Difference between revisions of "30: Ross Douthat - The Rave Before the Fall"
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30: Ross Douthat - The Rave Before the Fall (view source)
Revision as of 22:53, 4 August 2020
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'''RD:''' I mean, who are the experts? The think tank experts, then, are trying to achieve a set of policy goals that were sort of created 30 or 40 years ago. But under our system, you never actually achieve those policy goals, so you can go on championing them. Like, Republicans have been—to go back to the sort of the world of 10 years ago—Republicans have been arguing for the Flat Tax for as long as I've been alive. We will never past the Flat Tax for 17 different reasons. Therefore, it becomes just this sort of thing where you sort of cycle through arguments for it and arguments against it—it has no relationship to policy reality … Medicare For All might become the same thing on the Democratic side. And then the experts are … maybe they're denatured because they're engaging in rhetorical arguments with each other that don't have any bearing on legislation. … | '''RD:''' I mean, who are the experts? The think tank experts, then, are trying to achieve a set of policy goals that were sort of created 30 or 40 years ago. But under our system, you never actually achieve those policy goals, so you can go on championing them. Like, Republicans have been—to go back to the sort of the world of 10 years ago—Republicans have been arguing for the Flat Tax for as long as I've been alive. We will never past the Flat Tax for 17 different reasons. Therefore, it becomes just this sort of thing where you sort of cycle through arguments for it and arguments against it—it has no relationship to policy reality … Medicare For All might become the same thing on the Democratic side. And then the experts are … maybe they're denatured because they're engaging in rhetorical arguments with each other that don't have any bearing on legislation. … | ||
'''EW:''' But why does the flat | '''EW:''' But why does the flat tax discussion not stop? Why is it an intellectual collection point? | ||
'''RD:''' I think because it has a combination of fitting a certain kind of right-of-center American idea of justice—so it taps into some piece of part of the American Conservative worldview that's very powerful. And because it's one small manifestation of the way in which the sort of genuine upheavals of the 60s and 70s then got put on autopilot as the Baby Boom generation just, sort of, aged and remained dominant. So it might be that the Flat Tax finally disappears when the Grover Norquist generation of conservative operatives gets too old to have influence anymore, right? | '''RD:''' I think because it has a combination of fitting a certain kind of right-of-center American idea of justice—so it taps into some piece of part of the American Conservative worldview that's very powerful. And because it's one small manifestation of the way in which the sort of genuine upheavals of the 60s and 70s then got put on autopilot as the Baby Boom generation just, sort of, aged and remained dominant. So it might be that the Flat Tax finally disappears when the Grover Norquist generation of conservative operatives gets too old to have influence anymore, right? | ||
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'''RD:''' But some of those Boomers, like you know, they don't have three homes. But people living in the villages in Florida who are big Trump voters are prosperous Americans who could transmit more wealth, presumably, to their kids and grandkids. | '''RD:''' But some of those Boomers, like you know, they don't have three homes. But people living in the villages in Florida who are big Trump voters are prosperous Americans who could transmit more wealth, presumably, to their kids and grandkids. | ||
'''EW:''' Yes, although I do think that very often it is the rapacious class—rather than the well to do class—that is very focused on at least a veneer of public-spiritedness. And in some sense, it's a counterbalancing veneer. So that if you're if you're going to be truly rapacious, it's very important that … Pablo Escobar has to do a lot for the villagers. because quite honestly, if he doesn't, he doesn't have a balanced equation. And I think that this is the real problem with the kleptocratic center, is that the kleptocratic center-left was just crazy about wealth transfer. And as a result, they were constantly championing the good that they were doing somewhere that wasn't to themselves. And my hope is that the way that we emerge from this is a Left-Right consensus of the adult class that can say, “Look, I don't happen to share …” Let's take the Flat Tax that you brought up. My brother makes an interesting point. He says, “The Flat Tax is often championed, by virtue of its simplicity—that it can fit on an index card.” He said, “So can a progressive | '''EW:''' Yes, although I do think that very often it is the rapacious class—rather than the well to do class—that is very focused on at least a veneer of public-spiritedness. And in some sense, it's a counterbalancing veneer. So that if you're if you're going to be truly rapacious, it's very important that … Pablo Escobar has to do a lot for the villagers. because quite honestly, if he doesn't, he doesn't have a balanced equation. And I think that this is the real problem with the kleptocratic center, is that the kleptocratic center-left was just crazy about wealth transfer. And as a result, they were constantly championing the good that they were doing somewhere that wasn't to themselves. And my hope is that the way that we emerge from this is a Left-Right consensus of the adult class that can say, “Look, I don't happen to share …” Let's take the Flat Tax that you brought up. My brother makes an interesting point. He says, “The Flat Tax is often championed, by virtue of its simplicity—that it can fit on an index card.” He said, “So can a progressive tax schedule without exceptions.” So it's not the flatness of the tax that fits it on an index card. It's the simplicity so that it can't be gamed. | ||
'''RD:''' Right. | '''RD:''' Right. | ||