Month: July 2009

Energy Diets

by Patrick Appel

Shikha Dalmia doesn't believe that poor countries will curb emissions:

Consider what would be necessary to slash global greenhouse-gas emissions just 50% below 2000 levels by 2050–a far less aggressive goal than what the enviros say is necessary to avert climate catastrophe. According to U.S. Chamber of Commerce calculations, even if the West reduced its emissions by 80% below 2000 levels, developing countries would still have to return their emissions to 2000 levels to meet the 50% target. However, Indians currently consume roughly 15 times less energy per capita than Americans–and Chinese consume seven times less. Asking them, along with the rest of the developing world, to go back to 2000 emission levels with a 2050 population would mean putting them on a very drastic energy diet.

The human toll of this is unfathomable: It would require these countries to abandon plans to ever conquer poverty, of course. But beyond that it would require a major scaling back of living standards under which their middle classes–for whom three square meals, cars and air-conditioning are only now beginning to come within reach–would have to go back to subsistence living, and the hundreds of millions who are at subsistence would have to accept starvation.

In short, the choice for developing countries is between mass death due to the consequences of an overheated planet sometime in the distant future, and mass suicide due to imposed instant starvation right now. Is it any surprise that they are reluctant to jump on the global-warming bandwagon

Embracing Those Skeletons In the Closet

By Conor Clarke

I have today's idea of the day over at the Atlantic Ideas Blog, although it's not so much an "idea" as it is a horribly vague, nagging concern about the future that for some reason my editors let me get away with. The basic concern is about what the metaphorical confirmation hearing of the future will look like, when we all have large, embarrassing stockpiles of digital information accumulated about one another. Will they assure mutual destruction? It frightens me just to think about all the stupid emails and blog posts I wrote in the past week, much less the past year!

The problem is that I couldn't come up with an actual solution (hence the lack of an idea) except to put in a plea for a cultural shift: We should all become more comfortable with skeletons in the closet. But any other ideas? Or anyone who thinks this just isn't a problem? One angle that I don't really consider in the piece is that a lot of the information dredged up might be damning and useful. I happen to think, for example, that the fuss over that hoary old "wise Latina" line is fair game.

Taxing the Rich To Pay for Health Care, Part Three

By Conor Clarke

I've been getting a lot of email from Dish readers about the House's plan to pay for health care by imposing a surtax on wealthy Americans. In a future post I'd like to write about why I prefer the option that seems to have the most traction in the Senate: limiting the deduction for charitable giving. But I do think — once we learn to buck up and live with the fact that taxes always create deadweight loss and additional transaction costs — that the wealth surtax is hardly the fifth horseman of the apocalypse.

Anyway, onward and upward with the emails. One reader writes:

Isn't the point that Krugman and others make that money spent on a "national health care plan (that includes a government-run public option)" and "deficit reduction" is not fungible — i.e., not equivalent? If I understand the viewpoint correctly, establishing a public-option health care plan will drive down health-care costs by forcing non-governmental providers to become more efficient in response to competition with the government, reducing the percent of GDP the nation spends "needlessly" on inefficiencies, freeing up that future GDP for reduction of deficit.

I don't disagree with this. What I meant was that the revenue options are fungible (i.e. interchangeable), not the spending options. (If all policy options were equivalent, then the progress of this adversarial two-party system has been seriously misguided for quite some time.) What I found strange about the Washington Post editorial was that it assumed we couldn't tap one particular source of revenue now because we'll need to tap it later. I continue to think that this argument is complete nonsense: If we want to reduce the deficit and reform health care, a dollar from John Q. Richperson will be just as good as a dollar of payroll tax revenue. So, either the Post's objection is to the level of spending, or it's no objection at all. Moving right along:

Do you know of any data on the total [as opposed to federal] effective tax rate for the top 1%?  I know there would be considerable state-by-state variation, but is there some way to summarize the total tax burden borne by the richest over the last decade or two?  This seems likely to be a crucial point in the upcoming debate, and good data will be crucial.

I believe Citizens for Tax Justice gathers this data, and I once wrote about it here. But I'm not kept awake at night worrying about state taxes and the top 1%. State taxes (for labor mobility reasons, among others) tend to be far less progressive than federal taxes. When you add state taxes to the mix, the effective rate paid by the richest 1% only changes by about, well, 1%. One more email:

But, aren't high incomes in fact very unpredictable, particularly for the next few years? What happens if the expected revenue falls short? Does the tax go even higher, or will the bill just add to the deficit? Is the goal to pass a bill that CBO will score well, and then deal with the real revenue options later?

My understanding is that, if the revenue falls short, the bill will simply add to the deficit. But this is a congressional procedure question and I'm bored to tears by those things. Does anyone else know?

Why Do The New Atheists Lean Right?, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I feel compelled to comment on the supposed connection between atheism and neoconservatism. I read Wright's piece on HuffPo, and I tried hard–and failed–to reconstruct a cogent argument that supports his thesis. He makes the logical leap that, because, say, Richard Dawkins thinks that, say, Muslim extremists are religiously motivated, then there is no reasoning with them and no point in looking for other motivators, and therefore force is the only possible way to deal with the problem. But of course, there is no contradiction in seeing religion as an aggravator of ethnic conflict and still believing that there are material and social causes in these conflicts as well.

I also read Yglesias's post that comments on the article, and I can hardly begin to fathom what he means when he says that Dawkins "has basically tried to reformulate atheism in the evangelizing and illiberal mode of illiberal envangelizing religion." The way evangelical religions are typically illiberal is, I think, the way in which they tend to want to legislate their beliefs and weave their religion into the fabric of government. I have never known an atheist in the U.S. who has pushed to legislate atheism. The closest examples I can think of are efforts to remove "under God" from the Pledge or monuments to the Ten Commandments from courthouses or such legal actions, which are not atheist but secular, and are in fact more inclusive of different identities and in no way impede the practice of religion in this country. We can talk illiberal when atheists are trying to insert "under no God" into the Pledge of Allegiance. Meanwhile, there is no equivalence to be drawn.

I also take issue with your claim that anyone believes that religion is the "root of all evil." None of the "new atheists" have said that or anything like that. The only place where the phrase appears is in the title of a documentary written by Richard Dawkins, and he opposed the title. The common belief is that religion is a source of more evil than good, but there is absolutely no political conclusion that follows from that. Apart from making their arguments public and advocating for inclusion, atheists tend to overwhelmingly espouse a philosophy of live and let live.

Marriage Of Convenience

by Chris Bodenner

Kirchick tackles Bill Clinton over his recent epiphany:

After leaving office [with DADT and DOMA under his belt], Clinton added insult to injury. We also know that in 2004, he advised John Kerry to support not only the many state-level constitutional amendments banning gay marriage, but also the Federal Marriage Amendment championed by President George W. Bush. Five years later, with a series of states having legalized same-sex marriage, the polls decisively showing a generational surge in support for the cause, and — most importantly in terms of this discussion — the definitive end of the Clinton dynasty upon us, Bill Clinton wants us to know that he “basically” supports gay marriage.

Pardon me for being cool toward the latest tergiversations of this congenital liar and shameless opportunist.