By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Well, much to the chagrin of our Republican brothers and without any obvious help from the train wreckers themselves, their base just shrunk. For the first time in American history, more non-hispanic Caucasians died than were born. This demographic milestone hits the Right at the worst possible time. With the incredible shrinking number of minorities in its ranks (only 13% of Republicans identify themselves as a minority) GOPers could always rest assured of refilling their ranks with scores of Caucasians driven into a frenzy by racial fear mongering or to rage by claims fiscal foolishness or to just about any other emotion … just pick your own right-wing wedge issue. Couple that with the fact that last year over 50% of all babies born were non-Caucasians and that the Republican record with women is well … sad, very sad … and you’ve got a demographic disaster looming for the GOP.
Or do you? Let’s see how are our brothers (and a precious few sisters) across the ideological aisle are dealing with the problem. Why full speed ahead on blocking immigration reform (Sen. Ted Cruz); rushing to impose invasive ultrasounds in heartland places like Wisconsin (Gov. Scott Walker); budget cuts for the poor (Paul Ryan); more votes in the U.S. House on bills to ban all abortion procedures after 20 weeks regardless of rape or incest (Boehner & Cantor). These righties sure know how to woo a woman.
Are there any voices of reason on the deck of this Titanic? Well you’d hope so. The College Republicans, once the recruiting ground of bomb throwers like Newt Gingrich (in 1978 he implored them be “young, nasty people who h[ave] no respect for their elders”), now seems to be the crewman in the crow’s nest transfixed on the looming iceberg even as their older brethren play the same ol’ tune (Nearer My God to Thee was the reputed last song played on the ill-fated luxury liner–strangely appropriate now and then) that got them shut out in the last two presidential battles and lost the youth vote by 5 million votes. According to a new report by the baby Repubs, young people deemed “winnable” for Republicans increasingly are coming to see the GOP a ” closed-minded, racist, rigid, [and]old-fashioned.” (p. 69). Imagine what the “unwinnables” must think! The report also finds the GOP out-of-step with the under 25 crowd in terms of understanding young Americans reliance on social media and non-traditional news sources like Comedy Central’s’ The Daily Show to get news and hence their view of the world. Just as distressing, the Republicans are hopelessly tone-deaf to the attitudes of young voters on issues like abortion, immigration, and negative political advertising. Ignore them at your peril the collegians are screaming, but the Right just keeps chugging father right. Onward Christian soldiers!
You have to wonder how any political party can survive with shrinking numbers, unpopular views, and an institutionalized arrogance (that 47% line still resonates) a Roman emperor would envy. Maybe you don’t have wonder for very long. Ask a Whig. Oops there aren’t any.
And as for the Caucasian race in the U.S., it might be time to take a break from the rat race they so proudly created. “We’re jumping the gun on a long, slow decline of our white population, which is going to characterize this century,” William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, told the paper. “It’s a bookend from the last century, when whites helped us grow. Now it’s minorities who are going to make the contributions to our economic and population growth over the next 50 years.”
Was that a chill I just felt blowing over from the country club?
Source: Washington Post
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
Bron: On taxes, I think you mistakenly treat government like a business, when it should not be treated as such.
The point of taxation is NEVER to maximize government revenue; and sometimes the point of taxation is to discourage actions that are not beneficial to all, or to capture the societal costs of such actions.
So examples are in order. Keep in mind I am talking about an “ideal” government; not the current manifestation of government with its corruptions.
1) We need to pay people to protect us (military, or police). We need to levy taxes for that purpose, but the point of those taxes is only to pay for the level of protection the people desire; no more and no less. Ideally, we do not have to conscript or coerce citizens into becoming soldiers or police, we pay just enough to entice just enough volunteers to perform the duties we have collectively defined, in laws, as meeting our requirements for protection. In this case, taxation raises money, but a specific amount we have (indirectly) collectively agreed must be raised to accomplish objectives we want accomplished; say finding, apprehending, and incarcerating thieves. Or presenting a daunting deterrent to foreign invasion.
