Last week, n+1 put an essay by Mark Greif, called “Gut-level Legislation, or, Redistribution,” on its website. The argument is that since the purpose of government is to “share out money so that there are no poor citizens,” a 100% tax should be imposed on all incomes over $100,000. Then Dylan Matthews, who blogs under the Ezra Klein umbrella at The Washington Post, wrote a post about how Greif’s taxation plan would destroy the economy. It was called “How Not to Write About Policy.” Anyway I know both Dylan and people at n+1, so yadda yadda conflict of interest, but I want to butt in and say why I think they’re talking past each other.
Dylan’s problem with Greif’s plan is that, were it to be signed into law today, in this specific economy, it would fuck everything up. He thinks that Greif should have read policy papers, and talked to taxation experts, and just generally done the kind of homework that we expect legislators to do when they’re coming up with plans. He wrote, “I would call relevant experts,” and then named a bunch of them.
It seems pretty clear, judging from Greif’s article and Dylan’s post, that Dylan knows lots more about taxation policy than Greif does. I am convinced by Dylan’s arguments that a 100% tax on incomes over $100,000, if implemented today in the United States that everybody really lives in, would have bad consequences. If I were to put one of them in Congress today, I would pick Dylan.
The problem with the way Matthews criticized Greif is that it ignored the third full paragraph (not to mention the title) of “Gut-level Legislation,” which goes like this:
“What do you stand for! What will you do!” Legislatively? Are you kidding? Well, there is something one can do, without succumbing to the pundits: for the day when the Congress rolls up to our doorsteps and asks for our legislative initiatives, maybe it is up to every citizen to know what is in his heart and have his true bills and resolutions ready. Call it “political surrealism”—the practice of asking for what is at present impossible, in order to get at last, by indirection or implausible directness, the principles that would underlie the world we’d want rather than the one we have.
So, Matthews argument is that Greif isn’t thinking enough like a responsible legislator. But Greif’s argument is specifically that it is useless for a writer to be writing as though he or she were actually a congressperson with real legislative power, i.e. as someone whose ideas and desires must never land outside the realm of what’s politically feasible within the current Congressional term or whatever. Greif calls his own article “‘political surrealism’-the practice of asking for what is at present impossible.”
If Greif had been trying to write a piece about policy, Dylan’s criticisms would be relevant (also more or less correct, as far as I can tell). But that’s not the piece Greif wrote. “Gut-level legislation” is actually trying to answer the question “What would a just system of wealth redistribution in the US look like?” Which means that “Do Greif’s numbers crunch?” is the least interesting question you could ask about Greif’s piece, and almost totally irrelevant to the argument Greif is making. Some of the interesting questions you could ask would be these:
1. Is it true that extreme wealth is just as detrimental to a democracy as extreme poverty?
2. Is it true that the function of government is to share out money so that there are no poor people?
3. Given that pundits aren’t the same as journalists—i.e., given that they produce opinions along with information—what function is served by their offering opinions on real legislative proposals? Would health care have turned out differently if Andrew Sullivan, Ezra Klein, etc. had not been blogging about it?
-
awesomeflashgames liked this
-
youreaghost posted this
