Clarifying the Problem With Ryan
Over at the Washington Examiner, David Freddoso takes issue with my post on Ayn Rand-fan Paul Ryan’s plan to reduce the debt by cutting taxes on the rich and then dismantling Medicare and Medicaid. He says my argument rests on the assumptions (1) that there is some ideal tax rate mandated by Catholic social teaching and (2) that the current tax rates in this country fall below it.
Freddoso misunderstands my argument. The central purpose of my post was to observe that applying the wrong principles to produce policy suggestions that would otherwise fall within the ambit of permissible prudential disagreement is not itself within the boundaries of that permissible prudential disagreement (as the hierarchs have defined those boundaries). In other words, from the standpoint of a Catholic politician, at least, the principles matter. Nothing in Freddoso’s attempted take-down of my post even addresses this question. Instead, he chooses to attack a strawman.
Admittedly, my post was not as clear as it might of have been, but I suspect from his rhetoric that Freddoso was not interested in trying very hard to read it in the most generous light. The most interesting question to me — and the reason I wrote the post – is why someone like Ryan shouldn’t come in for the same treatment pro-choice Catholic politicians have often received. In his case, it would be more than just the question whether a Catholic can in good faith support his plan (back to that question in a second). There are also specific things about Ryan’s relationship to Randian libertarianism — his strange habit of requiring his staff to read Rand’s work, his statement that Rand was his reason for entering public service — that call into question his motives in structuring his plan the way he has (i.e., as “helping” with the national debt by cutting taxes on the rich and gutting two important entitlement programs for the poor and elderly). I think it is worthwhile for Catholics to call attention to the utter irreconcilability of Rand’s political philosophy, such as it is, with basic principles of Catholic teaching, and the apparent harmony of Rand’s philosophy with the basic architecture of the Ryan plan. Though I admit it’s not decisive, that harmony, combined with the other evidence of Ryan’s Rand-worship and the implausibility of Ryan’s empirical assumptions, seem like relevant data points for the inquiry into his likely principles.
Can Catholics in good faith support the Ryan plan? I have no doubt that, subjectively speaking, they can. On the other hand, I think it’s an important challenge to Catholics who are prone to accept the assumptions that would be necessary to justify support for that plan (e.g., that handing billions in dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans against the current baseline of historically — and comparatively — high inequality and low taxation rates would actually redound to the benefit of the poorest over the long run compared to the available alternative policies) to engage with the empirical support (or lack of such support) for those counterintuitive assertions. Moreover, given a Catholic commitment to social policy that is fundamentally oriented toward the well being of the poorest, I think its fair to hold a plan that appears on its face to simply transfer burdens from the richer to the poorer to a higher empirical standard than a plan that on its face appears to do the opposite. That last point is probably controversial, but it is in a way independent from my bottom line, which is that I don’t think the idea of “prudential judgment” should be allowed to absolve Catholics of various political stripes of the responsibility to do the work of evaluating a plan like Ryan’s against the principles of Catholic social teaching and the relevant standards of sound empirical analysis.
I ask this out of sheer ignorance, but who exactly are “the rich” whose taxes Ryan and his followers would like to cut? How many are there and what would his tax cuts mean in terms of lost revenue? I gather there are those who argue that taxing the rich more heavily would threaten jobs, and while I suppose a case could be made for that in terms of certain corporations, what possible harm to job creation would it do to tax rich individuals more heavily?
Surely somewhere someone has worked this all out, but where?
The premise of Ayn Rand is that there are some people (“John Galts”) who are for lack of a better word what I will call “stars” who are exceptional at creating economic prosperity and that these people must, above all, be given their due by the rest of us because it is important that their light shine as brightly as possible (for our own good). Tax rates and a whole host of other things that are referred to as Randian really flow from this premise.
Now, basically, I don’t see how all those bankers busily working at GS or Citibank or AIG or wherever are in the same camp as the mythical John Galt. Difficult as it may be to define things appropriately, however, her premise is that some people matter more than others. If you think that’s a Christian sentiment I’d like to know where you locate it biblically or in tradition.
