A good friend has written an interesting and perceptive post on inequality and fairness.
He's not particularly concerned about the former, but he thinks the latter is a real problem.
And he makes a series of suggestions that he thinks could help Mitt Romney own the issue. Given Mitt's recent comment that he's "not concerned about the very poor," that may be an unattainable goal. But my friend's ideas are worth considering.
He sugests making the tax code simpler, lowering rates, and eliminating preferences to ensure that all income is treated the same way, whether it's salary or capital gain. To my mind, that would be a good start, but I have doubts about its feasibility.
Our tax system is fruit of the same tree as many of our other problems -- namely, the increasing polarization of our political process.
As I mentioned earlier, Americans are less politically polarized than they think. But the people they elect are even more polarized than we realize.
Keith Poole has documented this change in a number of studies. This chart, for example, shows that the two parties haven't been as ideologocally far apart since the 1930s.
He also documents how moderates in Congress have essentially disappeared. The chart below plots the percentage of “overlapping” members in each chamber over time. Overlapping members are those Republicans who are tmore liberal than the most conservative Democrat; and conversely, Democrats who are more conservative than the most liberal Republican.
At their peak, overlapping members comprised majorities in each chamber. In the last few Congresses, the overlap has vanished; that is, the most liberal Republican is to the right of the most conservative Democrat.
The implications of this change in Congress' ideoplogical makeup are serious. It not only means that it is more difficult to get legislative action on important matters. It means that each party approaches those problems with diametrically opposite biases.
The Republicans believe government is always the problem; the Democrats, that it is always the soluton. The truth, of course, is closer to the middle. The problem is that there's no one there.
Electing majorities of either party won't solve the problem, but actually exacerbate it. In the end, the system won't produce fairer results until we elect people who are less ideological.
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Posted by: Liberal Bias | February 27, 2012 at 10:43 PM