Ask Rockridge: Taxation and Values
This month, the Rockridge Institute introduced a new way that we will support the progressive community. George Lakoff and all of us at the Rockridge Institute will now meet each week to review the questions and ideas that participants have contributed at the Rockridge Nation web community, and choose a selection to examine and respond to as a group. The following are the first results of this new initiative.
How should we frame taxation?
This question is multi-faceted. I realize that taxation should be framed as investment, but how should we deal with the fact that the tax cuts for the rich have starved the middle class, leaving no money for education, health insurance, etc., etc.? Also how do we frame the lack of fairness that results when money earned by people is taxed more heavily than money earned by money? The example is that capital gains is taxed about half as much as earned income, even before payroll taxes are considered.
Rockridge Nation member joetalarico
You ask two questions. The first is, essentially, how to talk about taxes. The second is, how to talk about tax fairness. We answer both questions this way.
When we talk about taxation, we are already victims of a bait-and-switch. The context presented to us is how we should use the money we have. What we miss, and the source of the unfairness is hidden here, is where our money came from in the first place. We have to look deeper into the ideas involved to see this. Here is our take on it.
Taxation is a conservative frame. We should talk instead about the common wealth or common infrastructure and two crucial functions of government, protection and empowerment. By common wealth we mean putting our money together to provide things none of us can provide individually, like schools, highways, police and fire protection, court systems, and the banking regulatory system. These are things no individual can afford on their own but that are essential for the opportunity to live a free and fulfilling life. We must collectively pay for them.
We are all empowered by those things we provide one another by pooling our resources. But some people use more of that infrastructure than others, namely corporations and wealthy investors. They take advantage of what is called "compound empowerment." See our new article on tax fairness for more about this concept. The wealthy have a responsibility to pay more of it back for the maintenance of the system that makes their wealth possible. That is the basis of progressive taxation.
While liberals typically talk about "tax fairness" in terms of regressive tax structures – sales tax takes more from those who have less – this plays into the conservative frame, a frame that hides the ways wealth is produced – through compound empowerment and exploitation of the common wealth.
Getting to values
Values and value statements form the basis of framing statements. Can you give some guidance as to methods for uncovering the values of individuals or groups? What approaches, methodology, techniques would you recommend for discovering values?
Rockridge Nation member dvoronoff
We find it useful to identify the values expressed by the person or group by considering what issues they care about and the arguments they make about those issues. The general approach we take to analyzing issues can be seen in the answer to the first question. The questioner was motivated by the feeling that something is unfair in the way working people are taxed.
Here is an outline of our general approach:
- Start with the value systems you know and see what they say about the given situation.
- In the above discussion, we started with our current account of progressive and conservative values — nurturant and strict, as outlined in Moral Politics and other books.
- On the progressive side we asked, What role do the values of empathy and responsibility play in this situation? In the example above we thought about how the government should care about people (empathy) and ensure that basic needs are met (responsibility).
- We looked at the subsidiary values that flow from empathy and responsibility: fairness, freedom, and so on.
- Freedom includes freedom from and freedom to. The government’s role in providing for freedom from is to protect, and in providing freedom to, it is to empower, especially through infrastructure.
- Look at contested concepts. A contested concept is a concept that has a core meaning that everyone agrees upon, but has other key parts of its meaning that can be filled in differently by progressive and conservative values. You can find them by looking at important words used by both progressives and conservatives, but with different meanings. Sort out the meaning differences, with Whose Freedom? as a guide.
- Explore different ways of reframing the situation that adequately capture these values and concepts and lead to a valid progressive argument on the issue.
We hope that this general approach is helpful to you as you explore the values that people hold.
We can see this with the example of the concept for freedom. An uncontested part of its meaning is that freedom requires the ability to pursue one's goals so long as they don't infringe upon the freedom of others. The contested part appears when we ask questions like "Does religious freedom mean the government cannot force another religion upon me?" or "Does religious freedom mean the government cannot restrict my religious practice of sharing my beliefs with others by displaying the Ten Commandments in public buildings?" (A comprehensive discussion of the contested concept of freedom can be found in Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea by George Lakoff.)
If you have a question for George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute, simply fill out the Dear Rockridge form. You will need to be a member of Rockridge Nation member to participate, but it is easy to join.
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Tax: Cut? Shift? Switch?
Given the assumption that all debt incurred by the federal government will eventually be paid (plus interest of course), doesn't that imply that there is no such thing as a tax "cut" while running deficit budgets? I have been using the term tax "shift" to refer to this, e.g. tax shift from investment class to future wage class. This article has made me consider using the term tax "switch" instead. Any thoughts on my reasoning or choice of words?
Compounded confusion?
- What a great article about taxation, and the importance of taxation in maintaining a robust public infrastructure. Thanks! Now we need to couple that idea with the notion of responsible government. Thanks for all the great work and stimulating ideas. It is so refreshing and interesting.
