Jon Stewart arm wrestles Grover Norquist (and wins)

Here's the Jon Stewart interview. (Dontcha wish actual newspeople interviewed this well?)

I have a pledge for you. And I bet it'd work.

"Any congressional district that elects anyone who signs Grover Norquist's pledge shall have its federal funding adjusted to equal its federal taxes paid."

This would affect mostly Republican districts who get more than they pay in. And it would balance the budget almost immediately.

Take it a step further: all congressional districts that elect a Democrat shall not have to pay more in taxes than they receive in federal funding. This would affect most Democratic districts who tend to pay more in taxes than they receive in federal dollars.

Ya see, here's the Big Hypocrisy: the districts that get the most from the federal government are Republican districts. And Republican districts nationwide, on average, get more from the federal government than they pay in.

So we'd be doing them a favor. We'd be helping them be honest, helping them be true to their ideals. No more federal gravy train for Republican districts who signed Grover's pledge (which he thought up when he was twelve–––I'm not making this up, it's on tape.) And Democrat taxpayers would stop being ripped off by the lazy, tax evading Republican parts of the country.

Anyway, Jon Stewart does a pretty fair job of outdebating Norquist. He points out that Reagan raised taxes a dozen or so times. He points out Clinton raised taxes and created a budget surplus and a boom, and Bush cut them and destroyed the global economy and bankrupted the country. Norquist doesn't blink or argue because it's all true.

Stewart does miss one big fat opportunity. When Norquist says we should get rid of public pensions and replace them with 401K's because then everyone knows exactly what they are going to get, Jon should have pointed out that 401K's are the accounts that Wall Street cleaned out over the past four years. The money went away. (Well, it didn't go away as much as it went into Goldman Sachs executive bonuses.)

Retirees under the privatized system have to pray really hard that the economy is up when they retire.

The thing Norquist hates about pensions is they are promises that have to be kept even if the market is being wiped out by pirates. Norquist doesn't like promises made to working people. Only promises made to pirates and CEOs, who are sometimes the same thing.

From INC. Magazine: High Tax Norway is an Entrepreneur's Paradise

Today's must read. Share this INC. magazine article with a small business person you know.

"Only two countries in the OECD—Chile and Mexico—pay a lower percentage of their gross domestic product in taxes than we Americans do.

"But there is precious little evidence to suggest that our low taxes have done much for entrepreneurs—or even for the economy as a whole. "It's actually quite hard to say how tax policy affects the economy," says Joel Slemrod, a University of Michigan professor who served on the Council of Economic Advisers under Ronald Reagan. Slemrod says there is no statistical evidence to prove that low taxes result in economic prosperity. Some of the most prosperous countries—for instance, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, and, yes, Norway—also have some of the highest taxes. Norway, which in 2009 had the world's highest per-capita income, avoided the brunt of the financial crisis: From 2006 to 2009, its economy grew nearly 3 percent. The American economy grew less than one-tenth of a percent during the same period. Meanwhile, countries with some of the lowest taxes in Europe, like Ireland, Iceland, and Estonia, have suffered profoundly. The first two nearly went bankrupt; Estonia, the darling of antitax groups like the Cato Institute, currently has an unemployment rate of 16 percent. Its economy shrank 14 percent in 2009."

Why did these "high tax" countries weather the recession better? Because their citizens didn't have the bottom drop out of their world. They didn't panic about their retirement accounts because they have a government that insures that. Safety nets are there to guard against the uncertainty problem. The Right in this country thinks the only ones entitled to safety nets are large corporations. That's what's holding us back.

INC. is the international magazine of entrepreneurship. It's the small business bible. It isn't aimed at or written by Wall Street or corporate types. And this article makes perfect sense. America isn't falling behind because of high taxes. We'd be much better off, less worried, more stable, more secure if our tax rate was higher and fairer. If the government took care of the things individuals and companies shouldn't have to worry about. Consumers would be freer to spend. Entrepreneurs would be freer to innovate. Think how productive we could be. Look at how entrepreneurs thrive in Norway. All they have to focus on is what they do best.

A fairer system with Eisenhower era tax rates could remove the healthcare burden from small business and from everyone. That is a major source of uncertainty today. Imagine not having to worry about it. Imagine being able to concentrate on what you do best. (I'm a small businessman, have been for 35 years. I know I would like this.)

A Different Kind of Strike

From Thomas Frank, writing in Harper's.

"A series of psychological studies appeared recently showing that the rich are quantitatively less nice than others. My object in the latest issue of Harper's Magazine, is to ask how that might be remedied, how the rich might be made nicer. My answer:

"Let us consider a different sort of strike, one that might help the emotionally arrested rich in their time of need. I propose a twenty-four-hour refusal to fawn. A servility strike. A day without deference..."