The popular television series "Fargo", heavily derived from the Coen brothers' film of the same name but quite different and in many ways much better, has received critical acclaim. On the surface, it's a story of good, represented by the local Minnesota police, versus evil, in the form of an out-of-town assassin named Malvo portrayed brilliantly by Billy Bob Thornton.
Spoiler alert: good prevails. But there's a possible subtext to the series, another layer of meaning. Malvo, it seems to me, represents a libertarian hero.
The good people of Minnesota are portrayed as being as blah and uncreative as can possibly be imagined. They are television-addicted couch potatoes who live in a rigid social and political structure weighed down with suffocating bureaucracy and rules, especially the police, who enforce the rules and are paid from tax money. They are government itself. From a libertarian point of view, they epitomize the lazy, unproductive parasites sucking the life blood from Ayn Rand's precious "makers".
Malvo, on the other hand, is a libertarian hero. He is creative and energetic and the epitome of free enterprise. His "business" happens to be murder, but he only murders lesser humans who are unproductive and have no creative energy, and so have no right to live, and he does it with spirit and style. Far from being a celebration of good conquers evil, the series can be seen as a libertarian tragedy. It's the triumph of the weak over the strong, the ultimate libertarian nightmare in which the meek inherit the earth.
Of course, modern libertarians mostly stop short of approving assassination for hire as an acceptable enterprise, even if the targets are lazy and useless hangers-on that live off other people's creative energy. So the series can be seen as taking libertarianism to its logical extreme, then asking the question that Malvo asks when confronted in a Las Vegas elevator by his acolyte Lester Nygaard, "Do you want this, Lester? Do you want this?".
If you haven't seen the series, I recommend it. It has a 98% "fresh" rating on rottentomatoes.com. You can find it on Amazon Instant Video and probably other on-demand sites as well. It's extremely well done and great entertainment. Besides that, it seems to have something to say that's worth considering.
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Marx vs. Ayn Rand: Lloyd Blankfein
Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, famously said in 2009 that Goldman is doing "God's work", which prompted me to quip that God had tasked Goldman Sachs with the job of vacuuming up all the loose money flying around the world so the rest of us can stop obsessing about it and pay attention to what really matters.
Money does matter though. You don't need to be rich to be happy and too much wealth may even interfere with happiness, but as Thomas Piketty has argued persuasively, extreme concentration of wealth has contorted politics and society in the past and likely will in the future.
Give Blankfein credit for understanding the risk of rising concentration of wealth. He has been saying for some time now that unchecked free market forces will lead to destabilizing wealth inequality and dysfunctional government. Of course sabotaging the government is precisely the goal of the lunatic right wing who seek to establish their own government-free zones, be they floating islands as proposed by The Seasteading Institute or Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's vigilante mob.
Blankfein agrees that some form of wealth redistribution is necessary. He has said that the country is good at creating wealth but not good at distributing it. He gets mealy-mouthed, though, when it comes to how to achieve this goal. Blankfein suggests that a growing economy, like a rising tide, will raise all boats, but if Thomas Piketty's "r > g" theory is correct, growth only makes wealth inequality worse over time. Piketty's theory suggests that taxes of 1% of net worth per year are needed for the growth in wealth to not exceed the growth of the economy.
Perhaps in his heart of hearts Blankfein knows that taxes are the only way to redistribute wealth but doesn't dare say it. The hatred that the wealthy harbor against paying taxes is so extreme that it approaches something like religious fervor. He might not last for five minutes as CEO of Goldman Sachs if he so much as breathed support for taxes. The company would risk becoming a leper in the eyes of their customers and he himself might not be invited to any more parties, ever.
Blankfein is right to be worried about what will happen as the concentration of wealth continues unabated. It augurs ill for the country, for his children, and for pretty much everything he cares about and believes in. But he needs to take the next step and lend his support to a sensible tax policy. He should at least get behind the "Buffet Rule", Warren Buffet's proposal for a 30% tax on income over $1 million. There's no doubt though that it would take a bit of courage. The blow-back would be fierce.
Money does matter though. You don't need to be rich to be happy and too much wealth may even interfere with happiness, but as Thomas Piketty has argued persuasively, extreme concentration of wealth has contorted politics and society in the past and likely will in the future.
Give Blankfein credit for understanding the risk of rising concentration of wealth. He has been saying for some time now that unchecked free market forces will lead to destabilizing wealth inequality and dysfunctional government. Of course sabotaging the government is precisely the goal of the lunatic right wing who seek to establish their own government-free zones, be they floating islands as proposed by The Seasteading Institute or Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy's vigilante mob.
