Because WordPress.com has recently expressed hostility towards the practice of “mirroring” posts, until further notice I’ll be posting the full text of my posts at Alexandria, and a short synopsis and link here.

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Responding to Dreher’s concerns regarding the AUMF reauthorization in the § 1031 of the pending National Defense Authorization Act, I post a few thoughts at the following link:

http://aleksandreia.wordpress.com/2011/11/30/reflections-on-ndaa12-§-1031/

I find Chesney’s analysis, and Dehn’s, persuasive.  Consequently, I am inclined to stand by my previously-expressed view regarding Al-Aulaqi’s killing.

[Samuels:]  There have been many different explanations given over the past 10 years for the strength of the American-Israeli relationship, ranging from the idea that Israel has the best and most immediately deployable army in the Middle East, to the idea that a small cabal of wealthy and influential Jews has hijacked American foreign policy.

[Luttwak:] You mean the Z.O.G.? The Zionist Occupied Government?

Yes.

Personally, from an emotional point of view, myself, as me, I prefer the Z.O.G. explanation above all others. I love the idea that the Zionists have sufficient power to actually occupy America, and through America to basically run the world. I love the idea of being a member of a secretive and powerful cabal. If you put my name Luttwak together with Perle and Wolfowitz and you search the Internet, you will get this little list of people who run the American government and the world, and I’m on it. I love that.

Anytime you need an added jolt of ego gratification, you open your laptop and confirm the fact that you rule the world.

In Pakistan, there are millions of people who go to schools where they are taught that I am the ruler of the universe. So, emotionally speaking, I would explain everything that happens by referring to the Z.O.G., the Zionist Occupied Government, which is run by a small cabal of people, and that I am one of them.[1]

This reminded me of a line by Jack Ryan in Tom Clancy’s “Clear and Present Danger”:

Some old guy on the shtetl in Czarist Russia . . . was reading the hate rag of the antisemites – you know, the Jews are doing this, the Jews are doing that.  So a neighbor asked him why he got it, and the old guy answered that it was nice to see how powerful he was.[2]

I’m not sure if the latter story is actually true, but I find it funny nevertheless.

• In the NYT, Jack Goldsmith defends the legality of the killing.
• Kenneth Anderson at VC gives some cogent thoughts on the matter.
• Robert Chesney comments re. Al-Awlaki’s role as an operational leader, and the inaccessibility of his location.
• Michael Lewis comments re. the laws of war & neutrality law.
• Benjamin Wittes addresses the issue of due process.
• Michael Ramsey offers an originalist perspective regarding the killing.
• Marty Lederman makes a very educated guess about the contents of the Obama administration’s legal justification for killing Osama bin Laden.  (Somewhat apropos, since both killings implicate many of the same legal issues.)
• A more critical perspective comes from Ta-Nehishi Coates (who rounds up the views of other like-minded individuals); and from Mary Ellen O’Connell.  (Of note:  the latter scholar was only able to square OBL’s killing with her view of the law by – unpersuasively, IMHO – characterizing the Abbottabad raid as having “followed law enforcement standards.”)

Also worth noting is this article by Robert Chesney, which explains why the Al-Awlaki killing was consistent with international law.  I find his argument persuasive.

In my (tentative) view, the Al-Awlaki killing was permissible under U.S. statutory & constitutional law.  More on that at a later date (hopefully).

1.       From a federal constitutional standpoint, mandatory vaccination is not analogous to the ACA’s individual mandate provision, since vaccination is primarily mandated by state – not federal – law.[1]  Such laws are enacted as part of states’ police power, which does not implicate the strictures of Article I.

2.       State sovereignty is not absolute; the Constitution places many limits upon state action,[2] and empowers federal courts[3] (and sometimes Congress[4]) to enforce these limits.  However, state vaccination mandates have long been deemed consistent with these limits.[5]

3.       Federal & state quarantine authorities derive from the Commerce Clause & state police powers, respectively.[6]  Federal law primarily concerns the military,[7] as well as interstate & foreign travel.[8]  The primary constitutional limit upon quarantine powers isn’t the First Amendment’s association clause, but rather due process & the writ of habeas corpus.[9]

Corrections & comments welcome.