If you trace those who are advocates for tax cuts for the rich you will find that ( those who are not rich) they are bought and paid off by the rich. The Tea Party is a great example. We now know that the billionaire Koch finance much of the Tea Part campaigns. And he is just one billionaire. We know elections are bought by the 1%. Let Ryan show who he is finance by and much will be revealed.
In ‘Animal Farm’ George Orwell puts forward the idea of “All men are created Equal, but some are more Equal than others.”
Our dear Ms. Rand takes it one more perverted step farther and posits that some people are much more equal than others to the point that they need not worry about anyone but themselves, The Most Equal of All.
I’m sure dear Brother Ryan can find SOME Catholic source to support him. “Fr.” Robert Sirico’s Alban Institute, maybe?
Oops – that’s Acton (not Alban) Institute.
Nicholas,
Here is some information from Bloomberg:
Here’s a table that will probably lose formatting of tax brackets:
I guess, although I couldn’t swear to it, that everyone making over $82,400 benefits, with those making over $373,650 benefitting the most. (The tax brackets are for 2010, but I assume future tax brackets will be similar if nothing is changed.) Note that the dollar figures in the first column are taxable income, not gross income.
“The central purpose of my post was to observe that applying the wrong principles to produce policy suggestions that would otherwise fall within the ambit of permissible prudential disagreement is not itself within the boundaries of that permissible prudential disagreement (as the hierarchs have defined those boundaries). ”
Holy cow, I’ve read that several times now and still find it impenetrable. Let me offer a few thoughts.
First, I don’t think Ryan wants to cut taxes for the rich. I think he wants to cut tax rates, and not just for the rich, but for everyone who pays taxes. There is ample empirical evidence that this would improve the economy, hence the poor, and increase the amount of taxes paid by the rich, which should warm the hearts of many in here.
Second, I think a cut in funding the government leaves the money (and the responsibility) with individuals, which seems consonant with the Catholic idea of subsidiarity.
David ‘you got it right; but let’s remember that for the top brackets one must show that for many many of them, they only pay 15% on their capital gains. We all remember the stock bonus payouts don’t we?.. One must also remember that these ‘gains ‘ are after deducting all their losses/losers. If they bring in their depreciation allowances you have a big chunk of taxable income disappear too. Those monster mansions in the Hampton’s have huge tax and interest deductions…I will also mention that the ‘top’ all live on the non-taxable expense account.. Check Jack Welsh GE CEO’s divorce explanation on living on the GE dole [GE pays no taxes either..] The McDonald, Walmart, truck driver employee says ..huh.. Ryan thinks ‘climber’ Jack Welsh is one of the ‘exceptional ones’ and so did the business community . he was ‘on’ TV more than Trump.
@Mark Proska (6:55 pm) I’m curious to know what empirical evidence you have that:
*Ryan wants to cut taxes for “everyone who pays taxes”;
*Ryan’s tax-cutting proposals will not disproportionately benefit the rich; or,
*Ryan’s tax cuts for the rich will “increase the amount of taxes paid by the rich”.
Also, where, in your view, does the Catholic idea of solidarity enter into, for example, the House Republicans’ budget plan?
Mark
Please provide empirical evidence that cutting taxes for the rich improves the economy.
Thank you
Luke/Charles–
My understanding, and I may be wrong on this, is that Ryan wants to lower tax rates across the board. Therefore, every tax payer will see the benefit of lower tax rates. JFK (60s), Ronald Reagan (80s), and George W. Bush (00s) all cut tax rates. Each time, the economy showed significant improvement and tax revenue increased. Given the progressive nature of our tax system, when the economy improves, when the rich get richer (even though the poor may get richer too), the rich shoulder an increasing share of the tax burden.
I can’t say I’m terribly familiar with the Catholic idea of solidarity, other than in a general sense, so I can’t really answer that question other than to say that, by not pitting poor against rich, middle class against poor, etc., by seeing all Americans as creatures of God and equal in His eyes, the Ryan plan seems to me to foster solidarity much better than the current political climate.
@Mark Proska (7:38 am) Thanks for your response. There are others here who have greater economic knowledge than I. I hope they’ll jump in.
I think at least some of your assertions are in error:
*Reagan cut taxes in 1981 and the result was an almost immediate increase in federal deficits—so much so that Reagan raised taxes in 6 of the following 7 years (and still left the nation far more deeply in debt than any previous president).
