The new American reality that conservative Republicans must face
As I’ve written here before, I think Republicans are mostly in the right when they suggest that Federal tax rates are already in line with the “normal” range of revenue over the last half century.
This chart, from the liberal website Crooks and Liars, shows the trajectory of tax rates as a percentage of GDP.
Yes, revenues have dipped below “mean” tax rates for a few of the years since 2002, and they plunged during the Great Recession.
But the more dramatic and pervasive trend is the surge of spending above historic norms that began in 2008.
The logical conclusion here is that spending must come down and tax rates must be stabilized, and perhaps even lowered, if we are to avoid a significantly higher long-term burden on taxpayers than Americans have accepted.
What appears obvious in the abstract, however, is confounded by a very different reality on the ground. The truth is that the American economic landscape has shifted tectonically.
The truth is that our citizens rely on government more and more, not because we’re lazy or ideologically confused or charmed by socialism, but because hard work in our country no longer produces a stable, secure livelihood.
This video (which Ellen Rocco shared earlier in the week) illustrates dramatically the growing income disparity in the US, which expanded dismally during the last four decades.
What’s clear here is that the old “rising tide lifts all boats” scenario no longer applies. It used to be true that everybody was getting richer in America — some faster, some slower.
But these days, a sizable percentage of our neighbors — even many so-called “middle class” Americans — just don’t earn enough to go it alone. They’re actually moving backwards. Their boats are sinking.
They don’t have the steady, reliable income needed to pay for good healthcare, to buy even a modest home, to pay for college tuition, or set aside money for retirement.
More and more seniors face an end-game that looks more like true poverty and less like the “golden” years.
Before the Great Recession, there were two factors concealing this implosion of the American dream. The first was massive debt, both personal and governmental. We borrowed our way out of reality.
The second was government spending. The public sector provided the backstop, both in terms of employment for the middle class and “safety net” programs for people drifting toward the bottom end of the economic ladder.
Already — and this is an important point — local, state and Federal agencies nationwide have slashed hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, eliminating one of the last stabilizers of middle class economic expectation.
More job cuts are on the way, as institutions like the US postal service and the military prep for deep cuts in employment that will target tens if not hundreds of thousands of workers over the next decade.
Now, conservatives want equally deep cuts to the social safety net programs that help those Americans dropping off the bottom of the ladder, aiming to slash “entitlement” programs for the unemployed, the elderly, and the poor.
Which brings us to the reality that Republicans aren’t facing. A growing slice of America is now poor. Bluntly and unambiguously impoverished.
And even many in the middle class have no debt-free assets, no job security, no emergency savings, no margin for error.
With income and wealth inequality rising — with the top 1% harvesting more and more of the country’s economic gains — it is mathematically certain that this trend will continue unless something is done.
So here’s what the GOP has to address, in policy terms and politically: What do we do about the “real poor” America? What do we do about full-time employed, two-worker families who have no health insurance, no equity, no assets and no security?
Thus far, the answer to this question from conservatives has been simple. Cut taxes, cut regulation, and jobs will come surging back.
But we’ve tried that for a generation and only a tiny fraction of the country has benefited. And much of the country is measurably, substantially worse off.
It may well be that the Democratic Party’s approach is wrong-headed. Fine. That’s why we have two parties, to offer different ideas and answers.
But to win the political fight over the future of the economy, the GOP will have to go beyond blocking tax increases for the wealthy, beyond promises that vast wealth at the top will somehow, eventually, maybe-next-year begin to trickle down.
They have to move beyond an ideological and abstract posture that makes zero sense to the 20% of full-time American workers who are earning less than $22,000 a year.
Frankly, without better alternatives, the Democratic Party’s solution begins to look more logical, less like socialism and more like fairness and common sense.
If our economy is now structured fundamentally so that everybody’s working really hard but only a tiny percentage of families really benefit, maybe it makes sense to use taxation to redistribute some of that opportunity?
I don’t mean money giveaways.
I mean maybe it makes sense to use higher taxes on the wealthy to fund things like low-cost higher education, job training, infrastructure building, entrepreneurial programs, more affordable healthcare and so on, all designed to boost America’s vast bottom-end economy.
I know, I know. Republicans really want to avoid that model. They don’t believe in the government stimulating economic activity. And they don’t want significantly higher taxes to become the new normal.
Again, fair enough.
But in the long run, blocking that agenda will take more than parliamentary gimmicks and tea party rallies and Ayn Randian magical thinking. It will take fresh, new and better thinking aimed at helping the country’s working poor.
This sentence should be in giant bold letters:
“The truth is that our citizens rely on government more and more, not because we’re lazy or ideologically confused or charmed by socialism, but because hard work in our country no longer produces a stable, secure livelihood.”
“It will take fresh, new and better thinking aimed at helping the country’s working poor.”
Brian, that video makes it clear that it’s not just the working poor– the middle class is suffering too. The idea that we’re heading toward Banana Republic conditions sounds like over the top lefty rhetoric, but it’s not. We’re still a fair way off, I guess, but getting closer every day.
Okay, first a couple questions-
“Thus far, the answer to this question from conservatives has been simple. Cut taxes, cut regulation, and jobs will come surging back.
But we’ve tried that for a generation and only a tiny fraction of the country has benefited.”
Could you expand on exactly what you mean by all that please, because I don’t know where you are seeing cuts in taxes and regulations. And you don’t seem to factor in the huge increase in debt and spending.
