What's Playing in my Car?

A.C. Newman - Shut Down the Streets
Ben Folds Five - The Sound of the Life of the Mind
Bill Fay - Time of the Last Persecution
Descendents - Milo Goes to College
Drivin' N' Cryin' - Fly Me Courageous
Frank Zappa - Hot Rats
Grizzly Bear - Shields
Lush - Gala
Metz - Metz
Robbie Fulks - Georgia Hard
Royal Trux - Accelerator
tieranniesaur - DIYSCO

Profile: Everything You Know About Toilet Plungers Is About to Change (A New Yorker Parody)

Americans have not yet discovered what the rest of the world already knows: Achilles Asteio makes the best toilet plungers in the world. Asteio's plungers work better, last longer and are less expensive than any other toilet plunger in the world. And it has made Asteio a very rich man.

I managed to catch up with Asteio at his palatial mountaintop retreat in the Zagori region of Greece. From Asteio's vast (18,000 square feet) home overlooking Mount Tymfi, constructed entirely from recycled aluminum cans and old tennis shoes, Asteio explained how he came up with the idea for the plungers, and shared his vision for the future of home waste disposal, as I nibbled on Kolokythoanthoi, a Greek delicacy which Asteio himself whipped up before my eyes from zucchini flowers grown in Patton's own hydroponic zucchini farm (the only one of its kind in the world).

"After many frustrating years of unstuffing toilets using those old rubber plungers, I knew there had to be a better way to force waste down the pipe. It was then I remembered the principle of column separation, which occurs in a water hammer event. It was the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation in fluid dynamics. Long story short, once the idea came to me, it was just a short leap to designing a better plunger."

After opening his first factory with seed capital from his father (a well-known Greek poet and race car driver, and the inventor of air), Asteio soon turned his company, Greek Fire, into a multibillion dollar enterprise. But hearing Asteio tell it, he's only just begun exploring the potential for toilet plungers.

"Some people think of toilet plungers as just a tool to unclog your toilet.  I see them as something more, with a nearly infinite potential for changing the world. World hunger, climate change, energy, it's all there. You just have to do it."

Looking into Asteio's crystal clear blue eyes (inherited from his mother, a great-granddaughter of General Patton and currently the President of Uruguay), you can almost believe it. Those who have known Asteio his whole life saw something special in him even when he was a young man. Says longtime friend Marcel Tropcher, currently head curator of the Louvre, "I remember this one time, we turned on the TV and it wasn't working. We couldn't figure out how to turn it on, and then Achilles says, 'Hey, it's not plugged in.' So we plug it in and sure enough it works. I thought 'Wow, why didn't I see that?' That's just the way Achilles thinks, he sees things no one else sees."

However, not everyone is a fan of Asteio and his plungers. Some point out that that the plungers don't work any better than regular plungers, and that Asteio's success is due mostly to canny marketing. Others point out that the plungers are able to be sold cheaply because they are made in Malaysia using slave labor. Asteoi dismisses his critics with a wave of his hand. Still others point out that fawning magazine profiles of rich people are just starfucking. "There are are always going to be people jealous of your success. I don't worry about that. I have good people on my team and I trust them to take care of business."

This token detour into something that could have become decent investigative journalism notwithstanding, it all seemed irrelevant as I joined Asteio and some of his oldest and dearest friends at a dinner party at Asteio's chic New York loft, where Asteio stopped off on his way home to Greece from Davos. As I nibbled on the finest bruschetta I had ever tasted (served to me by Asteio's supermodel wife) and chatted with the starting center for the Cleveland Cavaliers, I briefly wondered if there were other subjects that I could have written about for the Best Magazine Ever.  Injustice, hunger, climate change? Or did I prefer hanging out with rich beautiful people and pretending that their wealth and beauty confers moral stature? My reverie was interrupted when someone yelled, "Hey, the toilet's clogged!" "Nah," I thought, "I'm perfectly happy right here. Right here."

