Sunday, June 05, 2005
(9:42 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
"Wait, nothing happened."
Mark Kaplan, in a post entitled "The Big Other? No Thanks!", discusses the fact that, contrary to expectations, the world did not stop when the French voted "non" (rather than "no," because it's in French). Good American that I am, I immediately related these comments to the American situation:‘European unification’ had seemed to move under the spell of inevitability, as if unmoored from human control, and could be used to justify various measures – eg economic reforms – under duress of History. And the ‘yes’ men seemed to understand and be au fait with the secret knowledge of History. They embodied the big Other and spoke on its behalf. (In fact, a particular political and economic agenda was being smuggled in under the sign of Progress).I'm thinking here of all the times that politicians have said that things need to be modernized or that they're out of date -- for instance, Bush once said that our tax system is "out of date." My question is, What is the standard of measurement here? Is there some kind of necessary sequence of evolution in tax systems that we are required to go through? How did you learn of this sequence? Do you know what the tax system after next will be like? And what if we fail to do all the steps? What then?
