Former NYT Reporter Whines U.S. 'Least Generous' Industrial Nation - But He Means Social Programs
Former New York Times economics reporter Eduardo Porter’s signed NYT editorial Monday left no doubt where his political sympathies lay: "A Budget Without Core Purposes, Taxation Without Compassion."
President Obama trusts America’s generous and compassionate nature, that our rugged individualism is tempered by a belief that we’re all connected. In his speech on budget reform on April 13, he celebrated "our belief that those who benefited most from our way of life can afford to give back a little bit more."
The president’s faith in Americans’ sense of common purpose is uplifting. But it does not fit the history of American budgetary politics.
I don’t just mean Tea Partiers’ revulsion at the government spending "our money," or Republican Paul Ryan’s Reverse Robin Hood gambit to cut trillions from spending on social programs in order to pay for a tax cut for the rich.
The budgetary policy of the United States has been the least generous in the industrial world for a very long time.
Tax revenues in the United States have not reached 30 percent of gross domestic product since at least 1965. Today they amount to only 24 percent of G.D.P. In Britain, by contrast, they are 34 percent; in Sweden, 46 percent. And our government spending on social programs is equally puny. In 2007 Britain spent 25 percent more, as a share of its economy. Germany spent almost 60 percent more.
Porter, now on the paper's editorial board, conflates charity, which is voluntary, with taxes, which are mandatory, as if someone's compassion should be measured based on how much money they want other people to hand over to the federal government:
But perhaps he shouldn’t trust Americans’ generosity and compassion to simply carry the day on Capitol Hill. To build the America he extols he is going to have to fight for it.
In October 2009, Porter wondered why life couldn’t be more like a Ralph Nader novel: "Maybe the jolt of billion-plus losses can spur plutocrats to change. Ralph Nader just wrote a novel called ‘Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!’ in which Mr. Buffett (already a major philanthropist), Ross Perot and a few other billionaires go to Maui to ‘redirect’ society onto the right path. Warren Beatty gets to run California. Wal-Mart workers unionize. Corporate greed is brought to heel. There is no sign of such enlightenment on Wall Street."
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Comments
The only thing we're missing...
Submitted by SueDi on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 12:20pm.
is socialized healthcare. A VAT tax. That's it as far as I know. Do we want to go down the path of gov't decisions instead of our doctor's, rationing of care, inability to find a doctor as they retire or have too many patients, gov't requiring you buy health care, penalties, possible imprisonment? (Oh, that's right, we won't be able to be imprisoned in California - overcrowding.) Sigh. Yes, it sounds SO good.
Taxation != Charity
Submitted by Dave81 on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 12:38pm.
Thank you for making that point! Taking more money from other people is NOT charity. If you want to see realy charity, go down to your local church and watch people voluntarily put money in the plate to help others.
And I'm sick of people comparing our economy to other countries as some sign of failure. Good for Britain, Germany, Sweeden, et. al. Show me in the Constitution where the founding fathers expected us to spend more on lazy people than European nations...
dissolve DNC to pay down debt
Submitted by j17ghs on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 12:48pm.
The weekly Dow Jones financial publication, Barron's -- which is increasingly socialist and now only slightly better than a supermarket tabloid -- recently published a hit piece on Paul Ryan's budget plans. Here's a letter I sent to Barron's that the editors never published.
"Your May 2 cover implies that both political parties share equally in the causes and resolution our country's financial crisis. To report 'that both sides do it' almost always misleads the public in favor of Democrats.
"But Democrats have refused since the '80s Grace Commission report on Social Security to reform that self-bankrupting system and more recently Bush's plan to privatize the program -- while preserving benefits for retirees and those nearing retirement -- would have made government accountable to individuals whose money they now place in a giant slush fund.
"FDR's administration created and LBJ's administration used legislation that allowed Social Security funds to be mingled with the general budget on the premise that government could spend taxpayer money for anything deemed to be for the good of 'general welfare.' Such plans helped to finance LBJ's 'War on Poverty' that, in part, diverted funds to anti-Western groups (dare you allow me to say, Marxists?) that have worked since to dismantle our financial system, including industrial bases such as Detroit, and to spread propaganda first at the university level and now among children in preschools.
"Such actions and illicit funding have contributed greatly to voter registration and election fraud, reduced our justice system to a 'legal' system, helped to fund illegal immigration and expand welfare states, enabled socialist pedagogues to teach nonsense science that prevents us from using domestic natural resources and much worse."
Tax cuts don't have to be
Submitted by robert108 on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 1:11pm.
Tax cuts don't have to be "paid for", since they result in increased revenues to the Treasury. The Dems are in full Marxist class struggle mode these days.
"...tax cut for the rich, tax
Submitted by richflanj on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 1:31pm.
"...tax cut for the rich, tax cut for the rich, tax cut for the rich." Ahh, the sound of the liberal broken record.
The liberal left just doesn't
Submitted by jessieH on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 3:18pm.
The liberal left just doesn't get it. If the American Citizens wanted to fund it, it would be funded. But social projects are always showing their hidden agenda. Look at AARP. They are stealing from their members to give to a political party that most seniors aren't a part of. Unions give big money to the Democrat party, yet their members can do nothing about it. Some don't even know about it.
I Hate Marxists
Submitted by rammingspeed on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 5:11pm.
Porter is just another garden variety stupid, ignorant jazz bag from the agitating, Marxist left. He and his kind are the mortal enemies of America. But we're pushing back. I think that's why he's intensifying the rhetoric: the left is on their heels with the general populace, more than they have been in a long, long time.
taxes
Submitted by ferv888 on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 5:50pm.
Again, when lib reporters press the tax issue, the answer should be in a form of a question, Gee Matt, George, Mika, Wolf, Andrea, did you use the long form for your taxes to take advantage of your deductions to lessen your taxes???? Did you write a check for a larger amount than you owed since you think we ought to have more taxes. No, then shut the hell up about taxes. Turn the tables on these idiots, do not take this crap.
FERV888
Eduardo Porter is selfish, not generous
Submitted by needle on Tue, 05/24/2011 - 9:50pm.
“I don’t just mean Tea Partiers’ revulsion at the government spending ‘our money,’…"
No, Mr. Porter, you do not get it; we Tea Partiers find it morally repugnant to spend our children’s, grandchildren’s, and great grandchildren’s money on your socialism. I do not know if Mr. Porter actually has children; but whether he does or not, he does not act like it.
Mr. Ported calls spending the future generations’ money on his political projects being “generous;” that is what I call selfish.
- Looking forward to the self-annihilation of the Manipulated Stories Machine.
A Ralph Nader novel?
Submitted by drsamherman on Wed, 05/25/2011 - 9:51am.
Now there is a documentary evidence of dissociative disorder that we psychiatrists do not often find in such elaboration and content. We see a few dribbles of paranoiac fantasies like journal entries, notes, letters, scribblings on the walls, etc., but a whole novel? Wow.
As for Porter's budget comparisons, he forgets that the majority of health care delivered outside of the social welfare systems in the United States is through employer-sponsored plans. It could also be very easily argued that the size of our defense budget is in response to commitments made in Europe, Asia and other areas that have the luxury of having to spend far less on their own defense as a result - or so says my political scientist neighbor.