Samuel

I’m going to file my taxes today. It’s the first whole year I’ve worked a full time job after college. The pay is pretty lousy (neighborhood of $30,000 for a family of three) so I’m hoping to still get a quality size return. On the other hand, I’m not really sure what to expect at all.

I’m one of these crazy people who has always said that I relish the idea of paying for my fair share. I believe the government does important work (some of that work I myself actually do) and that it’s had it’s hands tied for too long by insane tax policy.

Like here in Oregon. We have a ‘citizen legislature’ that meets only every two years to set the budget for the coming biennium. They are in session right now and will be writing a budget that starts in July 2009 and goes through June 2011 based on budget projections that will be released next month.

Think about this for a second; we’re in the midst of a global economic crisis for which no one has an adequate explanation, much less a confident prediction of what’s going to happen next. Our legislators have been given the best information available to make a plan for the next two years, and once the plan is made we’re stuck with it. If there’s a shortfall, the Governor can make administrative cuts. If the economy does better than expected, the surpluses goes back to the taxpayers in the form of the Kicker.

What this means is that the legislature is going to make a worst case scenario crisis plan this summer, and if the recovery is better than expected we’re still going to have to live with the deep cuts they made to services like police, schools, roads, caregivers for seniors and people with disabilities, mental health care, and a thousand other essential functions that the state does every day without anyone even knowing that they’re doing it. If it’s worse, the governor will cut even deeper.

All of this is because the people of Oregon have been suckered by the siren song of so called citizen tax activists who are on an ideologically motivated mission to bankrupt the government. They don’t believe that government should be in the business of providing social services to people in need, and they are trying to destroy the government by cutting off it’s funding. These people call themselves patriots, but I say that they’re anti-government radicals who are trying to destroy our system.

Their plot is a brilliantly fiendish one. They never talk about destroying the government, beyond criticizing mythical sounding examples of government excess. Instead, they couch their argument in terms of the people being shouldered with an untenable tax burden. And we respond, because when it comes to the end of the year we are shocked by the price tag of all our payroll deductions from the year added up. Never mind that, in annual figures, taxes are one of our smallest expenses. dollar for dollar, our taxes (at least our state taxes) give us an enormous amount of value. Never mind that providing adequate services costs money.

In rich times, these anti-government radicals fight to cripple the government’s revenue stream so that in poor times like these the impact of crises is magnified. Well, I’m not fooled.

The truth is that paying taxes is patriotic, because taxes are what pays for our civil society. So today, as I set down to fill out forms and e-file, I’ll raise a glass to the government. Is it perfect? Is it completely efficient at all times? Is it without a single flaw to be held up to scorn? Absolutely not! But it’s the best government we’ve got, and it will only get better if we stop choking off it’s revenue flow. So here’s to paying taxes! Three cheers for taxes!

Hip hip! (Hurrah)

Hip hip! (Hurrah)

Hip hip! (Hurrah)

Crisis Precipitates Change

A Pantoum* By Samuel J. Rutledge

Who doesn’t want to get rich?
A million bucks sounds pretty good,
and we have a little something to invest.
What have we got to loose?

A million bucks sounds pretty good
and it’s so easy to ignore the obvious.
What have we got to loose?
Only our home and life savings.

And it’s so easy to ignore the obvious
until it all comes crashing down.
Only, our home and life savings
aren’t ours anymore.

Until it all comes crashing down
wealthy executives make off with life savings that
aren’t ours anymore.
They end up with taxpayer bailouts to boot.

Wealthy executives make off with life savings that
we unwittingly invested in their high flying schemes.
They end up with taxpayer bailouts to boot,
While we have to rent for the first time in 50 years.

We unwittingly invested in their high flying schemes
to take the money and run.
While we have to rent for the first time in 50 years
the house sits empty and growing mold.

To take the money and run;
The only rational answer.
The house sits empty and growing mold
and we’re heading for the hills.

The only rational answer
at times proceeds from desperation.
And we’re heading for the hills
because we don’t know what else to do.

At times, proceeds from desperation
provide the spark we need to learn a new way
because we don’t know what else to do.
We learn from gnarled handed wise ones.

Provide the spark we need to learn a new way!
True wealth only rises from land and labor.
We learn from gnarled handed wise ones,
loamy soil between their fingers.

True wealth only rises from land and labor.
Who doesn’t want to get rich
loamy soil between their fingers?
And we have a little something to invest.

* “The pantoum is a form of poetry similar to a villanelle. It is composed of a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern. The first and third lines of the last stanza are the second and fourth of the penultimate; the first line of the poem is the last line of the final stanza, and the third line of the first stanza is the second of the final. Ideally, the meaning of lines shifts when they are repeated although the words remain exactly the same: this can be done by shifting punctuation, punning, or simply recontextualizing.”
- From Wikipedia

There is a whole class of businesses with balance sheets that dwarf the economies of all but the wealthiest nations. These companies are not only individually massive, they are also interconnected – when one goes down, it takes others with it. When these companies get into trouble, therefore, the governments of their host countries are compelled to intervene and prevent them from going under with massive injections of capitol and other sweet little bonuses. In other words, these companies can not fail because their host governments will not let them. They are “too big to fail.” The owners and executives of these companies are well aware of this situation, and are therefore much less risk averse than they would be if there was some legitimate threat of going out of business.

Now I’m no economist, but I have a layman’s understanding of how the theoretical free market works. Generally, we get the best goods and services at the lowest price in a free and open market because the providers of these services thrive while others fail and go out of business.

So, here is my question: in what way does the situation described in the first paragraph fit within the theory described in the second? My answer: in no way. We have built ourselves a system of perverse incentives where mega-companies are able to take enormous risks, reap huge profits, and pass their losses on to the public. And if we don’t play their game, they tell us, our prosperity will evaporate.

This sucks.

American Automakers are never going to recover. Another bailout will buy them some time. A few months or a few years, depending on how deep the giant money hole turns out to be. So far, it doesn’t look like we’ve hit bottom. 3 month T Bills are trading at .01% in what looks to my untrained eye like an unbelievable flight to quality, and the Dow is down another 445 points today to close at 7,552 and change. I rattle that off like I know something about what it means, and the truth is I don’t. I’m no economist (although I do read The Economist every week). But the folks who know about these things seem to be scared shitless. Oregon’s Governor released his budget, and some projections were released to the state legislature yesterday. Hear tell, jaws were hitting the floor in Salem. It’s worse than anyone thought. And the picture here in Oregon is a little rosier than the national picture.

In times of trouble, I’m all for Keynesian solutions. The economic crisis is one problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. But not at Detroit. Throw money somewhere it’s needed. Throw it at human services, and at unemployment insurance, and at nationwide job creation programs for jobs that have a future. Don’t throw it on companies that are trying to sell yesterday’s technology (internal combustion) to tomorrow’s consumers. Let them fail, opening the market to new, innovative companies that can sell transportation products that meet our need for green, efficient vehicles.