A great rebuttal of the arguments offered in favor of a progressive tax: The Inequity of the Progressive Income Tax

I suggested a make-work program for the long-term unemployed. Turns out something like it already exists. In NYC, we have a non-profit program called Ready, Willing, and Able. Roughly half its funding is donations and grants. The other half is raised through the contract work that they actually do. Most often, they do street cleaning and maintenance of government buildings. I’d like to see if this can be more efficient than an EITC.

I’ve also suggested a carbon tax but there’s an interesting debate over, not climate change, but whether a carbon tax is an efficient way of dealing with climate change. Should We Re-Evaluate Carbon Taxes? The thrust of the argument is that because of demand inelasticity, we may need an extremely high carbon tax to get the results that we want. An order of magnitude larger than what has been proposed. Politics aside, can we live with $10/gallon gas? Of course, we can make it revenue-neutral so it may not be a deal killer but as Megan McArcle points out, it’s still a problem. Another problem that has traditionally been ignored is the possibility that it isn’t the low price of energy that is holding back alternative energy, but the lack of feasible technology. Would taxing snail mail in the 19th century have spurred on the private creation of e-mail? It’s a real possibility that a carbon tax will cause us to adjust to a long-term lower rate of consumption.

The Feasible Plan

Tax Reform

• Replace the corporate tax with a revenue-neutral subtraction-method VAT with no exceptions for anything. The subtraction method resembles our current income tax (revenue minus purchases). Most countries use an invoice-method where the VAT is collected on every sale. Paul Ryan suggests this and he offers 8.5% as the appropriate rate. He also wisely doesn’t call it a VAT but the Business Consumption Tax (BCT).
• Replace all income tax deductions with two: A personal exemption and a savings deduction.
• All qualified savings (savings at institutions subject to certain IRS regulations) are tax-exempt. All withdrawals along with any capital gains, dividends, or interest are fully taxed. This makes tax enforcement more difficult but it’s the only feasible way to get a consumption tax in the short run.
• Three income brackets: 15%, 25% and 35% set at income thresholds necessary to remain revenue neutral while placing no additional tax burden on the poorest 85% of households.
• Limit unemployment benefits to six months after which benefits decline and completely disappear at 18 months. However, recipients can enroll in a make-work program to keep their full benefits indefinitely.

Health Care

• Means-test Medicare to long-term solvency by offering full coverage to the needy, partial vouchers for the less needy, and nothing for the wealthy.
• Adopt Obama’s proposal for limiting Medicare spending growth.
• If there’s any surplus, it goes into individual HSA’s.
• Block grants to states for Medicaid based on the number eligible in the state.
• Replace the ObamaCare mandate with block grants to states to offer universal vouchers with the condition that insurers that accept vouchers can’t discriminate based on pre-existing conditions.
• Redirect Planned Parenthood funding to expanding women’s health services within Medicaid and ObamaCare.

Social Security

• Remove the Social Security tax cap.
• Means-test.
• Surplus contributions go into individual IRA’s.

Climate Change

• A tax of $17/tonne of CO2 rising $3/year for 10 years. That’s roughly 15 cents per gallon of gasoline rising 2 cents a year for 10 years. Every penny of that goes to raising the personal exemption on everyone’s income tax.

Discretionary Spending

• Require that all agencies adopt GAAP.
• Enact all the mutually agreeable cuts.
• Freeze spending for 10 years.
• Replace financial aid for education with loans.

Pro-Growth Policies

• Ratify FTA’s with South Korea, Panama, and Columbia.
• Lift the limit on H1-B visas.
• Repeal the Sonny Bono Copyright Act.

The Ideal Plan

The Feasible Plan can transition into the Ideal Plan.

Tax Reform

• Replace the income tax with the VAT/BCT.
• Taxpayers get a rebate card that instantly zero-rates purchases until the personal exemption amount is reached after which the full VAT applies.
• Taxpayers with privacy concerns can choose to continue filing taxes instead of using the rebate card. They’ll receive monthly rebate checks based on their income.
• Combine unemployment benefits with the EITC and apply it directly to the rebate card. Benefits phase out but can be avoided by enrolling in a make-work program.

