When the founding fathers spoke of “militias,” they were not referring to a bunch of yahoos running around in the woods with paint on their faces outside of state control.
They were referring to a citizen army under state control.
So is “militia” just the old-time word for what our army is today?
No.
A standing or “regular” army is one made up of professional, full-time soldiers like the US Army, the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force. And it’s permanent, meaning you don’t disband the army when the fighting is done.
A militia back in those days was something completely different.
The problem of a standing army
The founding fathers knew they needed to provide for the common defense, but they saw standing armies controlled by a central government as an immediate threat to the liberty the new union sought to preserve.
Why would they think that?
Easy. History was littered with case after case where standing armies had become a law unto themselves and oppressed the populace. One glaring example is what happened to the Roman empire. It suffered centuries where this faction and then that faction of the army was in control, and it brought nothing but a continual procession of civil wars and bloodshed.
History also showed that even if the military didn’t take over, kings and queens were happy to wield standing armies to impose their will and oppress the people. Remember: the world then was ruled by monarchies. The founders had never seen a standing army wielded by any other type of power.
So the founders didn’t want to give a president or any other central authority that power. They feared doing so would only pave the way to the ruin of the new nation they sought to form.
So if you don’t have a standing army, how do you defend your country?
The fyrd
The founding fathers thought they saw a solution in a tradition of duty that went back hundreds of years in England. In the days when the Saxons ruled England, the kings and dukes would muster and deploy the fyrd to help them fight their wars.
The fyrd was made up of all able-bodied free males between certain ages, regardless of their vocation. It was their duty to provide their own arms and defend the land when called by their leaders. So this was an army made up of farmers, tanners, smiths, tailors, etc.
But the fyrd wasn’t a standing army. Nor was it populated with full-time soldiers. This citizen army was to be called out when needed, and when the crisis was over, it was disbanded, and the men went back to their vocations.
The militia scheme
The founders took this idea and tweaked it. Back in the Saxon days, the king controlled the fyrd. In this new scheme, the United States would rely on a fyrd (which they called a militia), but the powers to control it would be split between the president, Congress, and the States.
First, Congress, not the president, was the only authority that could declare war and summon the state militias. So the president would be the commander in chief when the militia was active. But the minute Congress decided to end a war and disband the militia, that army dissolved, leaving the president as commander in chief of only the tiny number of troops that had been authorized as the regular army (less than 1,000 at the time).
Second, while the Federal government would provide the weapons the militia would use when it mustered them for war, the state governments would be the ones to appoint the officers and train the soldiers. You can’t run an army without officers. So this would prevent the Federal government from taking control by stacking the army leadership with those loyal to a despot president or Congress.
So the militia was supposed to be the main force that fought our wars, and it was supposed to be temporary. It’s true that Congress did authorize a standing army, but it was tiny. And with this setup, the founders figured we’d have the army we’d need, but we’d avoid the problems standing armies had posed in the past.
So militias, as thought of by the founders in the 1700s, were not groups outside the government’s control. They were temporary citizen armies. And power over them was broken up between the president, Congress, and the States so no one group or person could wield them tyrannically.
1791 and The Bill of Rights
Accordingly, the founders wrote the articles and sections of the Constitution in 1787 to set all of this up. However, many anti-federalists were concerned that the Constitution didn’t go far enough to protect the rights of individuals and limit the power of the Federal government. In fact, many of the founders were so concerned about the issue that they refused to ratify the Constitution as it was.
The only way they’d sign on is with the promise of the Bill of Rights. When they knew that bill was forthcoming, delegates from nine of the original thirteen states ratified the Constitution. The delegates of two other states waited until the document was produced. The final two (North Carolina and Rhode Island) waited until 1791 when the Bill of Rights, which includes the second amendment, was passed.
So let’s look at the language of the Second Amendment in light of what we know about the fear the founders had of standing armies.
“A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”
Why did they include this? It was not because they wanted the citizens to be able to hunt or protect themselves with guns. They figured that was a given. They included this amendment because they concluded that an armed citizenry would make it impossible for tyranny to arise.