Electric Light Orchestra

In my alphabetical journey through my CD collection, I am up to the Electric Light Orchestra. I listened to four albums in one round trip to Great Adventure.

Listening to them again after so many years is a fascinating experience. For those not old enough to remember, there was a period in the late 70s when they were absolutely huge. You could not get tickets to an ELO concert to save your life.

Listening to these records, I am reminded, perhaps for the first time, of how truly godawful they were. Except for some older material, in which Jeff Lynne had not completely abandoned his garage band roots in the Move, this music is utterly worthless. It is the sound of Jeff Lynne printing money.

What does this say about the record industry and the listening public? The record company is obviously utterly cynical. The only relevant consideration is how many records can they sell. And why not? The record industry is an industry after all. Why shouldn't they take people's money in the same crass way that they take people's money for other overpriced consumer goods?

The Books and Rilke

I've been listening recently to the Books' Thought for Food, and I like it very much, in a way that I don't think I've ever liked a piece of music before. For those who do not know it, it's a concatenation of what appear to be found sounds, loops, and country-ish guitar. It's disturbing and yet comforting, because it feels like a musical distillation of how I feel right now. It also puts me in mind of a line from Rilke's Duino Elegies, about death: Strange to see all that was once in place, floating so loosely in space. 

Have I mentioned lately that Michael Mukasey is a piece of shit?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-b-mukasey-the-ghastly-transaction-that-freed-sgt-bowe-bergdahl/2014/06/04/325d9780-ec04-11e3-93d2-edd4be1f5d9e_story.html

Does the Bible Hate Homosexuality?

This is a very interesting argument as to why the Bible does not actually ban homosexuality. Despite the fact that I am of course highly sympathetic to the argument, I find it somewhat unconvincing. The argument is essentially that the Bible (Old Testament, for you Christians) doesn't ban homosexuality, except when it does, except that Jesus changed everything and the entire Old Testament can be tossed out the window, except that Paul also hates homosexuality, except that we can disregard what Paul said because he was an old fart who didn't understand sexuality the way we do today.

The argument therefore is not that the Bible and New Testament do not ban homosexuality, it is that opinions expressed in 2000+ year-old books are irrelevant to how society treats homosexuals.

As the constipated man said to his gastroenterologist, "No shit."

Bodies of 800 babies found in septic tank of Irish home for unwed mothers run by Catholic nuns

So tell me again about the sanctity of life, you Catholic fuckers.

Where is Big Pink?

A number of years ago (before the age of the Internet) my wife and I went on an expedition with some friends to find Big Pink. Our only clue was that it was in Saugerties, NY (mentioned on the album) and that it was pink. After questioning people we found in Saugerties, we found the house. It is on a dirt road off of Stoll Rd. in Saugerties. We didn't know it then but the street is called Parnassus Lane.

Here is a map:

This Is Not "How Taxes Work"

Anyone who has surfed the Web and has an interest in politics or tax policy has surely come across an essay entitled "How Taxes Work."  The essay, which was collected by Snopes.com via e-mail in 2002, is a parable which purports to offer a "VERY simple way to understand the tax laws."   A copy of the essay, and a discussion of its provenance, may be viewed here.

The parable is easily recognizable as right-wing propaganda, designed to demonstrate that the U.S. tax system transfers wealth from the rich to the poor, and that if the poor want to continue to benefit from the generosity of the rich, well, they had better start being a little more appreciative. 

The parable is a transparently poor model of the U.S. tax system, but I found it devilishly difficult to explain why.  Furthermore, I was unable to find a satisfactory rebuttal to the essay online.  I have therefore taken it upon myself to offer my own critique of the "How Taxes Work" parable.  My qualification for doing so is 25+ years as a tax lawyer.

