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New Zealand PR
I just finished reading "Changing Politics -- The Electoral Referendum of 1993" containing a series of essays about what led to the referendum to change to a PR system and some speculation about likely effects. The book predated the actual change so I am moving next to some later assessments. However, I was struck by what led to the referendum, namely, widespread disaffection with an increasingly elitist government responsive to special interests at the expense of the general welfare. Interestingly, NZ had a strong populist system with a regulated economy and many aspects of a welfare state in which the governors were the instrument of the people until 1984. The post-1984 has all the markings of the Reagan/Thatcher era in which markets were seen as god and governments made decisions aimed at protecting markets as the only legitimate regulators. It was reaction to the post-1984 "restructuring" that led to the referendum and a desire to return to the earlier conditions.
The referendum was to put in place a "multi-member" proportional representation system in which a large number of members of parliament would be elected by plurality but voters also would vote for a party and many more members of parliament would be selected from national lists of persons prepared by each party with the goal of producing a parliament whose membership reflected actual voting preferences (by party).
The system would preclude the single member outcome in which the majority of members of parliament (and control of the government) could be elected by less than a majority of voters and even by less votes than went to another party.
However, the essay writers argued that external economic forces would prevent a return to the regulated, welfare economy even though the new system would result in more open and representative government. They also speculated that the need for negotiated policy making could make members less responsive to their particular constituencies (which might not be all bad).
I was left thinking that the structural change would not at all obviate the need for the kind of watchdog institution we envision. That is, PR could do much to alter politics as usual, but so long as a government relies on periodic elections and interim governing by elected representatives there will be a need for ongoing monitoring of governmental activity.
Bill
Inequality - distribution of wealth report
Bill,
Interesting that you sent this thing about inequality at this moment because I had just added to the symptoms of an ailing democracy the "increasing gap between rich and poor." Greater inequality is a reduction in inclusion (participation) and therefore a sign of a regressive democracy. There is a direct relationship to freedom, since having the theoretical freedom to do something but not the financial means to do it is meaningless.
I will cite this article. Right now I have
"Symptoms include the excessive power of corporations, excessive power of the Presidency, narrowing of admissible issues and choices to the public, widening of the gap between rich and poor, contested elections, erosion of civil liberties, corruption in high places, troubled domestic and foreign programs, and widespread public dissatisfaction and disengagement."
The
Abstract has a shorter statement that I should review. It is "Excessive corporate and Presidential influence, greater income inequalities, disengaged citizens, widespread distrust in politicians and government, a suspect judiciary, eroding civil liberties, and global distain are symptoms of an American democracy in trouble."
By the way, I just noticed that I did not say in the section on the causes of the ailing system that excessive corporation power working through the government was the primary reason for the abridgement of issues and choices to the people - which I will correct in the re-write. The structural roots (the pluralist electoral rules) are still the instrument through which the excessive corporation power was experienced.
larry
Top 1% in '01 Lost Income, but Also Paid Lower Taxes
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
Published: September 27, 2003
he incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans fell 18 percent in 2001, as did their income taxes, shaving $66 billion off revenues and showing how dependent the federal government has become on its wealthiest citizens.
Over all, Americans had 2.8 percent less income in 2001 than in the previous year. But federal tax revenues fell 9.4 percent because the incomes of those at the top, who pay the highest tax rates, dropped so much more than the average.
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The top 1 percent reported $1.09 trillion of income, down from $1.34 trillion in 2000, according to data posted by the Internal Revenue Service on the Internet yesterday without announcement.
The minimum income to reach the top 1 percent was $293,000 last year, down from $313,500 in 2000, but almost identical to the threshold in 1999.
The sharp decline in incomes at the top "is obviously due to the collapse of the stock market boom and the recession," said Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a lobbying group.
