SubscribeWhat's wrong with it? Would you like the academic reasons or the real-life reasons? What the hey, I'll give both. The academic problem is that the theories and arguments for a maximum-wage law are specious at best, and all end up boiling down to a purely emotional rationale: Some people are jealous of those who make more money than they do, and thus they want to make the act of being "too rich," as determined arbitrarily by themselves, into a moral crime. You want to argue the morality of being rich, fine, but don't try to bring logic into it. Real-life reasons: The economy would instantaneously - as in, the very day such a law took effect - enter a depression the likes of which the world has never seen, for a number of reasons I won't go into here unless someone who really doesn't understand why asks me to do so. More importantly, it would provide the government with less money in the end, not more. If you think people would simply keep on "technically" making >$250K while letting 100% of the excess go to the feds, you're nuts. All such salaries would immediately be cut below the $250K mark, while alternate ways of providing the excess would be discovered (there are always loopholes). In many cases, the motive to succeed, to take business risks, would simply evaporate. That means fewer new companies being created, little to no expansion of existing companies, etc. In other words, total nationwide economic slowdown, which equals major loss of tax revenue.
• If you thought that serious electoral reform was going to come out of the Florida debacle, you're probably going to be disappointed.
• Campaign finance reform is doomed. As has been touched upon above, nobody on either side of the aisle really wants it. Other than McCain, the Democrats are more in favor of it publicly, but behind the scenes they're even more against it than the GOP, now that their own data seems to show they might get more hurt by it than the GOP would. So they're playing the game: Let it pass in the Senate while making positive public comments, then watch the press and the public completely forget about it as it's totally ignored in favor of a million other bills in the House, never even getting brought up for debate. And what little support it did get came largely from John McCain, not from Nader.
• There is no such thing as a successful third party in the American political system. Though the system was not intentionally designed as such in the beginning, it has turned out that our system pretty much creates two main political parties by default. We are not doomed to have the same two parties for ever and ever, but if a new party - say, the Greens - does come to power, it will only happen at the expense of (and cause the death of) either the Democrats or the Republicans. And the only way the Green Party would ever achieve that level of popularity - and thus power - is through a rather severe moderation of its more extreme policies. Which means in the end they'd just be the Democrats with a new name.
• One thing that seems to have escaped notice here - and I think it's the most important point of all - is that this thread shows just how massively fractured the liberals (and/or the Democrats, as it were) are in this country right now. The infighting is all-pervasive between the moderate and more leftist wings of the party, and this shitstorm over Nader is papering over the fact that until these factions can be united in some fashion, liberals in this country are doomed. Doomed just like the GOP was from the time of Nixon's resignation until Reagan united them all. Democrats will continue to get elected, of course, but without some sort of overarching platform that all liberals can support to some extent, all you'll have are a lot of elected Democrats arguing with each other and not getting much accomplished. (Note how famously, um, "freewheeling" shall we say, the Clinton White House was when it came to internal discussion of policy issues, and how well that worked out.)
And keep in mind that Americans, in general, think of themselves as moderate, leaning slightly to the conservative side. While a true-left Democratic party may be intellectually satisfying to many, it would end up turning off far more people than it would attract. And if things get so bad that the lefties break off from the Democrats entirely, well ... see what I said above about successful third parties.
• I'm surprised there's been so few mentions of Perot here, since he seems to show that 3rd-party candidates can work for you as well as against you. Without Perot, we probably never would have had eight years of Clinton in the first place. (Whether that's a good or bad thing is up to you, naturally.)
• One thing this thread has made crystal clear is that when it comes to politics, everyone will interpret what s/he sees in a subjective fashion, in a way that corresponds with his/her own political beliefs. Straightforward events and traits will be misjudged in whatever way it takes to internally correspond with one's own ideology, even when it can clearly be proved that there's one objective reality involved. (Examples: 1) The Supreme Court nominations issue I talk about above, which is very complex, is treated as a very simple "We must vote X to stop Y from appointing SUPCO justices!" issue. 2) Many slams above of the "Bush is an imbecile because he sometimes mangles sentences" variety. Great for establishing an emotional feeling of superiority, but it's scientifically proven that such malstructured syntax has nothing to do with ones innate intelligence. And of course there a tons of other objective criteria that show Bush is anything but an idiot.) In the end, if we cannot get to the point where we all are willing to put aside our emotional prejudices, and focus on the objective facts we face and the choices we have to debate, there will never be any meaningful changes to our political process or discourse.
• This is a much cuter photo of a sheep.
posted by aaron at 12:04 AM on April 24, 2001
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posted by greensweater at 6:26 AM on April 23, 2001