For those without access to the original essay, here is a summary: every day, ten men go out to dinner.  The total bill for dinner is always $100, and the bill is always split the same way.  The first four men (the "poorest") pay nothing, the fifth pays $1, the sixth pays $3, the seventh pays $7, the eighth pays $12, the ninth pays $18, and the tenth (the "richest") pays $59.  No other information is given about the men or why they have adopted this strange practice.

One day the owner of the restaurant decides to reduce the overall cost of the group meal from $100 to $80.   The $20 reduction in the price of the dinner must therefore be distributed among the ten diners.  The group decides collectively that they want to pay their bill "the way we pay our taxes." The first four men continue to pay nothing.  The men first propose to divide up the $20 windfall equally among the remaining six people ($3.33 each), but that doesn’t work because then the fifth and sixth men would be paid to eat their meal.

The restaurant owner suggests the following "fair" settlement: the fifth man pays nothing, the sixth man pays $2, the seventh man pays $5, the eighth pays $9, the ninth pays $12, and the tenth pays $52.  Thus each of the six most well-off diners have benefited, and the four poorest continue to pay nothing.

You don't have to be Ayn Rand to see where this is headed.  After leaving the restaurant, the nine men start to grumble that they each saved less than the tenth man, whose share of the bill was reduced by $7.  In a remarkable display of ingratitude, the first four men, who never paid anything, complain that they didn't "get" anything at all.  "The system exploits the poor," they shout!  The first nine men then beat up the tenth man, who staggers off, never to return (in other words, he "goes Galt"). 

When the nine men show up the next day for dinner, they find that they are $52 short of being able to pay for dinner ("Imagine that!").  (Actually the shortfall should only be $44, not $52, since there are only nine men dining rather than ten, but whatever.)

The last two paragraphs are worth quoting in their entirety:

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college instructors, is how the tax system works.  The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction.  Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up at the table anymore.

Where would that leave the rest?  Unfortunately, most taxing authorities anywhere cannot seem to grasp this rather straightforward logic!

We do not know who these men are, what they each had for dinner or what their relationship is to each other.  We do not know how much money they earn, or how they got their money.  However, in order to assess the parable on its own terms as a viable model for "how taxes work," we must make the following assumptions:

 

• The restaurant represents the U.S. federal, state and local governments
• The men represent the adult populace of the United States
• The meal represents the sum total of the goods and services provided by government to the populace
• The amount paid for the meal represents taxes paid to the government.  These taxes would include federal and state income taxes (both corporate and personal), federal estate taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, state and local sales taxes, and a variety of miscellaneous other taxes imposed at all levels of government such as excise taxes, customs duties, etc.

The parable certainly does provide food for thought, but that is not the same thing as saying that it accurately describes "how taxes work." It does not. However, the fundamental flaw in the parable is not that it fails to accurately describe how taxes work, but that the parable offers a skewed vision of what government is and does, and what constitutes a modern civil society.

The first, quite fundamental flaw in the parable as a model for "how taxes work" is that the payment arrangement described in the parable not only does not meet the definition of a "tax," it is the very definition of something that is not a tax.  A "tax" by definition does not involve a receipt of specific goods and services in exchange for the tax (i.e., a quid pro quo).  A payment for which goods or services are expressly exchanged is not a tax, it is a fee.  For example, if a municipality requires payment for garbage collection, the payment is a fee, not a tax.  Those who choose not to take advantage of the garbage collection services need not pay the fee, while those who do pay the fee have the right to insist that their garbage be collected. 

The parable is written so as to imply that the diners receive the meal as a quid pro quo for their payment.  This means not only that those who pay their share of the bill are entitled to be fed, but that any diner may choose to opt out of the system, as the tenth man eventually does.  This of course is not how taxes work in real life.  People are required to pay taxes regardless of whether and to what extent the taxpayer receives goods or services from the government of equal or greater value and, with a limited exception for expatriates, taxpayers may not "opt out".

