Let's talk taxes

And just to keep it neat and simple, let's talk local taxes. City or county taxes.

It is taxes that allows the county of Los Angeles to run a public library system. I was at the library a couple of times this week, and I saw a lot of kids who probably come from low-income families, I saw people using the free computers to look for jobs and print out resumes, I saw old people reading the newspapers, and so on. It seemed to me like a very good thing. Most countries don't have anything like the public libraries we have, not even England or Japan.

If it were not for our public libraries, people with the money to spare could buy books in bookstores or through amazon.com. I can afford to buy books, and I do spend a fair amount of money per year buying my own books, magazines, and videos. I don't depend on the public library, though I like going there.

But if less government is better government, and if lower taxes are better than higher taxes, then it follows that we would be better off without taxing people to pay for libraries. If rich people want to donate books to poor kids, that's their choice, but why should successful, prosperous people who work hard and earn enough money to buy their own books have their money confiscated to allow access to books by people who haven't made the same good choices in their own lives?

Why should booksellers have to compete against public libraries that completely undercut them on cost? If we eliminated public libraries, more copies of books would be sold, increasing the income of hard-working authors, which would be good for the economy. Why should JK Rowling sell only one or two copies of Harry Potter to the library, to be read by dozens of kids? It seems awfully unfair to Borders and Amazon.com as well as Blockbuster, JK Rowling, and Houghton Mifflin that they pay taxes which then go to undermine their profits!

And ya know what? I bet some of those kids I saw at the library the other day speaking a foreign language have parents who came into the country illegally. That elderly Korean guy reading the Korean newspaper (my tax dollars being used to buy foreign language books and newspapers?!) could have over-stayed his visa. He may very well be an illegal himself.

This is essentially the same argument that is used on a broader scale to argue that we can't afford health care for all, that high taxes are unfair, that government should stay out of our lives. Is it convincing in regards to public libraries? Would anyone vote to close down their local libraries and sell the buildings in order to raise money, so as to lower taxes?

We take things like public libraries (and public schools and public highway systems) for granted. But if they had to be voted into existence now, would such a proposal pass? Or would people be standing up at meetings screaming, "I buy my own damn books and newspapers and dvds, and I'll be damned if I'll let some bureaucrat decide what books the city should buy. I fought for this country, and why should I be forced to pay for books in Korean and Japanese and Spanish, which I don't even read, or pay for books that are going to be read by kids whose parents came here illegally!! This thing will bankrupt us!"

Guilded Age 2

Paul Krugman recently posted a graph showing over almost 100 years what percentage of the nation's income lands in the pockets of the top 0.01% of the country. In other words, it's a measure of inequality, or the growth in wealth of the richest of the rich.

When the record-keeping began in 1913, the top sliver of the country earned less than 3% of the money earned in that year. (In a strictly egalitarian society they would, I suppose, have earned 0.01%) The income of the rich peaked in 1928, just at the verge of the Great Depression, with the wealthiest one-hundredth of a percent of the population receiving 5% of the income. After the crash, their share dropped down to around 2%, and then there was a long moderation, from 1943 to around 1983, when the rich's share of all income earned hovered just above 1%.

Since I remember much of that time period, I can say that it was a time when the working class became the real heart and soul of America. Working men could buy houses and cars and take their 5 or 6 kids on vacation, and their wives could stay home and raise the kids. Middle class people could send their kids to college, and college students from the lower middle class could work for 3 months and earn enough to pay their room and board for the next 9 months. If they took a year off, they could save enough to pay for 2 years of school. It was a good time, in other words. And rich people seemed to be doing ok too. (though I didn't know any of them! But you didn't hear of too many jumps out of Wall Street windows!)

The picture begins to change in the 80s, with the rich crossing the 2% line for the first time since 1938. And then the line bounces between 2 and 3% for a while, and suddenly between 1997 and 2007, it leaps up to 6%, the highest level ever.

The data only goes as far as 2007, but there does seem to be a notable coincidence--the last time the rich controlled so much of the income, the Great Depression happened. This time, we're calling it the Great Recession of 2008.