Health Care

• Transfer need-based Medicare to Medicaid.
• Turn the rest to an HSA with a flexible catastrophic insurance. The premiums for the insurance decrease as the balance of the HSA increases.

Social Security

• Turn need-based Social Security into an EITC but without a work requirement.
• Turn the rest into individual IRA’s.

Discretionary Spending

• Privatize all federal museums.
• Transfer all federal land and reclamation projects to states.
• Sell off all scientific research assets (e.g., US Geological Survey facilities) to universities.
• Transfer the USDA’s food inspection duties to the FDA and abolish the USDA.
• Outsource the census and all other statistics gathering.
• Privatize the FAA and TSA.
• Abolish the standing army. Reserves only.
• Incorporate the Marines and Coast Guard into the other branches and charge the military with border security as well.
• Complete overhaul of departments and agencies.

Pro-Growth Policies

• Pursue an FTA with the EU.
• Stream-line the immigration process to let in unlimited immigrants of above-average earning potential.
• Much higher standards of national accreditation for educational institutions.
• Reduce copyright and patent terms to 14-years.
• End the War on Drugs.
• Abolish all federal holidays except New Years, Independence Day, and Christmas. Move Thanksgiving to a Saturday. To make up for the lost holidays, give federal employees 7 extra vacation days.

From a Christian point of view, the entire Natural Law should be codified to the extent practical. Criminalizing online insults is impractical. Banning the burning of religious objects in public is probably practical. It may or may not deter conduct but the message of the criminalization would be strong. Just as the First Amendment infected American society, so too an intolerance ban would have a social impact.

But what about those constitutional rights we agree with? Some are obsolete. When was the last time a violation of the right not to quarter troops was litigated? But do we really need the others? Without a First Amendment, we aren’t going to have an established religion. Constitutional rights reflect universal American values. The normal democratic process won’t violate these rights. At the margins, the Supreme Court justices can’t agree on the extent to which to protect rights so the Constitution isn’t much of a safeguard.

Preventing an 80% majority from banning guns from their city is undemocratic.

The Borgias is the heir to The Tudors. About Pope Alexander VI, possibly the worst pope in history, and his family, it’s not a family show but so far a good adult drama. It’s even less historical The Tudor. The apocrypha story of the papal chair with a hole makes an appearance. The show is much better than the other highly anticipated show of the season, Camelot.

I only recently discovered the first season of Food Revolution. It follows Brit Jamie Oliver as he attempts to reform school food in Huntington, WV. It’s a chronicle of bureaucracy at its worst. I’ve long been appalled by what public school students are being served and it’s disheartening to see that it requires nothing short of a revolution to dent. Season 2 began this week and follows Oliver as he takes on the impossible task of reforming school food in LA.

Movies

The Way is a low budget independent film staring Martin Sheen. It follows individuals brought together to walk the Camino de Santiago from France to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Family-friendly and a good movie for parishes to show.

Myth Busting

Fact: The budget cannot be balanced by taxing the wealthy alone. Even if income over $100,000 were taxed at 50%, it would only close about half the deficit (Eat the Rich). The only way to close the deficit is to cut spending or raise taxes on the middle class.

Fact: The budget cannot be balanced by cutting defense spending alone. Eliminating DoD would only cut the deficit in half. The only way to close the deficit is to cut non-defense spending or raise taxes on the middle class.

Fact: Health care insurance vouchers cannot reduce the deficit without cutting benefits. If well-designed I would support vouchers but the savings come from cutting how much is spent on vouchers vs. Medicare, not from the virtues of vouchers themselves.

Fact: High-speed rail on the crowded Northeast Corridor between DC and Boston via Philadelphia and NYC would be the most expensive construction project in human history but it would be profitable because of the high volume. High-speed rail between San Francisco and San Diego via Sacramento and LA would be cheaper and also profitable. No other proposed high-speed rail project (Houston to Dallas, Tampa to Orlando, Michael Moore’s NYC to LA) would be profitable.

Fact: The biggest obstacle to nuclear power is not safety or regulation but cost. It’s prohibitively expensive to build a nuclear plant. Countries like France subsidize nuclear.

