This afternoon, George Takei tweeted out this image. It is great and I’m pleased to share it here. (Matthew Shepard’s name is unfortunately spelled wrong.)

Phil Robertson’s anti-LGBT comments were totally offensive. And they show a creepy obsession that conservatives have with anal sex. Think about it. I assume none of the Ls are into anal sex. At least half of Bs aren’t into it. I don’t think any of the Ts are into it. So really, Granddaddy Robertson seems to only be concerned with some fraction of homosexuality. It shows that his Bible thumping is just an excuse for his intolerance. Typical American conservative Christian, “Goody! The Bible says I can hate on the gays!” It’s despicable and I’ll repeat what I said before, “In a nation that had any shame, this would be the last season of Duck Dynasty. Because no one would watch it anymore.”

But here’s the thing. I don’t find Phil Robertson’s comments on homosexuality nearly as offensive as I do his comments about the “happy blacks” of his youth. Maybe it is just because I am so used to “religious” people using their 2500 year old Bible verses to get away with their vile bigotry. Regardless, Matthew Shepard deserves to be remembered. But so does Emmett Till. So I used my meager artistic skills to create a corresponding image for him:

If there is one issue that I find most difficult to get across to conservatives, it is the idea that tax deductions are a form of welfare. The best example of this is the mortgage interest tax deduction. Conservatives almost always say something like this, “Allowing people to keep more of their own money isn’t welfare!” Sorry, but that just ain’t true. There are laws saying that we must all pay taxes. If two people who make the same amount of money pay different amounts just because one of them is buying a house, then he is getting welfare. The government might as well be sending him a check each month to help with the mortgage.

I didn’t learn this from some freaky liberal sociology teacher in college. I learned it from about the most conservative man of his generation, Milton Friedman. But I understand the difficulty with the concept. Most conservatives have this weird idea (that most won’t admit to) that taxes are a form of theft. And this idea has only gotten stronger as tax rates have gotten lower. But unless you are going to claim full anarchy with absolutely no taxes—not even for the military or police—then you agree that we have to tax.

People also get confused about how taxes are applied. A common bit of folklore goes something like this, “I got a raise, but because it put me in a higher tax bracket, I’m taking home less!” No, that’s not the way it works. The year before last, I made about $20,000. In a tax system with no special deductions (like the mortgage interest deduction), even someone who made $20 million would pay the same amount of taxes on that first $20,000. But as I know, because of the various special deductions and tax rates, that year, I paid roughly 13% in federal taxes. Mitt Romney, who made a thousand times as much paid roughly the same rate. So clearly, he was paying next to nothing on that first $20,000. That’s welfare, folks![1]

I bring this up because of a really interesting article by Matt Bruenig over at Demos, Here’s Why the US Spends More on Social Needs Than You Think. In it, he shows that if you take into account this kind of welfare, the United States spends about as much as Sweden does relative to GDP. So how is it that Sweden doesn’t have all the terribly poor people that we have? Bruenig focuses on how poorly our social spending is structured. The most notable example of this is our healthcare system where we spend almost twice as much as comparable countries, yet provide mediocre quality care to our people and none at all for about 15% of us.

But it is bigger than that. Our social spending is set up in a way to hide what’s going on. And this allows us to not provide welfare for the poor, while we provide plenty of it for the rich, like Mitt Romney. It’s interesting, because we would have a much better government if we just simplified the tax system. Yet I am absolutely against doing that. Those words—”simplify the tax system”—are code for, “Raise taxes on the poor and lower it on the rich.”

But it would help a lot if we made what is going on explicit. Instead of Mitt Romney getting taxed at only 15% on his capital gains, he would be forced to pay the normal marginal rate (39.6% on most of it). And then, the federal government could send him a welfare check for $5 million. At least then, people could decide for themselves whether it was fair that we were paying Mitt Romney a half million a month while people were living on the street—cold and hungry.

If we did this, I think things might change.

Afterword

I haven’t read the research that Bruenig is writing about, so exactly what shows up as “social spending” may be different than what I’m talking about. For example, I suspect it does not include the extra money we give out as welfare for people who make money by owning instead of working. But that doesn’t change the argument.

[1] The main reason Romney paid so little was that he didn’t work for his money. It was almost all capital gains that for some reason we think should be taxed less than money earned through work.

This is the second in a series of articles about what we can do to reduce our unacceptable levels of income and wealth inequality. The first was on the Estate Tax. This one discusses how our society’s obsession with low inflation exacerbates income and wealth inequality.

When I was in middle school, we took some kind of class on critical thinking. I remember there being a question about building a parking lot and whether it ought to be perfectly level. It shouldn’t, because you want water to drain off it. I think about that example a lot when the issue of inflation comes up. A lot of people think that having no inflation would be perfect. Some libertarians have even argued that negative inflation would be good. After all, the “good” people who saved their money would see it go up in value. What could be wrong with that?!

