http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy17.html
An Open Letter to Republicans
by Bob Murphy
Well well. Good job, guys. George W. has won the election. Whoop-dee-friggin-doo. Just look at all of the federal bureaucrats trembling with fear, knowing they will be cast out into the private sector by the compassionate conservative! Who knows which Cabinet post will be first on the chopping block? Rumor has it that Dick Cheney himself is maintaining close contact with his oil ties, on the off chance that W. abolishes his position in a spasm of libertarian zeal. In the midst of this massive rollback of Leviathan, permit me a few comments.
First, let me say that I was darned lucky. You see, in an act that can only be described (and in fact was described by many Republicans) as selfish and stupid, I voted for Harry Browne. Admittedly, it was a gamble. Had the popular vote in New York State been decided by a margin of exactly one – and if the Electoral vote had been decided by a margin smaller than the number of New York’s votes – then my decision would have "elected Gore." Fortunately for the fate of Western civilization and, indeed, of human liberty, this contingency did not come to pass. My gamble paid off, and I was able to cast a protest vote with no dire ramifications. So I expect a full apology from all of you strategic whizzes at Free Republic who ridiculed my previous Browne articles.
But now to my main point. Rather than celebrating, you Republicans should be mourning this terrible system in which we’re all trapped. Imagine if your surgeon or babysitter were decided by a national election. Pretty scary, huh? But that’s how we pick the man who will have the power to steal our money and blow up foreigners.
Now just about the only thing worse than wasting one’s vote on a third party candidate is to engage in conspiracy theorizing. So I’m just going to tell a story, okay? Once upon a time, there was a land called Minerva. At its birth, Minerva was a very free republic. It had two major political parties, the Blues and the Yellows. The ruling members wanted – as is so common in folklore – to take as much loot from the people as possible, run their lives, and to raise grand armies to engage in foreign conquest. The only problem was that Minerva was a democratic society, and its people were very committed to the principle of limited government. However, some people were more concerned with personal liberties, while others were more concerned with economic freedoms.
Thus the Blues and the Yellows hit upon a splendid scheme: Every election would have only two candidates, one from the Blue and one from the Yellow party. This restriction was easy enough. In fact, the Blues and the Yellows managed to convince the people that such a restriction was for their own good. (Yes, sometimes make-believe stories are silly. We all know this couldn’t happen in the real world.)
Now to the real trick. Every election, the Blue candidate would promise to decrease economic freedom by a lot, but personal liberties only by a little. The Yellow candidate, on the other hand, would promise to eliminate many personal liberties, but would only lightly erode economic freedom. Since no one alive could ever remember anything but a Yellow or Blue candidate winning, each citizen voted against the candidate that scared him the most.
Over time, of course, the rulers got what they wanted: Both the economic freedom and personal liberty of the people melted away, with the Blue and Yellow candidates accordingly updating their positions every cycle, in a "race to the bottom" of complete totalitarianism. Certain people noticed this trend, and tried their best to stop it. This would actually be quite easy, since a vast majority of the citizens agreed with them. But every time they raised their voices, they were quickly shouted down, with Blues pointing out the horrors of a Yellow victory, and Yellows pointing out the horrors of a Blue victory. This logic was quite superb, and so the process continued happily (for the rulers) ever after. The End.
* * *
Let’s concentrate for a moment on the Republican golden boy, Ronald Reagan. On some pundit show, a conservative guest was asked about the success of the Clinton economy, despite all of the naysaying about his tax hikes. The conservative actually had the gall to say that our current prosperity was due, not to Clinton’s stewardship, but to the tax cuts of the Reagan Administration. Now this is rich. This analyst is able to assess the current consequences of a tax change made twenty years ago.
It may dishearten you conservative Republicans to know that I was once in your ranks. (I was only a teenager. What’s your excuse?) Maddened by the late ’80s liberal lie that Reagan’s tax cuts caused the deficit, I turned to the Statistical Abstract of the United States. I found that Reagan’s defenders were partially correct: Tax revenues went up during the Reagan Administration, so the deficits were indeed the fault of increased spending.
But I noticed something troubling. It was not at all clear that Reagan "cut taxes." Yes, in 1981 marginal rates were cut by 25% across the board. But taxes were raised in 1982 (as an "emergency measure" to "reduce the deficit") and again in 1986 (though this was called "tax reform" and "closing loopholes," which destroyed the real estate market). Thus, both sides – conservatives and liberals – were lying about what had happened during the ’80s. Liberals claimed that Reagan’s "tax cuts" had caused the deficit. Conservatives responded that the "tax cuts" had helped, and that spending had caused the deficit. But there were no lasting tax cuts.