Noah Webster, a Federalist, stated the idea this way when trying to persuade Pennsylvania to ratify the Constitution:
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive”
So the second amendment was included in the Bill of Rights because enough of the founders feared that the Constitution could be read in a way that would allow the Federal government to disarm the populace. Disarming the populace would open the way to a standing army under Federal control. And that would open the way to tyranny.
When all was said and done, the founders separated the power of the military in this way:
- Only Congress could declare war and muster the militia
- Only Congress could finance it
- There would be no standing army to speak of
- Only the states could appoint officers to the militia
- The government was forbidden to infringe on the rights of individuals to keep and bear arms
So what happened?
Militias didn’t work
The problem is the militia didn’t work well enough to actually provide for the common defense.
It didn’t work during the Revolutionary War. The republic had to create the Continental Army. That army was supported by the militias, but the colonists found they couldn’t rely on the militias alone. They had to have the regular army to fight the British.
After the war, the Continental Army was disbanded, but the militias simply weren’t good enough to face the threats the new nation faced, and George Washington himself openly lamented it. The troops took a licking in 1791 at the battle of St. Claire’s and then time and again during the War of 1812.
Heck, militias didn’t even work in the days of the fyrd. In those days, the Saxon and Norman kings relied on their house warriors (their standing army) and mercenaries for most of the work. They only supplemented with the fyrd.
1792
After the defeat in 1791, the early leaders concluded they needed a regular army with the training and skill it possessed. So in 1792 Congress authorized the creation of the First Legion of the United States, a standing army of 5,190 men. The legion was renamed “The United States Army” in 1796.
In 1792 Congress also passed the Militia Acts. The acts were written to expire in two years. But Congress wrote another in 1795 to replace them. These laws authorized the president to called out the militia “whenever the United States shall be invaded, or be in imminent danger of invasion” and “whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act.”
So a mere five years after the Constitution was first ratified, and a year after the Bill of Rights, Congress dramatically increased the size of the nation’s standing army and gave the President the authority to call out the militia! It’s clear that right from the beginning the militia scheme started showing some cracks.
Today
The First Legion was small. But it grew again in 1808, and then again during the war of 1812. And it continued to grow slowly, then ballooned in the 1900s until we now have more than a million troops in the armed forces of the US.
The National Guard is what the militias of the 1800s transformed into in the early 1900s, but, wouldn’t you know it, the National Guard is now mostly under the control of the Federal government too.
What does this mean?
It means we now have the most powerful standing army the world has ever known and almost no militia. It means our military is a complete 180 of what the founders envisioned.
I’m not saying it’s bad. I love our military.
I’m merely pointing out that militias back then meant a certain thing and the founders wanted them for a certain reason. And that we have completely replaced that arrangement with the exact opposite.
As for tyranny, we still have armed citizens. Maybe this is enough to deter tyranny as Webster claimed. Although the disparity between what the citizens can arm themselves with now and what the regular army has is nothing like it was in the 1700s. So maybe there are other laws and aspects of our culture that have prevented it. Maybe it’s both.
Either way, it’s important to understand what the original militias were, why the founders wanted them, and what the second amendment was all about.
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Helpful articles
US Constitution – Provisions for the military
Here are all of the parts of the original seven articles of the Constitution that deal with the military.
Article 1 – The Congress
Section 8
This section gives Congress seventeen powers. Six of these have to with the common defense. Those military powers granted are:
- To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
- To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
- To provide and maintain a Navy;
- To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
- To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; [notice there are only three cases that warrant the calling forth of the militia]
- To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
Section 10
This section prevents the States from doing thirteen things. Three of these have to do with the military.
“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
Article 2 – The President
Section 2
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States;”
Article 4 – The States
Section 4
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;”
I like how you think, man. Now to actually get other people to do this.
It may require a Vulcan mind meld.
Well said. I especially like the idea of taking away the power to levy taxes from congress.
John, you make me laugh while communicating important stuff ™. Thank you.
You’re welcome, guys. Spread the word.
I recommend reading Joseph Stiglitz, or at least listening to some interviews with him (he’s happy to criticise Obama, if you’re concerned that he’ll let politics get in the way of economics). He is a professor of and has a Nobel prize in economics, something that rather outweighs a fact sheet paid for by Romney.