2) Business owners are faced with either re-investing their excess revenue into their business, or pocketing the excess revenue as profits. If we tax the latter (keeping excess revenue as profits) but do not tax the former (using excess revenue as legitimate business expenses for expansion) then the objective of the tax is not to raise a lot of revenue, but to influence the decision of the businessman toward using his excess revenue, in his own self-interest, for the more economically beneficial route of expansion instead of hoarding. We don’t care how much revenue we get, any revenue we do get can be devoted to reducing the forms of taxation described in (1), the things for which we must pay. The point of these taxations is just influence; and the higher the tax, the more influence we exert, and the less tax revenue we will receive. Zero tax revenue would be perfect influence. This is why Eisenhower seriously proposed a 100% tax on profits over a certain very high income in the aftermath of WWII, to force industrialists to reinvest in business and grow the economy to avoid confiscation of the excess.
3) Certain business practices can result in costs borne by citizens at large that cannot be traced back to a specific culpable party that can pay, so the costs ends up victimizing people that had no power to prevent their victimization. Industrial pollution is an obvious one, the toxic combination of pollutants that gave somebody brain cancer can usually not be known after the fact, but we can know that industrial pollution in general significantly increases the incidence of brain cancer, so allowing industry to pollute is a way for them to shift a hidden cost of their production onto unwilling citizenry. Not paying that cost, because it is impossible to prove the causative pollutant came from their smokestack, means they profit by indirectly causing physical harm and expenses to others. Taxing that profit to help pay for the harm and expenses can be a form of (1), paying their fair (probable) share of an expense they are creating. Taxing their emissions is a form of (2), the point is to make them emit less, and if they find a way to stop polluting altogether, we achieve our goal by collecting zero taxes on their emissions.
The goal of a business is to maximize profit (or excess revenue).
The goal of government (ideally) is never to maximize revenue; in some cases the goal is minimize the revenue from a tax (which maximizes influence). In other cases, the goal is to raise a specific amount that pays for the performance of a publicly demanded function, like police protection, food and drug safety oversight, building and fire safety oversight, road building and so forth.
Copy that, Tony.
tony c:
and thank you for the introduction. It was an interesting lecture.
Gene: I feel the same (about Hawking vs. Penrose). I think Hawking is famous in large part because of the pathos of his condition and his accomplishment in spite of it. Which is a daunting level of self-control, determination and refusal to surrender that I do not wish to demean or diminish in any way, in fact I doubt I could attain myself. In my opinion, some of his peers (like Penrose) have contributed more ideas to physics, but to far less acclaim.
Mike Spindell:
I think it is interesting but doesnt tell the whole story. I think existing regulations favor existing companies more than taxes do. In fact I think big corporations use regulations to eliminate competition.
You guys have shown me that some taxes are indeed necessary, the argument is on how much. As with everything there is a sweet spot, maximum tax/maximum revenue. I think then all interests are served.
If 10% tax brought in $100 and 70% tax brought in $80 but 30% brought in $125 and 35% brought in $115 then 30% is the sweet spot. That is the point we need to find. Why have a 70% tax rate if it doesnt bring in anymore revenue? And why have a 10% tax rate if you can bring in 25% more dollars which means the economy is still going strong.
That is my thought on it.
Bron: Awesome, I was not aware of that lecture. It was excellent. Thanks for the link.
Tony/Bron,
Personally I find Penrose’s conjecture on consciousness not only interesting but an attractive idea as well. People like to talk about Hawking because he’s famous, but I’ve long thought Penrose had more interesting ideas as a physicist.
http://www.cosmolearning.com/videos/roger-penrose-lecture-conscious-understanding-what-is-its-physical-basis-1355/
Darren: …as they are a function of neurochemical actions in the brain which at the most granular level would follow a predictable chain of events.
You do not know that; it is a matter of faith based on our currently incomplete understanding of physics. Neurons have unexplained features which are small enough to operate on a quantum mechanical level; perhaps the human brain is a network of a hundred billion quantum processors, and not predictable at all. This is not my personal idea, by the way, Roger Penrose, a world famous physicist, proposed and waves a flag for this idea.
Brains may not be as deterministic as you have been told. We (all of us) are in the position of pre-Einstein physicists, we have unexplained anomalies in physics (dark matter, dark energy, an inability to fuse relativity with quantum physics) and we need a new idea. We know our ideas fall short, but do not know how to fix them. String theory is a dead end, and nothing else is coming forward.
