I'd trust the Government "Accounting" Office, vice the Congressional "Budget" Office.

If the Congressional "Budget", people are anything like the "Budget" types I've met at any time, their estimates may be wildly off the mark, and one might as well use a crystal ball.

(If I recall my civics correctly, anything "Congressional" is not authorized to charge, collect or spend anything.  That is an Executive Branch function.)

BT


Tracy Johnson
MSI Schaevitz Sensors 

-----Original Message-----
From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of James B. Byrne
Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 2:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [HP3000-L] OT: Weekend Reading


On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 09:40:38 -0700 Shawn Gordon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


> and where do you get these numbers?  I gave you the source of my
> numbers, but you fling these around as though they are gospel.


The figures that I used are provided on-line by the Congressional Budget Office of the Government of the United States.  Presumably the people responsible for charging, collecting and the spending the taxes are a suitably authoritative source for data on where they come from; or do have a more reliable source that you would care to share with us?


I will just give one more set of figures, from the same source, that you can reflect on.  In 1979 the lowest 20% of households had an average annual income, in constant adjusted (2001) dollars, of $14,100.00 USD.  In 2001 the lowest 20% had an average annual income of $14,900.00 USD.  In 1979 the highest 20% had an average annual income of $119,100.00 USD whilst in 2001 the highest 20% averaged $182,000.00 USD.  After tax, the figures are 13,000; 14,100; 86,300; and 133,700 respectively.  So, in real terms, the lowest 20% of society saw a growth in after-tax income of 8.5% over 20 years, whist in the same period the upper 20% had a real growth of 55%.  However, at the same time welfare benefits to those who have absolutely no income at all were cut. So the picture is even grimmer than that displayed above, because 10 million or so make so little in a year that they do not even have to file a return. 


And just to make the point even clearer, in the same period the top 1% went from $294,300 per annum to $703,100 per annum in constant after-tax dollars, an increase of 239%.


Now, you were claiming what, exactly? That people who have nothing should pay more taxes than they do and those that own most should pay less?  And your reasoning for this proceeds from what postulate with respect to means?  Do you see no contradiction here at all?


Self-exulting Horatio Alger like stories aside, the role of luck in the material success or failure of an individual life is far greater than is admitted to by those disposed to see the world through either a lens fashioned by morality - if you are poor it is beside you make bad life choices - or liberalism - if you are poor it is because you are both inefficient and incapable of learning from the experience of the successful.  Neither of these ideological assertions can be confirmed from empirical study.


What little that study of the underlying issues does reveal is that contrary to either moralist or liberal belief, ones eventual economic status in society is pretty much established at birth by the economic status of ones parents.  This is not a determinative finding, one is not necessarily condemned to a particular lot in life. However, as a detached observer, it is the way to bet if you are considering wagering on the likely life outcome for particular individual at birth. In other words, the mythos of the self-made man or woman is just that, a mythos sustained by reference to a few exceptional examples and our own tendency to see self merit in our success and the fault of others in our failure.  I would add that this predisposition to embrace the improbable as reality is likely buttressed by a rather pathetic hope that we will be the one to beat the odds and make it big; and we do not want anything disabusing us of that delusion.


It is very hard for most to reflect on how much they depend upon the particular circumstances of their upbringing to come to their present station in life.  What would have been the effect if ones parents had lost all they owned due to a natural or man-made disaster at some critical juncture of our lives?  How many fewer opportunities for employment would we have had, had our father or mother not possessed a certain standing in the community?  What would our values towards education have been had our parents not exalted it? Is it our fault when our parents were not educated, were not wealthy, were not successful? What if I stutter, are maimed, or just homely looking?


I too can see my life as self-made, should I choose to do so.  At sixteen my father left school before completing Grade IX to work as a steamfitter apprentice. My mother was born into a family of 15 children in an outport of Newfoundland.  I graduated from high school at fifteen and joined the merchant service as a dishwasher on a passenger ferry.  When I left the navy at the age of 23 I was full lieutenant, second in command of a warship, and possessor of a university degree, a comfortable bank account and a wife that I still cherish.  Would I have had all that entirely on my own? I doubt it.


My father stayed with the railroad for forty years, he eventually rose to middle management rank and he provided constant encouragement for his children to "do better" and to "educate themselves."  The most courageous thing that I ever witnessed, and I have seen many, was the day my father returned to school to obtain his high school diploma; just because his eldest son had then entered high-school himself.


My mother graduated from high-school and thereafter from business college.  Would my father have exalted education if he had married a woman who, like himself, had little formal schooling?  Doubtful. Would I be the same person as I am, had my parents lives or mine been but a little different?  Uncertain, but unlikely.


What if, as happened to my cousin, I had been jumped one night on my own street by four hooligans driving a TransAm, beaten to within a hair's breath of death, and left mentally deranged?  Was I to blame for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?  Where am I to be if not where I live? Am I to die then, so as to avoid burdening society?  Are my parents to deny my brother and sister an education so that they can take care of me because the state will not?  Who then is my brother?


The answer is, as we were told before, is all of us, together.  We are either all responsible for each other or we are nothing but what we can take from each other.  The Christian ethic provides no escape for the moralist here, judgement is not to take place in this life but the next. Your duty, like that the of  Samaritan, is before you.  Do you take up the challenge in your daily life, or shrug your shoulders to rid yourselves of the burden your moralizing requires if it is to be anything but hypocrisy?  Do you judge that you do enough?  Do you still have surplus while your brother goes in want?  How much then is enough?  Go then, and moralize in silence in the dark where you will be less of an embarrassment to those who truly hold to the scriptures you mouth but do not believe.


For the liberal equally, there is no hiding from implications of massive wealth transference from the many to the few.  Over- concentration of means creates a monopoly of opportunity, thus destroying the basis for competition fundamental to liberal economic theories.  There is small place in liberal theories for the situation wherein some take all and most sacrifice everything.


I do not condemn the citizens of the United States,  in many ways I rather admire most of them and their country, together with what it says it stands for and often acts to uphold, but as a nation it will either come to grips with the selfish self-interests that devour its wealth and debase its social values, or you will live to see destroyed most of what is good in your land.  The choice is yours for none can force it upon you.  Few would even if they could, for they see in this turmoil an opportunity to advance their own base interests.


For myself, I preserve hope.  Life is short and we all wish for things to be settled favourably to our own wishes in our own time, but this is often not to be.  I trust that, eventually, the fundamentally democratic nature of U.S. society will again assert the interests of the many over the preferences of the few but, regardless of the outcome of the election, I doubt that this will happen in the next decade.


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