*Many economists think that a more important factor in the economic boom of the 1980s was the Federal Reserve’s actions under chairman Paul Volcker (Carter appointee) to cut inflation by raising interest rates. The Fed succeeded by raising interest rates high enough to cause a recession (thereby slashing inflation) that started, if memory serves, at the end of Carter’s term (and was a contributing factor to Reagan’s election). Subsequent lower interest rates helped spark the 1980s boom (as did lower oil prices).
*Clinton raised taxes in 1993 (as Bush did in 1991). The result was the longest sustained economic boom in US history, 22 million new jobs and record federal budget surpluses.
*Bush cut taxes in 2001 and 2003. The result was widening wealth and income inequality, falling median incomes, a doubling of the federal debt, followed by the Great Recession.
*The assumption about “the progressive nature of our tax system” is suspect at best. Total tax burden (federal, state and local income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, etc.) as percentage of income is relatively flat in the US today. Thus (because we all have expenses for the necessities of life) the poor and middle-class bear a disproportionately heavy share of the tax burden compared with the rich and the merely affluent.
*By way of comparison: During the 1950s, a decade with a more progressive income tax rate, family incomes roughly doubled for all quintiles (poor, lower-middle class, middle-class, upper-middle class, rich) of US society (the “picket-fence” bar graph). During the 2000s, a decade with a less progressive income tax rate, family incomes were flat or declining for most Americans, while they skyrocketed for the richest 10%, 1%, 0.1%.
What we have here, at least in part, is another example of reality “having a well-known liberal bias” (as one of America’s most popular Catholic comedians, Stephen Colbert, would say).
As for solidarity, again, others here are more knowledgeable than I and I hope they’ll pitch in. My recollection of Church teaching is that notions of solidarity and subsidiarity are often twinned, and we are left to figure out the appropriate balance in the tension between the two. Subsidiarity is not an excuse for abandoning solidarity (and vice versa). So, in this case, I think an appropriate question (among others) for Chairman Ryan, and for Catholics sympathetic to the House Republicans; plan would be: how exactly does this plan foster solidarity?
From my perspective, Ryan’s plan has steep cuts for the poor (immediately, e.g., Medicaid and food stamps) and middle-class (eventually, Medicare) that are used to pay for steep tax cuts that will primarily benefit the rich. It’s hard for me to see how helping the rich to get richer increases solidarity—particularly given the experience of the past decade. As for subsidiarity, nowhere in Church teaching (that I’m aware of) is it to be used to justify abandoning or causing harm to the poor.
(Some community organizers talk about the “Golden Rule” (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) and the “Iron Rule” (never do for others what they can do for themselves) as being two sides of the same coin—another way of imagining the solidarity/subsidiarity relationship.)
I thought it would be interesting to compare the criticisms made about George Soros and his influence on the Democratic left with those made about Ayn Rand – but I couldn’t find any on this site.
Just to make sure we realize that not all conservatives are Randians, the leading Catholic conservative of our time wasn’t necessarily a fan:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KmPLkiqnO8
“Thus (because we all have expenses for the necessities of life) the poor and middle-class bear a disproportionately heavy share of the tax burden compared with the rich and the merely affluent.
Luke –
Thanks for the very informative post.
However, I don’t understand the above (never did). Does it mean that the poorer you are the greater portion of your income is spent on things like sales tax? Or does it mean that because there are so many poor people that, in toto, they contribute much more than the rich? Or what?
Mark P. –
It seems to me that in practice what “a preferential option for the poor” means that the last government cuts should be cuts of the necessities of life — including the greatest necessity, food. Within that necessity the very last cut should be cutting food for the children. But Ryan’s bill cuts food stamps. So ISTM that in this matter his thinking is not at all Catholic — not at all human, if you ask me. You don’t take food out of the mouths of babes. You don’t even need Christianity to teach you that.