Also, I suggest checking up on what Warren Buffet is saying, because he knows a whole lot more about money than anyone in either campaign.
Heath,
What specifically is it that you want to suggest is wrong with the idea of balancing the federal budget? And reducing the debt? Or did you have some other point to make? Stiglitz has written many things. I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Please provide more info 🙂
As for the Nobel awards, I take them with a grain of salt. Case in point: Obama’s award for the peace prize before he’d done a thing. When awards are based on big doses of ideology instead of results only, they tend to mean less to me.
As for Buffet, what he’s a genius at is finding undervalued companies and purchasing them to make a profit. And I can guarantee you that those companies do NOT run year after year deficits. They do NOT carry debt versus cash and income anywhere even in the same planet as what the US government does. For example: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2010ar/2010ar.pdf If Buffet is suggesting our debt and spending position is grand, then I find his comments disingenuous. Actions speak louder than words. If we follow Buffet’s lead, we would run the federal government in a fiscally responsible manner. What specifically is he saying that you find compelling?
I do know he made comments about taxes on the rich, the so-called “Buffet rule.” Maybe you’re talking about that? The problem is that he himself admits that’s a gimmick. As for the notion that the rich are paying less taxes than the last few decades, it’s all flim-flam.
The effective tax rate, what they really paid as opposed to the statutory rate, shows that the rich are paying about as much as they have been all along: “For people whose income ranked between the top 1 percent and top 0.5 percent, the effective tax rate for individual, corporate, payroll and estate was:
34.0 percent in 1960,
36.1 percent in 1970,
37.6 percent in 1980,
31.5 percent in 1990,
35.7 percent in 2000 and
31.3 percent in 2004.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/jun/29/barack-obama/barack-obama-says-tax-rates-are-lowest-1950s-ceos-/
The rich already pay most of the taxes anyway.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2011-10-06/income-tax-nonpayment/50676912/1
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/19/chart-of-the-week-nearly-half-of-all-americans-dont-pay-income-taxes/
But the issue isn’t taxes. The issue is spending. And the beauty of the Romney graphic is that it makes our Federal spending immediately understandable.
Hi John,
Sorry, I was trying to avoid getting too wordy. I didn’t want to get into it too much as it isn’t my election, but as someone trying to set up a business I’m paying close attention to how the policies of your politicians might effect my chances. Besides, there are political parties over here that are saying the same things, so I get to hear about it all twice :).
Basically, the Romney info ignores things like Obama already slashing hundreds of billions of dollars from the budget and trying to get through a whole host of programs to boost the economy, which the Republican Party blocked, no matter how much Obama tried to negotiate with them.
The figures are also based on faulty economics. Deficit spending while your economy is running well is idiotic, there’s no question of that. But as people like Stiglitz have pointed out, spending is the key to overcoming a failing economy, while cutting spending will only amplify the problem – for example, look at Greece. For a contrast, check how the Great Depression was overcome.
I just thought, given the philosophy of conservative groups still focused on budgets and not jobs, it would be good to give an alternative view. Hence, Warren Buffet. What we need (here as well as over there, although not as desperately here) is comprehensive tax reform, so that the conditions by which the wealthy avoid tax don’t come up anymore. But for some reason, conservatives focus on the ‘gimmick’ part rather than the ‘step in the right direction’ part.
Um, those links tell me that poor people tend not to pay income tax. Poor people don’t have much income, so they *can’t* pay it, can they? But, as those links state, they do pay a host of other taxes.
Those links also state the percentage of people earning over $75,000 not paying income taxes has increased 12,000% in recent years, with over a thousand millionaires not paying a cent in 2009. Reads to me like an increasing number of wealthy people aren’t doing their part to support your nation.
So, assuming those figures are accurate, I’m not clear on how they undermine the Buffet Rule. It’s not true reform, but it’s a start. Maybe the rich pay more tax, but they *should* given that they posses greater wealth and a lower propensity to consume – and it’s consumption, not investment, that drives an economy. You can spend a hundred billion dollars building a factory, but if no one is able to afford its products, that factory is a very expensive tin shed.
