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Originally published at Forbes.com on December 26, 2019.

 

A few days ago, I asked my twitter followers to share with me their traditional Christmas meals.

“My mother did ham. My grandmother has switched from ham to prime rib.”

“Traditional is Turkey . . . but since it will be smaller (13) group this year, my wife is doing Lasagna and a Chicken dish.”

“We’re having leg of lamb for Christmas Eve & Sukiyaki (w/ duck eggs).”

“Jambalaya.”

“My family is from southern Italy so we go with the fish on Christmas Eve.”

“My grandmother made roast beef (as an American food) and an array of Syrian dishes – string beans (with lamb), grape leaves stuffed with rice (and lamb), hummus (sometimes topped with lamb) and heaps and heaps of Syrian pastries.”

“My traditional Christmas dinner is beef rouladen, with all the trimmings. It’s been made the same way for the last 40 years, since the recipe was shown to me.”

Which is about what I expected: the traditional turkey with all the trimmings at Thanksgiving has no counterpart at Christmas; instead, families choose to continue traditions brought with them from the Old Country or regional traditions, or might choose something entirely new — or new-to-them.

Is this an example of the magnificent diversity and multiculturalism present in America?

At the same time, 90% of Americans surveyed by Pew in 2017 reported that they celebrate Christmas in some fashion or another. Although it is true that Millennials are considerably more likely to consider Christmas to be a “cultural” rather than “religious” holiday, compared to older generations, there is no substantial difference in the percent of those responding “yes” to the overall question by age — 88% of Millennials do so relative to 90% of Baby Boomers and 92% of Gen X.

Is this an example of something that unites (almost all) Americans?

Let me offer a third example: the “Christmas Proclamation,” as used by the Roman Catholic Church and certain other “high church” denominations, such as the Episcopalians. Here’s the current English text:

“The Twenty-fifth Day of December,

when ages beyond number had run their course from the creation of the world,

“when God in the beginning created heaven and earth, and formed man in his own likeness;

“when century upon century had passed since the Almighty set his bow in the clouds after the Great Flood, as a sign of covenant and peace;

“in the twenty-first century since Abraham, our father in faith, came out of Ur of the Chaldees;

“in the thirteenth century since the People of Israel were led by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt;

“around the thousandth year since David was anointed King;

“in the sixty-fifth week of the prophecy of Daniel;

“in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;

“in the year seven hundred and fifty-two since the foundation of the City of Rome;

“in the forty-second year of the reign of Caesar Octavian Augustus, the whole world being at peace,

“JESUS CHRIST, eternal God and Son of the eternal Father, desiring to consecrate the world by his most loving presence, was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and when nine months had passed since his conception, was born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem of Judah, and was made man: The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.”

Wikipedia provides the prior 16th century text, in which specific years were assigned to time since the creation, the flood, the birth of Abraham, etc., to the birth of Jesus. The proclamation was removed with the liturgical reforms of the 1960s, then restored by Pope John Paul II in 1980 with the altered text. And the proclamation itself dates to the early Middle Ages, which church fathers had worked out, to the best of their abilities, the birth of Jesus relative to historical events from not just Jewish history and the Bible but from the Greeks (the Olympics) and the Romans (the founding of Rome).

And this, too, has to do with culture, and a deeper layer of culture that we don’t necessarily have the same awareness of as these more superficial and visible items such as traditional foods or celebrations. Every now and again I revisit the book Riding the Waves of Culture, by Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner (1998, McGraw Hill), which focuses on culture from a global business perspective, and which provides a deeper level of understanding of cultural differences across seven dimensions: five “relational orientations” of

• Universalism versus particularism (”abstract societal codes” vs. obligations to people due to relationships),
• Individualism versus communitarianism,
• Neutral versus emotional (being detached vs. expressing emotions in interactions with others),
• Specific versus diffuse (in a business context, making a case for the deal vs. building a relationship with the customer), and
• Acheivement versus ascription (judging based on personal accomplishments vs. status attributed to you by family, education, or other status markers),

as well as attitudes to time and attitudes to the environment.