I happen to believe there is free will, and the universe is not deterministic. Flawed theories of physics and biology that cannot explain to me all the features of how the brain even works cannot convince me to turn away from the evidence before my eyes; namely that we CAN make choices and realize the future we envisioned.
Bron: Science isn’t very predictable at all.
But it may depend on what you mean by “science,” the products of science are models that are supposed to be predictive (or as in physics or cosmology or evolution, explanatory models that fit the known evidence). So in that sense, the products of science are very predictive; even the explanatory models have been predictive (e.g. letting us apply evolutionary pressures in the lab to grow bacteria that perform novel new functions, like breaking down toxic waste).
On the other hand, the process of science is hardly predictable, because new models, or revisions to existing models, usually require some flash of insight, some novel new idea that works out, some spark of new understanding, some new point of view. Somebody has to “see,” and to be dramatic it is truly for the first time in human history, a way to fit things together in a way nobody has ever seen before. There was a first model of the atom, a first realization of quantum behavior, a first realization of what it meant to have invented a transistor, a first blinding realization that forever fused electricity with magnetism.
Those moments of invention can be had with work, immersion, and a liberal dose of compulsive obsession, but when they come or what they will be is not predictable.
The product is predictability, by a process that requires unpredictable insights.
Forces of nature, for lack of a better phrase, is predictable but it is really a matter of granularity of the data and time. If all the factors leading to an upcoming event were known and understood (which might not be possible) then the outcome would be predictable. Lorenz’ theories into weather prediction are a good primer for this.
Some theories can hold, but it might be more philosophy than science, is whether or not there is actual randomness in the universe, meaning that are there events, perhaps on the quantum level, that could be described as being truly random. If this is actually the case where there is randomness then there is the potential for events being at the macro level being random also. But if everything is truly ordered, then the macro level is also. In that case even human decisions would be ordered and predicted as they are a function of neurochemical actions in the brain which at the most granular level would follow a predictable chain of events. But since we are incapable of perceiving much less compiling and arriving at the true answer, we might perceive this as free will.
But since we are a product of our brain’s thoughts, we are never going to be capable of absolutely accurate prediction the more the data involved and time between the formation of the question and the expectation for the arrival of the answer. But, this is rather a philosophical question.
Bron,
The scientific method allows for prediction, but I wouldn’t say it is predictable. The subject matter of study can always surprise the researcher by observations not conforming to predicted behavior. It happens all the time.
Whatever.
Gene,
Ill get back to you… I’m waiting on a response …
A well known conservative “think tank” recently counseled Republicans to stick with white people when looking for constituents.
Gene H:
the law should be predictable, fair and objective. What else do you need? Sceince is predictable by nature.
Russell,
I have been being quite civil and restrained given the circumstances and as others have noted, however, your interest in civility – which indeed hinges upon ad hominem attacks (attacking arguments is fine, attacking people, not so much) – and other blog policies is still that of observer at best unless you are personally violating the policies of this blog or are the object of violations of blog policy (as you have been in the past). In the instant situation, you are neither. Which naturally leads to the question of why are you trying to insert yourself into this situation or any other situation involving blog policy when you are neither perpetrator nor victim nor do you have any substantive say in the matter.
Gene,
Sometimes it’s just best to skip over some posts….
The field in which you play is not an interest to me….. Although it could be….
Civility is an interest to me….. Some folks regardless of status have none….
Just making a suggestion in which you turned it into an attack… There’s really no reason to do that….
But some folks are not content unless they have controversy…
Which takes me back to the statement by frank… Which are you feeding….
Or OS, don’t tell me what you believe, show me what you do and I’ll know what you believe….. Think about it Gene…. Be civil…. That’s an understanding of this blog and the only rule I recall the professor emphasizing….
Bron,
No look at the writing style …
Bron,
You’d be surprised on shoe issue. However, my books are categorized and alphabetized by author. Chaos isn’t in itself problematic. It is simply part of nature. Just so, civilization and civilized society are all based on order over chaos – from agriculture to science to law. Civilization requires the predictability of order to greater and lesser degrees.