Fact: Obama was born in Hawaii. A certificate of live birth, a legal document, was released and the original examined by factcheck.org. The original birth certificate is on file but cannot be released without Obama’s permission. Two newspapers reported Obama’s birth at the time of his birth. Birthers claim Obama’s maternal grandmother says he was born in Kenya. In fact, the question was lost in translation and immediately afterwards says he was born in Hawaii.

Fact: There aren’t many Birthers. Neither Glenn Beck nor Bill O’Reilly nor Sarah Palin is a Birther. Polls closely trail Obama’s approval rating, meaning respondents are just agreeing with any negative statement about Obama.

2012

A good rule of thumb: Guys don’t admit to being shorter than 5’7″. Mitch Daniels is official 5’7″. What is the political price for lying about height?

1. If you have Windows Vista or 7 Enterprise or Ultimate, enable BitLocker. Otherwise use TrueCrypt. It encrypts the entire hard drive. Some computers like Lenovo Thinkpads have TPM (Trusted Platform Module) which is a physical module with a unique key inside the computer without which a BitLocker-enabled hard drive cannot be read. In other words, the hard drive cannot be removed and read on another computer. Without TPM, you’ll need a key file or password to unlock your hard drive. If you use a key file, remember to back it up to multiple locations (another computer or hard drive and to the cloud).
2. Lock your computer with a password. Better still, use a biometric security device. I have a fingerprint reader built in to my laptop. Set your screensaver to lock your computer.
3. If multiple people use your computer with their own separate logins, enable EFS (Encrypting File System) on the professional editions of Windows and encrypt your personal folders. This prevents other users from accessing them.
4. If you have Windows, install an anti-virus program. I recommend Microsoft Security Essentials.
5. If you have Windows, install an anti-spyware program. I recommend Windows Defender. Remember to do a scan after you install.
6. Store your passwords and critical info like credit card numbers, bank and investment accounts, driver’s license number, passport number, etc. in LastPass. I even store lock combos in case I forget them. Lastpass remembers website passwords and any plain text you want it to remember. The information is encrypted using a master password and a copy is also stored on their servers for backup and for you to access from their website. The master password isn’t stored anywhere so even if your encrypted data falls into the wrong hands, they wouldn’t be able to read it. Also, for websites, let LastPass generate a random password for you. It’s much safer than using the same easy-to-guess password for every websites.
7. Starting from Microsoft Office 2003? you have the option of password protecting files when you save them. It’s too much of a hassle to use on all your files but it can come in handy from time to time.
8. You can zip any number of files together and password protect it using a tool like 7-Zip. Great for archiving a bunch of sensitive documents.
9. If you’re using a wireless router, use WPA2 protection if possible. WEP is the weakest protection and should be disabled.
10. Web traffic is typically not encrypted which means if you’re on a public wireless network like at Starbucks, anyone can intercept your communications and see exactly what you’re doing. So use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) whenever possible. Websites that begin with https, instead of http, are using SSL. Communications over SSL are encrypted. More and more websites are adopting SSL. Before you bookmark a website, replace “http” with “https” to see if the website also offers SSL. Facebook now has an option to use SSL, though it will prevent many apps from working. For Firefox there is the HTTPS Everywhere add-on that redirects you to the SSL version of websites if they’re available.
11. Look through your web browser settings and set it to remember only as much history and cookies as you think you’ll need. I have mine set to remember 9 days of history and cookies. I also have my browser set to reject 3rd party cookies except for facebook.com. Many websites employ 3rd party companies to track your browsing. Rejecting 3rd party cookies minimizes that. On rare occasions this may prevent a website from working though.
12. Install CCleaner to clean out your computer. Look through the settings carefully. Set CCleaner to run at startup.
13. If you use Firefox, install Flashblock. It prevents Flash from running automatically (and therefore logging your visit). Instead you need to click the placeholder to run it. As an added bonus, it’ll save battery life by preventing unwanted Flash from running. Chrome has a similar function built-in to block all plugins.
14. If you’re using the web browser on someone else’s computer, use it in private browsing mode. All the newer browsers have it. Look around. When you close the browser, everything you did since entering private browsing mode is cleared.
15. If you’re using a Macbook, check out iAlertU which is a rather sophisticated security alarm.
16. If you spend a lot of time at Starbucks, you may want to invest in a laptop lock so you can go to the bathroom with peace of mind.
17. Smartphones have security apps that, among other things, can locate your phone or even wipe it clean remotely from a website. On the Blackberry, it’s Blackberry Protect.
18. Go through your Facebook privacy settings obsessively. You will probably want to edit your friends and place them into groups and adjust what they can and cannot see.
19. Close all accounts you’re not using.
20. Don’t ever give out personal information including your name and email address.
21. Create an email address solely for suspicious email. Whenever you’re asked for an email address, unless you’re 100% sure you’re dealing with someone you can trust, give them your junk email address. If they turn out to be trustworthy later on, you can always give them your real email address.
22. Don’t install anything you aren’t sure of. Many times software will include malware that installs by default. You need to opt not to install it during installation. So read through the installation.