Now, with respect to time, the onetime self-proclaimed expert on diversity at my former employer liked to use as a favorite example of the importance of understanding across cultures, the differences in timing expectations of a German (an event starts when you say it does) and a Latin American (no one shows up for a party until well after the specified start time). But what these authors refer to is a much bigger-picture orientation — having to do with how a given culture thinks about the past, present, and future. They write,

“Especially important is whether our view of time is sequential, a series of passing events, or whether it is synchronic, with past, present, and future all interrelated so that ideas about the future and memories of the past both shape present action” (p. 123).

In other words, for a Catholic priest to proclaim this text situating the birth of Jesus among these other historical events — and for, in its current status as quasi-optional, some churches in some countries to incorporate it, and others not, and for it to resonate with some cultures but not others — is a deeper aspect of culture, of the sort that is much more invisible to us.

And this is where policy comes in.

After all, we’ve got multiple presidential candidates promising massive boosts to our social welfare/social insurance system — increases in government child care provision, government-provided healthcare, boosts in Social Security benefits, etc. And a typical skeptical response to “we should be Iceland” is “we’re too much bigger than Iceland to copy them,” which is missing the point. But it is nonetheless the case that in addition to looking at countries we might wish to copy and trying to gain a complete picture of their system, and the good and the bad, and likewise understanding other such instances as illustrations of pitfalls, it is likewise important to understand how our culture in America, in terms of these deeper dimensions, plays into all of this. And a system which might work perfectly well abroad might not, here, due to these cultural differences — and, similarly, exporting some characteristic of our society and economy elsewhere might have similar problems.

And, yes, this is really, really hard to do because these dimensions of culture are so hard to see, like the proverbial fish not knowing they are in water.

 

December 2024 Author’s note: the terms of my affiliation with Forbes enable me to republish materials on other sites, so I am updating my personal website by duplicating a selected portion of my Forbes writing here.

Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn made a pitch in favor of gerrymandered legislative districts in a recent column, asserting that to reform Illinois’ district-drawing process while “red” states with Republican legislative control did not, amounted to “unilateral disarmament,” and would therefore be a mistake.  And Zorn’s concerns are reasonable but place the wrong entities at the center of the districting process.  A political party has no “right to maximize its seats” or even a “right to be treated fairly.”

It is the voter who have the right to representation, and to representatives who truly represent the interests of voters and their communities rather than pursuing the agenda of a given political party.

That should be obvious, shouldn’t it?  We do not live in a country with a proportional representation method of allocating its legislative seats.  Representatives represent voters directly, not through political parties. If we wished to have proportional representation, then, heck, the Democrats completely control the legislature and the governorship both; nothing would stop them from amending the Illinois constitution to implement this.

And, yes, voters are also represented by their specific legislators rather than by a caucus of legislators of their particular race/ethnicity.  Again, if those in power believed that black voters and Hispanic voters’ interests were wholly defined by their black-ness and Hispanic-ness, respectively, well, then proportional representation would be the way to go for that, too.  (Yes, I know there are federal and state voting rights laws at play here as well, but it remains troubling that the very notion of representative districts is so wholly demolished in the way this plays out.)

I say this because the Illinois Democrats have revealed their legislative districts for the Illinois House (official map here; link source here; existing map for comparison here). This is not the final map but potentially just the first part of a long process; if the Illinois legislature cannot finalize a map by June 30 of a post-census year, an eight-member bipartisan panel is selected, and if they cannot agree by July 10, a tie-breaking name is drawn from a hat.  This procedure was intended to compel compromise, with each side being unwilling to leave the outcome to chance and settling on half a loaf, but, as the Trib reports, the tie-breaking procedure was used in 1971, 1981, and 1991.  In 2001, “the legislature left the process to the state’s congressional delegation to draw a compromise map, which state lawmakers then approved,” and in 2011, the Democrats already controlled the legislature and the governor’s office, so they solidified that control with their remap.  This year, the Republicans have staked their hopes on a legal challenge around the type of data being used, that would run out the clock on the legislative process that the Democrats would otherwise use to steamroll them, thus forcing the name-drawing.  (Sorry, no link; I can’t find my source for this analysis any longer.)

