Just like the San Francisco school board becomes "all Democrats, everywhere," so Rick Scott should become "all Republicans, everywhere" with much more justice.
As Scott so ably demonstrates, as hard as Republicans try to be populist party of the working people, you don't have to dig down too far to find the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Most of the points in the plan are nonsense. School choice is a good idea, but its completely inconsistent to mandate it from a federal perspective when Republicans are adamant that education is a traditionally state-level prerogative not covered by Congress' Article 1 enumerated powers. And school choice absolutely won't get rid of "woke" curriculum. Indeed, school choice would allow parents and students to self-sort into their curricular preferences, including those who want "woke" schooling. The pledge of allegiance stuff is all unconstitutional bullshit.
The border wall as an immigration plan is nonsense.
The economic protectionist stuff is nonsense and would also completely screw over any plan to balance the budget.
Balance the budget is a good, if painful, idea. There is no way Scott's plan sniffs a balanced budget. in 2019 (pre-COVID distortion), our budget was 22.7% Social Security, 14.6% Medicare, 9.2% Medicaid, 15.3% Military (not including military retirement). When we're talking about a 900 Billion deficit, there is no way to balance a budget by cutting discretionary services or making sure that everyone has a little skin in the game vis-a-vis individual income taxes. We would need a 24% increase in revenue from payroll taxes, corporate income taxes and individual income taxes. While taxes on rich people should go up, they don't have enough income and there aren't enough of them to pay for the difference. You can't balance a budget without a tax increase on the middle class. As you note, that message is radioactive, probably way more radioactive than Scott's token plan.
I would prefer that politicians stop lying about what they can and can't do, and what needs to be done. But since that's not going to happen, I would simply take them not lying and not having the lies be wacky bullshit.
Doesn’t someone, at some point, need to address entitlement spending? We keep hearing that by “ such and such” date, they’ll be insolvent. Is this a serious problem or not?
The idea of "trust funds" for entitlement programs is an accounting fiction; payroll taxes are not saved or invested to finance Social Security. The growth of Social Security spending (due in part to the population aging) is manageable enough to finance through tax increases if we wanted. Medicare is a bigger issue because of health costs growing faster than the economy, though the health care cost inflation situation has improved in the last decade. But yes, Medicare spending will need to be addressed as part of broader efforts to fix US healthcare costs. That should mostly be on the supply side: we need more doctors, a broader scope of practice for nurse practitioners, etc., and if we have that, labor costs in the health care sector will become more normal compared to other countries.
I've argued for a long time that anyone serious about ensuring the solvency of the OASDI Trust Fund could do it easily by removing the income cap and maintaining the benefit structure as it is. The IRS indicates that just over 50% of reported income isn't subject to SocSec taxes.
This is equivalent to raising not just the top income tax rate but a few of the upper brackets by 12.4 percentage points. Of course that would raise a lot of revenue. But people talk about this like it’s a technical adjustment when it would actually be a large change to US tax policy. Also, does that IRS stat include non-labor income?
"While you may hear a lot of people in Washington say they are “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” it’s much more common for voters to be the opposite"
The link doesn't really show that - what it shows is that on average the economic questions they asked in their survey are ones where a majority prefer the liberal option, which the social questions are more 50/50 (if you look at the scatterplot it's basically a blurry diagonal line shifted on one axis). But that's an artifact of the questions chosen! You could easily "prove" the opposite by making the economic questions stuff like "should taxes go up" or whatever.
And while this is more subjective, my read of their questions is that the economic questions really are worse at dividing the political spectrum in the US (judging by, say, "would a moderate democrat worry about embracing the liberal answer to this question").
Thank you for pointing this out. Although, I do think "Republicans" (I really dislike that word) are more fiscally liberal than they want to do lead on, I also think the left tries to put the GOP in a box of social conservatism that isn't real. For the most part, Republicans don't really give a crap what people choose in their own time. Surveys aren't a great method for analyzing this. And voting record is also subjective. It's common practice to try to summarize any vote as a single issue.
I agree with this analysis conditional on the public's awareness that they are part of the 47% of non, net-income tax payers. Considering all the payroll taxes and income tax withholdings people stump up, I wouldn't be surprised if a big chunk of the 47% (and a bigger chunk of those inclined to vote republican) would feel they were tax payers even though they weren't. Perhaps a "Everyone should pay at least a small amount in taxes" argument would work for those who misperceive themselves as taxpayers. People don't like free rides when they aren't getting one themselves.
What polling is there on people's self-awareness of whether they pay taxes? I'd be interested in how the cross tabs would look for this message too.
I’m sure a lot of employed people who don’t pay federal income tax think they do — because they very likely do pay other taxes that are withheld from their paychecks, including payroll tax and state income tax. But Democrats don’t have to adhere to Scott’s framing. They can say things like “Republicans would raise taxes on XX million families” or “Republicans would raise taxes on a family of four making $YY thousand dollars a year” that flow from his statement.
Agreed that dems would phrase in this way. The second framing would be much better. The first framing allows people to believe the fiction they pay taxes and that other 'undeservings' are just going to have to pay "their fair share."
Just like the San Francisco school board becomes "all Democrats, everywhere," so Rick Scott should become "all Republicans, everywhere" with much more justice.
