlight or two, so she doesn’t break her neck walking in the dark — chances are good she won’t get them.  Why?  Nobody’s on her side.  If she was an endangered goat, she’d have at least twelve different environmental lobby groups working for her.  If she was a rubbish disposal technician (or whatever garbage men are calling themselves these days) she’d have a powerful Public Service Union to rely on.  If she were a cultural event, she could get public funding, etc. etc.  Unfortunately, since Jane is none of the above, she’s on her own.  Jane has been abandoned by the people who are supposed to serve her.

The bottom line is Jane can’t hurt her government and powerful activist group can.  Social and political activists are no longer a bunch of like-minded citizens who have temporarily banded together to get their message out.  They are now permanent.  They have bricks and mortar office buildings, high octane lawyers and tons of money to throw around.  They don`t necessarily buy politicians; they don`t have to.  They can produce opinion polls, social and scientific research papers, press releases and enough media time to browbeat the politicos into line.  Meanwhile, all Jane has at her disposal is a nasty email or telephone call.  Furthermore, many activist groups are nonprofit and not only pay little or no actual tax but are also in line to receive government funding (which, by the way, is Jane’s money.)

It’s the same with Public Service Unions.  Over the years, they have been able to negotiate some pretty healthy contracts with the various levels of government.  In general, Public Service workers earn higher wages, receive more benefits and have better pension plans than the average private sector worker, and the gap is increasing.  This is because Public Service Workers control services essential to a modern society.  Even a minor disruption in garbage collection, transit service, education or health inspection can have disastrous results.  Politicians know this, so it’s better to throw money at union problems than risk angering its membership.  Union displeasure wields power far beyond its sheer numbers.  Once again, this special interest group has a lot more influence on government than Jane does, even though Jane is paying the bill.  It’s more than ironic that in many cases, Jane’s public service employees are earning more money than she is and certainly have a better pension plan.

Our democracy faces a unique situation.  Ordinary people are becoming disconnected from the government that is supposed to serve them because their voices are a mere whisper compared to the noise that 24/7 special interest groups can generate.  Jane’s problem is that streetlights aren’t sexy.  They don’t produce headlines; social questions and moral dilemmas do.  As activists push politicians further and further away from the nuts and bolts of government, ordinary people find their needs going begging.  Yet they are increasingly being asked to foot the bill.

In a nutshell, representation without taxation is no different from its colonial counterpoint, taxation without representation.  It just doesn’t have a revolution – yet.

 

Super Tuesday: A Revelation

Remember when you were a kid and your mother put something on your plate you didn’t recognize and said, “Eat it.  It’s good?”  And remember that sudden, life-changing understanding you had when you took the first bite and realized that the world was a hard and cruel place where a mother would betray her own child?  Revelations come to us all: every now and then, our eyes open just a little wider and a liitle more light comes in.  The irony is, most of the time when this happens, the world actually gets just a little darker.

I love politics.  It’s the thing that separates us from the beasts.  Throughout history, it has protected us from the bullies who roam this earth.  It allows people like me to say what I like without looking over my shoulder for the boys with the electrodes.  It delivers us from anarchy (which, by the way, has never been our natural state.)  It prevents chaos in a world where next-door neighbours don’t necessarily like each other.  It organizes us to achieve and accomplish things we could never do individually, and it keeps us from butchering each other with any more alacrity than we already possess.  Without politics, our world would look very much like the Dark Ages – scary, brutish and nasty.

Politics is the only human activity that combines our noblest ideals with our scuzziest behaviour.  It’s the real Sport of Kings.  And the rules of the game are very simple: there are no rules.  There never have been.  Ever since the first Egyptian tough guy discovered that Pharaoh sounded a lot classier than “that mean bugger over on the Nile,” there has been only one guiding principle to political life – you’re useless unless you win.  It doesn’t matter how altruistic your ideals, how noble your cause or how brilliant your solutions, without power you’re just another philosopher without a kingdom.  This is why, across history, so many men (and a whole lot of women) have assembled and excused all manner of low-life “ends justify the means” schemes and sacrificed more than their honour on the altar of political power.  It’s the way of the world.  You don’t have to like it; but it is the nature of political power.

Unfortunately, this leads us to the current crew of Republicans who wish to become the most powerful man in the world.  Their brand of “all’s fair” in primary campaigning is stooping to a new low.  In fact, they actually reached rock bottom some time ago, and now they’re starting to dig.  For the first time in my political awareness (and understand, I remember Richard Nixon!) I’m holding my nose.  Never in the history of political conflict has so much dirt been thrown so far for so little gain.  Look, men!  If you’re going to sling mud, at least make sure it sticks.  Not only that, but I’m not even certain these guys watch the news.  It’s the economy, stupid!  Yet, every time I turn around, one of them wants to bomb Iran, build a mansion on the moon or eliminate representation without taxation — meanwhile, stopping time entirely and returning the social calendar back to when Eisenhower was running the show.  Is anybody serious, here?  Take a look at yourselves, you guys!  You’re yapping on, as if you can change the world, but everybody and his puppy knows you spent last week hiding out from Rush Limbaugh, for God’s sake!  Not one of you called him out, and every one of you should have.