1. If you have multiple computers, you can backup your files on the other computer. They’ll need to be on the same network. If the computers are not on the same physical network, you can create a VPN (virtual private network). You’ll need to setup file sharing. I won’t go into any of the details of setting this up. Create a folder on the computer you’re going to backup to. On the computer you’re going to backup, find the folder on the network and mount it as a drive. Use SyncToy or SyncBack to backup daily. Because I backup to multiple locations, SyncBack works better for me.
2. If you don’t have multiple computers, go buy an external hard drive. They’re cheap. If you have an unused hard drive laying around, you can just buy an external hard drive enclosure which is dirt cheap. Make sure your buy an enclosure that’s compatible with your hard drive though.
3. Backup to the cloud. There are many services available that automatically backup your files to their servers. I recommend Syncplicity. Unlike some of the other services, you can access your files instantly online and you can pick which folders to sync. The first 2GB are free so I only backup my irreplaceable files.
4. Buy a scanner. Preferably with an automatic feed. Preferably a duplex scanner (ability to scan both sides of a paper automatically). They usually include a printer and are called multi-function printers or MFP. While we’re on the subject of printers, opt for laser instead of ink unless you really need the color. Laser printers are more economical in the long run. On the rare occasion I need color, I just go to Kinkos.
5. Scan documents to PDF/A-1b format at a resolution of 300ppi. This is not just any PDF. The ‘A’ stands for archive. It ensures that all the information necessary to view the document as originally intended is contained in the file. I use Adobe Acrobat (not the free reader. The paid version). I scan all my important documents including my driver’s license, car registration and insurance, and even my college transcript. I also scan all mail I send out if it’s handwritten. I save it until that matter is closed.
6. Scan pictures to TIFF at a resolution of 300ppi. If you have the option, save color pics as 24-bit color and black&white pics as 8-bit grayscale. JPEG is a lossy format, meaning that the quality is degraded to reduce the file size. TIFF is lossless.
7. Convert your CD’s to FLAC. More on converting and playing FLAC here. My preferred method is to use foobar2000. FLAC is a lossless format. Even if you want to convert your CD’s to a lossy format like MP3 or AAC to play on your iPod, convert to FLAC first, save the FLAC file somewhere safe, then create your MP3 or AAC. This way you’ll have that perfect copy you can always go back to.
8. I don’t see the point in backing up movies now that we have Netflix but if you insist, use DVDFab to get it onto your computer. Since, you can always Netflix a new copy, you can convert the movie into a lossy format to save space without worrying about losing the original. Use Handbrake to convert to H.264 with AAC audio (or pass-through if you want to retain the surround sound).
9. Copy software discs to your computer. If there’s a serial number, create a text file with the serial number and save it together.
10. Record account numbers and lock combinations somewhere. I have my credit card numbers (with expiration date and security code), gym membership number, gym lock combo, snowboard lock combo, etc. stored in LastPass. More on LastPass in another post.
11. Backup your bookmarks. I use Xmarks. Firefox and Chrome now have built-in bookmark syncing.
12. Backup your phone. You’ll have to figure that one out on your own. If you have a smartphone you can also backup to the cloud. I use Google Sync which is available for all modern smartphones. I should emphasize here to backup both to the cloud and to your computer. If the syncing with the cloud gets screwy, you want that copy on your computer. I’ve accidentally erased all my contacts on my phone which also erased them from Gmail. Luckily I had the backup saved on my computer.
13. Optional: For files that you want to keep for archival purposes and won’t be using regularly, you can zip them together to save space with a tool like 7-Zip. If it’s already been compressed like a FLAC, MP3, or movie file, zipping won’t help much. Documents can benefit though. 7-Zip offers a variety of compression formats. I prefer 7z which offers slightly better compression on average than zip.