@Ann Olivier (11:47 am) I had in mind that poor and working-class primarily pay Social Security, Medicare, sales, excise, property, state and local taxes, such that their total tax burden is—as percentage of income—nearly the same as the rich and affluent. In addition, the poorer you are the more your spending is consumed by the basic necessities of life. I had in mind something like the following:
Assume the bare necessities of life in the US today cost $10,000 per person per year. (By basic necessities I mean food, clothing, shelter, transportation, medical care, etc.) Assume that the annual minimum wage is $14,500 ($7.25/hour, 40 hours/week, 50 weeks/year).
Those bare necessities take up over 2/3 of the annual income of our hypothetical working poor person. They take up 14.5% of the annual income of someone making $100,000 per year (roughly the 20th percentile, I think). They take up 1.45% of the annual income of someone making $1 million a year, 0.145% of the annual income of someone making $10 million a year, and 0.00145% of someone whose net worth increased by $1 billion in that same year.
Now add taxes (sales, income, property, excise, etc.). To make our example simple, let’s assume a flat total tax rate of 10% for all incomes.
For our hypothetical minimum wage earner, taxes of $1,450 leave her with $3,050.
For our hypothetical $100,000 earner, taxes of $10,000 leave her with $80,000.
For our hypothetical $1 million earner, taxes of $100,000 leave her with $890,000.
For our hypothetical $1 billion earner, taxes of $100 million leave her with $899,990,000.
Does that help? (Or did I just further confuse things?)
Thanks, Luke. It is now crystal clear :-)
But I wouldn’t call Social Security and Medicare taxes. Taxes don’t come back, SS and Medicare do — SS is an annuity and Medicare is an insurance.
See Michael Gerson in the Washington post today on Ryan’s heroine, Ayn Rand.
Oh well, ….
But I wouldn’t call Social Security and Medicare taxes. Taxes don’t come back, SS and Medicare do — SS is an annuity and Medicare is an insurance.
Ann,
Well, not really. The average person gets more out of both Social Security and Medicare than they paid into it. This was fine when there were a lot of younger people paying into Social Security and Medicare, when lives were shorter, and so on. But now with the baby boom generation there are going to be a lot of people collecting more than they paid in to Social Security and Medicare, and fewer younger people paying into the pot. So it can’t go on forever, especially because of ever-increasing medical costs.
I am about as liberal as you can get, and I definitely support Social Security and Medicare, but right now they are a bit like Ponzi schemes. They can’t go on forever the way they are currently being run.
“From my perspective, Ryan’s plan has steep cuts for the poor (immediately, e.g., Medicaid and food stamps) and middle-class (eventually, Medicare) that are used to pay for steep tax cuts that will primarily benefit the rich. It’s hard for me to see how helping the rich to get richer increases solidarity—particularly given the experience of the past decade.”
Perhaps I can help. The wealthy are more likely than the poor and the middle class to invest their disposable income in productive investments, via capital markets, that will provide a foundation for the growth of the economy. A stronger economy should result in better jobs and higher income for everyone.
I’m not sure which part of the “experience of the past decade” you’re pointing to. When the Bush tax cuts took effect in 2001, GDP was about $11 trillion. By 2008, it was $14 trillion. If we posit a cause-and-effect between fiscal policy and economic growth, that seems to be a very positive experience.
“I am about as liberal as you can get, and I definitely support Social Security and Medicare, but right now they are a bit like Ponzi schemes. They can’t go on forever the way they are currently being run.”
Absolutely right.
Jim P. ==
The poor are not going to invest their disposable income because they don’t *have* any disposable income. That is one of the things that defines “being poor”.
As to the rich investing during hard times (which is where we are right now), well, historically it hasn’t seemed to have worked that way. And that is not surprising == capitalists take risks only when there is some likelihood they’ll pay off. That’s a fundamental Adam Smith principle.
“Now add taxes (sales, income, property, excise, etc.). To make our example simple, let’s assume a flat total tax rate of 10% for all incomes.
“For our hypothetical minimum wage earner, taxes of $1,450 leave her with $3,050.
For our hypothetical $100,000 earner, taxes of $10,000 leave her with $80,000.
For our hypothetical $1 million earner, taxes of $100,000 leave her with $890,000.
For our hypothetical $1 billion earner, taxes of $100 million leave her with $899,990,000.”
