Tag Archives: incentives

The “Free Lunch” of the State

Posted on by

By Jay Hansen

Conservative state governments seem hell-bent on cutting if not eliminating taxation altogether. Many have already imposed impossible legal requirements to ever raise taxes such as a two-thirds majority of Congress like in California and Oklahoma. Some want to abolish the income tax and replace it with a very regressive sales tax that hits the poor and middle class harder than the upper class. All of this is happening, mind you, at the same time as record-breaking state budget shortfalls and deficits, on which conservatives continually harp and preach about the evils thereof. Despite this, as I started with, it’s also the Republicans that continually push to cut taxes, which lowers budget revenues, and thus, creates more deficits.

Well I’m writing this article to share a little secret with you all that state lawmakers don’t want citizens knowing; there’s no such thing as a tax cut any more.

But perhaps I’ve already made many a claim you question or don’t understand about taxation. Allow me to start at the beginning. Conservatives and others of right-wing ideology oppose most modern purposes and facets of government. To varying degrees within the right-wing, conservatives want smaller government, sometimes to the point of recreating “the wild west,” a land of lawlessness where justice is determined by whoever had the most gun. The problem is a vast majority of civilized people do not like this ideology. We’re trying to build our society and the whole of civilization up, not tear it back down to the point it was centuries ago. I’m not accusing all conservatives of this ideology, of course, but this goal of the extremists within the Republican and Libertarian Parties is achieved through the same means more moderate conservatives (if there are any left) have applied for shrinking the government in the past, and still do today.

I’ve written about this before in my piece The Undermining of America. In the short-term, everyone loves tax cuts. It’s immediate gratification to satisfy our almost animalistic, and consumerist, nature; more money for me, less taken out of my paycheck, and less going into the hands of bureaucrats most will historically agree are either incompetent or corrupt (or both). The problem is, the more we cut taxes, the lower the revenue for the state. This ultimately leads to deficits and budget shortfalls if tax cuts are handed out freely, as the Republican Party always seems willing to do. With deficits comes outrage and perpetuation of the idea that the government is incompetent, thus fanning the anti-government flames. By exacerbating anti-government sentiment and creating a deficit, politicians of both parties are left with no choice but to cut spending in an attempt to quell public outrage and balance the budget, because the last thing they would want to do is raise taxes. It’s what caused the problem in the first place, and it would surely fix it in time, but it would only dramatically increase public outrage for taxes to be raised after the government proved to be so incapable of keeping a balanced budget, not to mention that the conservatives that pushed for the tax cuts would make damn sure through the media and talking points that raising taxes is demonized as thoroughly as possible. With such a situation created, the inevitability is that spending is cut from programs that primarily help the middle class and poor, as the wealthy have no need for aid from the government, and thus government shrinks. This is the back-door way through which conservatives are actually managing to shrink government, possibly all the way back to the point of a lawless frontier land, despite how deeply unpopular such a general idea is among citizens. Therefore, it is in fact in the best interest of the Republican Party, or any party that wants to reduce or eliminate the government, to cut or even abolish as many taxes as possible in a purposeful attempt to ruin the budget and make people more distrustful of government. To put it simply, the Republican’s primary message is that government doesn’t work. Put them in charge, and they’ll prove it (I also addressed this in an older piece, How Corruption Happens through Incentives and Disincentives).

