Letting it go

Y'know, maybe I complain too much. Maybe I should back off perfection. Maybe I don't see the forest for the trees. Maybe I miss how good things are economically when I think of how they could be better. Sure, the public and private sector could save oodles of money and/or redirect it to better, more productive ventures if there were one simple tax rate than that which we have today. Oops! See, there's an example of looking past the good for the perfect. Federal revenues are as high as they've ever been, doing their best to counteract the spending that is largely to blame for the budget deficit.
Apparently, Robert Kuttner doesn't see it that way (http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11890). Either that or he's trying to commune with John Kenneth Galbraith, every liberal economist's idol, like Obi-Wan Kenobi would with Qui-Gon Jinn. Seems to me all the changes over which he laments were good changes and those that have contributed to the explosion in U.S. GDP from “a generation ago”:
“More industries were regulated.” There used to be more red, bureaucratic red-tape through which to cut to do business;
The minimum wage went from “half the average wage” to “below one - third”. This is as much a matter of principle as it is economics. A minimum wage prices workers out of the market (although one result of that is, for example, self-checkout lines at the grocery store, which I like very much) and is viewed by many as a form of social promotion;
Enforcement of “workers' right(s) to organize” has waned. The existence of unions simply impedes the ability of companies to compete, especially with ever-freer trade, which itself raises living standards. It’s a wonder unions have had the smarts to make concessions faced with the realization that avoidance thereof could mean obsolescence for the domestic companies for which they work. (One of the last strong unions, that of public school teachers, will soon be brought to its knees once more parents start lobbying for more choice as to what school earns the taxes they pay to educate their kids);
“Funny-money worker-savings plans.” Don’t defined contribution plans offer people more control over their retirement savings than defined benefit plans??; and,
“Taxation was progressive.” Last I checked, the federal tax code has 6 brackets. Talk about your inconvenient truths.

I tend to be skeptical when I hear or read of writers, politicians, academics and the like pretending to know about the middle class, whether upper or lower. An exchange a few years ago between Al Hunt and Robert Novak on CNN’s defunct Capital Gang always comes to mind. Hunt told Novak (paraphrasing) “I don’t want to raise taxes on everybody. I want to raise taxes on people like you and I.” That simply displayed of sad ignorance of real life out here in the flyover land. Not all upper middle class people are writers. Some own businesses that employ the rest of the middle class. What do you think happens, or becomes possible, when you raise their taxes, or burden them with regulations?

The middle class, in my experience, is not all that different from what it was when I grew up. My education is probably the reason I make twice as much what my dad did when he was supporting my mom, sister and myself. People’s decision to have a two-earner household is just that; their decision. If people cannot live within their means, or they choose not to advance in life, why should I help push them into the middle class with my taxes?

Forbes magazine's Rich Karlgaard brought up a wonderfully insightful point that, for reasons I shall explain, I am almost ashamed I did not think of: since when can one support a middle-class lifestyle when he/she just barely makes double-digit dollars/hour?? Until I graduated college the first time in 1996, I don't believe I ever made more than double the minimum wage. Some of that time (right after graduating high school), I was still living at home. During the rest of it, I had one or two roommates. All the while I was in school. I never dreamed of parking my life at such a wage.
From the time I started studying economics in graduate school, I have never been able to understand the existence of liberal economists like Kuttner, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich, etc. (I honestly had never heard of Galbraith until he died) It’s one thing to read some yahoo like Dennis Kucinich talk about “excessive oil company profits”. The man studied speech communications in school. He doesn’t know any better. It’s quite another when someone trained in economics openly proposes government intervention, of any kind to any degree, into the private sector, or uses the word “excessive” to describe such profits. I read their publications because I find their views fascinating. I’m curious. I’m trying to figure them out. Maybe that’s another thing I need to back off from.