I went to the Heritage Foundation’s website to verify my recollection. Daniel Mitchell, in an article discussing the wonders of supply-side policy, discusses the tax cuts of the 1920s, ’60s, and ’80s. For the first two episodes, he has beautiful charts showing the marginal rates and how they were slashed over the course of the decade. Yet for Reagan’s tenure, he instead offers only charts showing that federal revenues increased, that the rich paid a higher proportion, that social mobility increased, etc. Nowhere do we see exactly what Reagan did with marginal tax rates. Now this doesn’t prove anything, and I’m not denying that marginal rates were lower after Reagan. But it does confirm my memory, that back when I was a devout supply-sider, I sadly concluded that I couldn’t in good conscience use the Reagan record to "prove" anything. The 1980s had not been a clear-cut experiment in supply-side economics.
Doubts still lingered, so I went to the Ronald Reagan homepage. It has a whole section about the "tax cuts." Go ahead and sift through its evidence. Now this is important: Do not trust the interpretation of the data given by the authors – look at the data itself. Most of the figures, again, are used to show that the liberals are lying. (Does this sound anything like the Blues and Yellows?) And the few figures that do cast Reagan in a good light depict odd things like "Mean Taxes Paid as a Percentage of Pre-Tax Mean Income," which indeed dropped a few points during the Gipper’s tenure. Hardly anything to wax nostalgic about.
The eternal optimist Julian Simon once made a bet with Paul Ehrlich (of The Population Bomb notoriety). He wagered that, despite the finite quantity of Earth’s natural resources, the price of a few certain commodities would fall in the future, due to the creative powers of the human mind. Simon was so confident, in fact, that he allowed Ehrlich to choose the commodities. Ehrlich eagerly did so, commenting at the time that he was "shooting fish in a barrel." Not surprisingly, Ehrlich lost. Every single one of the commodities fell in price.
I have a similar offer for Republicans. You choose the statistic – whether absolute federal spending (good luck), federal spending as a percentage of GDP, federal taxes as a percentage of GDP, number of federal employees, whatever – and I’ll bet you that it’s no lower when Bush leaves office. The only thing I rule out beforehand is marginal tax rates, since there are so many "revenue enhancement" schemes that cleverly get around this.
If anyone wants to take me up on this, we can work out the details. (In the event of a deluge, I’ll only accept the first few respondents.) I genuinely hope I lose.
But I don’t think I will.
November 8, 2000
Bob Murphy is a graduate student in New York City.
An Open Letter to Republicans
by Bob Murphy
Well well. Good job, guys. George W. has won the election. Whoop-dee-friggin-doo. Just look at all of the federal bureaucrats trembling with fear, knowing they will be cast out into the private sector by the compassionate conservative! Who knows which Cabinet post will be first on the chopping block? Rumor has it that Dick Cheney himself is maintaining close contact with his oil ties, on the off chance that W. abolishes his position in a spasm of libertarian zeal. In the midst of this massive rollback of Leviathan, permit me a few comments.
First, let me say that I was darned lucky. You see, in an act that can only be described (and in fact was described by many Republicans) as selfish and stupid, I voted for Harry Browne. Admittedly, it was a gamble. Had the popular vote in New York State been decided by a margin of exactly one – and if the Electoral vote had been decided by a margin smaller than the number of New York’s votes – then my decision would have "elected Gore." Fortunately for the fate of Western civilization and, indeed, of human liberty, this contingency did not come to pass. My gamble paid off, and I was able to cast a protest vote with no dire ramifications. So I expect a full apology from all of you strategic whizzes at Free Republic who ridiculed my previous Browne articles.
But now to my main point. Rather than celebrating, you Republicans should be mourning this terrible system in which we’re all trapped. Imagine if your surgeon or babysitter were decided by a national election. Pretty scary, huh? But that’s how we pick the man who will have the power to steal our money and blow up foreigners.
Now just about the only thing worse than wasting one’s vote on a third party candidate is to engage in conspiracy theorizing. So I’m just going to tell a story, okay? Once upon a time, there was a land called Minerva. At its birth, Minerva was a very free republic. It had two major political parties, the Blues and the Yellows. The ruling members wanted – as is so common in folklore – to take as much loot from the people as possible, run their lives, and to raise grand armies to engage in foreign conquest. The only problem was that Minerva was a democratic society, and its people were very committed to the principle of limited government. However, some people were more concerned with personal liberties, while others were more concerned with economic freedoms.
Thus the Blues and the Yellows hit upon a splendid scheme: Every election would have only two candidates, one from the Blue and one from the Yellow party. This restriction was easy enough. In fact, the Blues and the Yellows managed to convince the people that such a restriction was for their own good. (Yes, sometimes make-believe stories are silly. We all know this couldn’t happen in the real world.)