The Buffet Rule wouldn’t fix the budget, but it would mean that the rich are at least paying something approaching the average percentage-which would reduce the deficit, while having the least impact on spending.
Romney’s tax plan, by contrast, is to take a thousand dollars per year off the table of already struggling middle-class families, while extending tax breaks for the rich.
So I kinda want middle class families to be better off. And, hey, if they do get better off, the rich can sell more stuff to them, ending up richer again anyway :D.
Heath,
Wordy responses are always welcome here 🙂
PEOPLE NOT PAYING TAXES
The fact that more of those in the $75k – 100k range are not paying income taxes bugs me too. But that’s still the middle class here. Not the rich. I think you and I both agree that the tax system needs to be overhauled. However, my view is not to soak the rich. Look at my numbers again. The top 1% are being taxed what they’ve always paid. But they are now paying a larger portion of the taxes.
My view is that everyone who makes money in this system needs to have skin in the game. Everyone should be contributing to our defense and police force and feel the weight of the taxes. If you have no income, you can be exempt. If you’re not, you need to contribute. Even if it’s only 20 bucks.
I am totally against people getting a free ride because they essentially spend other people’s money. Not only do I find that immoral, but it introduces huge inefficiencies as we see with health insurance. It wastes.
DEBT SPENDING
As for debt spending, there are smart economists on both sides of this issue. To this point, however, I haven’t seen an argument on the more debt side that compels me.
Debt spending doesn’t make sense on a micro scale. The Romney numbers aren’t lies. That’s what our current position is. Any family trying to spend that way is on the fast train to bankruptcy. Any business as well. But somehow people think when we get to a macro-economic scale it’s good?
You said you’re in a small business. You and I both know that a LITTLE debt can help when you’re investing in something that has good potential to make money or in a dry spell. But when you start getting high levels of debt your risk of bankruptcy sky rockets because the cost of debt does not care about the variations in your cash flow. And because a higher portion of your earnings goes to servicing the debt, you cannot invest those dollars on things to make your business grow.
This is how my dad lost his multi-million dollar business. This is why most small businesses go out of business—they don’t manage their cash flow. This is why families go bankrupt. Again and again and again high debt levels lead to ruin. We all know how Greece got to where it is—debt spending. Why in the world would we think it would be a good idea to push ourselves even closer to their situation?
As for the Great Depression, there are many economists who believe that Roosevelt’s spending actually prolonged the depression. So I don’t know that’s a good example.
I understand that making huge cuts in government debt spending will send shocks through the US economy. So I don’t know if it’s better to go cold turkey or slowly reduce. But I don’t see adding more debt as the answer.
BTW, as for blocked spending cuts, the Democrats haven’t submitted a budget for years. The Democrats had control during Bush’s last years and the first of Obama’s. No spending cuts. Instead, spending went through the roof. I don’t blame just them. The Republicans during the Bush years thought debt spending was a good thing as well. But the Romney numbers show the situation we’re in. Obama is not talking about cutting spending. He’s talking about more debt spending because he’s bought into those ideas. To me it’s crazy talk.
BAD ALLOCATION
And it’s not just crazy because of the debt. It’s crazy because government allocation causes problems all by itself.
There’s a fixed amount of money in the system, unless government prints more, which then devalues what’s out there. But let’s say they don’t. If we don’t increase debt, the choice is to either leave the money in the hands of the consumers and let them spend it on what they want or take it from them and have the government decide what to spend it on.
Time and time again we’ve seen that it’s impossible for governments to allocate the dollars more efficiently than the millions of consumers. Consumer allocation may not be perfectly efficient, but it’s a heck of a lot more efficient than government allocation. When a few people in government allocate you get all the waste and scarcity that is commonly associated with programs like those in the old USSR. This has happened over and over in India, China, Sierra Leone, etc.
But the proponents of debt spending don’t want to just have the government allocate. No, they think it’s a good idea to go borrow a whole bunch of money to allocate.
I know the debt-spender idea is to stimulate growth in the economy. The extra dollars will prime the pump. But all that does is artificially inflate demand if you give it to consumers. Or artificially deflate the cost of debt and investment if you give it to companies. And then you add the waste of government allocation on top of all that.