As for the form of taxation, thus far the income tax has been the most progressive form of taxation we’ve developed. I don’t mean politically progressive, but rather in terms of how it works. If you can afford to pay more into the system of which we are all a part, you pay higher income tax rates. If you can only afford a little due to a low income, you are expected to contribute less. If you make very, very little income for yourself, you are not expected to pay the income tax at all because you need 100% of your income just to live in poverty. This is why we have different tax brackets for different levels of income. Many conservatives make the claim that this system is flawed because it allows those that aren’t productive in society (the unemployed) to avoid paying taxes. In reality, they still pay taxes, just not the income tax. They still pay sales tax, property tax if they own land, and even the payroll tax if they’re making any form of legitimate income, just to name a few other taxes they still pay. On top of that, conservatives claim that there are too many people not paying into the system for it to work, or at least for it to be fair to those that do. The problem is that a majority of the people not paying the income tax aren’t paying it for a reason, primarily because they’re retired. The income tax allows us to no longer place as harsh of a tax burden on the elderly who have passed their working years. It allows us to go without taxing those that are struggling to find a job. It protects many of those seeking an education, the disabled, the underemployed, and those that have otherwise fallen on difficult times from having to contribute to the general upkeep of the state. There are also protections for families, veterans, and countless others through deductions and exemptions in the tax code that would not be possible in a sales tax-based system. The very core ideology of the income tax is that we are all in this society together; those that can give more should give more, while those that can give only little or none at all are expected to give as much, all the while everyone, from the very poor to the very rich, are still entitled to keep a huge portion of their income. We take care of each other, look out for each other, build each other up and make others stronger through this system of compassion and care for our fellow citizens. Conservatives will still argue that there are too many “leeches” on the system, often insinuating if not outright saying that all those not paying the income tax are good-for-nothing welfare queens, when I’ve easily demonstrated that is not the truth at all. Still, I’m not one to ignore the fact that there are those at the bottom of society that abuse the system… just as there are great scores of those who abuse it at the top. If anything, the damage abusers from the top of the socio-economic scale do unto our social system is far greater than anything the poor could ever do. But even putting that aside, just because someone abuses a right does not mean we get rid of the right. People abuse their right to free speech by saying hateful, damaging, or downright stupid things every day; do we get rid of the right to free speech because of it? Of course not; the damage ending such a facet of our society would do vastly outweighs any possible benefit of keeping it. The same is true for the income tax. It has served us well for nearly a century (100 years as of next February), and under its framework the greatest economic boom of the nation’s history, if not the world, was created and heralded in the great American middle class for which people all around the world admire our nation and culture. It was in no small part thanks to the income tax that this became a possibility.

Under a sales tax system, no such sense of fairness exists. Regardless of what you can afford, you are expected to contribute equally as everyone else. If you have no money to spare, be it because you’re unemployed, elderly and retired, a middle class, blue-collar worker, or anything in between, you’re still expected to pay as much in taxes and contribute as much to our society as a billionaire. How is that fair? How is that compassionate? Perhaps most of all though, just how high would a sales tax have to be if it is the exclusive source for revenue for the state?

But that’s the catch. That’s the key to my initial statement. That’s the wool that’s being pulled over our eyes by lawmakers; it’s not the exclusive source for revenue. Like I said, many states, Oklahoma included, have made it politically impossible to ever raise taxes. At the same time, we have a horrible deficit in Oklahoma. Lawmakers are doing whatever they can to prevent the budget from getting worse, but spending cuts can only go so far (especially when they’re matched or outweighed by tax cuts). The only other alternative is to raise revenue without raising taxes. This is done by raising fines and fees.

The costs of government fines and fees have been skyrocketing across the country because state governments are desperate for revenue, especially those that have fallen into the Republican trap of effectively outlawing tax increases. If you thought the sales tax was regressive and hard on the middle and lower class, you’d better hold on to your seat. The cost of renewing driver’s licenses, admittance into state parks, vehicle registration, parking or speeding violations, fireworks permits, traveling circuses, and many, many more have all gone up in desperate grabs for revenue by state governments. I recently heard a story (granted, from California, but nonetheless) about how a single speeding ticket was over $400. Now, do you have $400 just lying around to spare? Does the average member of the middle class or lower class just have a spare $400? Of course not. Do the wealthy? Absolutely. Hell, many wealthy people would opt to hire a pricey, high-quality lawyer and challenge almost any financial punishment dealt to them, disincentivizing law enforcement from even pursuing the wealthy when they violate the law. Let’s also not forget the fact that the wealthy could easily make bail while it’s out of the question for the poor.

Coupled with a sales tax system, these fees and fines are the most regressive form of taxation we’ve ever seen implemented in this nation. It’s the fees and fines that are the true culprit gutting the middle and lower class, because they are silent killers. How often is taxation a topic in the news and political talk shows? Nearly every damn day. Not a tax-related issue can come up in government that won’t be discussed heavily in the media, but what about fees? When was the last time you heard the news talking about the cost of getting your driver’s licensed renewed? Maybe if the news day is really, really slow, and it happens to fall around the same time as the increase, it can slip into a five-second long blurb in a news story. For the most part though, you almost never hear or learn about the increases in fees and fines; they just happen as we all go on about our everyday lives, completely unaware of the scheme being pulled on us.

