NEWMAN!
Said I, " . . . -Most of Gore's tax cuts are conditional. Why should -you have to do something the Gov wants you to do to -get a tax cut, in light of $260 billion surpluses. -Bush's are much less so, albeit to the wrong people.
Pronounceth Nathan, "Conditional tax cuts" is another word for government spending. All government spending is conditional- ie. it tells you we are giving you health care coverage rather than letting you spend the same money on a big screen television. What a bizarro Republican line you want to take Max to keep calling Gore's spending conservative. . . . "
-WRONG! Soc Sec benefits aren't conditional. Neither is any -other cash transfer, of which there are a number. You can -spend them on whatever you like, like big screen televisions, -or even one a' them fancy flat screen you put on the ceiling -over your bed. Revenue sharing wasn't conditional. Personal\ -exemptions aren't conditional. Etc. etc.
I still think you are spouting bizarro Republicanism, since by your logic, progressives should be supporting monetary vouchers for everything. Abolish federal and state funding for schools, since people get to use them only if they send there kids to particular schools. Abolish Medicaid and give poor folks vouchers that they can spend on big screen TVs instead of health care. Abolish mass transit spending and give folks vouchers to spend on private buses or their own cars at their desire.
No more conditions on any government money, sayeth Max.
>what progressives need are large, simple proposals for
>transparent, redistributive cash transfer programs for
>broadly popular purposes (i.e., working families with
>children, young people just starting out their careers,
>higher ed, or business enterprises. Not narrowly targeted,
>means-tested fiscally constipated, numerous programs
>entailing high levels of bureaucratic overhead.
Let's see Gore is promoting tax credits - also known as cash transfers - for purposes such as preschool, health care for kids, prescription drugs for the elderly, and college tuition. Which of those purposes are unpopular?
As for bureaucratic overhead, most of these tax credits are pretty simple. There are tax calculators all over the Web comparing the Bush and Clinton tax and spending credits. No big sweat. There is some means testing for the richest taxpayers, but they apply to the vast number of middle income families.
>Reject liberalism and try social democracy: Big,
>expensive universal programs serving broad purposes
>that eliminate boundaries within the working class.
Reject social democracy and support socialism. I'm all for the latter, but neither has a chance of winning the election this year. And apparently, everyone who wants to piss their vote away would rather waste it on social democracy (Nader) rather than support socialism (McReynolds).
You are awfully obsessed with your policy wonk Keynesianism and tax simplicity (both of which I support all things being equal) to the total exclusion of the substantive gains for families that will have funded preschool, health care and college tuition for their kids, matching funds from the government for retirement savings, and elder care and prescription drugs funding to take care of their parents.
$10,000 in benefits for various working families seems like a good thing, not even a lesser evil. These kinds of programs by Gore fall more in the classification of lesser goods. But the fact that we have lesser goods on the table politically should be something to cheer about.
-- Nathan Newman