Do I point this out because I'm jealous of the top 0.01% of income earners and want to punish them for being richer than me. No, I assure you, that's not the point.

The point is that it is deleterious for everyone, for the entire economy, when a very small number of people receive a large share of the wealth that is generated. Why? Because money that is spent creates demand for goods and services, creating jobs and opportunities for those in the lower segments of the population. And if those jobs are paid a slightly higher proportion of the income that comes into a corporation, it benefits everyone. That's why we had widespread prosperity and growth from WW2 till the 1980s.

But when money pours into the pockets of the very rich, they have no need to spend it. They invest it in the stock market instead, producing bubbles as capital expands much faster than the markets for actual good and services (since those at the bottom are more numerous but have less to spend.)

The spike is probably somewhat self-generating--as more money is in the hands of the wealthy, they invest more, driving up the price of stocks artificially, creating paper wealth, which shows up as income. But meanwhile, the real wealth, which is produced at the bottom of the food chain, and also largely consumed there, stagnates, so the spike leads directly to the crash. Paper wealth evaporates, reducing the rich folks share of the income, but not actually touching their lifestyle, while at the bottom, people living paycheck to paycheck lose their homes and their jobs and their health insurance, and their kids lose their chance to go to college, so the crash, though it hurts the rich more on paper, actually hurts the poor in personal ways.

What could stop the spike and collapse pattern? It seems like 2 things--more reasonable behavior by corporate boards, stopping the inflationary spiral of top executive pay and spreading the wealth more evenly down through the totem pole (Wal-Mart, for instance, doesn't *have* to create the 3 richest people in the country and also pay its workers low wages. The see-saw could tip the other way.)

And government could provide the nudge in the form of a tax system that treat all income equally, whether it is earned by work or by investment, and by raising the marginal tax rate on large incomes, so that corporations and small businesses would be incentivized to leave the profits at work in the company productively, rather than sucking them out and distributing them in wages and bonuses, which money is used for speculation rather than worthwhile investment in actual productivity.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/even-more-gilded/

Who's really Killing Granny?

No death panels needed, really.

Try to imagine yourself in this situation: You are 60 years old. You ran your own business for years, paid for your own health insurance, and then you had the misfortune to be diagnosed with cancer. Three times. You can't work as hard as you used to, but you can and must still work. So you find a job that covers your insurance.

And then you get fired.

Not so bad--COBRA requires that you be allowed to keep your coverage, as long as you pay for it. For 18 months. So for the past 14 months, this 59 year old cancer survivor has lived on unemployment, paid probably more than her income to remain covered, and searched for a job that will include health benefits. Not surprisingly, in this economy, the market for older, cancer-surviving, grey-haired women isn't all that hot, and so far, she hasn't found a job. If she doesn't have one in December, she will be without income and without health insurance.

She had medical bills to pay out of pocket in 2005 of $33,000, so odds are that those took a big bite out of her savings. And of course, if she was a real smart cookie, she had money in mutual funds in a 401k, but those have dropped by half for most of us, so it's pretty unlikely she can pay for private medical insurance anyhow, but with her medical history, under our current system, it's most likely that no insurance company in the country would take her at any price.

God forbid that we should have rationing. God forbid that we should have inefficient bureaucracy. Thanks heavens we have the freedom to choose our own doctors.

And if you worked all your life and have the misfortune to have a life-threatening illness before age 65, well let's hope God is on your side, because otherwise, you are on your own.

Here's the story and a picture of this woman. Look at her and think about her when you think of why our "health care system" might need a few tweaks.

Random Thoughts on Labor

Throughout American history (and probably all history) there has always been a two-tier system of workers, one paid at the "full-pay" level, and one that is expendable in various ways.

At first, there was slavery. Slaves could be called upon to do any work that no one else wanted to do, and they were paid only subsistence.

When slavery went out of fashion, child labor came into play. And when child labor went out, women came into the marketplace. Female workers could be hired on a casual short-term basis, let go when work decreased, and they could be paid less than a man. And of course, in that same time frame, black workers were also paid less and had none of the rights and privileges of a white male worker.

