The Rant: I've Hit My Breaking Point

These days, I'm pretty much just incensed about the Massachusetts Senate race and how Scott Brown is looking more and more likely to win. I am angry not just because Martha Coakley is such a weak candidate, but because I simply do not understand what is going on in this country.

The storyline in the national media is that Republicans and Tea Partiers from across the country are coming out of the woodwork in rebellion of the leftist Democratic agenda and in rejection of Obama. This does not make any sense to me, because (1) the Democratic agenda is not even left-of-center, let alone socialist, and (2) for every person who disapproves of Obama from the right, there are probably two more who disapprove of him from the left; I sincerely believe that much of this country believes Obama has not done enough to implement his campaign promises.



What I think is going on is Republican manipulation of the media and the populous's knee-jerk reaction to the word "tax." Consider the recent study out of Columbia, in which participants were given the choice whether to pay a "carbon offset" surcharge on a particular good, and participants who self-identified as Democratic, Republican, and independent all were willing to pay the surcharge. However, when given the exact same problem with the surcharge labeled a "carbon tax" instead of a "carbon offset," Republicans and independents bolted, refusing to pay extra.

Ah, the story of America. We love helping people and the environment, just so long as our method of help is not called a "tax."

In an article this week about the Massachusetts Senate race, one person from Marlborough said, "It’s just tax, tax, tax, and I think the people are just getting sick of it." Of course, the person was talking mainly about the increase in the state sales tax, not increases in federal taxes, but the popular leeriness of "taxes" still shines through.

As Paul Krugman pointed out last week, the United States collects 28% of its GDP in taxes (somewhere between 15% and 18% federal and the remainder state), whereas major European countries collect between 36% and 44%. Krugman's conclusion, based on economic data, is that Europe's economy is "as dynamic, all in all, as our own," but that Europe does much better in the area of social justice. As supplements to Krugman's article, I want to add that (1) we could close the budget deficit by raising taxes by 9% of our GDP, which would bring us only to the low end of the European range, and (2) tax revenue for 2010 is predicted to be the lowest percentage of our GDP collected as federal taxes since 1950.

So, despite the Republican talking point, the current dogma in Washington is not "tax, tax, tax," but "spend, spend, spend, and leave it to our kids to suffer under taxes." Republicans should remember that they're forcing people my age to pay for their old age, and that people my age are getting to the point where we're ready to say, "Screw you."

All this brings me around to the health care bill, which is the target of Republican ire these days. I hate the bill as much as anyone, but I hate it because it's a watered-down, half-assed, half-hearted attempt at real reform that was prevented from being something better by an obstructionist Republican party that's more intent on bringing down our president than on helping our people.

And I am completely at a loss to explain the hatred towards the health care bill. Because of this fact: If you have private insurance and are making less than $200,000 a year, this bill will not affect you.* The only new taxes in this bill are on the top 1% of income earners (and in the House version of the bill, only on the top 0.5% or so of income earners). Meanwhile, it expands access to health insurance to millions of Americans and regulates how the insurance companies may treat those who do have insurance.

Yes, there are some anti-libertarian measures, such as the individual mandates and the employer mandates, but these are not outlandish socialist measures. Any Republican economist should love the idea that the individual mandates are merely "internalizing externalities" created by the uninsured. And small businesses are exempted from the employer mandates. So, liberal, yes, outrageous, not at all.

For the life of me, I cannot figure out what about health care reform is making people so goddamned mad. Seriously, what am I missing?


So, that's the rant. Not the most coherently organized set of thoughts in the world, but something I needed to get off my chest.



* Yes, the Senate bill contains some cuts to Medicare, but those are relatively small, as far as I can tell.