Well, as it happens, there is something really wrong with that. Having zero inflation (much less negative inflation) encourages people to hoard money. Instead of spending it so that people can have jobs providing products and services, the economy stagnates. Clearly, this situation is bad for income inequality. It would be disastrous for employment. But it would be bad in another way. Almost by definition, poor people owe rich people money. That amount continues to grow because of the interest they must pay. In a negative inflation situation it is even worse: the principal actually grows over time even without interest.

It should come as no surprise that the rich want inflation to be really low. But as you must know, the rich are a very small number of people. Oh, let’s say they represent about 1% of the population. So why is it that the rest of us buy into this idea that inflation ought to be kept down? Part of it is the media who are the lapdogs of the power elite. And part of it is just that the Federal Reserve is the power elite and there’s no way they are going to put the needs of the unemployed and over-extended above the “needs” of the rich. This is why they target a 2% inflation rate instead of the much more reasonable 4%.

But most people who I talk to who are concerned about inflation are not rich and powerful. (In fact, I don’t think I know anyone who fits into that category.) For them, I think it is a matter of fairness. It seems right that if you earn a dollar, that dollar ought to keep its value. What’s more, if you borrow a dollar, you should have to pay it back and not be helped out by a bunch of inflation. I get all of that. I’m a big believer in fairness. But by focusing on this kind of fairness, people are missing other kinds of unfairness.

I’ve already talked about how low inflation keeps unemployment high and hurts those who owe money. But it also hurts those who live hand to mouth. They aren’t going to see any impact of a 4% inflation rate when they spend their entire check every two weeks. The rich, who don’t have to spend all their money just to survive, will be hurt by the higher rate of inflation. Or to put it the other way: low inflation doesn’t help the poor, but it does help the rich. None of this is fair; it all helps the rich relative to the poor.

I got thinking about this because this morning, Paul Krugman wrote, “Talk to gold bugs and they’ll tell you that paper money comes from governments, which can’t be trusted not to debase their currencies.” He’s definitely right. There is almost nothing more frustrating than talking to a libertarian about monetary policy and the gold standard. What’s interesting about this is that these people are worried that the government will allow high levels of inflation (debased currency), but it is just the opposite of what they should be worried about. The government is overly worried about inflation because our government is primarily of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

Clearly, hyperinflation would be bad. But we don’t have to worry about that, because it would be as bad or worse for the rich. But trying to get the inflation rate up to 4% would do a world of good. It would help the poor reduce their debts. It would stimulate spending and thus increase employment. And it would reduce the value of the cash that the rich hold on to — encouraging them to spend and invest. A higher inflation target would help reduce income inequality.

Afterword

See also:

Kathleen Geier is doing the blogging over at Political Animal this weekend. She apparently knows a lot more about reality television than I do, which she displays in, Your Mandatory Duck Dynasty Update. She compares the bigotry on display among the Duck Dynasty clan to the open-mindedness of—Wait for it!—Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

The thought had never occurred to me, given I haven’t seen either show. But as Geier notes, how could the family not be accepting of the LGBT community when they are so involved with the beauty pageant circuit. That’s about as gay as it gets, and it is unlikely that those sets get dressed without a good deal of homosexual help. But she also sees the show in a way that is different from anyone else’s view I’ve ever heard:

I guess you would have to be tolerant. All I’ve seen of the show is a two minute clip that Andrea forced me to watch. Based upon that, how could they not be tolerant in a general sense?

But there is another aspect of this that I first discussed in, The Sad Reality of Duck Dynasty. The Duck Dynasty clan are pretenders. They are just members of a family that has been rich for generations. They are, in other words, the Romneys with long beards and camouflage. And that is just a business decision for them.

The Thompson clan, for all that I find offensive about them, really are the loud redneck Mountain Dew downers who they claim to be. And as wealthy as I know they must by now be, they are still what they always were. They are what the Robertson clan is not: authentic.

Now I have no use for either family. But I at least appreciate a bit of honesty. And what do you know: the truthful ones are also the accepting ones:

Afterword

I don’t think I’ve written about it here, but I have in the comments on other blogs. What was most offensive about Robertson’s GQ interview was his racism. It sounded just like what bigots were saying in the early 1960s, “None of our coloreds was unhappy until them northern liberals got ’em all worked up!” In a nation that had any shame, this would be the last season of Duck Dynasty. Because no one would watch it anymore.

[1] I hate that spelling. It is older than “likable.” But in the US (Which is where Political Animal comes from!) the spelling is pretty much always the newer “likable.” My project is to make English usage and spelling simpler. “Likeable” looks like something out of a Ben Jonson play. I have enough headaches!