To further elaborate upon this “scheme,” as if I haven’t enough already, and since we’re talking about fees, consider the price of filing for public office. Did you know that to file as a candidate, let alone run for office, for the US House of Representatives in Oklahoma it costs $750? Just to file – $750. On top of that, I once heard a story about someone filing for office who was warned to not do it unless he had at least $10,000 for campaigning, otherwise it “wasn’t going to happen.” If the middle class, let alone the poor, didn’t have the spare $400 to pay for a speeding ticket, how on Earth are they supposed to be able to afford $750, much less $10,000?

Now consider who are the ones making the laws about taxation and fees, and you get this:

Well… there’s your problem. Lawmakers only represent their wealthy donors and wealthy selves. Fair representation for all is a long lost concept in America, and it’s no clearer than when it comes to representation of the poor and middle class. This is why lawmakers don’t bat an eyelash at the idea of cutting federal aid to the poor, spending programs that benefit the middle class, worker’s rights, the cost of everyday fees and fines, fairness in tax burdens, or just economic justice in general.

I’m sure you’re still all itching with anticipation of my initial statement though; there is no such thing as a tax cut any more. How can I say such a thing? Under good economic times, tax cuts can work because when there’s a surplus in a state’s budget there might not be as large of a need for people to be contributing as much. Cutting taxes during this time won’t affect the budget too badly so long as the cuts are modest and revenues are predicted not to go into the red within the time frame of the cuts. Currently though, many state governments are in horrible debt. Tax cuts reduce the amount of revenue the state is getting. Therefore, that money must be made up elsewhere in the budget. As I’ve just thoroughly elaborated upon, this can’t be done through increasing taxes for both legal and political reasons, so many states are forced to do so by increasing fees and fines or other indirect means. The only other option is to cut spending, for better or for worse, and it almost always starts with cuts to education and programs that benefit the poor.

Given that, when a government “cuts” taxes, they’re really just shifting the cost elsewhere to the budget. Revenues lower from tax A, so they go up through fine B. The most direct means through which this is accomplished is by tricky, indirect ways of raising revenues that don’t involve raising taxes. Cutting spending will increase the cost of living for someone, somewhere, and likely a great number of people when these cuts hit public education, Medicaid, financial help for homeowners, or a great number of sectors. If your revenue goes down while already in debt, something will have to make up for it, because people will not respond kindly to increasing the debt further when it’s already gotten so bad. This is particularly true for Republicans who pride themselves on being budget hawks. Someone has to pay for it somewhere down the line.

So, just like there’s no free lunch, there’s no such thing as tax cuts anymore. At some point, somewhere, someone has to pay, be it in money or physical labor, to make that lunch, just like someone, somewhere pays for the cost of cutting taxes that almost always disproportionately benefit the rich over the poor. Until we get serious about fixing our budget, which will require raising taxes, and recover from this debt debacle brought on by years of Republican control and right-wing, supply-side economics, this will remain the case for both state and federal governments facing such deficits.

The core of the problem, as I mentioned above, is that our government does not represent us, and those within the political system; the lawmakers, pundits, and politicians, are incentivized to actually make the budget worse and weaken a once strong government. The only way we accomplish that is by removing money from politics. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and majorities of just about any category of American all agree that this needs to happen; we just have to summon the will to do it.

www.wolf-pac.com

Dissecting A Bug’s Life

Posted on by

By Jay Hansen

I’ve seen and heard many stories online recently about the political message in The Hunger Games. I’ve never read the books, nor seen the movie, so I will wait to pass significant judgment on them. One story about the movie, however, caught my eye. The author claimed that the movie fed into both liberal and conservative ideology. What little I do know of the story leaves me very puzzled about how it could be a conservative movie, given that the general plot is that the wealthy have gained absolute control of the government and force the poor to fight each other to the death for their own entertainment, and to give the poor just the tiniest sliver of hope of being able to be wealthy too, because the winner gets to live among the rich. Supposedly, conservatives claim that the movie is some sort of testament to “run away, big government,” completely ignoring any aspects of class the movie has, which seems to be the primary focus. Again, I’m yet to read them or see the movie, so I still have an open mind about it. For now, let me just say that this conservative reading of the movie, at absolute best, is very shallow.

