My brother came to visit this week, and we had a big political
discussion on Sunday afternoon. My brother is a Republican who voted
early for the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket. As for myself, while I
registered as a Republican so that I could vote for Ron Paul in New
York's closed primary, I ended up voting for the Barack Obama-Joe Biden
ticket. I was thinking of voting for Jill Stein of the Green
Party, since I figured that New York would go for Obama anyway, and I
agreed more with Jill Stein's support for a single-payer health care
system and her opposition to drones, which have reportedly killed
innocent civilians. But I decided to vote for Barack Obama
because of the impact of Hurricane Sandy on New York City, a city that
provides a significant amount of the state's Democratic vote. I
feared that the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy could inhibit Democratic
voters there from getting to the polls, and so Barack Obama needed my
vote here in upstate New York.
In this post, I'd like to
talk some about my political discussion with my brother, specifically
where he could see my points, and where I could see his. I should make a
couple of things clear at the outset. First, if my brother were to
write this post, he'd probably tell the story differently from how I'm
telling it: perhaps he'd highlight where he thinks that he presented
better arguments than I did! So I'm writing this post from my own
perspective. Second, neither one of us changed the other's mind. He's
still a conservative Republican, and I'm still, well, whatever I
am----somewhat of a leftist, I guess! We have fundamentally
different worldviews. That particularly came out when we were
discussing health care: I said that I trust the government more than the
private health insurance companies, and he said that he did not. But,
while it would probably be going too far to say that we found common
ground, we did acknowledge the validity of each other's points, on
certain topics.
I'll start by listing areas in which my
brother acknowledged validity in my points (and yet calling that a
concession on his part would be going too far), sometimes with
reservations, then I will say where my brother got me thinking about
certain issues, or made me aware of things of which I was previously
unaware.
Where my brother acknowledged my points:
----My
brother could see validity in the government rejuvenating the economy by
spending money to improve our country's dilapidated infrastructure,
especially when many in the private sector are not spending money. But
he doesn't think that the government does this all that well or
efficiently, but rather that there's a significant amount of waste.
----My
brother and I were talking about pre-existing conditions. He could see
my point that a health insurance mandate could address the problem of
people getting health insurance after they become sick rather than
paying into the system beforehand. As I think about the issue some
more, though, I have some reservations about this. There are reasons
that people get health insurance after they get sick: in some cases,
they may have had health insurance but they lost their job or moved to
another state and thus lost it, and now they're sick and need to find
another insurer. That's why I think that national health
insurance or a national health insurance exchange is important: a person
can be covered, even if she loses her job or moves to another state,
plus she'd have established a track-record of paying into the system.
----My
brother said that Ronald Reagan improved a bad economic situation much
more quickly than Barack Obama did. I responded that we really cannot
replicate what Ronald Reagan did and expect an economic boom to result.
Reagan reduced income tax rates from high rates to much lower rates,
and that had a more stimulative effect than we would have were we today
to reduce income tax rates, since income tax rates are already rather
low. My brother could see my point there, and he added that interest
rates came down from high to low during Reagan's Presidency, which was
stimulative, whereas interest rates are already low today.
Where I acknowledged my brother's points:
----My
brother seemed not to buy into the notion that tax cuts would work the
economic magic that a number of conservatives and libertarians think.
Or at least he was realistic in that he did not see tax cuts as the
end-all, be-all when it comes to stimulating the economy. But he also
thought that tax increases on the rich would not help the economy, for
that could discourage investment. He also said that there are small
businesses making over $200,000 a year, and a tax increase on those
making that amount or more could hit them especially hard. When I
responded with the typical Democratic talking-point that the vast
majority of small businesses make under $200,000 a year, he replied that
small businesses making over $200,000 a year still employ a lot of
people, and thus a tax increase on them could discourage hiring.
I've long struggled with this issue on this blog. I recognize that
taxing small businesses making over $200,000 a year could discourage
hiring. At the same time, I believe that people who make more money
than they know what to do with should pay a higher income tax rate. Is there a way to increase income tax rates on those making over
$200,000 a year while exempting small businesses from that tax
increase? Perhaps the problem there would be that rich people could
then dodge the tax increase by incorporating themselves. I don't know.
----My
brother argued that increasing the corporate tax rate could encourage
companies to go overseas, where the corporate tax rate is lower. He
also said that rich people can always find loopholes, and he also stated
that corporations often pass on the cost of higher corporate taxes onto
their consumers. My brother is a supporter of the fair tax: replace
income and corporate taxes with a national sales tax, which would have
exemptions for the low-income. Whereas corporations can dodge paying a
significant amount of taxes, the argument runs, a national sales tax
would be collected when people make a purchase. I've struggled some with this issue on this blog before. One point that stood out to me in Mitt Romney's book, No Apology,
is that corporations don't just buckle under and pay higher corporate
taxes. What that means is that raising the corporate tax rate won't
necessarily bring in a lot of revenue. I believe that we do
need revenue, though, for a social safety net is important, as is paying
off the deficit, and other things (i.e., defense). I think of
European countries and Canada: by and large, they have low corporate tax
rates, but they raise money for their generous social safety net in
other ways. Many European countries have a Value-Added Tax (VAT), for
example. Perhaps this approach can preserve the best of both worlds:
corporations are attracted by the low corporate tax rate, resulting in
more jobs for the area, and yet money is raised for the social safety
net. I still have questions about the national sales tax and
the VAT, however, but I'll save my discussion of that for a future post.
----My
brother knows far more than I do about alternative energy. He argued
that nuclear power and wind and solar power are very expensive, in terms
of construction. He also said that we are not far along in terms of
solar power, and that the government should not subsidize companies when
they cannot produce a cheap solar-powered car at this point. He did
see some promise in hybrid cars, however, and he noted that oil
companies themselves are doing research on solar power. Moreover, he
was open to the government spending money on research. I'm not
sure how to respond to my brother's arguments, but they do tell me that
there are challenges in the area of pursuing alternative energy.