Conversations / Live Q&A

You have raised one of the most important issues and it has less to do with any politicians than it does with us -- with what our expectations of government really are.  What is the role of gov't?  Ironically, from the Tea Party to the Libertarians, and from President Obama to the far left of his own party, I have never heard anyone argue for anything other than fairness, but they all have a different understanding of what that means.

I think that leveling the field sounds good, but means little in the abstract.  I do believe that government can create rules of behavior, and enforce them, in ways that offer people the chance to do better, to make progress toward fulfilling their dreams of a better life, but better does not always mean fair or equal to others. 

Seems to me that goverment's role is more appropriate to assuring a safe process, and one that does build hope and rewards striving, but NOT one that assures fairness or sameness at every step of the way.

Again, "living wage" if used alone, is an almost meaningless buzz word. What kind of living?  Is it being able to feed one's family?  Is it the ability to shop at leisure?  I can't define it for you, except as the term in meaningful to me, but it sems that we need to move from the terms that you use to terms like nurturing hope, creating expectations of the possiblity of upward mobility, etc.  all of which are based on where you start, not where someone elese determines where you have the right to be.

As to education being a partnership with business, unless you are talking about retreating from a gov't committment to public education, it's not clear what you envision.  And does health care for all mean that all get the same health care regardless of what they contribute to either the maintenance of their own health and/or the real cost of paying for their own care?

A real safety net, beneath which nobody should have to go, especially when living in the wealthiest nation in the world, seems right.  But assuming that that "ethical floor" beneath which nobody should fall, is not the same as an imposed ceiling through which nobody should rise.  Just a thought.

You are 100% correct.  "level palying field" is a meaningless term, more often than not.  It works, because deep down, most Americans believe in giving people a fair break -- we believe in equality, even if we don't always practice it.  It's actually a great thing about our culture.

For those reasons, we should stop using terms which all will use and yet about which there is little agreement, and instead ask things like: are people generally more or less hopefull about their ability to create a better future, will the coming generation do better or worse than the one which came before it.  Those are measurable and also good predictors of what creates a strong nation.

Again, some will argue that teh code alredy is unfair because it punishes wealth, while others will argue that it is unfair because it overburdens those who have the least.  It's a bad debate because it's just fodder for both sides to exploit. 

We need tax reform, about that, virtually eveybody in DC agrees.  So here's an idea -- only those politicians who can successfully reach agreements that will at least begin to simplify our tax code and restore some measure of order to how we pay taxes, will be deemed worthy of our support.  Since all politicians want the same thing -- a next term -- if we as voters really demanded that, we could probably make it happen.

If we choose instead to use taxation as the arena in which we play out other social and econimic theories, we wont get anywhere.  it's really that simple.

So here's the deal:

1.  some will argue that he does not pay more than you, that he actually pays far more than you do, and in real dollar terms, that is almost certainly correct given that Mr. Romney is in the top percentile of the 1%.  Not defending it, but you can see how the argument works, and makes getting real reform difficult.  WE HAVE GOT TO STOP ARGUIN ABOUT THIS AS A FAIRNESS ISSUE!

2. People ignore flat tax plans primarily because not one of them, as heretofore advanced, can show how enough money could be collected from enough people without becoming so draconian as to lose all support.  It's not that it's not possible, but it has not yet been done.

You would have to ask Robin Hood, the Bible, or a whole list of other people and books which argue quite forcefully that the answer to your question is 'yes'.  Now, am not suggesting that we need to follow that path, but dismissing it at crazy, communist, etc.  doesn't really fly.

I think the real issue is not so much moving dollars from one place to another, as it is the absence of trust that those dollars moved are being moved by people and isntitutions in which most of are have less and less trust.  If we actually thought that genuine good which benefitted us all as a nation was being accomplsihed by moving those dollars, it would not feel liek they were being "taken away" as much as they were being well invested in our shared future -- one in whcih we could be more secure in the ability to make even more dollars.

It's not a tax thing, it's a trust thing!

Lobbyists, more often than not, are a toxic force in Washington.  But blaming the lobbyists for being toxic is like blaming a knife for being sharp -- each is just doing it's job.  The real issue is the politicians who advance themselves by working with the lobbyists, and even moreso, it us -- the American electorate.

find out how much your elected officials rely on lobbyists, which ones exert significant pressure on them, etc.  It's up to us.

It's also important to appreciate that regulations alone could NOT have stopped the nosedive -- at least not the mortgage crisies, as suggested last night by the President.  This was a perfect storm of 1, government pushing Freddie and Fannie to give out money foolishly -- treating home ownership as a modern version of Ancient Rome's bread and circuses. 2, Banks that rode that gravey train with wild and irresonsible abandon.  And 3,  here's the really painful part which most people refuse to admit, individual greed in which people decided what kind of house they "deserves" whether it was financially responsible or not.

Wise assessment all around.  We ARE better at providing opportunity that pretty much any place else in the world.  As you pointed out, the numbers speak for themselves.  And, as you also pointed out, so do the numbers regarding increasing disparity.  No matter how much some may wish to disregard those numbers, they do so at all of our risk.

The classic free market claim has always been that a rising tide will lift all boats.  It's a great claim, one in which i believe, and one which when increasingly UNTRUE, as is becoming the case in the US, we MUST attend to.  That's not a Liberal thing or a Conservative thing, it's a future of american thing.

Don't apologize when you are right!  It's only wishful thinking if your advice is not directed to, and accepted by, both sides.

If your plea is to BOTH the President AND to his most intense critics, then I am with you.  The President needs to stop flogging the fairness issue, and the far right needs to stop this socialist garbage.  And actually, if we stopped rewarding them, with both our cheers and our checks, when they do so, they would at least cut back.

If what you mean is in terms of enforcement of laws, then I agree.  But that is not simply a matter of individual rights.  It is also about fulfilling a mandate to govern and nurture a strong and prosperous nation.  How activist that role is, is precisley what is up for debate, and that debate would be healthier and more productive if it was results-driven, not ideology-driven.

You quote the right text, and I have no disagreement with you there.  But make the mistake of confusing the text with your own commentary -- which is what your final sentence is.  Don't get me wrong, you MAY be correct to have reached that interpretive conclusion, but it IS an interpretive conclusion -- one about which reasonable people can and do differ.

The greatness of our Constitution, and in fact of any durably meaninful text, is that it is continually interpretable -- it resists a single final reading, while having enough of what are seen as eternal values, to keep going back to.  In other words, we must keep basing ourselves on the Constitution, but not become sop arrogant as to presume that ours is the only correct reading of it. that would actually kill it's enduring value and authority.

If your point is that a measure of difference/inequality is built into the system, I agree.  Tolerating that is what differentiates us from a socialist system.  It is also why the whole fairness debate is unhelpful -- the left makes more of it than it is, and the right doesn't want to admit that it exists and that they are okay with it existing.  For that reason, among others, we should stopp debating the term, startign with the President.

Thh real issues are effectiveness, expectation of doing better, likelihood of real advancment, expansion of opportunity -- even if not equally distributed.  In other words, what we need to secure is not sameness for all, but the sense and the systen which makes a path forward that much more realistic to pursue.

Were i too buy into to all-too-narrow definition of results as being limited to short-term economic numbers, I would share your conclusion.  I don't.

And of course, this IS an ideology.  But it's one which measure itself not simply on how i think, but also based on how it impacts the lives of others as well.  It's about balancing the ugly approach in China which see people as little more than widgets, and the artificial archetype of American individuals each free to make it on their own.

Liberty matters and mcut be protected because we are more than widgets, but nobody accomplsihes anything, at least not anything significant, on their own.