Blankfein agrees that some form of wealth redistribution is necessary. He has said that the country is good at creating wealth but not good at distributing it. He gets mealy-mouthed, though, when it comes to how to achieve this goal. Blankfein suggests that a growing economy, like a rising tide, will raise all boats, but if Thomas Piketty's "r > g" theory is correct, growth only makes wealth inequality worse over time. Piketty's theory suggests that taxes of 1% of net worth per year are needed for the growth in wealth to not exceed the growth of the economy.
Perhaps in his heart of hearts Blankfein knows that taxes are the only way to redistribute wealth but doesn't dare say it. The hatred that the wealthy harbor against paying taxes is so extreme that it approaches something like religious fervor. He might not last for five minutes as CEO of Goldman Sachs if he so much as breathed support for taxes. The company would risk becoming a leper in the eyes of their customers and he himself might not be invited to any more parties, ever.
Blankfein is right to be worried about what will happen as the concentration of wealth continues unabated. It augurs ill for the country, for his children, and for pretty much everything he cares about and believes in. But he needs to take the next step and lend his support to a sensible tax policy. He should at least get behind the "Buffet Rule", Warren Buffet's proposal for a 30% tax on income over $1 million. There's no doubt though that it would take a bit of courage. The blow-back would be fierce.
Friday, June 6, 2014
Marx vs. Ayn Rand: The French Wealth Tax
In a previous post, I suggested that any country, for example Kiribati, could impose a wealth tax on individuals even if they don't live in that country. France already has a wealth tax which it imposes on its citizens, but why couldn't it be extended to non-citizens? I've tried to do a little on-line research and I can't find anything that prevents it from being applied to persons in other countries even in its current form. I'm certainly not an expert in this field of law, though, and it would take a lot more research than I'm willing or able to do to determine if any changes in law would be needed, or if it's simply a question of the government of France mustering the will to try to apply it to non-residents.
Nothing could be more "un-American" than a country applying its tax to foreigners. The American Revolution was fought in large part over the issue of "taxation without representation" because the British Parliament had imposed taxes on the American colonies but colonists were not allowed to vote for Parliament. So one possible objection to imposing the wealth tax on foreigners could be that they do not have a voice in the government that is imposing the tax. But despite the prominence of "taxation without representation" as a pretext for the American Revolution, the United States doesn't exactly follow the principle that people who are taxed should have a voice in government. Persons with permanent resident status in the U.S. are not citizens and cannot vote but are taxed the same as citizens.
This objection to application of the French wealth tax to foreigners is easily overcome, however, if France were willing to grant citizenship to anyone who pays the tax. France has its share of xenophobes, of course, but it's difficult for me to see any good reason why a country should withhold citizenship from anyone subject to the wealth tax. It kicks in at about US$1 million of net worth so it's not like the country is in danger of being overrun by immigrants who will be a burden to society.
France is the country that produced Thomas Piketty, the economist who has become something of a superstar to those who believe that allowing unchecked wealth accumulation is dangerous and unwise. By seeking to apply its wealth tax to persons outside its borders, that country could take a bold step to ensure that there is no "Galt's Gulch" anywhere on the planet where the uber-wealthy can escape appropriate taxation.
Nothing could be more "un-American" than a country applying its tax to foreigners. The American Revolution was fought in large part over the issue of "taxation without representation" because the British Parliament had imposed taxes on the American colonies but colonists were not allowed to vote for Parliament. So one possible objection to imposing the wealth tax on foreigners could be that they do not have a voice in the government that is imposing the tax. But despite the prominence of "taxation without representation" as a pretext for the American Revolution, the United States doesn't exactly follow the principle that people who are taxed should have a voice in government. Persons with permanent resident status in the U.S. are not citizens and cannot vote but are taxed the same as citizens.
This objection to application of the French wealth tax to foreigners is easily overcome, however, if France were willing to grant citizenship to anyone who pays the tax. France has its share of xenophobes, of course, but it's difficult for me to see any good reason why a country should withhold citizenship from anyone subject to the wealth tax. It kicks in at about US$1 million of net worth so it's not like the country is in danger of being overrun by immigrants who will be a burden to society.
France is the country that produced Thomas Piketty, the economist who has become something of a superstar to those who believe that allowing unchecked wealth accumulation is dangerous and unwise. By seeking to apply its wealth tax to persons outside its borders, that country could take a bold step to ensure that there is no "Galt's Gulch" anywhere on the planet where the uber-wealthy can escape appropriate taxation.
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