Your assumption isn’t very realistic. Federal income taxes aren’t flat (despite the best efforts of Steve Forbes and his ilk), they are progressive – a policy which, I suspect we agree, squares very well with Catholic social teaching.
Here is the way to think about taxes:
* Income taxes – progressive on the federal level – squares very well with Catholic social teaching. We can, should and do argue about how progressive they should be.
* Medicare/Social Security contributions – charged as a fixed percentage of income (which the employer matches). So this is a flat tax up to a certain point ($106,800 in annual income), after which it is capped – which means that people who earn more than that pay a smaller percentage of their income into Medicare and Social Security than lower wage earners. This is a regressive tax, and so it does not square very well with Catholic notions of social justice. (Note I am critiquing the funding scheme, not the programs themselves. One can support the Medicare and Social Security programs and still find flaws in how the programs are funded).
* Capital gains taxes – short term capital gains (that is, income from investments that were held for less than one year) are taxed as regular income, and so, like income taxes, they are progressive – good by Catholic standards. Long-term capital gains are also crudely progressive – they are taxed at 5% for the lowest two income brackets, and at 15% for everyone else. Not bad, from a Catholic perspective. Again, lots of room there to quibble over whether those rates should be tweaked to bring about an even more just outcome.
* Sales taxes – generally flat – i.e. a fixed percentage of the value of purchases of a defined sets of goods, like groceries, gasoline, clothing, and the like. Flat taxes have a certain superficial ring of fairness about them – everyone pays the same percentage – but as Catholics we’re called to show a preferential option for the poor, so we should (in my opinion) prefer progressive taxes. In addition, as your analysis rightly demonstrates, the poor spend a much greater share of their income on necessities than the wealthy do: both the well-to-do family of four and the poor family of four needs to buy a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread from the grocery store each week, and pays the same amount for those staples, and so the fixed-percentage sales tax on those commodities represents a larger percentage of the poor family’s income.
Please note that various Democratic schemes for raising funds via vehicles such as value-added taxes and sales taxes is that they are regressive, for the reasons described here. As proponents of Catholic Social Teaching, we should be pubicly criticizing regressive tax schemes for closing the federal deficit.
The problem with the original post and this one is that they are based on an inaccurate recitation of the facts. The question is irrelevant because it’s based on a false premise.
Ryan didn’t make his employees read “Rand.” He gave them copies of Atlas Shrugged and asked them to read it. He says he found it influential. The assumption that this makes him or anyone else who agrees with him on the book a “Randian” (a term I never heard before the first post) is more than an overreach. It’s like saying if you like Anna Karenina you must be an anarchist.
The novel has a lot to say about the dangers of political power and human dignity. You don’t have to buy everythink Rand believed to see that.
It’s not surprising that it’s not getting great reviews, it’s not the kind of story that would make a good movie.
Lots of books tell us something about “the dangers of political power and human dignity” but Ryan picked this one. Just one. The objection doesn’t hinge on compulsion–it’s not about “makes” although a request fron a boss is often as good as an order–it’s that of all the possibilities to recommend he picked that one. I agree he’s might not share all her views (eg abortion) but he’s on the hook to explain his actions and statements with regard to her beliefs insofar as he has associated himself with her and her followers.
I wouldn’t call him a Randite/Randian/Randy if it had been one title on a reading list, or if he hadn’t said she’s his number one influence. I don’t use the label “objectivist” mostly because I think it’s easily confused with the general epistemology and also because I think it’s silly to dignify her nonsense with the label of “Philosophy” (the latter is my bias, since I think Rand : Philosophy :: L. Ron Hubbard : Religion).
If Tolstoy had spent most of his time not as a novelist but in developing a new philosophy of, and writing screeds about, “suicide by train-car as noblest end of love-gone-bad” then heck yeah, someone who gives a speech at the Tolstoy Society about how Tolstoy caused him to seek office and who also hands out copies of Anna K can fairly be called a Pullmanarian.
Cheers!
“Ryan didn’t make his employees read “Rand.” He gave them copies of Atlas Shrugged and asked them to read it.”
Sean,
I hope your logic will resurrect and your naivete will shrink in the new season.
The novel has a lot to say about the dangers of political power and human dignity. You don’t have to buy everythink Rand believed to see that.