All this thinking about political messaging in movies, however, reminded me of one of my favorite movies of all time; Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. This movie acted somewhat of a speculated sequel to the Aesop Fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, which is one of the most diverse of all Aesop’s in terms of how many times it has been re-written by different cultures and re-interpreted with different meanings. The nearest I can tell is that the following is the original story as found on AesopFables.com:

In a field one summer’s day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart’s content.  An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.

 

“Why not come and chat with me,” said the Grasshopper,

“instead of toiling and moiling in that way?”

 

“I am helping to lay up food for the winter,” said the Ant,

“and recommend you to do the same.”

 

“Why bother about winter?” said the Grasshopper; we have got plenty of food at present.”  But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.  When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger, while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer.  Then the Grasshopper knew:

 

It is best to prepare for the days of necessity.

In modern politics this story is often used by conservatives to criticize social safety nets and welfare programs because they believe such programs promote laze and irresponsibility, like the grasshopper, and turn the United States into the frequently demonized “nanny state.” Obviously though, simply having welfare programs does not equate a nanny state. Social Security and Medicare, the largest of such programs, were created as safety nets primarily for our senior citizens, disabled, and those that have fallen on hard times to prevent them from falling into poverty. When Social Security was created, half of all seniors lived in poverty. Today, the poverty rate among seniors is only about 10%, and not a single one of them ever has to worry about not having health insurance because of these inarguably successful programs. This is the primary flaw with the conservative arguments to drastically reform, cut, or privatize the program; just because a minority people using welfare are abusing their right to it doesn’t mean we should scrap the whole system. People abuse their right to freedom of speech every day with violent, hateful, misleading rhetoric in the media; should we get rid of the freedom of speech? Absolutely not, because that right of ours is fundamental to the success and vitality of our nation. If we have a system or a right that is being exploited or showing flaws, you don’t eliminate or severely eviscerate the program; you make very minor amenities to compensate with changing times. Social Security and Medicare are inarguably among if not are the most successful programs and undertakings of the United States. To completely overhaul the systems by privatizing or voucherizing them is a patently bad idea.

With that addressed, it’s worth noting that The Ant and the Grasshopper has had many different versions, interpretations, and morals over the centuries. Some of these variations are minor, such as instead of focusing on the vice of the grasshopper the moral is more about the virtues of the ant. Others take the opposite lesson from the story, wherein the ant is the workaholic villain and the grasshopper the hero (you know, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy). Others still completely flip the rolls around, yet maintain the same moral of personal irresponsibility, depicting the ant as a farmer unsatisfied with his own work, constantly toiling and grumbling about it. For this he is cursed and turned into an ant, where he is forced to steal the food from other farmers (using the negative imagery of an ant infestation on a farm) and survive off their hard work for the rest of his life.

I first heard this fable was when I was a little kid watching a PBS children’s show. It was essentially the same as the original, with the grasshopper loafing about each season of the year while the ant toiled, but there was one primary difference at the end; the ant took the poor, impoverished grasshopper into his home and helped him survive the harsh winter out of nothing more than the kindness in his heart. The writers made sure to include two morals in this version of the story; always be responsible and plan ahead, as well as always show kindness to the downtrodden. This way the two primary, historical lessons of the story were included, and all audiences could be pleased.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one that saw this version of the story though, because the guys at Pixar essentially made A Bug’s Life a sequel to this particular version (or at least they were inspired by it). The movie tells the story of a colony of ants on Ant Island. Every year the ants have to gather food for both themselves and a merciless gang of grasshoppers who don’t do any physical work themselves. The grasshoppers live largely a life of luxury, and are led by the very intelligent “Hopper,” who has mastered this system of oppressing the ants and manipulating them into doing all the labor of their miniature society. By the end of the movie, the ants realize that they are more numerous, intelligent, and powerful than the grasshoppers and they revolt, throwing the lazy, do-nothing grasshoppers out of town.

From that very brief summary, one could make the argument for either side of the political spectrum. Conservatives may claim that the grasshoppers represent either the irresponsible “welfare queens,” as they call them, just the same as the grasshopper of the original fable did. They could also make the argument that the grasshoppers represent “career politicians,” as they also call them, in a “big government run amuck” scenario that do nothing but collect big paychecks brought to them by the taxpayer and oppress the average hard-working American into doing everything. Both of these interpretations, however, are highly flawed, so let’s take a look as to why.