With all these measures in place, no catastrophic sort of a nuclear holocaust can destroy your data. Best of all, most of it is automated. With a very small time commitment you can sleep well at night.

The gulf between the two camps isn’t as deep as it seems at first glance.

The most common meme these days is that Reagan raised taxes. Eugene Jarecki, director of HBO’s Reagan, went so far as to claim that Reagan didn’t cut taxes. The truth is that Reagan cut taxes and raised taxes. Net taxes fell substantially. Reagan adviser turned liberal, Bruce Bartlett, has the breakdown. Much of the tax hikes were accomplished by broadening the tax base, a goal that Republicans today still support. Republicans today favor eliminating the tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance. That is a tax hike but a kind that Republicans support.

It is also said that Reagan increased spending. Reagan and even Republicans today make no secret of the fact that Reagan increased defense spending. In fact, he nearly tripled it. Non-defense discretionary spending under Reagan actually fell.

Some of the budget deficit wasn’t Reagan’s fault at all. Reagan agreed to the largest of his tax hikes, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, on the condition that Congress cut spending in the next budget. Congress ended up increases spending over his veto.

In one way Reagan was even more right-wing than today’s GOP. He lowered the top marginal income tax rate to 28%.  There’s no talk of going back to those flatter rates on the right today. All in all, today’s GOP is justified in claiming the mantle of Reagan’s fiscal conservatism.

In response to Obama’s negotiation of the START treaty, liberals claim that Reagan was a hippie when it came to nuclear arms. It is true that Reagan was willing to completely eliminate nukes. But he didn’t. Reagan stopped Carter’s disarmament and maintained America’s nuclear arsenal throughout his presidency.

On foreign policy, non-interventionists note that Reagan cut and run from Lebanon. True enough. But Reagan also unilaterally invaded Grenada. Even the UK wasn’t with the US on that one. The world was a different place back then and there’s no telling what Reagan would’ve done without the Soviets keeping him in check.

Finally, liberals point out that Reagan supported amnesty for illegal immigrants. There’s no getting around this one. Today’s Republicans acknowledge that this was Reagan’s one mistake.

Life, Dignity, and Economic Rights

Man has the right to live. He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of illhealth; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood.

Pacem in Terris 11, John XXIII (1963).

Let’s unpack that. Everyone has the right to:

1. Life from conception to natural death. Shouldn’t need any explanation.
2. Bodily integrity. This would prohibit any infliction of physical injury by public or private parties. Self-defense is an exception.
3. Means for proper development of life. Most of this can be accomplished through financial aid and ensuring access to necessary goods and services. It would also prohibit unjust termination or unjust barriers to employment. Taken with #2, it would prohibit states from physically punishing someone to the point where he cannot make full use of his abilities to make a living. So no limb chopping.

The first two are dealt with rather effectively by most criminal law systems around the world. The last point is what I’d like to concentrate on in detail. First, how to deal with access, then how to deal with poverty.

The free market is generally very good at providing access to goods and services to those with money. The only exceptions I can think of are remote villages and cases of unexpected disaster that prevent goods and services from getting to those who need it. For remote villages, we should ensure adequate transportation. As for natural disasters, the government can provide aid itself or it can require that people contribute to individual emergency accounts and purchase rescue insurance.

