People demonstrate on October 19, 2010 in Paris against pension reform. France faces a sixth day of national protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy's reforms, with the stakes rising after youths battled riot police and filling stations ran dry. A placard reads, "When order is injustice, disorder is a beginning of Justice'. By Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images.
Over at TNC's place, Cynic marvels at the American education system's perverse incentives:
We want teachers who demonstrate perseverance coupled with ambition, steady improvement over time, and achievement, without succumbing to complacence. Our school systems, on the other hand, are bastions of stability. They extend the promise of steady employment in a volatile world, substantial job security, and for those who stick it out for long enough, an enormous deferred payoff in the form of benefits and pensions. If we'd designed it from scratch, we would have struggled to produce a system more perfectly designed to attract young people who value stability, or to repel and grind down those who seek constant change.
…Work environments hospitable to continual innovation tend to have relatively low barriers to entry, and relatively low barriers to exit. Schools invert that. Many have extensive up-front credentialing requirements, forcing novice teachers to invest substantial time and money at the beginning of their careers, before they can even decide whether they are indeed well-suited for the job. Early career teachers tend to get the least desirable assignments, and to be paid barely enough on which to live. On the other hand, most compensation packages are grossly back-loaded, offering lock-step seniority raises and substantial retirement benefits. So it's tough to get in the door, and once you do, leaving entails abandoning the rewards for which you've already labored before you can enjoy them. That's crazy.
And the teachers unions are fighting to preserve it.
A reader writes:
As a liberal, I don't have any problem acknowledging that many of the wealthy people in our society have worked hard to earn what they have. What I question is whether their financial rewards are proportionate to their work, given that the creation of wealth is the product of collaborative efforts far more often than it is the product of individual acts of genius. What I also question is why conservatives so often forget that many people of ability work very hard and do not accrue such wealth. If it is a question of hard work, tell me Andrew – who works harder than a single mother employed at Wal-Mart?
I don't deny that. But if an entrepreneur works just as hard but because he's smarter or more driven or more innovative, I think he deserves as much of his rewards as is compatible with a basic safety net and core public goods. After all, he is the person whose success makes taxation possible at all – or rather far more successful than if there were only Wal-Mart workers. But I am content with inequality as the price of freedom, and do not believe the government should punish people for being successful. Another writes:
While I agree that liberals should give more credit to the value of hard work in becoming successful, more conservatives should give more credit to the myriad other factors that either enable or detract from success.
The obvious one that most liberals point out is cultural/societal influences, but the one I would highlight is the conditions put in place by a developed country’s government. The rich are able to make their money, whether it’s from inheritance or hard work, because of the security, infrastructure, research, education, patent enforcement, etc. that the government provides, and they should be responsible for providing funding for these services in the future if they are deriving the vast majority of the benefits from their provision.
No less a conservative figure than Ben Stein has highlighted this. In a column in the NYT a few years ago, he wrote, in reference to raising taxes during wartime:
But if they are superrich, they derive special benefits from life in the United States that the nonrich don't. For one thing, they can make the money in a safe environment, which is not true for the rich in many countries. It is just common decency that they should pay much higher income taxes than they do. Taxes for the rich are lower than they have been since at least World War II — that is to say, in 60 years.
This makes no sense in a world at war, in a nation with so many unmet social needs, in a nation with so many people without health care, in a nation running immense and endless deficits.
But I agree! I favor a return to Clinton era tax rates for the successful because we need to find some money somewhere and the hike is not that bad, given the debt we face. I'd like tax simplification and an end to the myriad loopholes and deductions in the tax code that the rich pay lawyers to exploit. I believe in an estate tax, in order to reward work not nepotism. I've made the same point about paying for the wars and supported the health insurance reform. I just think that wealthy seniors should pay more for Medicare and that social security could easily be means-tested and that the retirement age be raised. Not because I hate the old, but because we have to do something, or go into default. The successful already pay the bulk of the taxes. I just don't see why tax hikes should be framed as some kind of revenge on them, or long-overdue comeuppance. It's a necessary evil for the common good. And many liberals would fare better if they made their case that way, as, I might add, Obama generally does.