First let’s look at the classic moral often used as an argument against welfare. I’ve already presented one argument as to why eliminating or drastically reforming such social programs is a terrible idea, which would in turn make for a terrible moral to the story, but within the context of the movie there’s an important element missing that causes the stereotype of the “welfare leech” to simply not work. Hopper and his gang got their way through intimidation and manipulation. Apparently, initially the grasshoppers promised to protect Ant Island from bigger, nastier bugs that would try to take advantage of them, when in reality that’s exactly what the grasshoppers wanted to do. As villainous as it may be, it is a rather ingenious plan. So already, we’ve established the grasshoppers as intelligent (well, at least intelligently led), and more importantly powerful and threatening. This does not match the conservative idea of a welfare queen at all. The grasshoppers have direct, unquestioned control over the ants and even induce fear in them. Welfare queens are treated horribly, and we are raised in our society to think lowly of them. From there is where many uneducated conservatives make the false assumption that anyone on welfare, then, must be a “welfare queen,” or leech on the system. The fact that the grasshoppers have established such a perfect system of control and fear makes it impossible for them, in this particular story, to represent the irresponsible and lazy. If you honestly think that the extremely poor in this country have that kind of power over our political system, you clearly have no idea how the government, or even human nature, works.

At the same time though, this exact evidence that disproves the first version of a conservative reading seems to feed directly into the second; the grasshoppers represent big, government fat cats that don’t do any work. This is where I drew my initial connection to The Hunger Games. Conservative critics have said that the movie is about the dangers of a big, corrupt government, with the words “big” and “corrupt” often being synonymous in most of conservative ideology. As I said at the beginning, this reading of the movie is, at best, shallow, because yes, there is a corrupt system controlling society (the government in The Hunger Games and the grasshoppers in A Bug’s Life), but the question such conservative interpretations fail to ask is how and why the system of control became corrupted.

In The Hunger Games, the wealthy capture the government entirely, to the point where it represents and works for them exclusively. For their insolence, the poor are punished by being forced into battles to the death with each other for the amusement of the upper class and, more importantly, as a means of keeping them in line and not revolting against the aristocracy again, because whoever wins the battle to the death is allowed to join the upper class. This, in essence, is the American Dream; the promise of making it rich. Conservatives constantly use propaganda, such as referring to the wealthy as “job creators,” to disincentives the poor from taking political or electoral action against the wealthy that oppress them, because there’s a chance (a tiny, tiny chance) that they too could be millionaires one day, and wouldn’t want to do anything to in any way disturb the comfortable lifestyle that someday will be theirs (in their own minds). In doing so, the poor are often pitted against one another; unionized worker vs. non-union, public employee vs. private employee, immigrant worker vs. native born, and so on. That is why The Hunger Games is so symbolically liberal; the poor are pitted in battle against one another in hopes of being rich as orchestrated by the wealthy.

To find the same conservative message in A Bug’s Life, we have to ask the same questions. How did the “government,” or system of control, become corrupt? Why is it corrupt? Instead of using hope to soothe the working classes into submission, the grasshoppers used fear and convinced the ants that they weren’t strong enough to stop the grasshoppers, and that the ants needed the grasshoppers for protection because of this same weakness. The ants depended upon the generosity of the grasshoppers, just like Republicans constantly defend the “job creators” and the wealthy in our society today because they claim we need them. That’s why we must do all the work and pay all the taxes, while the “job creators” have their taxes cut so low some corporations are paying a zero percent (or lower) tax rate. That’s why we have to continue to cut taxes for the wealthy that are already paying record low taxes and simultaneously cut spending to programs that benefit the working class, raising their cost of living, taking the food off their tables. God forbid we actually tax the rich, or at least, Republicans forbid.

In the end, it’s hard to even make this argument without making the case against government as a whole, which sadly many ultra-right wingers are doing by saying there should be no or almost no taxes or regulation whatsoever. They believe the very concepts of government to be fundamentally wrong, which is simply untrue. We need taxes for a government to run. We need regulations to protect citizens. We need law and order to prevent people from devouring each other like wild animals. By saying that the grasshoppers and ants represent the government and the people respectively, the conservative view of the movie is that the people (the ants) should overthrow the entire government immediately.