As of close of business yesterday, Barack Obama still had the keys to the White House, and Super Tuesday or not, the Republican Party is no closer to calling dibs on the lease.  Somewhere around Ohio, I had the revelation that these three pretenders (Sorry, Ron!  You never had a hope!) just don’t have the cojones for the job.

Politics is about ideas, but you can idea ‘til you’re blue in the face: eventually you have to do something about it.  You have to generate some excitement.  You have to gather the tribes and give them something to hope for… something to vote for.  This primary season is turning into the bland leading the bland, and nobody seems capable of putting it away.  Somebody’s going to win the nomination, obviously, but unless that somebody steps up and demonstrates political power, it’s not going to mean much.  Barack Obama isn’t a very good president, but he’s a great politician.  From what I’ve seen so far, that’s something the Republicans candidates aren’t.  Right now, it doesn’t matter who wins: come November, Obama’s going to beat their brains out.  It will be the worst defeat since Lyndon Johnson kicked Goldwater’s ass back to Arizona in ’64.

Last night, looking at the Super Tuesday numbers from Ohio, I suddenly realized: today, the world is a harder, crueler place.

Mythology and the New Reality

It’s hysterically ironic that, while pop culture has elevated the End of the World Mayan Calendar to pseudo-scientific status, the real history of the decline of the Mayan civilization is largely ignored.  The thing that makes this doubly funny is that the collapse of Mayan society two millennia ago actually offers some insights into our current situation, whereas the more celebrated Calendar is simply fatalistic hocus pocus.  However, as with a frightening amount of analysis in our contemporary world, facts are largely irrelevant in the face of overwhelming mythology.

The Mayans were a hugely successful civilization that flourished for a couple of thousand years in the Yucatan peninsula, Guatemala and Belize.  These people lived in a well-structured, sophisticated society at the same time my ancestors in Northern Europe were still cracking each other over the head with stone axes.  (Not really, but you know what I mean.)  The scale of Mayan urban development is absolutely breathtaking – even today.   Unfortunately, somewhere around the time of the birth of Christ, things started to go to hell for the Mayans.  A number of theories explain why, but rather than debate them here, suffice it to say that the glory days of Mayan society were over by the time Augustus ruled Rome.

The Mayans faced a series of severe economic, environmental and social changes they simply didn’t understand.  Instead of adapting to these new realities, they insisted on clinging to their old way of life.  They demanded that their leaders call on the gods to maintain their world.  In Mayan society, that meant human sacrifice – more and more of it.  Eventually, however, the old ways were simply unsustainable in a new age, no matter how much blood was spilled.  Out of mindless frustration, the people stormed the pyramids of power and tore their society apart.

It’s a bit of a stretch to compare the later day Mayans to contemporary North Americans but like the Mayans, our society is going through some massive changes that most people do not understand.  Those same people seem intent on preserving the old ways, come hell or high water, and they’re relying on some serious mythology to do it.  We might not be Mayans, but we have a lot in common.

The big myth we’re faced with these days is income inequity.  This is the pointed stick that everybody with a grievance keeps waving.  The problem is … it’s a myth.  It has no factual base.  However, it’s being touted as not only the cause of all our problems but also the solution.  Prevailing wisdom says too much money has been gathered into too few hands.  The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting screwed.   Therefore, to preserve the old ways, we must redistribute the cash through the newly minted “Robin Hood” tax.  It sounds good, but Robin Hood is a fictional character.

The reality is very few people with a tendency to protest have studied economics.  They figure somehow that the money supply is just a big bag of gold coins somewhere, and a bunch of greedy billionaires got there first and took them all.  They also believe that all we have to do is make the billionaires give them back and everything will be fine.  Then there’ll be enough for everybody.

The problem is these ideas are crap.  There is absolute no connection between the fact that George Soros can buy New Hampshire and I’m coming up 45 bucks short on my credit card payment.  I could personally ask George for the $45.00 but I don’t think I’d get past his roomful of secretaries.  Besides, why should he give it to me in the first place?  The idea is absurd.  Yet, it seems to gain immeasurable credibility when it’s distributed across our entire society.  The whole “Robin Hood” tax business is just a bunch of people asking the government to throw their muscle behind all of us poorer folks, asking the George Soros of the world to pay our credit card bills for us.

In actual fact, it doesn’t matter how much money George Soros or any of the other billionaires have; it matters how much us poorer folks don’t have.  The Haves aren’t taking anything away from the Have-Nots (or even the Have-Lesses) but that is the myth that sustains us.  And that’s the real problem.  As long as we abide by our mythology, we can’t face the reality that our world is changing.

Back in the golden days when western economies ruled the world, our government’s largesse was endless.   There were innumerable programs, loans, projects, subsidies and payments.  There were high-paying jobs and whole careers based on government intervention.  Those days are gone.  They didn’t survive the new global economy, and unless we quit whining about it and adapt to this new reality — like the Mayans — neither will we.