Reich: Giving up our public goods

Reich is right, even liberals are too shy anymore to mention public goods and the general welfare:  

Not even Democrats still use the phrase "the public good." Public goods are now, at best, "public investments." Public institutions have morphed into "public-private partnerships" or, for Republicans, simply "vouchers."

Outside of defense, domestic discretionary spending is down sharply as a percent of the economy. Add in declines in state and local spending, and total public spending on education, infrastructure and basic research has dropped dramatically over the past five years as a portion of GDP.

America has, though, created a whopping entitlement for the biggest Wall Street banks and their top executives -- who, unlike most of the rest of us, are no longer allowed to fail. They can also borrow from the Fed at almost no cost, then lend out the money at 3 percent to 6 percent.

All told, Wall Street's entitlement is the biggest offered by the federal government, even though it doesn't show up in the budget. And it's not even a public good. It's just private gain.

We're losing public goods available to all, supported by the tax payments of all and especially the better-off. In its place we have private goods available to the very rich, supported by the rest of us.

There's a class war going on alright, and the super rich and the TBTF banks are winning it.

Private Gain to a Few Trumps Public Good for the Many

By Robert Reich

August 24, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1f5iuUo

Progressive tax + public goods = National happiness?

Statistics from all over the world are all well and good, but hey, psychologists, there is a little thing that's proven and it's called American Exceptionalism. Which means the rules for everybody else don't apply to us Yanks.

In America, the pursuit of happiness isn't in building good public transport, education, health care, etc., it's in chasing that one-in-a-million lottery ticket to rich assholedom.

And I don't know about you, but it's gonna happen for me, just you wait! I'm gonna be the exception.

Progressive Tax Rates Linked To National Happiness: Study

By Alexander Eichler

September 8, 2011 | Huffington Post

Detractors of Warren Buffett take note: The more a country taxes its richest citizens, the happier everyone in that country will be.

Such are the findings of a new study, led by University of Virginia psychologist Shigehiro Oishi, which compares 54 different countries and finds a correlation between progressive tax policies -- that is, higher tax rates for higher tax brackets -- and overall contentedness.

It may not be the case that a progressive tax system automatically leads to a happier population, however. The report emphasizes that what matters is what governments do with the tax dollars they collect.

"[A] key to a happy society is quality public and common goods," a draft of the report notes. "[E]ven if a society does not adopt a progressive tax, as long as it can afford good public transportation, education system, health care, and so forth, citizens are likely to be happy."

The study observed the highest rates of "life satisfaction" in Canada, New Zealand, the Netherlands and a number of Nordic countries, including Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden -- all nations that consistently rank high whenever countries are compared on the basis of happiness.

The study also noted that many of these nations tax their richest citizens at a much higher rate than their poorest. Several other nations displayed a correlation between progressive tax rates and happiness, including Israel, France and the U.K.

A number of organizations have ranked nations by happiness in recent years, and offered a raft of explanations for why certain countries seem more satisfied than others. An extensive Gallup study in 2010 concluded that while rich countries are generally happier, so are societies where interpersonal relationships tend to be strong.

In June, 24/7 Wall St. analyzed a quality-of-life survey performed by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, and noted that natural resources, economic stability, a strong services sector and "a good balance of work and leisure time" are all correlated with national happiness.

In the study examining the link between happiness and progressive taxes, the U.S. ranked fairly high among nations for happiness, but has only a mildly progressive tax policy. Some two dozen countries have tax policies more progressive than the United States', including Belgium, Mexico, Germany, Pakistan, Vietnam, Japan and Morocco.