Democracy: A Journal of Ideas

Total Tax Credit

Ron Tang — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:00:00 -0400

The Social Security payroll tax hurts working Americans -- and it’s getting worse. Because the tax (a flat levy of 15.3 percent, combining the nominal employer portion with the nominal employee portion) applies to income only up to $97,500 (with a scheduled increase to $102,000 this year), it is inherently, grossly regressive, falling far more heavily on working Americans than on the rich. At the same time, as a result of rising pre-tax wage inequality, the payroll tax system is growing dramatically more regressive. In 1983, 90 percent of wages and salaries were subject to payroll taxation; today, thanks to… more

Public Investment Works

Articles — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 10:16:00 -0400

An important debate over fiscal policy is beginning to take place within the Democratic Party. For the past 15 years, deficit hawks within the party have argued that addressing America’s fiscal challenges should take priority over our public investment needs, suggesting that, in effect, we cannot afford to increase public investment until we have reduced the federal deficit.

But there is an alternate view, holding that the deficit hawk position neither accurately reflects America’s true economic strength nor represents good policy in light of the very significant changes that have occurred in the economy over the past decade… more

Fight Al Qaeda

Articles — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 07:47:00 -0400

One of the most bitter ironies of the Iraq tragedy is that our occupation has been a godsend to Al Qaeda and its affiliates, drawing thousands of foreign fighters to the country over the past four years. As a result, jihadist terrorists have, for the first time, secured a substantial presence in a country at the heart of the Middle East. The Iraq war has also inspired a rising wave of terrorist attacks, from London to Kabul, and it has helped to spread militant ideas among Iraq’s Sunnis, who were previously more secular than most other Muslims in the region.A… more

Mismatching Funds

Articles — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 20:14:00 -0400

Ten years ago, the United States held its first billion-dollar election -- that was roughly the amount spent by all candidates for Congress and the presidency put together. The same year brought the first large-scale campaign finance scandal since Watergate, best remembered for the almost accurate metaphor of President Bill Clinton selling overnights in the Lincoln Bedroom in exchange for large contributions to the Democratic Party. And both took place at a time when Americans were deeply disconnected from politics; the 1996 election was the only presidential election since 1960 in which turnout of the voting-age population fell below 50… more

A Matter of Pride

Articles — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 11:49:00 -0500

While there are deep and divisive fissures across the political spectrum over how to combat terrorism, there is a surprising level of agreement as to its cause. "We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror," George W. Bush told an audience in Mexico in 2002. "Today, billions of people live on the knife’s edge of survival, trapped in a struggle against ignorance, poverty, and disease. Their misery is a breeding ground for the hatred peddled by bin Laden and other merchants of death," Howard Dean declared during his 2004 presidential run. Kim Dae Jung, the former dissident… more

Reality Check

Articles — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:51:00 -0400

Michael Signer’s essay ["A City on a Hill", Issue 1] is yet another in an all-too-numerous list of recent works by center-left intellectuals arguing that America can recover from its present international difficulties by changing the style of its approach to the world without significantly changing its policies. He denounces the "vulgar exceptionalism" of the neoconservatives and the Bush Administration but does not realize that we are well past the days when a tonier, more agreeably phrased American exceptionalism could command real support from most of the rest of the world. Signer’s argument reflects the fact that, in the end,… more

Urban Legend

Articles — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 19:17:00 -0400

Cities have always served many functions: as centers of religion, political power, and commerce. But one of their most important tasks has been to serve as engines of upward mobility and aspiration. Nowhere has this been more true than in American cities. From the earliest period of American settlement, European observers were often struck by the remarkable social mobility found in America’s urban centers. The average nineteenth-century American factory worker, whether native-born or an immigrant, enjoyed a far better chance -- and his offspring an even better one -- of rising into the middle or even upper classes than his… more

Not-So-Great Liberalism

Articles — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 05:42:00 -0400

In March 1997, the neoconservative pundit David Brooks published a cover story in The Weekly Standard titled "A Return to National Greatness: A Manifesto for a Lost Creed" in which he called for a conservatism committed to a "national mission and national greatness." In an op-ed that following September, Brooks and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol elaborated on the argument, explaining that the American people are not great unless they are engaged in heroic collective projects, such as the Cold War. In both articles they set forth prescriptions for just how to embark on such a project.

What wasn't… more

The New Biopolitics

Articles — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 22:20:00 -0400

Will globalization destroy itself? Every few years, another crisis suggests it might. The Internet, satellite phones, and intercontinental air travel help terrorists cross the world in an instant. The global spread of democracy shakes authoritarian governments -- and opens the way for Islamists in Tehran and Cairo, a populist strongman in Venezuela, and nuke-happy nationalists in New Delhi. Open capital markets wreck the economies of Southeast Asia. Divisions between Muslim immigrants and the rest of Europe explode in French riots and Dutch assassinations.

These unhappy stories are familiar by now. An open, mobile, interconnected world creates new threats,… more