There’s no analysis yet of what sort of partisan split this map will produce, that is, how lopsidedly in favor of Democrats this map would be but let’s look at it visually anyway:

Now, some of these districts don’t look thaaat bad:  the ones in the southern half of the state I suppose they figure are mostly going to go to Republicans no matter what, so you might as well make them reasonably contiguous.  At any rate, the 115th from the prior map looks like the sort that was drawn to exclude a particular established legislator:

In addition, in the towns to the east of St. Louis, there’s clearly some funny business going on, with a C-shaped district in purple and a green district within:

For what it’s worth, these districts mirror ones now existing (though they’re more extreme), and the carve out actually seems to be racial:  the purple district aggregating the black voters for a black (Dem) representative in the 114th (plus enough leftover Republicans once this majority is ensured), with the green district collecting the leftover (white) Democratic voters. The current officeholder, Rep. LaToya Greenwood, won her race with a margin of 57% vs. 43%.

But moving northward:  Springfield and Decatur are combined into a single, narrow district.  Maybe that’s reasonable enough as Springfieldians and Decaturians might have more in common with their nearby hinterlands.  But this district is even narrower now than before:

 

This district’s rep, Rep. Sue Scherer, won her 2020 race 51.5% to 44.4%.  Was this too narrow a margin for comfort, motivating the Dems to shift more Dem voters into the district and shift Republicans out?

But that brings us to the greater Chicago area.

This J-shaped district?  Dunno what the rhyme or reason is here.  My best guess is that even though DeKalb and LaSalle/Peru are small towns, they are larger than their neighbors, and the algorithms said that another seat would be gained by combining them.

And finally, these creations on the south side of Chicago and the south suburbs:

though, to be fair, there were many similarly bad long-and-narrow creations in the prior map, each of them creating districts of Democrats, and many seemingly designed to create districts “reserved” for black Democrats while tucking in white suburban voters who become a perpetual minority vote in their district as a result.  And these narrow finger-districts are the most egregious of all, in so far as individual voters cannot reasonably have a connection to their legislator when there is no community being represented, no neighborhoods, when their neighbors, the folks with whom residents are connected with community organizations, churches, have no common legislator.

Finally, a group called CHANGE Illinois has been pushing for a “fair maps” reform and had previously pushed for a constitutional amendment.

But the Illinois constitution already says these districts must be “compact,” as well as contiguous and substantially equal in population (Article IV, Section 3).  Yes, perhaps in the meantime courts have determined that “compact” is a meaningless word legally.  But that still doesn’t make it right.

So, yes, there is nothing new under the sun.  But Illinois politicians want Illinoisans to believe that they are reformed, that they are now ethically devoted to the common good, rather than in it for themselves.  A map such as this, in which the people of Illinois simply, to such an astounding degree, do not have elected officials who represent them and their communities, means that no such claim is to be believed.

 

*Incidental footnote:  How do the demographics of Illinois’ legislators compare to its population in general, in terms of racial/ethnic makeup?  The most recent estimates are that Illinois is 61% non-Hispanic white, 15% black, 18% Hispanic, and 6% Asian.  Among legislators, 71% are white, 18% are black, 8% are Hispanic, and 1% are Asian.

Are Hispanics unfairly underrepresented?  A separate metric is the Citizen Voting-Age Population:  here, 69% are white,  11% Hispanic, 15% black, and 4% Asian, and these percentages are much closer to the actual statistics.  In any case, there have long been neighborhoods and towns which have a high enough black percentage that gerrymandering strategies can produce the desired result through their combining together of parts-of-town and the creation of multiple districts with “just-enough” desired voters to ensure the end result.  But if new immigrants are coming to suburban apartment complexes spread throughout the area, there’s much less that can be achieved through these traditional gerrymandering methods.  As the CVAP percentage of Hispanics grows, will Illinois look to other methods of determining who represents Illinoisans in the General Assembly, such as, in fact, a proportional representation system, or will they simply gerrymander ever more determinedly?

Originally published at Forbes.com on November 16, 2020.

 

Reformers have long bemoaned the manner in which poor workers pay too high a “marginal tax rate” when both “regular” taxes and government benefit phase-outs are combined together. A recent article at Accounting Today summarized the situation:

“About a quarter of lower-income workers effectively face marginal tax rates of more than 70 percent when adjusted for the loss of government benefits, a study led by Atlanta Fed Research Director David Altig found. That means for every $1,000 gained in income, $700 goes to the government in taxes or reduced spending. In some cases, there are no gains at all.”

