By Marc Jampole
Reading about the 17th century in Geoffrey Parker’s Global Crisis really helps one
understand our current challenges. Parker’s thesis is that the extreme weather
conditions across the world in the 17th century tipped what would otherwise be
normal political disruptions into rapid social, economic and political decay.
The Fronde revolt in France, the 30 Years War in Germany, the Great Revolution
that led to the temporarily overthrow of royalty in England, the Time of Trouble
in Russia, the violent end of the Ming Dynasty and establishment of the Qing in
China—these are just some of the major revolutions and wars that seemed to
cluster around the middle of the 17th century, leading to serious population
losses virtually everywhere.
Parker makes a compelling but not airtight case that the
famines and extreme weather caused by what historians call “The Little Ice Age”
did affect human societies enough to worsen all social and economic tensions
and push many situations beyond the point of cataclysmic upheaval.
But even if we discount or reject Parker’s climate change theses,
we can still learn a great deal from Global
Crisis that applies to today’s world.
Take the topic of taxes, for example. Parker shows that throughout the world in the
17th century rulers and their administrators collected and raised taxes for two
purposes:
1.
To fund the extravagant lifestyles of royalty
2.
To fight wars of territorial conquest
No wonder there were literally hundreds of major and minor
tax revolts throughout the entire world, and especially in Europe, during the
middle war-torn decades of the 17th century! Who would want to pay for useless
wars and the high life of the nobility?
Tax revolts have a storied and honorable history during the long
and bloody era of royalty, including our own revolt against the British. Keep
in mind though, that the American colonies were not opposed to taxes, merely to
be being taxed without representation.
Fast forward to today and our far more complex
post-industrial society. In light of the
strong historical connection between anti-tax revolts and warfare, isn’t it
truly bizarre that the only budget item that none of our advocates for lowering
tax rates want to cut is the military? In fact, virtually everyone who wants to
lower taxes is also in favor of increased military spending. They will gladly cut back spending on
education, unemployment insurance, the space program, medical research, safety
inspections, IRS audits and everything else the government does, but not on
guns, bombs and ammo.
In the 17th century, tax protestors and rioters were mostly
outsiders—peasants, merchants and minor nobles who objected to paying for
foreign wars. By contrast, since the ascent of Reaganism and the politics of
selfishness, most of those in favor of lowering taxes and against raising them
to meet pressing needs are members of the establishment—rich folk like Pete
Peterson, the Koch brothers and executives of large corporations plus their
congressional factotums. And while they talk about lowering taxes as a general
mantra, when you take a look at their tax proposals, they always only call for
lowering taxes on two groups: the wealthy and corporations.
The rich control the news media, the multitude of think
tanks that advise elected officials and the political process, which explains
that the idea that taxes are bad is now so engrained in the public
consciousness. Anti-tax fever has gotten so bad that Congress cannot even pass an
adequate law to fund the repair and upkeep of our highways. Members of Congress
either are afraid to pass a higher gas tax or are so adamantly against any tax
that they just don’t care how much our roads deteriorate.
No one likes driving through potholes or over bridges that
need structural work. Providing adequate permanent funding for our highways
creates jobs and will lead to faster and more energy-efficient travel. To the
degree that the tax would discourage driving, it may also help clean up the
atmosphere.
Yet no one—not even President Obama—will come out in favor
of raising the gas tax or raising other taxes to fund highway repair and
maintenance. Every elected official is as afraid of anti-tax frenzy as they are
of the National Rifle Association.
Some may point out that a gas tax assesses everyone and goes
against my basic premise that anti-taxers are really just interested in
lowering taxes for the wealthy. Let me explain: the incessant call to lower
taxes, which has dominated economic discussions since about 1980, has created
an atmosphere in which the default position is to hate all taxes—new, old,
general or earmarked. The debate in the marketplace is about all taxes, but the
bills that are passed to typically give all or a large part of the tax breaks
to the wealthy and corporations. We could make a new gas tax progressive by
giving poor people gas rebates on income taxes, of course, but first we have to
pass a new gas tax. And that’s nearly impossible in the current anti-tax
environment. Meanwhile, we keep funding our senseless, goalless wars by
borrowing money from the wealthy.
Let me close with a sarcastic shout-out to the New York Time which found room in its
shrinking print pages for an extensive story on a scientist who denies that
climate change is occurring. I’m guessing that it’s part of a series of
personality pieces on climatologists and that the series will reflect current
scientific opinion, so that in each of the next 200 editions, the Times will do in-depth studies of
scientists who support the reality of global warming. 200 for and 1 against
will just about represent the true balance of opinion among scientists.
Or maybe today’s article is the first in a series on
scientists who speak against the overwhelming flood of facts on issues that
were decided years ago: Next week, the Times
might feature someone who doesn’t thinks the sun revolves around the Earth; and
then move on to someone who believes in spontaneous regeneration, someone who still
thinks phlogiston causes things to burn, someone who believes that vaccines
cause autism and someone who thinks that only gays can get AIDS.
I’m fairly confident though that today’s feature about one
of the small number of anti-climate change scientists is not the start off a
special series but rather a continuation of the Times and the mass media’s decades long pandering to those
advertisers who gain by postponing the changes we as a society will have to
make to steer a peaceful and bloodless transition to the much warmer world of
the future.
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