Torture versus collateral damage; the bigger evil?

[carl]

Fuchs:

Very good point about size. I think we often forget how big this country is and how many people over 300 million is. At least I do.

[Bill Moore]

We regressed morally at so many levels during this conflict. We made a deal with the devil (Pakistan) that allowed AQ senior leadership to escape and plot for another 10 years. We declared war on Iraq based on less than compelling evidence (the 1% doctrine), and shifted forces from an unfinished conflict i Afghanistan to Iraq. We publically endorsed torture as official policy, which as you have pointed out will put our forces at much greater risk at an unknown time in the future. We hired thousands of low quality contractors, many of them based on their political affiliations, to provide poor service at a high price. In many cases creating significant set backs to the overall operation. We aggressively pursued social and political engineering trying to create mirror image societies insteand of facilitating self-determinatio. We foolishly embraced a doctrine that has failed repeatedly throughout history, and now want to capture those lessons for future conflicts. Instead of collective sacrifice, we gave our citizens a tax cut for political expediency at the start of two wars and wonder why we can't manage our budget. We threw billions of borrowed dollars at the problem with no real strategy, and when it didn't work we surged billions more and now are looking for an acceptable exit.

I'm coming to the point where I think a nation's values (real values, values its people live by) are more important than its size, its economy, or the size of its military. Actually the values increase in importance as a nation gains power.

Maybe the pending economic crisis will drive us back to our core values that made us great to begin with.

[Fuchs]

Maybe the pending economic crisis will drive us back to our core values that made us great to begin with.

Invade neighbours, annex terrain, invite immigrants to take the booty?

[carl]

Invade neighbours, annex terrain, invite immigrants to take the booty?

Yep. Worked out well for everybody. Those who lived in the annexed part didn't have to live through the various agonies Mexico has gone through and is going through. My Grandfather fought in the Mexican Revolution and he said it was a very unpleasant time. The people in Arizona, New Mexico and California didn't have to go through any of it.

All those immigrants got to make a new start and we got the pick of the litter of all those countries for only those who had get up and go got up and came. Win win again.

[carl]

Instead of collective sacrifice, we gave our citizens a tax cut for political expediency at the start of two wars and wonder why we can't manage our budget.

Bill:

This brings up a very important point that I try to keep raising. The Americans were not averse to something like a war tax being imposed. We would have gone for it. The political elites were afraid to ask us to do it. They lacked any real backbone or moral courage as evidenced by all their defense of torture. Hell they lack any real moral base.

The Americans do have a moral base (Fuchs, restrain yourself). We are much as we were as far as willing to sacrifice for a war goes. It is the elites who have changed. If they are morally adrift, as I think they are, they will never see the need to sacrifice for anything for there isn't anything really good. Because they only know themselves, they figure everybody is like them and since they don't recognize there is anything worth sacrificing for they figure the rest of us feel the same way. So they won't even ask.

I am convinced it is the same thing when people say Americans are casualty averse. We aren't. The elites are. In their morally relativistic world they see nothing worth dying for so they figure the rest of us are like that.

We have a big problem now and will get bigger if we can't figure some way to address this cultural disconnect between the elites and the rest of us.

p.s. Tax rates don't matter. You can't spend rates, you can only spend revenue. And revenue goes up when you lower rates, generally. We still should have had a war tax though.

[Fuchs]

(...)revenue goes up when you lower rates, generally.

Trust an economist: That's nonsense.
It has never been observed since the Laffer curve argument has been brought forward that lowering a tax increases its or even only total revenue. The opposite is being observed every single time.

Lower taxes = less revenue. All else is nonsensical propaganda. Period.


There's a theoretical special case in which theoretically lowering the tax rate might increase revenue - this applies to ridiculously high tax rates, far above 50%.
A reduction of a tax rate from say 50% to 49% or 40% or 30% will inevitably deliver a loss of revenue not much smaller than the reduction of the tax rate (reduction from 50% to 40% would yield almost 20% less revenue).



The Laffer curve myth is one of those anglophone speciality myths - the rest of the world is laughing at you (if it knows or learns about he myth) for it.
My whole microeconomics class of more than 60 students laughed heartily, for sure.
That's because we haven't been indoctrinated with big lie propaganda abut the Laffer curve for three decades, of course.

[Entropy]

Torture versus collateral damage; the bigger evil?

The obvious and biggest difference is intent. With torture you are knowingly engaging in, at best, a morally questionable activity. Your intention is to deliberately cause pain.

"Collateral damage" by contrast is usually unintentional, and often unavoidable.

[carl]

Trust an economist: That's nonsense.
It has never been observed since the Laffer curve argument has been brought forward that lowering a tax increases its or even only total revenue. The opposite is being observed every single time.

Lower taxes = less revenue. All else is nonsensical propaganda. Period.