Sean,
Reading Atlas Shrugged for its warnings about the dangers of political power and human dignity (?) is like ready Ulysses for the sex. As I have said before, if the Church still had an Index of Forbidden Books, the works of Ayn Rand would be likely candidates for inclusion. It makes scant difference whether Ryan requires his staff to read it or just recommends it or lists it (as he does) as one of his favorite books on Facebook (along with Mere Christianity, which must have C. S. Lewis rolling over in his grave).
Having said that, if you go back to the early 1960s, you will find a little picture of me in the Catholic paper for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati along with a little blurb about how my favorite book was Atlas Shrugged. Her philosophy is abhorrent (although it did not strike me so at the time), but actually I think a pretty good movie could have been made out of it. It’s kind of like Moby Dick. When you leave all the boring stuff out, you’ve got pretty good movie material.
From Vincent Miller over on the America blog:
Vincent Miller’s piece which David references is well worth a look. Here is another poingnant and pertinent excerpt:
” In Rand’s words, her ethics held “that man exists for his own sake, that his own happiness is his highest moral purpose, that he must not sacrifice himself for others, nor sacrifice others to himself.” She disdained the Cross: “It is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors.””
As Miller points out the bishops are slow to condemn Ryan who is clearly in opposition to the “preferential option for the poor.” i guess the 1% helps build million dollar cathedrals.
@Jim Pauwels (2:12 pm) Regarding ““experience of the past decade”, I had in mind the fact that virtually all the wealth created in that decade flowed to to the wealthiest Americans, while median family income remained essentially flat. I also had in mind that about 3 million jobs were created during George W. Bush’s presidency (compared with 23 million under Clinton, 2.5 million under H.W. Bush, 16 million under Reagan, and 10 million under Carter). I don’t have figures at hand, but I had in mind a sense that the economy grew at a faster rate overall 1993-2000 than it did from 2001-2008.
We agree that, as you say, “a stronger economy should result in better jobs and higher income for everyone.” I think one lesson from the experience of the W. Bush years is that, in the words of the great Ira Gershwin, “it ain’t necessarily so”.
“if you go back to the early 1960s, you will find a little picture of me in the Catholic paper for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati along with a little blurb about how my favorite book was Atlas Shrugged. ”
Gasp! David, repent – there’s still time! :-)
@David Nickol (2:11 pm) I would disagree with your assertion that Social Security and Medicare are “are a bit like Ponzi schemes”, and for the purposes of clarification I would separate them.
Social Security is fully solvent for at least the next generation. It has low overhead expenses, and thus is “well run” from that perspective. It would require relatively minor changes to make it fully solvent for the foreseeable (2-3 generations) future.
The declining ratio of workers to beneficiaries is often overstated, and was accounted for by its creators and revisers (notably the Greenspan Commission in the 1980s) when they (respectively) established and revised Social Security. The main reason the declining ratio of workers to beneficiaries (which is projected to continue gradually leveling off) is not a great concern for Social Security’s solvency is that worker productivity continues to rise (as it has for decades), thus it now requires fewer workers paying into Social Security to cover each beneficiary taking out from the system than when Social Security was established.
Medicare is a different story. The problem isn’t Medicare per se; the problem is health care inflation.
There are some cost controls (for health care in general and Medicare in particular) built into the 2010 Affordable Care Act. President Obama proposed additional cost controls in his speech at George Washington University last week. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has additional cost control measures in their deficit reduction plan.
By contrast (as I’ve written abundantly over several recent threads), the House Republican plan appears to:
*focus primarily on cost-shifting (i.e., from the federal budget to family budgets) for both Medicare and Medicaid;
*repeal much of the ACA (including its cost controls);
*do relatively little to control health care inflation (other than force greater responsibility for coping with it onto the backs of the poor, disabled and elderly).
In my view, conflating the problems facing Social Security and Medicare, and comparing them to “Ponzi schemes” is to fall into a language trap set by those who—at some fundamental level—don’t think universal social insurance for the old and the sick should exist.
@Jim Pauwels (2:40 pm) I think we’re making slightly different points and don’t disagree. Thank-you for your thoughtful and detailed analysis of the different means of taxation, and how they “match up” (as it were) with Church teaching.