I think a perfect example of this is what happened with the subprime mortgages and debt crisis that started this whole mess. The US government told Fannie Mae et al to give loans to at risk groups and they’d insure them. They would allocate dollars to this great cause. This created an artificially reduced cost of debt. And people who should never had had those loans snapped it up. It suggested to the rating companies that these bad loans weren’t as bad as they really were, after all, Uncle Sam was insuring them. So their ratings were artificially high. And after a number years all those artificial price reductions couldn’t be maintained and this exploded into the mess we’re in.
So I’m with you and am totally for growing the economy. I just don’t see debt-spending and more government allocation as the answer.
Maybe the rich pay more tax, but they *should* given that they posses greater wealth and a lower propensity to consume – and it’s consumption, not investment, that drives an economy. You can spend a hundred billion dollars building a factory, but if no one is able to afford its products, that factory is a very expensive tin shed.
I agree that consumption drives the economny. And I like your tin shed example. But I don’t see how soaking the rich grows the economy. Besides, the rich already pay more dollars total and a greater % of their income. Do you know anyone making $50,000 paying 31-34% of their income on payroll and income taxes?
And I don’t see how soaking corporations grows the economy either. Furthermore, what any CEO might make represents a fraction of the money a well-run business pours into its employees and vendors–giving people $$ to increase consumption. Look at any income statement. The bulk of the money goes to wages and investments and cost of goods sold.
I need more details to see how soaking the rich and corporations grows the economy.
Hi John,
Thanks for engaging in the conversation, I’m kinda used to hearing people on both sides screaming at each other without actually listening, and I was worried that joining in would mean I received more of the same. Very pleased that you are willing to talk rationally :). You raise some good points, although I’m still going to disagree on the whole (respectfully, I hope). Sorry it’s taken a while to reply, but being a full-time and simultaneously trying to start up a business seems to involve a lot of work.
PEOPLE NOT PAYING TAXES
From the sources you gave me:
“As of 2009, more than 20,000 filers making more than $200,000 a year — 1,470 of whom had adjusted gross income of more than $1 million — owed no income tax”
Ergo, a large and growing number of people who really are rich paid no income tax. Over 1,000 millionaires not paying a cent of income tax. That’s equivalent to many, many times that number of middle class people not paying a cent, and they’re people whose propensity to spend their money is quite low – their propensity to store it in a foreign bank is much, much higher, though.
I agree that everyone should pay their fair share, middle class or higher. What concerns me is that many groups want to extend tax breaks for the rich, according to the disproved fantasy that this will boost your economy, while focusing on increasing tax for the middle class.
DEBT SPENDING
Please link me an economist on the other side, as I’ve only heard it from politicians and their employees. If you look at history, though, it’s apparent that the rich have regularly held unbelievable amounts of wealth. That’s how it worked for thousands of years. It didn’t trickle down and create widespread economic growth. That occurred when nations started taxing the rich and the middle class started to grow.
Yes, debt is bad, but if it’s a choice between a collapsing economy (and therefore even less government revenue) and spending on things which boost your economy, then would it be better to have people with jobs and debt, or people with no jobs and an almost-as-big-debt?
Greece got to where it is through stupid deficit spending. But then they vastly cut their costs, putting thousands of people out of work – and their economy fell hard, making the problem even worse. The USA’s situation isn’t that much different from Greece’s a few years ago, and if you use the same strategies, I see no evidence that your outcomes would be any better: you’d still end up with your already-huge debt, but no economy to pay it off.
Please link one of those economists, too, because I’ll need a lot of convincing to believe that employing thousands upon thousands of people somehow hurt the economy. And it wasn’t just the USA, it was nations around the world like Australia. The resultant growth was quite consistent.
Anyway, we both agree deficit is bad. I’ve never said it wasn’t. But there is a solution other than cutting costs: increasing revenues. I’d say removing the loopholes letting those millionaires not pay income tax would go a long way.
Also, please check up on the legislation Obama has been pushing in recent years. Last time I looked at a list, it was quite extensive.