The combination of a sharp drop in income, if sustained for several years, and the tax cuts that were enacted this year could result in another sharp drop in taxes paid by the top 1 percent. The top rate on capital gains and dividends, the source of much of the income in the elite group, has been cut to 15 percent from 20 percent.
Taxes paid by the top group fell to $300.1 billion in 2001 from $366.9 billion in 2000. The decline accounted for the bulk of the $92.7 billion drop in individual federal income tax revenue in 2001.
The sharp drop in incomes caused the share of income taxes paid by the rich to shrink nearly a tenth. The share of total taxes paid by other groups consequently increased. The top group paid 33.9 percent of all income taxes, down from 37.4 percent in 2000.
The share paid by the next most wealthiest group, the 4 percent of Americans just below the top group, grew slightly. The bottom half of Americans, the 64 million households making less than $28,000, accounted for a somewhat larger share of total taxes.
The biggest increase, however, was among those making $56,000 to $92,800, whose share of all income taxes increased to 18 percent from 16.7 percent. They accounted for a larger share of income taxes than the very wealthiest, the top tenth of 1 percent of Americans who paid 16 percent of the government's total income taxes.
Isaac Shapiro, an analyst at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit group in Washington that advocates for the poor, said the tax rules set by Congress mean broad swings in revenues as the economy moves through good times and bad.
"If you have income concentrated at the top, it will produce tax revenue greater than growth in the economy over all," he said, adding that the opposite takes place when the economy contracts.
The I.R.S. also released data on the top tenth of 1 percent, the most prosperous 129,000 households in the country. This group had so much income that they made almost as much as the other nine-tenths in the top 1 percent.
This very top group, representing one in a thousand households, had $505 billion in income, for an average of $4 million each. To be counted among this group one needed an adjusted gross income of at least $1.3 million, down from $1.6 million in 2000.
This small group received almost $1 of every $12 earned by all 129 million American households.
Mr. Bartlett, an advocate of lower taxes, noted that the Bush tax cuts in 2001 did not cause the drop in taxes by the wealthy.
"It is pretty clear that the tax cut played no role by the fact that the average tax rate paid by the top 1 percent actually went up slightly," he said.
This group paid 27.5 cents in taxes on each dollar of reported income, up a sliver of a penny from the previous year. This increase was caused by a drop in income from capital gains, which are taxed at a much lower rate than wages.
Over all, the tax rate fell, with Americans paying the government 14.2 cents in taxes on each dollar of income, down from 15.3 cents in 2000. Because spending did not decline, the government borrowed to make up the difference, in effect deferring the cost.
While the tax cuts that President Bush championed in 2001 will give the most benefits to the top 1 percent in income, those cuts had not taken effect in 2001. At Mr. Bush's urging, Congress voted this year to make most of the cuts benefiting the wealthiest immediate instead of waiting until the latter half of this decade. Congress has now reduced the maximum income tax rate to 35 percent, from 39.6 percent when Mr. Bush was elected, and reduced the top rates on capital gains and dividend income to 15 percent from 20 percent
We have an adjunct named, Scott Bales, from a Phoenix firm teaching a course this fall entitled "Election Law." Here is the description:
Course Overview: Election law, as the 2000 presidential election dramatically illustrated, sets the ground rules for the most fundamental process in our democracy: the use of voting to determine who governs or, through an initiative or referendum, to determine substantive law. These issues are especially relevant in Arizona, where voters have approved a number of election-related reforms, including an open primary, public campaign financing under the Clean Elections Act, and the use of an Independent Redistricting Commission to draw legislative and congressional districts.
This course will review the key constitutional provisions, statutes, and court decisions governing such topics as the expansion of the franchise, presidential selection, redistricting, campaign finance reform, and direct democracy. Weekly lectures may include guest speakers who have participated in federal and state campaigns.
Course Materials: The course text is S. Issacharoff, P. Karlan, and R. Pildes, The Law of Democracy (2001), supplemented with recent decisions and Arizona-related materials.
I don't know Bales but I will contact him.
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