That article summarizes the conclusions of a May 2020 paper, “Marginal Net Taxation of American’s Labor Supply,” which took data from the American Community Survey to look at the situation across all surveyed households, to calculate the Marginal Tax Rates when all kinds of taxes, including federal/state/local income taxes, FICA taxes, and so on; and all sorts of transfer programs, including SSI benefits, Food Stamps/SNAP, Medicaid or ACA/Obamacare subsidies, subsidized housing, childcare benefits, and so on. Adding all of these up, the marginal tax rate for the lowest fifth of earners, as a whole, was 37.8%, a rate actually slightly higher than all but the highest 20% of earners, whose marginal tax rate was 41.3%.

And, yes, the same is not only true when looking specifically at retirees, and splitting them out by wealth levels, but even more extreme. (Thanks to Mr. Altig for sending me the data here.) The average marginal net tax rate for lowest-wealth-quintile retirees, on a lifetime basis, works out to 55%. For the middle-wealth folks, it’s 44%. And for the wealthiest, it’s in the middle, at 48%.

What does it mean to say “on a lifetime basis”? That’s a calculation that takes into account the double-taxation we pay when investing our savings and receiving interest income or capital gains. And, yes, someone with little income, saves little of it, but still saves some, and someone without sophisticated investment strategies gets lower investment returns, but still gets some.

Here are two graphs, first the effective marginal tax rates by wealth quintile, considering only the current year’s income, and, second, considering the effect over the individual’s lifetime due to double-taxation on savings, for all people over 65 in the survey:

And here, in table form, is a breakdown of the calculations of extra tax paid for the lowest fifth of the country, in terms of wealth, based on a baseline and the recalculated numbers for earning an extra $1,000 — for both “normal” taxes as well as the loss of government benefits, again, on a current-year and lifetime basis. To explain the abbreviations (especially for non-Americans):

• TANF is traditional welfare for the unemployed poor,
• SNAP is Food Stamps, that is, food vouchers,
• Section 8 is subsidized housing,
• CCDF is Child Care Development Fund, the name for government childcare subsidies for the low income (yes, over-65s can be eligible if they are taking care of children, such as grandchildren, while still working),
• Medicaid is medical care for the very low income;
• Medicare is medical care for everyone over 65;
• ACA means subsidies to purchase private-sector health insurance;
• SSDI means Social Security Disability Insurance (not based on income); and
• SSI means Supplemental Security Income, or benefits for low-income people over age 65 or who are disabled, for whom Social Security Old Age or Disability benefits are insufficient to keep them out of poverty.

Remember, too, that these are averages. In the same way as, for all individuals, Altig’s research found that some workers were far more impacted than others, the same is likely true here as well. The 75th percentile person in the age group 60 – 69, in the lowest-wealth group, had a 74% marginal lifetime tax rate; the 25th percentile person, only 33%. For those age 70 – 79, the 75th percentile tax rate was 74%, and the 25th percentile, 34%.

So what’s to be done with this information?

When it comes to younger folk, the call to remedy these high marginal “tax” rates, taking into effect loss of benefits, tends to produce two reactions: some people shrug these calculations off with the response that there is not really any alternative way to design benefit programs, and others insist that these impacts are not relevant because the poor so sincerely want to move away from government dependency that potential benefit losses don’t factor into their choices in any case. Whether this is true or not, the picture gets even more muddled when it comes to older Americans.

On the one hand, however much we think of the over-65s as retired, so that “income” doesn’t matter as such, many older Americans continue to remain in the workforce, even if only part-time. But there is no promise that, even if their paychecks are mostly wiped out by taxes and benefit losses, in the future, with pay raises to come, it’ll be worth it. And the “cost” of working, for someone over 65, is, often enough, greater than for their younger co-workers, even if just from the physical impact of time spent on one’s feet at a cash register.

And at the same time, much of the “income” of the over-65 set is in the form of pensions and the spend-down of tax-deferred retirement savings. And here there is a question that only a few experts are talking about: to what extent is it worthwhile to prod the lowest-income workers to save more for retirement, if they do so at the cost of accruing more debt, in the here-and-how, and if their future retirement income is less than all the retirement calculators predict it will be, due to the loss in benefits?