As Scott so ably demonstrates, as hard as Republicans try to be populist party of the working people, you don't have to dig down too far to find the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Most of the points in the plan are nonsense. School choice is a good idea, but its completely inconsistent to mandate it from a federal perspective when Republicans are adamant that education is a traditionally state-level prerogative not covered by Congress' Article 1 enumerated powers. And school choice absolutely won't get rid of "woke" curriculum. Indeed, school choice would allow parents and students to self-sort into their curricular preferences, including those who want "woke" schooling. The pledge of allegiance stuff is all unconstitutional bullshit.
The border wall as an immigration plan is nonsense.
The economic protectionist stuff is nonsense and would also completely screw over any plan to balance the budget.
Balance the budget is a good, if painful, idea. There is no way Scott's plan sniffs a balanced budget. in 2019 (pre-COVID distortion), our budget was 22.7% Social Security, 14.6% Medicare, 9.2% Medicaid, 15.3% Military (not including military retirement). When we're talking about a 900 Billion deficit, there is no way to balance a budget by cutting discretionary services or making sure that everyone has a little skin in the game vis-a-vis individual income taxes. We would need a 24% increase in revenue from payroll taxes, corporate income taxes and individual income taxes. While taxes on rich people should go up, they don't have enough income and there aren't enough of them to pay for the difference. You can't balance a budget without a tax increase on the middle class. As you note, that message is radioactive, probably way more radioactive than Scott's token plan.
I would prefer that politicians stop lying about what they can and can't do, and what needs to be done. But since that's not going to happen, I would simply take them not lying and not having the lies be wacky bullshit.
Doesn’t someone, at some point, need to address entitlement spending? We keep hearing that by “ such and such” date, they’ll be insolvent. Is this a serious problem or not?
The idea of "trust funds" for entitlement programs is an accounting fiction; payroll taxes are not saved or invested to finance Social Security. The growth of Social Security spending (due in part to the population aging) is manageable enough to finance through tax increases if we wanted. Medicare is a bigger issue because of health costs growing faster than the economy, though the health care cost inflation situation has improved in the last decade. But yes, Medicare spending will need to be addressed as part of broader efforts to fix US healthcare costs. That should mostly be on the supply side: we need more doctors, a broader scope of practice for nurse practitioners, etc., and if we have that, labor costs in the health care sector will become more normal compared to other countries.
I've argued for a long time that anyone serious about ensuring the solvency of the OASDI Trust Fund could do it easily by removing the income cap and maintaining the benefit structure as it is. The IRS indicates that just over 50% of reported income isn't subject to SocSec taxes.
This is equivalent to raising not just the top income tax rate but a few of the upper brackets by 12.4 percentage points. Of course that would raise a lot of revenue. But people talk about this like it’s a technical adjustment when it would actually be a large change to US tax policy. Also, does that IRS stat include non-labor income?
Yes, it does; it's based on AGI. Such a change would indeed be huge but, so is the problem we face after years of Congressional avoidance behavior.
The gets a like from me just for note #5.
"While you may hear a lot of people in Washington say they are “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” it’s much more common for voters to be the opposite"
The link doesn't really show that - what it shows is that on average the economic questions they asked in their survey are ones where a majority prefer the liberal option, which the social questions are more 50/50 (if you look at the scatterplot it's basically a blurry diagonal line shifted on one axis). But that's an artifact of the questions chosen! You could easily "prove" the opposite by making the economic questions stuff like "should taxes go up" or whatever.
And while this is more subjective, my read of their questions is that the economic questions really are worse at dividing the political spectrum in the US (judging by, say, "would a moderate democrat worry about embracing the liberal answer to this question").
Thank you for pointing this out. Although, I do think "Republicans" (I really dislike that word) are more fiscally liberal than they want to do lead on, I also think the left tries to put the GOP in a box of social conservatism that isn't real. For the most part, Republicans don't really give a crap what people choose in their own time. Surveys aren't a great method for analyzing this. And voting record is also subjective. It's common practice to try to summarize any vote as a single issue.
I agree with this analysis conditional on the public's awareness that they are part of the 47% of non, net-income tax payers. Considering all the payroll taxes and income tax withholdings people stump up, I wouldn't be surprised if a big chunk of the 47% (and a bigger chunk of those inclined to vote republican) would feel they were tax payers even though they weren't. Perhaps a "Everyone should pay at least a small amount in taxes" argument would work for those who misperceive themselves as taxpayers. People don't like free rides when they aren't getting one themselves.
What polling is there on people's self-awareness of whether they pay taxes? I'd be interested in how the cross tabs would look for this message too.
I’m sure a lot of employed people who don’t pay federal income tax think they do — because they very likely do pay other taxes that are withheld from their paychecks, including payroll tax and state income tax. But Democrats don’t have to adhere to Scott’s framing. They can say things like “Republicans would raise taxes on XX million families” or “Republicans would raise taxes on a family of four making $YY thousand dollars a year” that flow from his statement.
Agreed that dems would phrase in this way. The second framing would be much better. The first framing allows people to believe the fiction they pay taxes and that other 'undeservings' are just going to have to pay "their fair share."