When blacks and women finally gained a legal right to equal pay--not until the 1970s and 80s--there was a big gap. Who would fill in this gap between full-time, benefit-receiving, mainstream workers and the fluctuations in the market? Who would do the dirty work? That just happens to be when large numbers of illegal or undocumented workers began pouring into the country. That is also when out-sourcing began to be viable. With the internet coming of age, the niche that once would have been filled by educated but lower-paid, temporary female workers (housewives, women between graduation and marriage or child-reading) was filled by skilled or semi-skilled workers in China and India. The niche previosuly filled by "Negroes" was now filled by "Mexicans."

In academia, that very same niche, the last-hired, first-fired, non-benefit, no-commitment niche, is filled by part-time instructors.

In most cases, including that of part-time academic workers, the promise is that if you accept this low position on the totem pole, at some point, you can move into the mainstream. And then a new class of marginal workers will have to be brought in to fill your role.

I Voted!

I woke up at 4 am this morning, to the sound of rain. Oh no, not rain on election day! Got up and showered at 5:30, and got ready for the day. I waited till just after 7:30 to go vote, hoping not to have to stand in line. By 7:30, the sun was out and every leaf glistening. "Morning has broken, like the first morning." I decided to walk over to Lincoln School, in case there was any difficulty parking. Right by the school, a car started backing out of its garage unexpectedly and almost hit me--a car with Ron Paul signs all over it. Figures. The crossing guard made sure I got across the street all right, and I felt like it was 1957 and I was walking to school for the first time!

Kristen's friend Sarah W-R was one of the poll workers, and she told me that there had been a considerable line at 7 am when they opened, which had just cleared. There were only 3 people ahead of me. I saw Kristen's name there, marked as Vote By Mail, and they tried to convince me that I had already voted by mail, but I drew my finger along the line and showed them that I was on the line above. Old age, not voter suppression. One poll worker had a sign indicating that she spoke Japanese and another had a sign indicating Chinese.

Obama's name was first on the ballot, and McCain was not second but third, I think. I inked it carefully, and after I took it out, I checked again to be sure that the mark was in the right spot.

By the time I was leaving, another line was building up, as parents came to drop their kids off for school and vote at the same time.

I walked home in the glistening morning sunlight feeling the Hope! feeling the Yes We Can!

My students were asking me yesterday who I planned to vote for. All I would say was, I'm gonna vote for the winner! Please God let it be true! I enjoyed this vote more than any vote I can ever remember. I also enjoyed voting No on Prop. 8. Since when would we vote to take rights away from people?

Now the tension builds!

The Secret Life of Bees

For several years now, I've been teaching The Secret Life of Bees in my 1A and 1AX classes. Student reaction to the book has been almost uniformly positive, from international students and American students, from white students and black students, and somewhat from men, as well as women. Several times over the semesters, students have wanted to see the movie, but there wasn't a movie. I imagined what a good movie it might make, and when I heard that Dakota Fanning was going to play the lead (at least 2 years ago an internet rumor), I was surprised because she seemed too young.

But she grew up, and the movie was finally made and was released this weekend. Sam and I went to see it this afternoon. (Thanks, Sam! It's not really your kind of movie, but I appreciated your presence.) One of the first things I noticed was that an 11:30 am movie on Friday in south Torrance was quite full, and a substantial portion of the audience was African-American women and couples. Later I read that there is some concern that if it is perceived as a "black film" it won't play to white audiences. I am not too concerned about that. Millions of white women have read and loved the book. In fact, i was more concerned whether black people would accept the movie. There is some controversy about the fact that a white woman wrote a book that some (few) see as co-opting or stealing cultural icons that rightly belong to the black community. Here's hoping that, as in politics, so too in daily life, we can all appreciate a story that involves both black and white people in all their separate and intertwined glory. (Incidently the director and several of the producers, as well as the majority of the actors, of course, are black. But the lead is a white girl, and it's her story.)