1. Effective income tax rates do start to decline at the highest income levels.
2. OTOH, the effective income tax rates at those levels remain well above those for most lower-income categories.

These points are graphically illustrated in Figure 1, which gives the effective income tax rates for various Adjusted Gross Income categories in 2008.

Figure 1

Granted, Fig. 1 only considers income taxes.  However, as Figure 2 shows, the aforementioned points remain valid when we include other federal taxes (e.g., FICA, excise, corporate).

Figure 2

I find it hard to get excited about the very-very-rich paying a somewhat lower federal tax rate than the very-rich, when rates for both groups remain higher than those for most other income categories.

Sources and Notes

In Figure 1:

• The effective income tax rates for the categories between $1 & $50k, and between $500k & $10 mil, were calculated using the Adjusted Gross Income data in col. 2 of this IRS table, and the “Total income tax” numbers in col. 41 of this table.
• The effective income tax rates for the categories between 50k & 500k were calculated using the AGI & “Total income tax” numbers from columns 2 & 62, respectively, of Table B in IRS Publication 1304 (Rev. 07-2010).
• The effective income tax rate for the “Top 400” was calculated using 2008 AGI & aggregate income tax data from Table 1, pp. 1 & 10, of this IRS report.
• The aggregate AGI for the “$10 mil+ ex Top 400” category was calculated by subtracting the AGI for the top 400 from the AGI of the “$10,000,000 or more” category in this table; the same procedure was used to calculate the aggregate income tax for the “$10 mil+ ex Top 400” category.

Figure 2 was generated using the 2005 Total Effective Federal Tax Rate data in Table 1 of this CBO report.

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

The implication is that the federal tax system is regressive, such that Buffett & others at his income level have lower effective federal tax rates than the rest of us.  Or, at Buffett might put it, our tax system (unnecessarily) “coddle[s]” “super-rich” individuals such as himself.  However, it appears that Buffett’s anecdotal evidence is not representative of the federal tax system as a whole.  From a recent CBS news story:

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes and payroll taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank.

Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15 percent of their income in federal taxes.

Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5 percent of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7 percent.

The latest IRS data is a few years older and it’s limited to federal income taxes but it shows much the same thing. In 2009, taxpayers who made $1 million or more paid on average 24.4 percent of their income in federal income taxes, according to the IRS.

Those making $100,000 to $125,000 paid on average 9.9 percent in federal income taxes. Those making $50,000 to $60,000 paid an average of 6.3 percent.

For those so inclined, the sources for the above can be found in this Tax Policy Center table, and on p. 23, Fig. 4 of the IRS’s Statistics of Income–2009 Individual Income Tax Returns.  (See also this report from Citizens for Tax Justice, which gives similar results.)

Given my previous forays into tax-distribution issues, these results do not surprise me.

TANSTAAFL, OIF edition

How Europe Sees Itself

Possible failure mode for the Eurozone (Related)

McArdle re. HPV vaccination

Cowen re. the “NASA space pen” myth

Orin Kerr at VC pens a WSJ op-ed about pending CFAA amendments . . . and promptly discovers an “imitator.”  Not the first time I’ve seen this happen . . . .

First, as shown in Fig. 1, after adjusting for temporary Census employment, the combined payrolls of federal, state, & local governments peak in late 2008, and decline thereafter.

Figure 1

Disaggregating the data paints a somewhat more complex picture.  As seen in Fig. 2, both educational & non-educational components of local government employment have fallen in the last couple years.  The same is true of non-educational state government employees.  Although the state educational & federal payrolls continued to rise as these other categories fell, in the last year even they have begun to decline (see Fig. 3).

Figure 2

Figure 3

Admittedly, government employment did continue rising even after private employment started falling in early 2008.  In the last couple years, however, the reverse has been true.  See Fig. 4.