Now to the real trick. Every election, the Blue candidate would promise to decrease economic freedom by a lot, but personal liberties only by a little. The Yellow candidate, on the other hand, would promise to eliminate many personal liberties, but would only lightly erode economic freedom. Since no one alive could ever remember anything but a Yellow or Blue candidate winning, each citizen voted against the candidate that scared him the most.
Over time, of course, the rulers got what they wanted: Both the economic freedom and personal liberty of the people melted away, with the Blue and Yellow candidates accordingly updating their positions every cycle, in a "race to the bottom" of complete totalitarianism. Certain people noticed this trend, and tried their best to stop it. This would actually be quite easy, since a vast majority of the citizens agreed with them. But every time they raised their voices, they were quickly shouted down, with Blues pointing out the horrors of a Yellow victory, and Yellows pointing out the horrors of a Blue victory. This logic was quite superb, and so the process continued happily (for the rulers) ever after. The End.
* * *
Let’s concentrate for a moment on the Republican golden boy, Ronald Reagan. On some pundit show, a conservative guest was asked about the success of the Clinton economy, despite all of the naysaying about his tax hikes. The conservative actually had the gall to say that our current prosperity was due, not to Clinton’s stewardship, but to the tax cuts of the Reagan Administration. Now this is rich. This analyst is able to assess the current consequences of a tax change made twenty years ago.
It may dishearten you conservative Republicans to know that I was once in your ranks. (I was only a teenager. What’s your excuse?) Maddened by the late ’80s liberal lie that Reagan’s tax cuts caused the deficit, I turned to the Statistical Abstract of the United States. I found that Reagan’s defenders were partially correct: Tax revenues went up during the Reagan Administration, so the deficits were indeed the fault of increased spending.
But I noticed something troubling. It was not at all clear that Reagan "cut taxes." Yes, in 1981 marginal rates were cut by 25% across the board. But taxes were raised in 1982 (as an "emergency measure" to "reduce the deficit") and again in 1986 (though this was called "tax reform" and "closing loopholes," which destroyed the real estate market). Thus, both sides – conservatives and liberals – were lying about what had happened during the ’80s. Liberals claimed that Reagan’s "tax cuts" had caused the deficit. Conservatives responded that the "tax cuts" had helped, and that spending had caused the deficit. But there were no lasting tax cuts.
I went to the Heritage Foundation’s website to verify my recollection. Daniel Mitchell, in an article discussing the wonders of supply-side policy, discusses the tax cuts of the 1920s, ’60s, and ’80s. For the first two episodes, he has beautiful charts showing the marginal rates and how they were slashed over the course of the decade. Yet for Reagan’s tenure, he instead offers only charts showing that federal revenues increased, that the rich paid a higher proportion, that social mobility increased, etc. Nowhere do we see exactly what Reagan did with marginal tax rates. Now this doesn’t prove anything, and I’m not denying that marginal rates were lower after Reagan. But it does confirm my memory, that back when I was a devout supply-sider, I sadly concluded that I couldn’t in good conscience use the Reagan record to "prove" anything. The 1980s had not been a clear-cut experiment in supply-side economics.
Doubts still lingered, so I went to the Ronald Reagan homepage. It has a whole section about the "tax cuts." Go ahead and sift through its evidence. Now this is important: Do not trust the interpretation of the data given by the authors – look at the data itself. Most of the figures, again, are used to show that the liberals are lying. (Does this sound anything like the Blues and Yellows?) And the few figures that do cast Reagan in a good light depict odd things like "Mean Taxes Paid as a Percentage of Pre-Tax Mean Income," which indeed dropped a few points during the Gipper’s tenure. Hardly anything to wax nostalgic about.
The eternal optimist Julian Simon once made a bet with Paul Ehrlich (of The Population Bomb notoriety). He wagered that, despite the finite quantity of Earth’s natural resources, the price of a few certain commodities would fall in the future, due to the creative powers of the human mind. Simon was so confident, in fact, that he allowed Ehrlich to choose the commodities. Ehrlich eagerly did so, commenting at the time that he was "shooting fish in a barrel." Not surprisingly, Ehrlich lost. Every single one of the commodities fell in price.
I have a similar offer for Republicans. You choose the statistic – whether absolute federal spending (good luck), federal spending as a percentage of GDP, federal taxes as a percentage of GDP, number of federal employees, whatever – and I’ll bet you that it’s no lower when Bush leaves office. The only thing I rule out beforehand is marginal tax rates, since there are so many "revenue enhancement" schemes that cleverly get around this.
If anyone wants to take me up on this, we can work out the details. (In the event of a deluge, I’ll only accept the first few respondents.) I genuinely hope I lose.
But I don’t think I will.
November 8, 2000
Bob Murphy is a graduate student in New York City.