So how was the movie? It's hard for me to say, in a way, because I have so internalized and memorized the plot that I can't really see how well the movie stands on its own. The movie stuck quite closely to the book, putting many of the most memorable lines directly into the actors' mouths. And almost miraculously, to me, the feel and tone of the movie seemed close to that of the book. But, as is almost inevitable, some of the depth is lost. A few of the cuts seemed regrettable to me. I have imagined so vividly so many times the scene when Lily and Rosaleen bathe in the creek after a disagreement that it *feels* as if I've seen it. But that scene, with its strong baptism imagery, was not included. Also, the scene when they stop to rest at Lily's church and steal a fan was omitted, as were any details about how Lily springs Rosaleen from the hospital (a much simpler scenario, that the young sheriff was busy flirting when the two walked out) was perhaps more believable, but it took away some of the charm of Lily's personality.

Also, it was more explicit from the beginning that Lily had held the gun that killed her mother, and so the pivotal scene at the end, when Lily runs after T. Ray to ask who really did it is necessarily changed to her asking if her mother had really come back to get her or not. Perhaps that works better, since it makes her quest not one to find out if she did it, but to find out if her mother loved her or not, which is a deeper and more universal quest.

The most significant plot change actually seemed to improve upon the plot of the book: the issue that got Zach in trouble and led to May's suicide. Rather than a fight between young black boys and older white guys over a rumor about Jack Palance bringing a black woman to the theater (though, oddly, the mention of that is left in), what happens is that Zach and Lily themselves sit together in the "colored" section of the movie, and the white guys storm in and abduct Zach. Again somewhat miraculously, he escapes with only a black eye and a few bruises, but is gone long enough to move the plot forward. And also nicely, Zach's mother is one of the Daughter's of Mary, and May learns of Zach's abduction when his mother slips into the house to pray before Our Lady of Chains.

The acting was mostly really good. Dakota Fanning was just right as a barely adolescent girl with a quick mind and a wounded spirit. (She reminds me very much of my niece Hannah.) I couldn't quite see Queen Latifah as August in my mind, but she plays the part well. Perhaps the best jobs were done by the guy who played T. Ray, as a believable angry redneck, whose wounded heart is conveyed with subtlety. I think I was most impressed with the character of May. I could never quite picture someone singing Oh Susannah as therapy, but she hummed it very lightly before dissolving into tears, and her cock-eyed smile and intensity was better than I could have imagined. The weakest character, for me, was June. I had difficulty, first of all, with her appearance and clothing style, since I certainly never pictured June in tight jeans and a form-fitting NAACP t-shirt (nor did I find that believable for the time period.) I also didn't feel that her anger and resentment came across as anything more than simple nastiness.

I wished there had been more period touches, more of a 1964 feel to it. Sam also felt that it didn't feel like he remembers 1964, or even like I remember Auburn, Alabama in 1973. A bit more of the music, and more of African-American culture and the feel of the Civil Rights movement would have made me really feel that I had time-traveled to South Carolina in 1964.

But my final judgment? Better than I expected. And a story I still love.

The Last Debate

So we're down to the wire, and this is the last chance these two guys have to talk to the whole country before we vote.

So here's how McCain starts it off. After shoe-horning Nancy Reagan's name into the intro (remember Reagan? remember how warm and fuzzy he made you feel? Remember how old he was? ok, never mind), his first major point is this:

Americans are hurting right now, and they're angry. They're hurting, and they're angry. They're innocent victims of greed and excess on Wall Street and as well as Washington, D.C. And they're angry, and they have every reason to be angry

Wow, the word angry 4 times in the first 20 seconds or so? Guess who's feeling angry tonight? Man, Freud got that projection thing right.

Then he brings up the semi-mythical beast, Joe the Plumber:

You know, when Senator Obama ended up his conversation with Joe the plumber -- we need to spread the wealth around. In other words, we're going to take Joe's money, give it to Senator Obama, and let him spread the wealth around.

I want Joe the plumber to spread that wealth around. You told him you wanted to spread the wealth around.

The whole premise behind Senator Obama's plans are class warfare, let's spread the wealth around. I want small businesses -- and by the way, the small businesses that we're talking about would receive an increase in their taxes right now.

Who -- why would you want to increase anybody's taxes right now? Why would you want to do that, anyone, anyone in America, when we have such a tough time, when these small business people, like Joe the plumber, are going to create jobs, unless you take that money from him and spread the wealth around.

