Month: May 2013

Carol Matlack reports on the recent move away from flat taxes in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria:

The lesson: Flat taxes seem to work pretty well when an economy is growing—but not so well when it is stagnant or shrinking. Across Central and Eastern Europe, “every country is in need of more revenue because of debt and public deficits,” says Andreas Peichl, a senior research associate at the IZA think tank in Bonn, Germany. “There is a feeling that the crisis has affected poorer people more than the rich and that the rich should contribute more. But that is not easy to do if you only have one tax rate.”

Given the extremes of inequality we are now facing – and likely to intensify as technology cuts yet another swathe through entire industries that sustain a middle class – I have to say I am pragmatically against such a tax now, even though I have consistently supported one in the past. I’m only flip-flopping, I hope, in the best way. A flat tax remains theoretically and symbolically deeply attractive to me. I still believe that penalizing people for succeeding in our economy is unjust to those individuals. But in our current contingency of accelerating inequality, a flat tax would be socially destructive.

And a true conservative seeks to avoid social destruction more than he enshrines ideological purity (which is why I really have no love, and a lot of distaste, for the current GOP). Nonetheless, we clearly, desperately need simpler taxation. And surely that is one area of potential compromise for both the GOP and the president, if the GOP hangs on in the House.

You would have to make it revenue neutral at first. But taking not a scalpel but a sledge-hammer to deductions, especially corporate welfare, could finally create a tax code that is comprehensible to most citizens.

It is deeply damaging to our core democratic legitimacy that the average citizen has no hope of understanding the tax code. If we cannot understand it, we cannot truly monitor it. And thereby lies one root of profound distrust of government, of the way in which powerful interests, like Apple, can find ways to avoid tax, while the struggling middle class has no way out. Yes, we need new revenue. Desperately. But if the actual politics prevent it, why not the next best thing: radical tax simplification. Some may argue that this could ultimately hurt the Democrats’ leverage for more revenue. So be it. We have four years of what could be stalemate – and this framework could unite sane people in both parties to make our tax regime comprehensible, reduce the income of lobbyists, and restore a sense that the game is not rigged. Those are important – close to indispensable – elements of a functioning democracy.

A reader writes:

As an African-American, I respect your point about the value of Obama’s speech at Morehouse, but ultimately, I completely agree with TNC’s critique.  Why?  Because I am tired.  It seems that every time Obama comes to the black community to address us, he lectures us; he does not simply speak to us. He gives us a lesson about personal responsibility; he preaches to black men about responsible fatherhood; etc.  These are crucial topics, and matters that we, as a community must solve and address, but must he talk about them every goddamned time he comes into the community?

This is especially galling when he refuses to address in explicit terms the specific policy needs of the black community (and they do exist).

I understand that he is the President of ALL of America, but would it kill the man to fight for at least a few policy initiatives that would specifically benefit low-income African-Americans, in particular?  God knows we fought for him when we stood in lines across this country, often times for hours, in the face of relentless Republican efforts to disenfranchise us, simply so that he could put up with those boneheads for another four miserable years.  If he is going to be our constant scold, it would ease the sting if he was occasionally more than our symbolic benefactor.

I will close on one last note, and I want you, in particular, to be mindful of this.  Some of the best and brightest young African-American men in the country attend Morehouse, and many of those men grew up in middle and upper middle-class families (a number of which are likely still intact).  I would not be surprised if there are at least 1-2 men in each class who turn down Harvard, and a handful more who turn down other Ivy League schools, in order to attend Morehouse.  It has a storied history, and the men who attend that institution graduate, attend exceptionally fine graduate institutions, and often lead wonderfully productive lives.

Of all the groups of young men in the world who needed to hear the lecture that the President gave, they should not have been high on that list.  He should have treated them like he would have treated the graduating class at Harvard: like bright young people with a world of possibilities in front of them, who had the right to pretend on just one day that a legacy of pain and the assumption of inadequacy did not accompany their every step.

I’m grateful for that perspective. And for my reader’s sharing of it.

David Cay Johnston believes that “costly specialized storm shelters—big public structures that would be used only every few years or even every few decades” aren’t smart investments:

In Webb City, next door to Joplin, the Federal Emergency Management Agency gave $3 million last year to build a safe room at the local high school. It can shelter 3,000 people, if they can get there before a twister strikes. (And that’s a big if, given the short time between a tornado warning and the moment when the doors need to close; just picture how tough it is to get 250 people into a jumbo jet in 40 minutes.) The shelter cost $1,000 per person it can protect from a tornado; building shelters for everyone in Missouri at this rate would cost $6 billion. Based on Missouri’s average of two deaths per year from tornadoes, this measure would save 100 lives over 50 years at a cost of $60 million per life. Even if the shelters last 200 years, the cost would be $15 million for each life saved.

An alternative:

A planned addition to Andalusia Middle School in the southern part of Alabama includes an interior multipurpose room designed to withstand deadly storm winds. Its walls are made of thick concrete with rebar reinforcing rods. And the hallways are built with the doglegs that Roberts favors. The new school also has windows, which are good for education and a sense of well-being. If a tornado approaches, heavy steel shutters inside the building lock in place, letting the winds throw the glass outward, but leaving those inside safe.

(Photo: Shown is the storm shelter that Gary and Ferrell Mitchusson used to ride out a massive tornado on May 21, 2013 in Moore, Ok. Their home was completely destroyed in the massive tornado. By Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Annalee Newitz introduces more theories as to what happened to the human subspecies:

Anthropologists, according to [Professor John] Hawks, often ask the wrong questions of our extinct siblings: “Why didn’t you invent a bow and arrow? Why didn’t you build houses? Why didn’t you do it like we would?” He thinks the answer isn’t that the Neanderthals couldn’t but that they didn’t have the same ability to share ideas between groups the way H. sapiens did.

Their bands were so spread out and remote that they didn’t have a chance to share information and adapt their tools to life in new environments. “They were different, but that doesn’t mean there was a gulf between us,” Hawks concluded. “They did things working with constraints that people today have trouble understanding.” Put another way, Neanderthals spent all day in often fatal battles to get enough food for their kids to eat. As a result, they didn’t have the energy to invent bows and arrows in the evening. Despite these limitations, they formed their small communities, hunted collectively, cared for each other, and honored their dead.

When H. sapiens arrived, Neanderthals finally had access to the kind of symbolic communication and technological adaptations they’d never been able to develop before. Ample archaeological evidence shows that they quickly learned the skills H. sapiens had brought with them, and started using them to adapt to a world they shared with many other groups who exchanged ideas on a regular basis. Instead of being driven into extinction, they enjoyed the wealth of H. sapiens’ culture and underwent a cultural explosion of their own. To put it another way, H. sapiens assimilated the Neanderthals. This process was no doubt partly coercive, the way assimilation so often is today.

Recent Dish on Neanderthals’ extinction here.