There's a theoretical special case in which theoretically lowering the tax rate might increase revenue - this applies to ridiculously high tax rates, far above 50%.
A reduction of a tax rate from say 50% to 49% or 40% or 30% will inevitably deliver a loss of revenue not much smaller than the reduction of the tax rate (reduction from 50% to 40% would yield almost 20% less revenue).



The Laffer curve myth is one of those anglophone speciality myths - the rest of the world is laughing at you (if it knows or learns about he myth) for it.
My whole microeconomics class of more than 60 students laughed heartily, for sure.
That's because we haven't been indoctrinated with big lie propaganda abut the Laffer curve for three decades, of course.

Trust a European economist to tout the conventional wisdom; no its not, as you yourself say above. It has happened several times in American history. IIRC Thomas Sowell say it happened in the Coolidge admin, the Kennedy admin, the Reagan admin and I believe that devil Bush's admin.

Just because a rate is ridiculously high doesn't mean it isn't applied. So if you knock down a ridiculously high rate revenue goes up because economic activity goes up. Which you said. So lower taxes don't equal lower revenues period. Viola.

As far as a bunch of Euroweenie students laughing at the US, weelllll....

[Fuchs]

It's not relevant what the guy says. It's relevant what happened.

Reagan did cut taxes a lot, lost revenue, had to raise the tax again multiple times. Why do you think did he do so?

I tell you: His best trait was his ability to recognize some of his errors. That's why he ran from Lebanon, that's why he raised taxes.

The only ways how reducing a normal tax rate could increase revenues are
* one-time effects with taxes such as capital gains taxes where the tax subjects have the ability to determine the period in which to pay taxes (they move tax payment into a low-rate period fearing a later rates hike).
* A revenue increase not ceteris paribus, but caused by economic growth from period to period, overcompensating a small rates reduction.

At a very, very high tax rate you cold gain a revenue increase by reducing tax evasion a lot and making the taxed activity substantially more attractive. This is the Laffer curve special case which is pure theory, for such stupidly high effective tax rates are excessively rare. They're even outlawed by constitutional court in Germany, when it said that the Legislative shall ban activities or items it wants to disappear, not strangulate them.

A look at the item to be taxed shows that it never expands nearly as much as required to compensate for the reduced rates.
For example, incomes don't double when you cut income tax by half.

Reagan's tax effects on revenues:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics#Tax_revenue
Vast reduction of revenue by big cut (first tax law), clear gains of revenue by increasing the effective rates again by closing loopholes (second one), gains by increased gasoline tax.

_________


This stuff is actually quite relevant to the torture topic, for the U.S. shows the (a certainly not unique) human susceptibility to the big lie; repeated wrong and seemingly unbelievable assertions begin to accumulate believers over time, and this supports some horrible policies.

I suppose it's especially troublesome in the U.S. because the U.S. has the critical mass to justify the required effort by special interests and it's large enough to sustain an alternate reality in public discourse. "The Netherlands could not sustain an alternate reality such as "torture is fine" or "cut taxes to increase revenues" because it's a smaller country and its people watch a lot of German TV. Dutch special interests would need to manipulate Dutch AND German perceptions, and they cannot muster the money and access for this.


There are not only horrible policies, but also discussions about horrible policies between big lie believers and the unconvinced. The conflict goes on and on and on and the end result is that the U.S. is still discussing or unable to fix problems which have been closed cases in many European countries for between 20 and 110 years.
I suppose these discussions and policies could not be sustained if there were more interactions with non-anglophone countries.


Again; to discuss costs and benefits or torture alone is already a sign of failure. It means one is discussing something which shouldn't even get any attention, but be dismissed because the correct answer should be obvious by now (and probably has been for a long time; one of Reagan's primaries competitors already called the Laffer Curve "Voodoo economics").

[carl]

It's not relevant what the guy says. It's relevant what happened.

What happened is relevant. And after the tax rates were lowered, tax revenues went up.

In 1982, the top individual rate was lowered from 70% to 50%. Individual tax receipts were just under 300 billion in that year. In the years that followed, individual tax receipts climbed until they were right around 400 billion. That year the top rate was again lowered from 50% to 28% and individual tax receipts continued to climb until in 1990 they were around 450 billion.

In 2003, the top rate was lowered from 39.8% to 35%. No effect on individual receipts that year and the next but climbing receipts every year until 2007.

And the same thing happened in the Kennedy admin, and according to Mr. Sowell in the Coolidge admin.

The only ways how reducing a normal tax rate could increase revenues are
* one-time effects with taxes such as capital gains taxes where the tax subjects have the ability to determine the period in which to pay taxes (they move tax payment into a low-rate period fearing a later rates hike).
* A revenue increase not ceteris paribus, but caused by economic growth from period to period, overcompensating a small rates reduction.

