Olbermann was on fire Monday, with enough Big Money pieces to make your head spin — or rather your stomach turn — as you consider the future of what used to be the Republic. (I'll have a piece up later on how it's become the Republic of Rove.)
But this Countdown piece is both so visceral, and has so many angles, that it deserves pride of place. The background elements:
- • A rural county in Tennessee (close to Rand Paul's state) • A city fire department supported by taxes • A supplemental fee required of county residents to get city fire services extended to their individual homes (on a home-by-home basis) • A county resident who forgot to pay his fee (but see below on "forgot")
First, a question: Would you change your mind about this person if you thought he was a Republican voter?
Now some thoughts. This situation presents a rich set of on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand conflicts:
Misfortune vs. fairness. On the one hand, this is unfortunate by any measure, a terrible and inhumane tragedy. Firemen watching a fire! On the other hand, this is fair in a pay-to-play world. He says he forgot (though by his own admission, he didn't pay three years ago either). Others choose not to pay. Either way, pay up or lose. The IRS doesn't take "I forgot" to pay taxes. The cops don't take "I forgot" to stop drinking.
Pay-to-play vs. public services. On the one hand, as progressives we think that pay-to-play is wrong on its face, always. We would ask, why doesn't the county simply tax all county residents and provide city-subscribed fire service to everyone?
But on the other hand, this guy didn't see that as the solution. His solution is a fire chief who winks at the rules in his favor. In other words, he's fine with pay-to-play, but he wants to cheat the system by paying for insurance only when he has a claim, and pocketing his money otherwise. This keeps his own costs down at the expense of funding a needed public service for all. And he wants an enforcement official who guarantees that kind of "deal."
Taking responsibility. On the one hand, people like him — people with the least, or at least, with less — are always hurt by pay-to-play. And the sell to him by the Big Boys is that pay-to-play denies "undeserved" services to the undeserving Other. The Other needs to "take responsibility," a nice moralizer's argument for self-dealing and withholding.
On the other hand, it's inevitably people like him who end up "taking responsibility" (i.e. paying the price) themselves, since in their ignorance, they don't ever see that withholding from The Other always results in withholding from themselves as well. And that's where he is; given that he likes the solution he voted for, the party of "take responsibility" hands him these results, and that admonition. He's stuck.
Finally, incentives and the problem for progressives. On the one hand, we don't want this world for anyone, for us or for them. (I'm deliberately rejecting revenge as a motivation; in my opinion, to be socially vengeful is to be exactly what they are, and what we reject.) We want quality government services, fairly funded by equitable (and progressive) taxation, available to everyone.
On the other hand, the incentives are all wrong. Yes, the working poor are always hurt, but Tea Party "freedom-loving" low-enders and retirees (not the most affluent of folks), as voters, are a big part of why we're in this mess. It's rural Mississippi that keeps Mississippi shoeless. It's eastern Oregon that keeps all Oregon in fiscal woes. It's small-state senators, representing almost no one, who pack the Senate with more conservative votes than there are conservative voters.
So how do we "incentivize" conservative voters, as opposed to their Big Money manipulators? In a Freakonomics world, the answer is consequences. Wall Street is incentivized by government bailouts to take more risks; in that world they call it "creating moral hazard." How do you re-incentivize Wall Street the other way? The pain of a world without bailouts.
Thus the problem for progressives. Wall Street's pain is corporate pain as much as individual pain. Mr. Cranick's pain is only individual pain — very tough to countenance. The man is in tears for a reason; as would be any of us. And yet, it's the incentives, stupid. Conservative voters need a reason to stop voting against the interests of us all. If they don't stop, we will all go down with them.
See what I mean? Contradictions and consequences. Or, to quote Latka in one of my favorite Taxi episodes, "America is one tough town."
GP