BAD ALLOCATION
The trick with consumer allocation is that while it’s more efficient, consumers are self-interested. If your kids are going to a private school, you get no direct benefit from supporting a public school. If you aren’t sick right now, you get no benefit from private health insurance. If you’re an employer and employees are a dime a dozen, insuring your employees is just unwanted paperwork. If you want a reference, go back to the guy who developed economic theory in the first place: Adam Smith. He wrote that these things should not be entrusted to consumers.
What you need to be doing is looking at nations that are more efficient with their spending. For example, “Comparing the USA, UK and 17 Western countries’ efficienty and effectiveness in reducing mortality”, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, found countries with an emphasis on public health care are vastly more efficient in their health spending than nations with a heavy emphasis on private care, like the USA.
So government spending can outperform the private sector in multiple areas. I absolutely agree with you that giving money to banks to provide loans to people with no chance of paying them off was idiotic (I’ll note that the more tightly regulated Australian banks lost a lot of their overseas money, but kept up business as usual while USA banks were imploding).
What the government needs to invest its money in, then, is more efficient places like education and healthcare. It also needs to be in lasting assets, such as the roads and railways by which goods are transported. Costs go down for everyone, people building roads get paid: everyone wins. By contrast, see how locally maintained roads worked for pre-Industrial Europe.
TAXING THE RICH
Of course, the cash for these long-term investments needs to come from somewhere. If it isn’t deficit spending, someone has to foot the bill.
Firstly, leaving the rich with all that money doesn’t boost your economy. If they were positively linked, the immense increases in incomes for the richest Americans would have seen your economy booming for the last few decades. And income growth of the lower income classes would be growing in real terms, which it hasn’t been for quite a while.
As your links established for me, many millionaires *aren’t* paying 31-34% income tax, but 0%. I’m sorry, but I hear people claiming these figures, but I’ve never seen evidence of their veracity.
The same is true for corporations. Oil companies, for example, are getting taxed at an average of 9%:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
This article also points out that these companies are making use of foreign tax havens, so that’s even more tax that the USA deserves, but isn’t receiving. Worst of all, the subsidies that profitable companies are receiving actually outweighs the taxes they are paying.
Also check out:
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/06/how-farm-subsidies-harm-taxpayers-consumers-and-farmers-too
It’s old, but it illustrates the misallocation of government subsidies. For a nation that is supposedly so against welfare, why is so much welfare going to people with millions to spare? And Romney wants to increase this, if you check out his tax policies.
So it isn’t about soaking the rich, it’s about paying a fair share, it’s about not propping up companies and individuals who can stand on their own, and about putting that fair share into things which will set the USA on a track for long-term growth.
I’m all for the USA making spending more efficient, but simply cutting costs won’t do anything more than put Americans out of jobs.
For a much quicker summary of my points on cutting costs, from a much more influential source, check out this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/opinion/krugman-those-revolting-europeans.html?smid=FB-nytimes&WT.mc_id=OP-E-FB-SM-LIN-TRE-050712-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click
Heath,
Holy cow, man. I think we have to limit the discussion or this will spin way out of control. And since this is my blog, I get to be the facilitator 🙂
So, you brought up or tried to address the following questions:
TAXES
– Does cutting taxes spur economic growth?
– Does cutting taxes for the rich spur economic growth?
– What are the factors that led to America’s rise as an economic powerhouse?
– Which factors lead countries to become economic powerhouses?
– Is disparity in wealth a bad thing?
– What’s “fair”?
CURRENT U.S. ECONOMIC WOES
– What’s the best way to help the US out of its slow growth and unemployment?
– More government spending financed with debt or taxes on the rich or less government spending? (The old Keynes vs Hayek debate.)
– Or does the solution lie elsewhere?
GOVERTNMENT SPENDING
– Do public health systems actually lead to better public health than private health care systems?
– Are there areas where it’s better to have government allocate the money than individuals? What are those areas?
– Are government subsidies useful?
Did I miss any?