The lack of a quid pro quo is a necessary element in the definition of a tax.  Unlike the meals in the parable, most if not all of the services provided by government cannot be individually doled out to those who pay taxes and withheld from those who cannot.  An obvious example is defense spending – the benefits of the U.S. military must of necessity be enjoyed collectively by everyone regardless of how much they pay in taxes.  Even in the case of government services which can arguably be allocated to specific individuals, such as police, fire and garbage collection, the populace in general has a common interest in providing such services to everyone regardless of how much they pay in taxes.  To quote Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., "Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society."

The second fatal flaw in "How Taxes Work" is that the parable implies that there is a connection between what the government spends its money on, and how the government is funded.  Put another way, the parable assumes that whoever pays the piper calls the tune. In order to understand this point, one must first understand that, as a matter of both economics and politics, spending money is exactly equivalent to reducing taxes (thus the term "tax expenditure").  That is, a decision by the government to reduce taxes to a class of taxpayers is exactly equivalent to writing them a check. 

Once it is acknowledged that money not collected is exactly equivalent to money spent, it becomes clear that, in a representative democracy, deciding how government is funded must be independent from deciding how government spends its money (which includes the decision of how government doles out tax benefits).   Both decisions are made by representatives who are elected by the people, each of whom (to simplify slightly) is entitled to one vote regardless of the individual's income or assets. 

A government in which decisions on how to spend money are made by the people that have the money is not a democracy, it is a plutocracy.  Examples of plutocracies would include the Roman Republic, certain city-states of Ancient Greece, the civilization of Carthage, the Italian city-states/merchant republics of Venice, Florence and Genoa, and the pre-World War II empire of Japanese zaibatsus.  It would not include the United States of America at the present time.  It is not clear whether the parable is proposing to ban representative democracy in the United States.

When viewed correctly in this light, the apparent injustice visited upon the tenth man (leaving aside the violent reaction of the first nine men) no longer seems quite so unjust.  If the restaurant and its ten patrons were really an accurate and honest depiction of society, the ten men would, upon leaving the restaurant, have to tend to their other needs which the restaurant is apparently not meeting.  They would have to feed and clothe their families, educate their children, find a place to live, etc.  Suppose that the nine men, outside of the restaurant, were living hand to mouth, barely feeding their families, in serious danger of starvation or fatal exposure to the elements, while the tenth man was living comfortably.  Suppose further that the restaurant found itself with an extra twenty dollars (the same twenty dollars which it doled out to the diners in the form of a "tax reduction"), and decided to give that twenty dollars to the tenth man.  I suspect that even most honest conservatives would be uncomfortable with that decision (or am I giving too much credit to the average modern conservative?).

The parable also inaccurately depicts the way our tax system works because it presumes that each taxpayer derives an equal benefit from the goods and services provided by the government.  However, because there is no linkage between how a government spends its money and how it is funded, taxpayers do not derive an equal benefit from the government.  (If they did, taxpayers would only pay taxes in an amount exactly commensurate with the benefits they received.)  The most obvious example is that wealthy individuals with substantial assets benefit from police protection far more than a poor person with no assets. 

Thus, in the parable it is presumed that everyone is having the same meal.  If the tenth man were dining on lobster and champagne, while the nine poorest were subsisting on rice and beans, the tenth man would look far less sympathetic. 

Even if we accepted that the cost of the meal was a "tax," and that the diners are entitled to receive identical meals in exchange for their tax payments, the parable is carefully constructed so as to emphasize the injustice to the tenth man.  This is because the parable leaves out any discussion of the relative income or assets of the ten men.  Therefore, we cannot assess the relative burden borne by the ten men.   After the adjustment, the tenth man is paying approximately 26 times what the sixth man is paying.  But if the tenth man's income were 200 times that of the sixth man, the tenth man would actually be suffering under a much lower tax rate than that borne by the sixth man.

In short, despite its claim to illustrate "how taxes work," the parable is a grossly inadequate model for the tax system currently in place in the United States.  The parable misrepresents the nature of tax payments, and the nature of what government provides in return, solely to make a political point.