Figure 4 (1/1/07 = 1)

Sources: 

Historical BLS data came from the following FRED series:

The “Fed (ex Cen)” series is a composite, with data for 11/1/08 through 9/1/10 taken from the seasonally-adjusted figures in BLS’s “Census 2010 temporary and intermittent workers and Federal government employment” publication; and the remaining data taken from FRED’s “All Employees: Government: Federal (CES9091000001)” series.  The “Total Gov (ex Cen)” series sums, for each month, the “Fed (ex Cen)” series, and FRED’s “All Employees: Government: State Government (CES9092000001)” & “All Employees: Government: Local Government (CES9093000001).”  All the FRED data is seasonally adjusted.

First, it appears compensated emancipation may not have been politically feasible.  By 1860, abolitionists were apparently quite opposed to paying sinners (i.e., slaveowners) not to sin (i.e., own slaves).[2]  Even before the advent of this moral stance, however, abolitionist compensated emancipation proposals were repeatedly rejected by antebellum slaveowners, who consistently opposed any proposal that smacked of weakening their “peculiar institution.”[3]  Moreover, even if these two interest groups had accepted compensated emancipation, one wonders whether the American people at large would have followed suit.  Historically, it took the experience of the Civil War to bring the bulk of northerners around to supporting universal emancipation;[4] and it took enforcement at gunpoint to convince slaveowners to accept that outcome.  Absent the war, how likely is it that Americans would have willingly accepted a quadrupling of their tax burden[5] to satisfy slaveowners and a group of radicals?

Economic factors also militated against acceptance of compensated emancipation.  Plantation slavery was profitable,[6] and its rate of return was competitive with other antebellum investments.[7]  Moreover, slave labor was more efficient than its free counterpart,[8] owing to greater intensity of labor per hour.[9]  Finally, given slaves’ adeptness at industrial work,[10] it seems improbable that slaveowners would’ve endorsed compensated emancipation for fear that industrialization might doom slavery.  Absent a miraculous mass conversion to abolitionism, it seems unlikely slaveowners would have voted against their pocketbooks.

Finally, the antebellum Constitution erected significant barriers to federal involvement in any emancipation scheme.[11]  Enumeration of powers restricted federal interference with slavery in the states.[12]  The Fifth Amendment imposed further limits upon any federal emancipation scheme, by requiring Due Process and “just compensation” for any federal taking of private property.[13]  A constitutional amendment could have bypassed these restrictions, but for the reasons mentioned above, I don’t think such a provision would have commanded enough political support to win ratification.  Nor does it seem likely that the Taney Court – which handed down the Dred Scott decision – would have accepted the sort of creative abolitionist constitutional interpretations proposed by Lysander Spooner and the like.[14]  The final alternative would have been enactment of compensated emancipation at the state level; but there appears to have been little antebellum support for such measures in the slave states.[15]

For all the foregoing reasons, I don’t think compensated emancipation was a viable alternative in 1860.  One other aspect of the comparison between war and compensated emancipation bears mentioning, however:  both sides’ underestimation of the war’s true costs.  When “the war came,” both Union & Confederacy thought it would be short & cheap;[16] only gradually did they come to realize that this wasn’t the case.  Claudia Goldin – the economist who made the aforementioned cost comparison – suggested as much:

In all probability, the major reason that the war was fought instead of there being a political settlement was that its costs were incorrectly anticipated. The North was obviously surprised by the tenacity of the South, and the South had counted on more support from Great Britain. It appears that neither side thought the war would last more than one or two years.[17]

Or, as the folks at Straight Dope more colorfully observed:

Perhaps had [Southern leaders] foreseen that their society was about to be dismantled with cannonballs they’d have taken the money, said ta-ta to their former chattels, and split for Nicaragua without further fuss.

Perhaps if Alien Space Bats had “Flashforwarded” America’s 1860 population a decade thence, antebellum Americans would have possessed the 20/20 hindsight we now enjoy, and both opposition to war and support for compensated emancipation might have been greater.  In reality, however, neither side had sufficient a priori knowledge of the Civil War’s true costs (in both blood & treasure).  Hence, we should not be surprised that neither made an accurate comparison of the relative costs & benefits of war vs. compensated emancipation.

Update 20110818:  Though I didn’t know it when I posted the above, yesterday Matt Yglesias argued that compensated emancipation would’ve been cheaper than fighting the Civil War.  In response, Ta-Nehisi Coates explained why compensated emancipation wasn’t a viable option.