What do we do about those who can’t afford the means for a proper development of life? The baseline moral requirement is that anyone willing to work should receive at least enough to raise his family up to the poverty line. We can debate where to set the poverty line but it’s important to keep in mind that poverty is measured by dignity. Dignity requires not only essentials for biological survival but that level of prosperity required to live in relative dignity. In America, I cannot live in dignity without electricity, hot running water, and a telephone whereas someone in Somolia can. So along with an absolute bottom below which we cannot allow any human on earth to endure, we should establish a poverty line relative to the income of those around us. Many countries use median household income normalized for household size as the measuring stick and set the poverty line at some percentage of that. Another method is to set it at, say, the line between the bottom and second to bottom quintiles of households normalized for household size.

There are a few other points to keep in mind when designing an employment program.

Women must be accorded such conditions of work as are consistent with their needs and responsibilities as wives and mothers. . . . The amount a worker receives must be sufficient, in proportion to available funds, to allow him and his family a standard of living consistent with human dignity.

Pacem in Terris 19-20, John XXIII (1963).

It is not enough to provide enough for a person to live in dignity. The person’s entire family must live in dignity. Furthermore, it is the employer’s responsibility. Obviously if employers have to pay for their employees’ families, the employers would be less willing to hire women and those with large families. Risk pooling is appropriate here. Spread the cost of child-bearing and raising across all employers by requiring employers to carry employee insurance that pays out according to the size of the employee’s household.

To finish off the economic rights, I just want to add:

As a further consequence of man’s nature, he has the right to the private ownership of property, including that of productive goods. . . . Finally, it is opportune to point out that the right to own private property entails a social obligation as well.

Pacem in Terris 21-22, John XXIII (1963).

Morals & Culture

Moreover, man has a natural right to be respected. He has a right to his good name. He has a right to freedom in investigating the truth, and—within the limits of the moral order and the common good—to freedom of speech and publication, and to freedom to pursue whatever profession he may choose. He has the right, also, to be accurately informed about public events.
He has the natural right to share in the benefits of culture, and hence to receive a good general education, and a technical or professional training consistent with the degree of educational development in his own country. Furthermore, a system must be devised for affording gifted members of society the opportunity of engaging in more advanced studies, with a view to their occupying, as far as possible, positions of responsibility in society in keeping with their natural talent and acquired skill.

Pacem in Terris 12-13, John XXIII (1963).

Man has the right to:

1. Respect. Prohibits hate speech and unjust discrimination. The US has decided to place freedom of speech above freedom from hate and maybe that’s a wise policy choice but it’s not the only choice. We can ban racist organizations and racist speech as they do in other countries. Unjust discrimination, as opposed to just discrimination, is discrimination that serves no purpose other than to advance or protect bigotry. Discrimination can only be just if something about the discriminated makes them objectively ill-suited or if the discriminated consents to discrimination. For example, convicted child molesters can be banned from serving as Boy Scout leaders. If blacks want segregated schools, they can have them. Unjust discrimination includes banning gays from the military because the straight soldiers would feel uncomfortable.
2. His good name. Covered by defamation laws.
3. Investigate the truth. Lack of access to information can usually be solved through financial assistance.
4. Freedom of speech and publication with the usual exception for speech that creates a clear and present danger. Access to speech that offends community standards can be restricted (e.g., proof of age requirements).
5. Pursue whatever profession he may choose. Institutional barriers to entry should be prohibited.
6. Be accurately informed about public events. The free market does a good job of this. Laws against inaccurate reporting don’t seem to work very well. They’re only litigated if there’s some controversial issue and if it’s controversial, people have already made up their minds. Misinformation is a serious problem though and we should bear in mind that there is no right to misinformation so if there are effective ways to curb it, we should be open to them.
7. Good general education. Parents should be required to educate their children. No public schools or vouchers are necessary. Indigent parents have access to general subsidies. To ensure “good” education, students should have to take standardized exams. If students fail, schools can be shut down or taken over and parents can have their wages garnished to pay for better or supplemental education.
8. Technical or professional training. High school students entering their junior year should be able to choose between technical training and pursuing more advanced studies.
9. The opportunity of engaging in more advanced studies. High school students who pass the academic muster to pursue more advanced studies should be able to. We don’t need financial aid for higher education. There is nothing wrong with loans you can repay. To protect against predatory lenders, the only recourse that lenders should have is a small percentage of future earnings. Lenders would then be reluctant to lend to those they believe are unlikely to succeed. Lenders can demand certain grades or admissions test scores. Or offer more favorable terms depending on grades or test scores. Even those who may not have the grades to get a loan for fours at a private university, may still be able to get a loan for a part-time semester at community college. With good grades, the chances for a more favorable loan improves. If government wants to encourage people to get more advanced degrees, it can do so by providing students a stipend. This achieves the same goal that subsidizing tuition is designed to do but with less price distorting effects.

