Special mention
Cartoon of the day
Posted: 2 July 2017 in UncategorizedTags: profits, rich, cartoon, United States, immigration, oil, Republicans, tax cuts, Monopoly, GOP, Trump, Amazon, refugees
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Cartoon of the day
Posted: 1 July 2017 in UncategorizedTags: Amazon, cartoon, debts, healthcare, immigration, internet, labor, Monopoly, Republicans, rural
Marx and libertarians
Posted: 30 June 2017 in UncategorizedTags: economy, freedom, history, libertarian, Marx, private, private property, progress, technology
There are plenty of reasons why contemporary libertarians might want to read Karl Marx—and at least one reason why they wouldn’t.
Chris Dillow suggests libertarians “would be surprised by a lot of Marx” and offers three reasons why they should read him.
One is that Marx saw economics as a historical process.
One implication of this for libertarians is that they must ask: what material economic basis would make our ideas more popular? I’d argue that one such basis is greater equality, as this would diminish demands for statist regulation.
A second is Marx’s view of the relationship between property rights and technical progress.
This might speak to our current secular stagnation. Why are productivity growth and capital spending so weak? Might one reason be that the fear of future losses from competition is deterring investment? Or that excessively tight intellectual property laws are restricting innovation? Marx poses the question: how should property rights alter to foster growth? This surely should interest libertarians.
The third reason lies in Marx’s attitudes about the expansion of the realm of freedom.
Marx’s main gripe with capitalism wasn’t so much that it was unfair but that it thwarted our freedom to develop our human potential. Work, instead of being a source of self-expression, is oppressive and alienating under capitalism.
According to Dillow, libertarians should read Marx because, in all three cases, he poses some questions to them that should sharpen their thinking.
I agree.* But, as I explained back in 2012, there’s at least one reason why Marx would infuriate libertarian readers—because of their sense of the right of private individuals to do what they like on and with their property.
Marx, in chapter 6 of volume 1 of Capital, presents an analysis of private power to which libertarians are—and, I suspect, always will be—blind:
This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all.
On leaving this sphere of simple circulation or of exchange of commodities, which furnishes the “Free-trader Vulgaris” with his views and ideas, and with the standard by which he judges a society based on capital and wages, we think we can perceive a change in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae. He, who before was the money-owner, now strides in front as capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his labourer. The one with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business; the other, timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding.
*Although I can’t agree with Dillow’s suggestion that readers should start volume 1 of Capital at chapter 10, and turn to the first nine chapters last. In my view, readers should begin with the first three chapters, on the commodity, where Marx presents the initial steps in his critique of political economy. In fact, every time I teach Capital, I run the risk of rushing through the remaining material precisely because I find so much to present to contemporary students about commodities and markets in that first section.
Cartoon of the day
Posted: 30 June 2017 in UncategorizedTags: profits, war, cartoon, corporations, Republicans, healthcare, Titanic, terrorism, GOP, politicians, Trumpcare
Cartoon of the day
Posted: 29 June 2017 in UncategorizedTags: cartoon, deaths, drugs, Medicaid, Mitch McConnell, muslims, opioids, Paul Ryan, rich, segregation, Supreme Court, tax cuts, travel ban, Trump, Trumpcare
Death, taxes, and Trumpcare
Posted: 28 June 2017 in UncategorizedTags: 1 percent, deaths, health insurance, Obamacare, Senate, tax cuts, Trumpcare
According to Donald Trump, “Nobody Knew Health Care Could Be So Complicated.” But the latest version of the plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, negotiated behind closed doors and finally publicly presented by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans, isn’t very complicated. In fact, it’s quite simple: the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017 trades the health of tens of millions of Americans for tax cuts that would be captured by a tiny group at the top.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill would increase the number of people who are uninsured by 22 million in 2026 relative to the number under current law, only slightly fewer than the increase in the number of uninsured estimated for the House-passed legislation. By 2026, an estimated 49 million people would be uninsured, compared with 28 million who would lack insurance that year under current law.
Moreover, the increase in the number of uninsured people would be disproportionately larger among older people with lower income—particularly people between 50 and 64 years old with income less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level. That’s largely because of the cuts to Medicaid, which would result in 15 million fewer Medicaid enrollees by 2026 than projected under current law. The Office also estimates that, by 2026, 7 million fewer people would obtain coverage through the nongroup market—because the penalty for not having insurance would be eliminated and, starting in 2020, because the average subsidy for coverage in that market would be substantially lower for most people currently eligible for subsidies (and for some people that subsidy would be eliminated entirely).
Tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of additional deaths will occur as a result of the enormous increase in people without health insurance.
As Clio Chang succinctly states:
If we send people to war, people will die. If we consign people to live in poverty, people will die. If we take away health insurance, people will die.
And what will Americans get in exchange for those cuts in healthcare coverage and additional deaths?
According to the Tax Policy Center, nearly 45 percent of the benefit of the tax cuts proposed in the Senate bill (much as in the bill the House passed) would go to the top 1 percent of households, those making $875,000 or more.
The lowest income 20 percent of households (that will make about $28,000 or less in 2026) would receive an average tax cut of about $180, or 1 percent of their after-tax income. Middle-income households (that will make $55,000-$93,000) would receive an average tax cut of $280, raising their after-tax incomes by about 0.4 percent.
By contrast, the top one percent of households (who will be making $875,000 or more) are in line for an average tax cut of more than $45,000, raising their after-tax incomes by 2 percent. And those in the top 0.1 percent (who will be making $5 million or more) would receive an average tax cut of nearly $250,000, boosting their after-tax incomes by 2.5 percent.
In the coming weeks, Senate Republicans will be debating details of the proposed healthcare plan and cutting deals to get some of their number to drop their opposition and vote with the leadership. That may get complicated (and already has, causing McConnell to delay a vote until after the 4th of July recess).
However, when it comes to death and taxes, there is no such complication: the Senate plan would take away health coverage from 22 million people, and likely kill tens of thousands of low-income Americans, in order to create an enormous tax cut that would largely benefit the nation’s highest income households.