The question I have, however, is the terminology Rockridge is using to describe this concept. I wonder if there isn't a more plain speakin' way of conveying what you mean, rather than using the somewhat opaque term, "Compound empowerment?" (For the same reason, progressives might consider an alternative to "hegemony" - another expression that no one but intellectuals knows the meaning of. Maybe "domination," or even "imperialism," as in "Domination or Survival?" It might have sold Mr. Chomsky a couple more books!) Anyway, it seems to me that the phrase you've already come up with, "tax fairness," could be a better term to use to advance the debate -- but maybe y'all are aiming for a different audience?
Another issue that I would love to see Rockridge address at some point, if it hasn't already, is the importance of government regulation in maintaining healthy trade and commerce.
Here's my thinking about that, illustrated with some anecdotes: My husband and i are very, very leery of any drug made by U.S. pharmaceutical companies nowadays. First there was Vioxx. Who knows how many other U.S. made killer drugs made in the U.S.A. are out there? Then someone close to us, a former chemist for Tyco, was fired recently for refusing to falsify a document during testing for a new drug to prevent patients from throwing up under anaesthesia. They were trying to rush it to market, and the chemist's integrity got in the way. Who knows how many nations might begin banning U.S. pharmaceuticals, because of their bad safety record? The drug companies and neocons don't want us to know. Information, tracking, record keeping and statistical research are their enemies.
As for raw spinach? I've completely lost my appetite for it since the E.coli outbreak. I'll bet I'm not alone. Haven't bought ground beef in 15 years either, for a similar reason. Years ago a friend, a grocery store inspector, once laughingly told my husband and me a story about the time he inspected a grocery store, and how he demanded, under angry protest from the management, that the meat department dismantle its grinder so he could verify that it had been recently cleaned. Evidently this is something they hate to do because it is so labor intensive. Sure enough, it was crawling with live maggots. Our friend laughed heartily, but we groaned, and now we never buy the stuff! Maybe things have changed since then, but our appetite is lost forever, regardless.
Of course the neocons would rage and bellow. To them, this story illustrates why we don't need no stinking regulation: If the meat inspector had never been there in the first place, the public would never have any way of knowing what hazards they are being exposed to. Which is the real reason they oppose regulation. Information is their enemy.
But to me, it illustrates that the mindless conservative mantra that the "free-market is self-correcting" is completely without merit or logic when it comes to issues of public health and safety. If, many years ago, the government hadn't tracked and reported on the correlation between exploding tires and highway deaths, we'd still be riding around on bad Firestones. And come to think of it, with all the neocons now populating our consumer protection agencies, we might very well be, without any way of knowing.
Another example: I work in an ag school and was writing about the E.coli spinach issue. I discovered, not surprisingly, that many in the fresh-cut produce industry oppose HACCP regulations (Hazard analysis and Critical Control Points.) This is an intelligent regulatory system that is used in meat and poultry and infant formula and several other food industries. But interestingly, I also learned that there is at least one major fresh-cut produce trade organization that actually WANTS the HACCP regulations, seeing them as a way to protect the whole industry. But nowadays, it is easy to imagine the neocons in Congress fiercly opposing this trade group's own desire, purely on ideological grounds that "all regulation is bad." Again, they see the solution lies in ending ALL regulation, especially tracking, statistics gathering, and, above all, reporting the information to the public. That way, they can keep selling their poison meat without the free market ever finding out.
Bottom line is, smart regulation is not only moral, and decent, and civilized, but it creates public trust -- and healthy commerce depends on public trust. Conservatives are dead wrong. Regulation does not stifle the economy or growth. On the contrary. It is a cornerstone of economic development. Regulation is good for society, and what's good for society is good for the economy. Deregulation is as uncivilized and as irrational as the free-market. Caring, mindful humans can do better.
Progressives know this, the fresh cut produce industry knows this, and Republican politicians and businessmen and Rush Limbaugh know this too -- although they are all too enslaved by greed and free-market ideology to admit it publically. But everyday conservatives do not, and they reflexively, mindlessly support free market ideology. They are the ones who also could benefit from knowing the other side of the issue, which is why I hope Rockridge takes on this issue too.
New! Compound Empowerment
Compound empowerment: when corporations and the wealthy make more and more use of infrastructure provided by the common wealth.
Evan & Dr. Lakoff,
Thank you for these two posts on taxes, values & tax fairness, posted on Rockridge Institute and simultaneously Rockridge Nation.
Compound empowerment is a concept that was an aha for me. A saying comes to mind, "If it had been a snake it would have bit me."
I have questions trying to get out and I don't know how or what to ask quite yet. Let me start with - is this concept a negative concept or a positive concept?
Thanks.