Poor McCain. He thinks that Americans live in fear of someone "spreading the wealth around." Well maybe in Sedona they do. But out here in the flatlands, our biggest fear is that the wealth will keep on doing what it's been doing (statistically speaking) for the past 8 years, which is clumping all up at the very tippy-top. So a little wealth spreading doesn't scare us, Senator McCain. We know how it's gone, we know who has the wealth. And it isn't plumbers who work for it. It's investment bankers who play games with it.

He actually said: "We need to encourage business, create jobs, not spread the wealth around."

Oh that's beautiful. Encourage business, but don't spread any wealth around! Keep it where it belongs--in rich guys pockets!

McCain also revels in his oldness, his memories of things that happened before most Americans were even born. Talking about the urgent need for town hall meetings (the lack of which forced him to call Obama a terrorist), he reminded Americans that this is "the way Barry Goldwater and Jack Kennedy agreed to do, before the intervention of the tragedy at Dallas."

Right. I was in the 4th grade then, and I am eligible for the Senior Special at IHOP. I don't think Obama was even born. Neither were most of his voters. Look it up in your American history book, you bunch of punks!

He also refers to the good things the government did in the Great Depression, as if it were only yesterday.

Then there are the times when he references things that even those of us who try to follow all these things just can't quite follow:

Let me just say categorically I'm proud of the people that come to our rallies. Whenever you get a large rally of 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 people, you're going to have some fringe peoples. You know that. And I've -- and we've always said that that's not appropriate.

But to somehow say that group of young women who said "Military wives for McCain" are somehow saying anything derogatory about you, but anything -- and those veterans that wear those hats that say "World War II, Vietnam, Korea, Iraq," I'm not going to stand for people saying that the people that come to my rallies are anything but the most dedicated, patriotic men and women that are in this nation and they're great citizens.

Hunh? What is this about Military wives for McCain? And Veterans of our many wars? And let's be serious here. Those numbers at "our rallies"? McCain isn't drawing crowds like that. Only Palin is.

He finally got up the courage to accuse Obama of, um, knowing Bill Ayers. And then he said this:

ACORN, who is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy

Get out. Destroying the fabric of democracy? By registering Mickey Mouse to vote? Damn, and when Mickey shows up and flashed his ID, we're gonna have to let that rodent vote! And there goes the neighborhood.

McCain pounced on Obama for saying he'd "look at" offshore drilling, calling it an example of how Obama's "eloquence" was deceiving people. Except that it was McCain doing the deception in this case, because the transcript clearly shows that what Obama had said the paragraph before was:
"And I think that we should look at offshore drilling and implement it in a way that allows us to get some additional oil. "

McCain also used this old tried and true method of casting doubt: compare Obama to...Herbert Hoover? Seriously?

Senator Obama wants to restrict trade and he wants to raise taxes. And the last president of the United States that tried that was Herbert Hoover, and we went from a deep recession into a depression.

All of you out there over the age of 80, who were actually alive when Hoover was president, I know you'll never forget how much you hated Hoover, and you will see that Obama is his direct descendent.

He also tried to scare the bejezus out of us all by telling us that under Obama, our health care will be like Canada's and England's. Nooooo! You mean like where Americans go to get drugs at a price they can afford? You mean like where people who have cancer or their kids have cancer, and all they have to focus on is dealing with the illness, and not also worry themselves sick dealing with insurance companies? You mean where a pregnant woman who needs to go on bedrest doesn't lose her insurance coverage? You mean where people aren't being forced into bankruptcy to pay for a one-week stay in the hospital? You mean where small business owners don't also have to worry about how they could possibly pay for their own insurance, much less that of their employees? That damn terrorist, doing that to us!

He ended up grinning into the camera, telling Joe the Plumber that at $250,000, Congratulations, you're rich! haha. (because everyone knows that don't touch rich. Cindy, now that's what I mean by rich!)

All in all, it was a pitiful performance by an angry old man who is despreately trying to distance himself from his own party (one of his biggest selling points is how often he can disagree with his own party, and he seems to think there's something wrong with anyone who belongs to a party he actually supports).

I can't wait to vote, and to see the results pour in.