And, on the third hand, there’s what James Meigs, writing in a recent article at City Journal, called the “Chump Effect.” The article is particularly timely with discussion of a potential student loan elimination program being floated as achievable as an Executive Order, producing anger from people being made to feel like chumps for having saved for their children’s college tuition, or recent graduates, for having worked while watching peers partying, or choosing less-expensive schools than those now complaining about student loans. It is valuable, for the well-being of society, for those who worked and saved, not to feel they are being made into chumps if they think their efforts were not worthwhile.

So what can be done? I’ll remind readers, again, that a “basic retirement income” like that of the UK, the Netherlands or Australia, would solve at least some of these problems, though I admit that I seem to be a voice crying in the wilderness on this point. So how ‘bout it, America?

 

December 2024 Author’s note: the terms of my affiliation with Forbes enable me to republish materials on other sites, so I am updating my personal website by duplicating a selected portion of my Forbes writing here.

Oh, the irony!

If, back in 2008 when it was on the ballot, the call for an Illinois constitutional convention had passed, if we hadn’t been snookered by our betters who told us to vote no, if we Illinois voters had understood that the state constitution had fundamental flaws — including the pension clause, the provisions granting the House Speaker such substantial powers, the narrow definition of topics eligible for an amendment by means of petition-gathering, and more — then I’ll admit readily that I would have found it entirely acceptable to remove the clause forbidding graduated tax rates in the personal income tax as part of an overhaul.  Why should that be in the constitution, rather than simply left for legislators to decide, based on the conditions any any given time?

But as it is, I cannot support the proposed amendment, because the elected officials who are and will be making decisions about tax rates have not left the world of corrupt and broken politics in which a graduated income tax is a recipe for failure.

A simple look at the new tax structure itself makes its flaws apparent.  In the first place, there is a significant marriage penalty, as the tax brackets for the lowest four rates are the same for singles and couples.  Bizarrely, it is only at the higher income levels that joint filers have a higher bracket level than single filers.  What’s more, when a single taxpayer earns more than $750,000 or a couple earns more than $1,000,000, all of their income is taxed at the highest rate.  In addition, the tax brackets are not adjusted for inflation or wage increases over time, so that over time, more and more Illinoisans will be subject to the higher rates.  These three components of the new tax rates are completely out of line with the way the federal government, any state, or any sensible entity, taxes its residents.  In fact, after the new legislation was proposed, I kept expecting these provisions to be revised, but that’s exactly how the bill was passed.

But beyond that, the advertising around the new amendment promises Illinoisans that they can have it all:  all the state services they’re used to, improved education funding, property tax reductions, as well as a tax cut for themselves, paid for by the wealthy.  This is corrosive to our civil society — and I’m not just speaking of the risk of businesses leaving the state due to the impact on small businesses filing as individuals as well as the corporate tax hike, but of the “us against them” mindset that the tax promotes.

The explanation on the ballot further misleads; as watchdog group Wirepoints observed, the ballot language misleads voters into believing that the constitutional change will only raise taxes of high, not middle-earner taxpayers.  It falsely states that the method of taxing higher earners more is how “a majority of states do it” (in reality, it is more common for states to use their graduated tax rates to protect lower earners, while taxing middle- and high earners at the same rate).  And it omits the change that removes a provision that there may be only one income tax, leaving open the possibility of adding a tax on retirement income by using a lower tax rate to make it more palatable, for example.

And at the same time, although thankfully we can keep adding to the tally of “years since a governor was sent to jail,” the state of Illinois and its elected officials have not truly committed to changing the way the state operates.  Pritzker gives speeches professing “shared sacrifice” but in the end promises Illinoisans that they can have it all, paid for by increasing gambling, pot use, and taxes on the wealthy, and even still, despite massive budget holes facing the state, has made no cuts to payroll.  A pension amendment is rejected out of hand.  Ethics reforms stall.  Madigan stays in power seemingly immune to scandals surrounding him, defended rather than being called to account by his party.

It is not sufficient merely to profess that Illinois is, or will be well-governed.  To deserve its citizens’ trust and be given this new taxing power, the legislature must prove it has reformed.  And it has failed to do so.