These are all good questions. I think central questions. And each one deserves examination. But it’s too much at once. However, it seems the core of your argument is that:
a) GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + net of exports?imports.
b) Cutting government spending will send shocks into the US economy, drastically reducing GDP, and that will only make things worse. So we shouldn’t cut spending.
c) We’re currently spending much more than we take in as a government.
d) There are only two sources of government income: taxes and borrowing.
e) This means we need to continue to add to the debt. If we want to decrease the amount of debt we take on, we need take more from the rich to make up for it.
Have I captured it?
Here’s my response.
TAXES DON’T INCREASE GDP
Taxing the rich doesn’t increase the money in the system. All it does is remove the ability to choose what to do with the money from those who are being taxed to folks in Washington.
I know you’ll say that the U.S. economy is driven mostly by consumption. And a lot of the money the rich have is NOT used to consume products and services, and so it’s sitting around doing nothing. But it’s not doing nothing. It’s not out of the system. It’s being invested in all sorts of ways, one of which is in providing capital for business ventures and lowering the cost of money. And it’s being used to fuel consumption.
For example, if I purchase original shares of stock in a company, I’m giving money to the company to conduct business. That money flows out to employees and vendors (who also have employees). Any extra that sits in a bank is lent out. We could get into the capital market, but the fact is that the money never sits. It goes round and round. The only time it sits is when I park it, not in a bank because they lend it out, but in my vault in the basement.
What this means is that if I raise taxes it doesn’t add money to the system. If I cut taxes it doesn’t take any money out of the system. Taxing and not taxing just shifts ownership. Cutting taxes allows people to allocate the funds as they see fit, which in most cases is much better than government allocation. I agree there are some things that can be allocated better by government, but I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole right now. I believe we both agree the vast majority of GDP is best allocated by individual consumers.
If this is true, cutting taxes will probably make the economy more efficient overall, allocating the $$ better to its most productive uses. And that might give the economy a boost because the money will move round faster. But I’ll admit that’s something that needs to be substantiated with more than I provide here. And we’d need to quantify the effect, i.e. cutting taxes by X dollars leads to Y boost in GDP.
Do you dispute either of these ideas:
– Taxing doesn’t increase GDP, it just shifts who spends what
– While government allocation can be more efficient at some things, it is less efficient for the vast majority of spending
TAXING THE RICH 100% WON’T COVER GOVERNMENT SPENDING
Walter Williams wrote an interesting article http://newworldorderreport.com/Default.aspx?tabid=266&ID=8265, which claims that if we were to tax ALL those who make above $250,000 at 100%, we could not pay for government spending. If we were then to make the billionaires sell ALL their assets, we still couldn’t pay for it. What if we add in corporations making $250k and force them to pay 100%. Same problem.
We’d have to verify the numbers, but this means that to maintain current government spending levels, we have to continue borrowing money.
BTW, here’s the Bill Whittle “Eat the Rich” video the Williams essay was based on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=661pi6K-8WQ
Do you dispute the numbers?
Once we see where we are on these two things, we can move to the next topic of whether debt spending is the way to move the economy. Because in the end the thing we want is a growing economy.
BTW, I read that Krugman thing. I heard him the other night as well. He brought up Iceland and Ireland, but he doesn’t make a compellion comparison. Were the two situations exactly the same, and the only difference was that one devalued it currency? I doubt it. And is he’s suggesting the U.S.A. create a huge tax on those of us with jobs and savings by devaluing our pay and bank accounts? That’s the solution? Taxes?! And talk about a regressive tax! We certainly can discuss this, but later. The point is that he leaves far too much out. And again, I’m not impressed with credentials. All I care about are the ideas and support for them. You have as much pull with me as Krugman.
Hi John,
It was rather capped by me having other things to do, so sorry but it’s been a few weeks since I had a chance to look at this.
From the information I’ve been given, the problem is that a huge portion of that cash is just sitting as cash, i.e. not being invested. Further, when it is invested it is put overseas, and therefore the cash isn’t going to US families.
Secondly, by redistributing the money to poorer individuals, say teachers, it is spent on businesses owned by the wealthy. It is just a bigger bang for the buck before it ends up being invested again.
My only point with raising the Krugman article is that the austerity measures aren’t working. So a government with the plan of introducing austerity measures? The evidence is against such an approach.