The only alternative to this reading is to say that the current government is broken, and that we need a political revolution in this nation to make sure the government works for the people, and not the 1%. This moral, though, isn’t just conservative, but progressive as well. Americans are much smarter than we often give them credit, because both liberals and conservatives can at least agree to that; the current system does not work.

This is why I believe A Bug’s Life is a much more progressive movie than it could be conservative. The grasshoppers are symbolic of the wealthy that control our government and how things work by way of political bribery. Politicians do what the wealthy want because whoever does so the best gets the most money during their election campaigns. Whoever has the most money almost always wins because of influence they have in the media from said money. Therefore, we have a system where our representatives are incentivized to not represent us, but only the wealthy. This is how the government becomes of the wealthy, by the wealthy, and for the wealthy, as opposed to the people. In A Bug’s Life, the ants are disincentivized from overthrowing the current power structure because they’re tricked into thinking they are weak and need them. Americans are tricked every day of their lives into supporting policies that do nothing but give more and more to the wealthy while cutting into the livelihoods and wallets of the working class, and how? Because we have to protect the “job creators,” and that it’s “class warfare” to expect the rich to pay their fair share in taxes, and class warfare is just petty and shameful.

In this clip from the movie, Hopper addresses his fellow grasshoppers, who are considering leaving their rigged system on Ant Island behind because many of the… less intelligent grasshoppers have convinced themselves they don’t need the ants any more, similar to how the wealthy will sometimes arrogantly forget that they need the poor in order to survive. This is one of the most telling, prominent, meaningful scenes in the movie, and ever since I first saw it when I was eleven years old I’ve never forgotten it.

The same questions that led me to this conclusion about the movies The Hunger Games and A Bug’s Life should be asked by every American about our own government. Yes, it’s broken. Yes, it’s corrupt. Could we stop just saying that and figure out how to fix it? Despite what conservatives seem to believe, government is not a lost cause. It was not a thousand-year-plus social experiment that we need to throw out the window. Now is the time for us to ask how our government got corrupted, why it got corrupted, and most importantly, what can we do to fix it and prevent it from ever happening again? If you look at these movies, as well as many other stories out there, you’ll start to get the same idea for our current reality. We Americans are chastised every day by our politicians and media as trying to “divide people,” or “inciting class warfare,” and are often dismissed whenever we so much as ask the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes, just as Flick and the ants were if they so much as spoke up against the grasshoppers. If you haven’t seen the movie and don’t know how it ends, I’d highly recommend it. If you have seen it and know what happens, learn from it, and keep that moral in mind the next time you go to vote. Are you voting for a grasshopper, or an ant?

How Corruption Happens through Incentives and Disincentives

Posted on by

By Jay Hansen
(Originally published September 12th, 2011)

(Photo: Carolyn Tiry / Flickr)

I recently read an article called “Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Who Left the Cult,” by Mike Lofgren of Truthout, a former GOP staff member in Washington D.C. It’s hard for me to really summarize the article and give it justice, as it was just bloody brilliant. This one article summarizes nearly the entirety of my political ideology today. I highly encourage everyone to read it. Be warned, it is quite lengthy, so make sure you’ve got spare time on your hands (but don’t be too concerned – half an hour should suffice), but, allow me to attest one more time, it’s a remarkable analysis of how politics in this nation works, specifically from the GOP’s perspective, and the absolute core principles of their party in the most simple, clear cut, yet revealing and shocking way.

There is a lot I could discuss that is written in Lofgren’s piece, especially the part where he writes in detail how Republicans are waging a war against voting. The GOP is trying to stop Americans from voting because statistics show that the fewer people vote in elections, the better Republicans do, among a whole host of other reasons and downright villainous tactics such as creating mandatory photo ID laws for voting, yet also closing down DMV offices in Democratic-leaning districts. Vile, sleazy tactics of the Republican party like this fill the article, and worse yet, it explains how Democrats so desperately want to “play along” with the Republican handbook.