Worship

Also among man’s rights is that of being able to worship God in accordance with the right dictates of his own conscience, and to profess his religion both in private and in public.

Pacem in Terris 14, John XXIII (1963).

The only limitation should be generally applicable laws established for a purpose that can justified by Natural Law (known today as secular reasons). For example, a law against murder would prohibit a religion from performing human sacrifice.

Does this prohibit states from punishing heresy and apostasy? It would seem so. However, it doesn’t prohibit state funding of religion or even establishment of a state religion. A state can choose to pay priests or require catechism classes. It doesn’t seem to work very well in Europe though. The free market of religions we have in the US seems to keep everyone more religious.

State in Life

Human beings have also the right to choose for themselves the kind of life which appeals to them: whether it is to found a family—in the founding of which both the man and the woman enjoy equal rights and duties—or to embrace the priesthood or the religious life.

Pacem in Terris 15, John XXIII (1963).

Simply prohibits forced marriage or celibacy.

Association

Men are by nature social, and consequently they have the right to meet together and to form associations with their fellows. They have the right to confer on such associations the type of organization which they consider best calculated to achieve their objectives.

Pacem in Terris 23, John XXIII (1963).

The state should encourage the anti-social to join associations with positive influence. Alcoholics, drug addicts, ex-cons, those suffering from depression, widows, at-risk minors, etc. Such programs would be cheap but would go a long way towards social improvement.

The freedom of association also provides the right to unionize.

Migration

Again, every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own State. When there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there.

Pacem in Terris 25, John XXIII (1963).

Someone who is being denied his rights, including his economic rights and the right to live with his family, has the right to move and states must admit him. So long as the migrants have just reasons, the state must admit even the destitute, ex-cons, those with communicable diseases, and certainly those who can’t speak the language. For those without just reasons, the state can be as open or as restrictive as it wishes. States may perform a case-by-case determination for just cause but they do not have to. They can approximate the likelihood of a just cause using criterion like income and country of origin.

I’d point out here that voting is not a fundamental human right. States have the right to declare it such but they can also add conditions such as a residency requirement or even a literacy test.

In the next part of this series, I’ll explore how governments should organize economic life.

52% of Medicare costs goes to treat people who will die within 2 months. During those last 2 months, Americans receive care that’s unavailable in other countries. So if you want to improve America’s ranking in health care spending to outcome ratio, just let people die. There are ways to do that by limiting coverage or providing financial incentives to refuse care but there are no palatable ways to do it.

The extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy will cost $120 billion and create 290,000 jobs. So the Republicans are correct in asserting that it’ll create jobs but it’s a terribly inefficient way of doing so. Extending unemployment benefits is the most effective, followed by cutting payroll taxes. Tax and Unemployment Agreement Leads to Jobs Growth

US unemployment benefits: Up to 693 days of full benefits. Required to apply for at least 3 jobs a week.

Swedish unemployment benefits: Benefits begin to decline after 300 days. After 450 days, benefits can continue but you must work for it, cleaning toilets or whatever the government assigns you.

Restrained Radical’s ideal unemployment benefits: You must work for your benefits and apply to at least 3 jobs a week.

Over the last 12 years, the S&P 500 yielded about 0%. Dividend yields alone make up for most of the inflation. If you contributed every year to a portfolio tracking the S&P, retired at 65, and you die today at age 78 (average US life expectancy), all your investments would have been in the green. So don’t buy the BS that the latest recession proves that privatizing Social Security is necessarily a bad idea. Lengthen the horizon and you’ll always come out on top.