David Brooks, better known for his weekly appearance on PBS as a counter analyst to Mark Shields, wrote in a NY Times column that about “two rival economic systems” between the “American model” of conservatives and the “European model” of liberals. Arbitrarily he sees the American model as smaller government, lower taxes but less social support, whereas the “European model is bigger government, more generous support and less inequality.
He uses this as a ploy to excoriate the social security system shortfall in face of aging populations: The American model will be “challenged” but the European model is “unsustainable.” By this, I take it, conservatism means more fine tuning of inequality will be the challenge while saccharine liberals’ hands will be tied when confronting the attrition of equality. Brooks cites a dependency ratio statistic that shows the number of people over 65 as a percentage of those 20-64 will rise from 22% to 37% by 2050, thus cutting the growth rate of GDP and employment but markedly better than the fate of Europe, which he implies, relying on 19th century myth, the workforce there labors only 50% of US workers due to higher taxes lowering incentive to work.
Conservatives are infamous in simplicity: first the so-called lower taxes — and to Bush still not low enough — in the US is federal income without regard to the payroll tax, nor do they take into account the myriad of rather regressive state and local taxes. Most important, they do not blink an eye in seeing the runaway train of interest on the debt paid out to the affluent here and overseas, exceeding even the fiasco of the prescription plan for seniors. They love to cite evidence that the poor don’t even pay income tax, but never mention the causal relationship between living wage and the ability to pay income tax. Just as affluent liberals urge higher taxes, but never return the gain they have made since Reagan to the federal coffers, affluent conservatives whine about their unfair payroll tax, yet on retirement are eager to put the social security checks in a trust fund for their progeny. Though conservatives pose as champions of the flat tax as soon as one counters that it be progressive, they freeze; for they know under the current system they make out like bandits owing to enormous tax shelters, and ridiculously low rates on investments and capital gains.
Brooks has always been a smoothie — in the vein of Wm. Buckley — as though one of the intellectual Republicans with compassion and commonsense solutions. As a result, the reader is to infer that the solution is to address the coming shortfall in social security by the “American model” that furthers inequality, or as he would prefer to put it, even less social support.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: January 9, 2005.
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