Luke,
I don’t fundamentally disagree with most of what you say, but I stick by saying that Medicare and Social Security are a bit like Ponzi schemes, in that people get out of them more than they put in, and this can’t go on forever. No matter how easily they can be fixed, they do indeed need to be fixed. I am firmly in the Democratic/Obama/Paul Krugman camp on these things, but it is absolutely essential for liberals/Democrats to acknowledge, if we want any credibility, that Medicare and Social Security must be fixed.
Gasp! David, repent – there’s still time! :-)
Jim,
Oh, I repented very soon after that incident. That’s the very last picture of me in a Catholic newspaper you would ever be able to find. ;-)
@David Nickol (5:58 pm) David, we agree that liberals/Democrats have to acknowledge that Medicare (as part of the larger health care problem) and Social Security “must be fixed”.
Speaking just for myself, I think the Social Security “fix” is relatively minor and easy to do (and best done sooner rather than later).
I think the health care “fix” is a bigger problem, but one that can be dealt with if conservatives/Republicans would agree that ending Medicare (as the House Republicans have proposed) is “off the table” for negotiating purposes.
P.S. The more economically literate can correct me if I’m wrong here, but it seems to me that in theory, assuming a steadily growing and more productive economy over time, that it’s entirely possible to have a social insurance system (like Social Security) in which beneficiaries receive more than they pay in. (In addition, there are all those people who pay in but don’t survive to become beneficiaries, or die before they take out what they’ve paid in.)
David N. –
The people who invested relatively small amounts of money in the start=ups of Coca=Cola, Berkshire Hathaway and Microsoft have had their money returned many, many, many times over and there is no end in sight. Would you call them Ponzi schemes? I wouldn’t.
“The more economically literate can correct me if I’m wrong here, but it seems to me that in theory, assuming a steadily growing and more productive economy over time, that it’s entirely possible to have a social insurance system (like Social Security) in which beneficiaries receive more than they pay in.”
Luke–
I don’t think the problem is the economics so much as the demographics. The system assumes an ever increasing workforce, or at the very least not a decreasing one. So, logically, it seems that those who support this type of social security system should support the Church’s teaching on artificial contraception!
IMHO in this series of posts we have fine examples of the genetic fallacy.
“Genetic Fallacy: A conclusion is based on an argument that the origins of a person, idea, institute, or theory determine its character, nature, or worth.
Example:
The Volkswagen Beetle is an evil car because it was originally designed by Hitler’s army.
In this example the author is equating the character of a car with the character of the people who built the car. However, the two are not inherently related.”
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:SVMp24Uoh7kJ:owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/659/03/+genetic+fallacy+argument&cd=10&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
My favorite example of a genetic fallacy, though I can no longer find the source: Origen claimed that if the devil tempted you to do a clearly good act you should refrain from performing that act on the basis that the devil suggested it. So far as I know Origen is alone in holding that opinion.
For the sake of argument, let’s ignore the fact that the vast majority of supporters of the Ryan plan are non-Randians, and let’s overlook the fact that that majority clearly includes dedicated anti-Randians such as adherents of the Buckley/National Review persuasion. Aside from those considerations, I would still maintain that if it could be clearly shown that Lucifer himself inspired Paul Ryan and if it is further shown that Ryan has fathered 32 children out of wedlock, all of whom he strangled in their crib, one should not reject the plan on those grounds alone.
Patrick ==
I have to comment on the link. That’s a very good presentation of some fallacies. But I checked some of the other pages at that site which are about logic, and they’re really pretty bad. Don’t trust them. They look like they were written by an English teacher, not a logician. Sigh.
One question occurred to me as I was letting this topic “marinate” over the weekend that might be worth pursuing. For those who are inclined to dismiss Ryan’s plan (and politics) as an extension of his Randianism, how is the relationship between his “first principles” (for lack of a better term) MATERIALLY different from the relationship between Marxism and liberation theology? Progressive Catholics often defend liberation theology on the grounds that the anti-Christian elements of Marxism can be separated from liberation theology. Is the same true of Ryan’s case? If not, what is different (other than his or the individual commenter’s political commitments)?