No. I think you are wrong. What you are assuming is that people don't react to stimuli. People do more when they are not penalized for it. Taxes are a penalty on economic activity. It stands to reason that if you penalize economic activity, you get less of it. If there is less economic activity there is less money available to tax, so over time revenues won't go up. The converse is true too. The less you penalize economic activity, the more there of it there will tend to be so over time revenues go up. That can't not be if people act as people and react to stimuli. If people were mindless drones, then you would be right.

A look at the item to be taxed shows that it never expands nearly as much as required to compensate for the reduced rates.

I disagree.

For example, incomes don't double when you cut income tax by half

We're not talking about incomes, we're talking about revenues.

The conflict goes on and on and on and the end result is that the U.S. is still discussing or unable to fix problems which have been closed cases in many European countries for between 20 and 110 years.

A bit of editorial advice here. You can take or leave it. You probably won't get far with American audiences by telling them how the Europeans have been getting it right for "between 20 and 110 years" and boy are those Yanks thickheaded. We remember too much European history over the past 20 to 110 years for that to be a good approach.

Again; to discuss costs and benefits or torture alone is already a sign of failure.

That I fully agree with.

[Surferbeetle]

Just because a rate is ridiculously high doesn't mean it isn't applied. So if you knock down a ridiculously high rate revenue goes up because economic activity goes up. Which you said. So lower taxes don't equal lower revenues period. Viola.

Just to stir the pot a bit...and please keep in mind that I am a fan of the scientific method, not a keynesian, nor am I a fan of either of our currently 'ascendent' political parties...

Note to neo-liberals: Earth orbits the sun, John Ross, 24 Nov 2012, Key Trends in Globalization, http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsin...s-the-sun.html

H/T to Gavyn Davies, FT Macroeconomics Blogger and Goldman Sachs Alum

As for torture...it's a tool of the twisted & weak....karma catches us all in the long run...

[Bill Moore]

Posted by Carl

This brings up a very important point that I try to keep raising. The Americans were not averse to something like a war tax being imposed. We would have gone for it. The political elites were afraid to ask us to do it. They lacked any real backbone or moral courage as evidenced by all their defense of torture. Hell they lack any real moral base.

I tend to agree, since conservations with most people outside of the self-appointed political elite point to agreement on many of the moral issues we're discussing. However, we have a system that allows us to purge the politically elite and yet we re-elect the same batch of clowns repeatedly. Can we be both moral and apathetic?

As for lowering taxes to raise revenues I'm in strong agreement with Fuchs. I have done a fair amount of reading on this topic, and I tend to believe that big business propaganda is pushing that line, but the numbers don't add up. I'm also of the belief the government should spend less, but that is a different argument altogether. I think we're in agreement that when we go to war the nation goes to war, so everyone should sacrifice. Putting a "I support the troops" sticker on your car isn't sacrifice. Paying additional taxes to support the war effort is, and it should motivate the nation (populace) to more closely watch how the government spends that money in support of the war and put a stop to the multi-million dollar contracts to political croonies who are getting rich off the war and providing no value in return.

This gets back to my previous point can we really be moral if we're apathetic? The political elite count on us being sheep, in military terms it gives them considerable freedom of movement.

[carl]

As for torture...it's a tool of the twisted & weak...

That is a wonderful sentence. I am hereby informing you that I will use it frequently in the future, probably without attribution.

[carl]

Note to neo-liberals: Earth orbits the sun, John Ross, 24 Nov 2012, Key Trends in Globalization, http://ablog.typepad.com/keytrendsin...s-the-sun.html

There are rather a lot of problems with that article.

[Dayuhan]

I think Entropy effectively addressed the OP's original question: torture is intentional, collateral damage is accidental. Apples and oranges.

The point of thread diversion arrived here, as far as I can tell:

We regressed morally at so many levels during this conflict. We made a deal with the devil (Pakistan) that allowed AQ senior leadership to escape and plot for another 10 years. We declared war on Iraq based on less than compelling evidence (the 1% doctrine), and shifted forces from an unfinished conflict i Afghanistan to Iraq. We publically endorsed torture as official policy, which as you have pointed out will put our forces at much greater risk at an unknown time in the future. We hired thousands of low quality contractors, many of them based on their political affiliations, to provide poor service at a high price. In many cases creating significant set backs to the overall operation. We aggressively pursued social and political engineering trying to create mirror image societies insteand of facilitating self-determinatio. We foolishly embraced a doctrine that has failed repeatedly throughout history, and now want to capture those lessons for future conflicts. Instead of collective sacrifice, we gave our citizens a tax cut for political expediency at the start of two wars and wonder why we can't manage our budget. We threw billions of borrowed dollars at the problem with no real strategy, and when it didn't work we surged billions more and now are looking for an acceptable exit.