Humans at play:
Tim Knoll BMX from tim knoll on Vimeo.
Theodore Dalrymple says that in this case modern media culture helped its subjects:
For once, media attention was wholly beneficial in its effects. The miners were in the eye of the world. They knew that what they did, how they acted, would be known to untold millions… Here, then, is an illustration of the evident but often forgotten fact that social pressure is conducive to virtue as well as to vice. We generally imagine that so-called peer pressure leads only to such activities as taking drugs and vandalism; but it also leads, or rather can lead, to emulation of virtue, self-respect and decent pride. No man but an out-and-out psychopath wants to appear worse than his fellows in the eyes of the world; and the miners' (justified) pride in appearing brave and self-composed helped them to survive their ordeal.
And then many reverted to being disloyal money-grubbers.
It's a kind of a lawn dart that touched many lives – and taunted the nanny state:
Long live the 3:1 ratio of boys to girls with “penetrating lawn dart injuries” that led to the ban.
Long live the box copy reading, mostly chronologically: “an outdoor game,” “a missile game,” “an exciting outdoor game of skill for the whole family,” “fun for the entire family.”
Long live the amended copy: “an outdoor skill game for adults,” “a skillful sport for adults,” or “a competition rated adult lawn dart game.”
Long live the end of the jart.
Long live the end of childhood.
Long live the culture of protection.
And on it goes.
(Hat tip: Will Wilkinson, who illustrated the essay.)
Chris Good asks Richard Lee, the man behind Prop 19: "how many counties do you think will go ahead in the next couple years and allow for commercial sale" of marijuana should Prop 19 pass? Lee's answer:
There's about nine cities that have already put adult cannabis tax referendums on their local ballots to be ready when Prop. 19 passes. Six cities passed adult legalization initiatives or resolutions back in 2006 or so. I think there's a number of places that will move ahead.
Kevin D. Williamson fights back against the Church Of Norquist and for a reality-based fiscal conservatism:
I myself do not favor a VAT; I’m a flat-income-tax guy, myself. But, as I always insist, taxes are secondary. Every dollar you spend is a dollar that has to be raised in taxes, eventually. There is no way around that, Sunshine. You can clap as hard as you want, but Tinkerbell still has to fill out a 1040. Can I imagine a universe in which a VAT is preferable to our current system? Yes, I can. But the problem is not the engineering of the revenue code — it is spendthrift congressmen of both parties.
So, no, I don’t favor a VAT. But I also do not favor letting conservatives’ position be defined by magical thinking — magical thinking of precisely the sort that already has destroyed the Republican party’s credibility on fiscal restraint and has undermined the conservative movement’s credibility in the process.
The GOP has been listening to the likes of ATR for a generation, buying into the canard that they can do the feel-good stuff (cutting taxes) without worrying too much about the hard part (cutting spending). The results are all around you, and they are dismaying …
The fact that Mr. Ellis would use the word “apostasy” to describe my thinking and Andrew’s on the issue is telling: We’re supposed to accept his vision on faith, in spite of three decades’ worth of evidence (or more) that cutting taxes while allowing spending to run wild is a recipe for ruination.
Ryan Ellis can stamp his feet all day, but the evidence speaks for itself: Santa Claus is no fiscal conservative, and no model of responsible governance. Taxing and spending are the same issue, and Ellis is on the wrong side of it.
Balko writes about the shameful way that police officers treat whistleblowers in their midst, and highlights an interesting parallel:
A few years ago, I attended a conference on the use of police informants. In one session, the "Stop Snitchin'" movement, which discourages African Americans from cooperating with police, came up. I was astonished to hear one hip-hop artist and activist say he would not cooperate with the police even if he had witnessed the rape and murder of an old woman in broad daylight. He just didn't trust the police. I told him his position was absurd: Whatever his concerns about the police when it comes to the use of drug informants (concerns I share), they shouldn't prevent him from cooperating with the investigation of an innocent person's murder. His response: "Isn't the Blue Wall of Silence really just the most successful Stop Snitchin' campaign in history?"
The Dish 