However, what is both fascinating and disturbing about the parable is not its phony claim to accurately describe how taxes work, but the window that it provides into how the modern conservative views society as a whole and government in particular.  In the right wing view, government is a mere vendor of goods and services, which naturally implies that those who pay more should get more.  To the modern conservative, the government is not of, by or for the people, but an independent entity that does not reflect at all the will of the populace.  Government services are made possible only by the generosity of the rich to the hapless poor, who have nothing to offer and no role in civil society. 

The modern conservative is cut off both from his government and from his fellow citizens. The rich man in the parable generously funds dinner for the other nine, and gets nothing in return. In actual society, the tenth man would be counting on the first nine to serve his food, tend his garden, clean his house, and take care of his children.  They would be his neighbors, his work colleagues, and sometimes they might even be marrying his daughter.  In the parable, none of the men derives any benefit from the fact that his colleagues are being fed. In real life, every person benefits from the well-being of his fellow citizens.

Finally, in the mind of the modern conservative, the first reaction of the underclass to perceived injustice is to resort to violence. This last telling detail makes it quite clear that the purpose of this parable is not to illustrate how taxes work, but to demonstrate why the poor should be grateful for what few scraps the rich choose to leave for them. 

What I've learned from listening to (almost) everything Bob Dylan ever recorded.

I am listening to all my CDs in alphabetical order, and I am just about to finish up Bob Dylan. I listened to all the original studio albums through New Morning and most of what came thereafter, including the recently reissued Another Self-Portrait. I missed some albums from the later years since I couldn't bring myself to shell out bucks for them, and by that time I was getting tired of listening to Dylan.

Here is what I learned:

1. Dylan's first album might just be his best. Although it is largely covers and the originals are not nearly as good as his later originals, it displays an energy and talent that is completely overwhelming. Dylan would never achieve this fresh-faced sound of blues and folk for as long as he lives.

2. His follow-ups until Bringing It All Back Home are the sound of a man groping for a way forward from where he had been to where he wanted to go. Although the songs and recordings are great, certainly as great as most artists would hope to produce in a lifetime, they are clearly inferior to what is to come.

3. The trio of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, plus The Basement Tapes is the finest body of recorded musical work of the 20th century in any genre.

4. The songs on The Basement Tapes are the best he ever wrote.

5. I still don't love John Wesley Harding.

6. With the exception of Desire and Blood on the Tracks, everything Dylan recorded after John Wesley Harding is thoroughly mediocre. The later records feature some of the laziest songwriting by a major history in the history of popular music.

7. After listening to all the Bootleg Series, I've concluded that Dylan is now positioning himself commercially as the Aging Bluesman. I find this despicable, especially since he obviously despises the folk scene which he is now desperate to be considered to be a part of.

8. Every live Dylan concert after Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid closes with Knockin' on Heaven's Door.

9. Dylan is a narcissistic, calculating, mercenary jerk, but he is the most brilliant jerk in the history of popular recorded music.

Tonight's activity

Going to see The The Band Band at Towne Crier, first time at the new location. It's an absolute downpour outside. Hope I don't float away.

Is Faith Stupidity?

So I was chatting recently with a colleague, nice guy. And I was telling him about a conversation with my rabbi at Torah study and how one of the attendees asked how it would affect our belief system if we knew that the events described in Exodus never really happened. And the rabbi said, actually, we do know that those events did not happen.

I could tell that I was losing my colleague, and I said "You think it happened, don't you?" And he said yes, that's faith.

And I thought actually, that's not faith. Faith is when you believe something that cannot be proven true or false. The belief in something that is demonstrably false is not faith, it's stupidity.

What's Playing in my Car?

Bob Mould - Silver Age
Books - Thought for Food
Calexico - Algiers
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
Divine Fits - A Thing Called Divine Fits
Jesus Lizard - Goat and Liar
Passion Pit - Gossamer
Redd Kross - Researching the Blues
Swans - The Seer
Animal Collective - Centipede Hz