I'm coming to the point where I think a nation's values (real values, values its people live by) are more important than its size, its economy, or the size of its military. Actually the values increase in importance as a nation gains power.

Maybe the pending economic crisis will drive us back to our core values that made us great to begin with.

That sparked a digression into the impact of tax rates on government revenues.

Not that it's any less a digression, but I must say I think it would be a good idea to have entry into a war accompanied by a mandatory war tax, partly because that would help pay for a war, but far more because it would make politicians think twice, or thee or four times, before they decide to go to war.

The idea that moral degradation or a lack of moral courage could result in the use of torture may have merit. It's also true, though, that the idea of "moral courage" can also be twisted into a conviction that the morally courageous know what is right and must do what is right no matter where that leads. People who know they are right are a good deal scarier to me than people who accept that they might be wrong, or at least not completely right, even though doubt may in some circles appear to signify a lack of moral courage.

I don't know that moral courage or moral degradation have anything to do with the current economic problems.

[carl]

I don't know that moral courage or moral degradation have anything to do with the current economic problems.

It may have everything to do with it. Our elites seem to have come not only to the conclusion that in order to gain and retain power they have to tell people that they can have their cake and eat it too; they seem to have come to believe it themselves.

[Dayuhan]

It may have everything to do with it. Our elites seem to have come not only to the conclusion that in order to gain and retain power they have to tell people that they can have their cake and eat it too; they seem to believe it themselves.

I don't see what that has to do with "moral courage". It's not as if there's some clear "right path" that leaders refuse to walk because they haven't the courage. There is in fact nearly infinite debate, even among the qualified and the knowledgeable, over what the right path is. It would be appealingly simple to reduce it all to a lack of courage among the elite, but that explanation doesn't take us very far.

And yes, the electorate does expect to be told what it wants to hear, and gets into a terrible snit when it's told anything else.

[carl]

I don't see what that has to do with "moral courage".

I think it does because I think it is clear that there is a right path. We have to cut the expenditure on entitlements. There is no way around that. That may be discussed, but it isn't acted upon. In my view it isn't acted upon because of a lack of moral courage.

That is related to the suits using torture and then using their fine educations to rationalize it. Lack of moral foundation and lack of moral courage...maybe the same animal viewed in different parts of the spectrum.

[Dayuhan]

I think it does because I think it is clear that there is a right path. We have to cut the expenditure on entitlements. There is no way around that. That may be discussed, but it isn't acted upon. In my view it isn't acted upon because of a lack of moral courage.

That is related to the suits using torture and then using their fine educations to rationalize it. Lack of moral foundation and lack of moral courage...maybe the same animal viewed in different parts of the spectrum.

Do you suggest that those who hold opinions other than yours lack moral courage? There's a considerable spectrum of opinion out there on where and how to cut spending and where and how to increase revenue, and I don't see any clear indication of an objectively "right" path within that spectrum of opinion. The common folk, top to bottom, have their own inconsistencies: the prevailing opinion seems to be that somebody else should pay more tax and less should be spent on entitlements that benefit somebody else.

[motorfirebox]

Nope not false, true. Regardless of the things that were done, those loans were bad and the would not have been made if the gov hadn't forced them to be made. So that is it. Bad loans made under duress that eventually went bad. Some surprise that that led to trouble.

It is a necessary part of the financial system that some people win and some people lose. In this case, the bad results of those bad loans would be passed back to the government itself and, for the most part, harmlessly absorbed. No, it wouldn't be indefinitely sustainable, but the damage it could do on its own was pretty sharply limited.

What caused it to snowball into an economy-wrecker was actual, intentional fraud. Do you understand that? If you lend me a nickel and I don't pay it back, you're out a nickel, regardless of whether someone forced you to lend me that nickel or not (and the fact that Fannie and Freddie will pay your nickel if I fail to takes a lot of the sting out of it). If you lend me a nickel, and then bet someone else a hundred million dollars that I'll pay you back, and show them fraudulent documents indicating that I'll probably pay you back, you can't blame me when you lose that hundred million. That was all you.

Yep. I'll go with all of that as contributing factors. Fannie and Freddie were mixed up in all of this and they were widely believed to be no risk because no matter how bad they screwed up, the gov would step in.

Uh, Fannie and Freddie weren't the ones who propagated the idea that securitizing risky loans made them less risky. That was... private investment.

Dayuhan, bubbling and nosediving are what I see indicated--I'll admit we're not there yet. As for what we need, re: government oversight and private investment, what we need is for fraudsters and enemies of the state to be thrown in jail for their crimes. We can't function as a society when some groups are above the law, and the group that most flagrantly and exorbitantly flaunts the law in the US these days is investment bankers. It's useless to talk about more or less oversight when that oversight is utterly toothless.