Where is the __________!

What people often say is “rage.” Where is the rage! The context here, of course, is that something quite outlandish has happened, some shocking news has surfaced. But there is no visible reaction to it. The public is grooving instead on Christine Beatty, again, she who, like years ago, exchanged sexy e-mails on (Horror!) city-owned communications devices with the deposed, disgraced ex-Mayor of Detroit Kwame Kilpatrick. Or they groove on “Sports Sightings.” Or they groove on the “K-Pop Star among us.” Don’t ask. I haven’t figured it out yet either (link).

A more refined form of that question would be “Where is the Informed Voter?” Quite astonishingly shocking information appears almost daily, but it doesn’t even make it into the papers, never mind produce a rash of letters, never mind a march on Washington. And to that over-simplification—which is what “informed voter” really is—might be added, how wide-spread among informed voters is a sufficiently sensitive cultural and moral understanding necessary to weigh the mountains of facts out there. Herewith a couple of shocking charts from a source I cited two posts back, a Congressional Research Service report (link).

The first of these shows us what the top tax rates were back in now sighed-after decades when things were good—alongside the rather shockingly low tax rates on capital gains, the form of income the very rich use to amass their wealth. The second graphic shows the rather phenomenal rise in the share of total income of the super-rich 0.1 percent and of the stratospheric 0.01 percent of the population.

Did we see these graphics in our papers? No. They were crowded out by pop stars, sports, and Netanyahu.

The really meaningful questions? “What’s the point of a universal franchise?”— if the average voter, looking at such images, can’t even make them out, never mind discerning what they really mean. And “Why bother with democracy?” is another. When things get really bad enough, there are still pitchforks. We have one in the garage, but I wonder how many other people do.

Taxation with Representation

Instead of “taxation with representation” we have gradually made a transition to “taxation with titular representation.” Representatives are elected in Congressional districts and in States and, in a formal, titular way, they represent the public residing in those geographical regions.

The problem is that getting elected requires an enormous amount of money. I know that’s true because a member of our family ran for Congress a few years back and I have personal experience to back up what is commonly repeated in the media and backed by published statistics. After a person is elected, especially to the House, where the term is a mere two years, the need to raise new funds, for the next election, begins almost at once. Under such circumstances, the tendency is very strong for the legislator to “represent” the biggest sources of his or her funding rather than the masses who contribute very little. Who pays the piper calls the tune.

Okay. This is rocket science. It’s difficult because we cannot see, touch, feel, and taste motivation. We have to infer it. We don’t have time to shadow the legislator’s every move and record his/her every statement, read every piece of paper he/she sees. But if money matters a whole lot, those who have the most should be harvesting the biggest benefits from legislation.

I show a chart taken from a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report that issued this September (link).† Understanding that graphic is not rocket science, however.

Nothing on LaMarotte should be read as advocacy. I’m personally sure that the state of a society always mirrors the state of the individuals in it. No mechanical fixes, reforms, stratagems, or devices (like public funding of elections) change things. Societies are too vast and complex to be ruled by anything other than inspiration—meaning the deepest convictions that move the most people. When things have come to this state, very serious troubles loom ahead. They will eventually produce vast public trauma. And that trauma will, in turn, erase our democratic institutions except (that word again) in titular form. Will oligarchies rule us forever? No. This sort of thing eventually produces a kind of dictatorship but under exalted names—and the ruler will be the enemy of the oligarchy. That’s the way we’re going. Advocacy, no. But I like to know what lies ahead.

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† Thomas L. Hungerford, Congressional Research Service, Taxes and the Economy: An Economic Analysis of the top Tax Rates Since 1945, September 14, 2012.