The one part of this article that I absolutely must make comment on, though, is on Lofgren’s comments about the incentive structure for the Republican Party. Republicans fancy themselves the anti-government party these days. Their slogans and speeches are always about one thing; getting the government “out of the way.” They do this by cutting spending to programs the lower and middle class are dependent upon, cutting taxes disproportionately to how much money the government has to spend to remain functioning, eliminating regulation on the false claim that it “hinders job growth,” and a whole host of other things. Given that the Republican’s claim is that “government doesn’t work” and that it’s “always in the way,” their party has an incentive for the government not to work. As Lofgren writes;

“By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner… This constant drizzle of “there the two parties go again!” stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends… Undermining Americans’ belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy.”

The Republican Party has an incentive to sabotage the government. Lofgren so eloquently laid out his case for this most harsh of criticisms it’s difficult to even think of an argument to the contrary, let alone be able to present it in a fashion as skillfully as Lofgren.

I write this article primarily to explain this simple truth; every single decision in life by anyone is all about incentives and disincentives. This is the reason why Communism fails; people have no incentive to work harder or improve the quality of their work. They get no higher wages or extra benefits, so why bother? The exact same thing is true for systems of government where corporations are unregulated and hold all the power. If we deregulate, and allow corporations to do whatever they want, what incentive would they have to do the ethically correct thing? Say an energy company has multiple power plants that generate large amounts of smog, which causes numerous health problems. Federal regulations such as those of the EPA would prevent the company’s power plants from generating certain amounts of smog in the name of public safety, even if this means the power plants in question can’t generate as much energy, and therefore, get less business and the company make less profit. If we remove the regulations on smog, then the company stands to make more profits by generating more smog, even though more smog puts public health and the environment in jeopardy.

This is why companies and corporations are amoral. They exist solely to make a profit, not do good or evil. Without regulations, companies have an incentive to generate more smog, because doing so will make them more profits. With regulations, companies have a strong disincentive from generating smog, because generating excess smog could lead the company to face fines, penalties, or even jail time for certain company leaders and decision makers.

So now, let’s go back to the matter at hand; Republicans have an incentive to sabotage the government. Their party runs on a platform policy of “government doesn’t work,” and that they can somehow change that, usually by placing more and more of society’s needs in the hands of corporations and the private sector which, as I just highlighted, puts American citizens at risk since corporations don’t make decisions on what’s good or bad for people, merely by what is profitable. So if a political party’s key message is government doesn’t work, their goal will be to make sure of that. As detrimental to society as that is, Republicans are “keeping their promise,” in a matter of speaking, by making the government not work.

Republicans cut and “reform” taxes, limiting the revenue flow to the government, but appeasing the uneducated by giving them more money that ordinarily would have gone to the government. Then the government can’t pay for all the programs and regulations it needs to in order to function properly, leading to spending cuts. Spending cuts to programs that help with the cost of living for lower and middle class families such as food stamps, unemployment benefits, specific tax credits, and other things leads to an increase in the cost of living for these socio-economic levels. Increases in the cost of living directly because of the government leads people to have little faith that the government is doing the right thing, and thus, that “government doesn’t work.” Out of frustration and disappointment, people then find themselves in agreement with the political party (the Republican Party) that runs entirely on that exact claim, and so, they vote for them. Voting for Republicans then leads to more tax cuts and reforms, more spending cuts, higher cost of living for the lower and middle classes, more frustration and disappointment towards the federal government, and thus, more distrust of and anger for it, which Republicans then fuel even more by saying the government doesn’t work. Driven by emotion instead of logic, uninformed, uneducated people that often proclaim themselves to be “centrists” agree and vote for Republicans. This is the vicious cycle Republicans have set up in a society where tens of millions of people are completely unknowledgeable on how the government works, let alone who controls what or what each party does when they are in power.

This is how Republicans have rigged the system. This is why Republicans keep growing more and more radical in how they want to weaken, shrink, and eliminate the federal government. It’s grown to a point where it’s snowballing out of control and Democrats are stupidly playing along, thinking that because the strategy of “less government” worked for the Republicans means it will work for them too because they’ll appear “centrist,” when in reality all it does is make them look weak and disenfranchise their voter base (liberals don’t want to see the federal government shrink, yet Democrats continually follow policies that do just that in some misguided belief of appeasing “centrists”).

It will take a long time, and a lot of effort to fix this problem. Education is the key, and moving to a point where socially we can all talk about politics again without wanting to kill each other or resort to petty name calling. Being an informed voter is the absolute best way you can fight corruption, and put an end to the Republican’s purposeful sabotage of the US government.