So my argument is 1) you can grow your economy or cut your budget, but the evidence suggests you can’t do both; 2) an increasing number of Americans aren’t paying taxes, which may not be the whole problem but it does compound it; 3) if the rich getting richer is going to drive the economy so well, why have lower socioeconomic groups not seen anything approaching the income growth that the wealthiest have?
Look, this argument is old. It’s been fun, but I think we have to leave it as an amiable disagreement. 🙂
Heath,
You may certainly drop out. But I’m going to respond to your nicely put points.
1) YOU CAN GROW THE ECONOMY OR CUT THE BUDGET. The assumption of this point is that government allocation is THE way to spur economic growth. I believe this is a false dichotomy. This article summarizes a number of studies on this and concludes something different: http://mercatus.org/publication/does-government-spending-affect-economic-growth Based on some of these studies, it may be that cutting government spending actually grows the economy.
2) MORE CITIZENS NEEDS TO PAY. I agree more Americans need a stake in public spending. But not because government allocation is the best way to get the economy going. They need a stake so they are not voting to spend other people’s money. We never spend our money as wastefully as we spend someone else’s.
3) RICH GETTING RICHER.
A. My argument was never that economic growth policy needed to focus on the rich getting richer. My argument is that government allocation is inefficient and puts an overall drag on the economy.
B. The numbers (see the links above) show that you could take all the money from the rich and it wouldn’t fix our spending issue, which may in fact be placing a drag on the economy (see point 1).
C. The “rich” aren’t a fixed set of people. Many of those in the lowest economic groups in the US find themselves in the “rich” group later in life. There’s a great deal of economic mobility in the US.
D. Depending on what number you’re using to describe income, you might be comparing apples to oranges. Household income increases, for example, are understated because households used to be MUCH larger in America. So income hasn’t grown as much per household, but the average household size has shrunk.
4) KRUGMAN’S CLAIM THAT “AUSTERITY ISN’T WORKING.” The article provides no supporting data or model, just his claim. What does this austerity actually mean? The graph displayed here shows very little “austerity”. Furthermore, did they cut taxes or raise them? Watch this: http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/05/21/from-gbtv-whats-really-happening-in-europe/ Of course, I want to fact check, but this paints a very different picture of that Greek “austerity.”
As far as Iceland goes, is it correlational or causational? We don’t know. It’s like the arguments for government run healthcare based on a country’s child mortality rate and life expectancy–are those correlational or causational? Did the government healthcare programs cause the numbers or did lifestyle factors like levels of obesity, smoking rates, levels of activity, and diet, as well as environmental factors like pollution?
5) INVESTMENTS DON’T HELP THE ECONOMY AS MUCH AS SPENDING. I’d like to see some stuides on this.
Money invested never just sits around as cash. John buys stocks from Bill who then takes the money and buys stocks from Mary who takes her money and buys bonds from Frank who takes the money and invests it in Joe’s start up company who uses the cash to purchase office equipment from Bill and pay for inventory from Sarah and pay his employee Jack, Jane, and Fred who then go purchase other things with the money they received.
It’s true some money goes round and round, purchasing stock and bonds over and over. But is that bad for growth? It’s true some of that money goes to foreign investments. But Foreign investors invest in US companies as well. What’s the net effect on the US economy?
The key thing question is: what happens to the economy when investment captial shrinks? And does taking the money from the rich and having government allocate it instead make the economy grow?
If you look at government spending in the US, you’ll see it grew during the Bush years and then exploded during Obama’s. And yet we still had a recession. Correlation? Causation? I don’t know.
But I do know that when you take on horrid amounts of debt, you will either have to (1) print money and devalue everything everyone has–reducing their real income rates–or (2) cut back government services in relation to the tax burden to pay for it, or (3) raise taxes out the wazoo to pay for it.
I understand the argument that if you grow the economy you can select option 2 and not have to cut back so much. And that because we don’t want to tax folks out the wazoo our government wants to borrow money to spur that growth. But I don’t see the evidence that government spending actually has that effect on growth. If someone can show me lots of good evidence, I’m happy to revise my opinion.