“I mean maybe it makes sense to use higher taxes on the wealthy to fund things like low-cost higher education, job training, infrastructure building, entrepreneurial programs, more affordable healthcare and so on, all designed to boost America’s vast bottom-end economy.”
We can tax the wealthy at 100% Brian and it would fund gov’t spending for about a week. We could seize the assets of the wealthy and run the gov’t for a couple months. Where does the money come from after that?
“The truth is that our citizens rely on government more and more, not because we’re lazy or ideologically confused or charmed by socialism, but because hard work in our country no longer produces a stable, secure livelihood.”
Brian not NCPR thinks this is a key point. I agree it seems to a be a logical conclusion, but I have to ask
what gov’ts role is making it so hard to produce a stable, secure livelihood is? That is, every dollar taken from us by gov’t is a dollar we no longer have to spend as we need to or want to. Taking money from the worker and returning it to him after gov’t has taken it’s cut still means lost income for the worker.
I don;t have a surefire answer to the problem. I have no issue with taxing the “rich”m, go ahead. The problem I see is that it isn’t going to be enough unless we do something major on spending. But then, we’ve been down that road before.
I like to think I’m pretty sophisticated this subject, but the video made me realize I really had only a limited idea of the situation.
But Brian is wrong about one thing: that something must be done about it. I agree that something SHOULD be done about it, but it’s not the same thing.
The position that most of us share is that we are part of a single country, and that we bear a certain responsibility for the well-being of our fellow Americans.
Also, that our own well-being can only be sustained when the vast majority of Americans is reasonably comfortable, safe, and educated. That we do not change into a banana republic
Finally, that it is the responsibility of the entire society, including the various state and national governments, to insure this occurs.
But many people, a substantial minority, and a substantial minority of those who comment here, do not accept this.
They believe that they are citizens of the United States, but there no compelling reason why anyone should, or has to, assume responsibility for the well-being of other Americans.
They believe that, beyond protecting persons and property from external and internal attack, there is no compelling reason to assure the well-being of others. That, in fact, such attempts tend to worsen things by taking property from those who have earned it, and giving it to those who have not, thus discouraging enterprise and encouraging indolence. Even if they could be convinced that this is not the case, that most Americans, them selves likely included, have become poorer through no fault of their own, even if they could be shown that, the prosperous will become more prosperous were the poor allowed to prosper, as history shows time and time again, these people would reject the premise of increased government involvement simply on an overriding belief in the sanctity of property as a condition of constitutionally-guaranteed freedom. To them, better a banana republic than a tax increase.
So don’t count on anything like a consensus for change.
Change doesn’t have to happen.
Hopefully, it can.
The chart shows an almost mirror image fall in revenues at the same time as spending rose, about 2008. The rise in spending wasn’t more pervasive or dramatic, it was close to equal the fall in revenues.
The truth is that our citizens rely on government more and more, not because we’re lazy or ideologically confused or charmed by socialism, but because hard work in our country no longer produces a stable, secure livelihood.
Not sure what to make of this. It is hard work to become and be, for instance, an electrical engineer. That is just one job of many that are out there. What I do see are lots of people who are unwilling(some might say unable) to do the hard work it takes to enter those fields that do have jobs for qualified people. Not everyone can be a sports media person, a corrections officer an elementary teacher or a DOT employee. However, there are lots of areas where vacancies go unfilled year after year after year and just waiting for someone to retire is probably not going to work. Do the jobs many of these people qualify for pay to little to survive on? Probably. But then again maybe it depends on what survive means.
The economy currently and in the future as Zeke points out, has many high paying jobs to offer and many jobs that are begging for people to fill them. They are however largely in math, science, engineering and technology, you cannot have a workforce where 1 out of every 4 people fail to graduate from high school and compete in today’s world. We have a major skill imbalance in the US.
So yes we need infrastructure spending on building a skilled, smart workforce that is internationally competitive with any in the world.
We also need a consistent, secure and fully funded social safety net for those who are at the bottom and falling through the cracks. I do think in the end we are going to have to disconnect access to health insurance from employment. It would be a great help to both employers and employees to be able to have a consistent choice for each individual to get their own health insurance.
The GOP should be talking about increasing high paying jobs and increasing access to those jobs through training and education. STEM does not always have to mean an expensive college degree it also can mean training.
Anyway poverty is very very real in this country, I mean here in the North Country just open your eyes and drive around a little. Drive into many of our village and towns and countryside, look at how many of our people are really living.
The graph above does show revenues increasing and outlays decreasing.
I discount the projections beyond 2014 because, well because they are projections and not facts.
I think the best approach to control the budget and the debt without wrecking the economy would be one of cautious tinkering. This could include the elimination of many of the loop holes in the tax code and some adjustments in Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.
The whole darn Medicaid and Medicare thing could be fixed by eliminating private health insurance and throwing everyone including the President and Congress into National Health Care.
We probably could get rid of the Army and be more than adequately defended by the Air Force, Navy, National Guard and Coast Guard at a much lower cost.
As far as working our way out of the current situation goes, the last time we had massive federal debt (much higher in debt:GDP ratio terms) was after WWII. What resolved that situation was high taxes, much higher than now, and public spending on education and infrastructure. And we had a Republican president to boot. It worked then and in the process created a large middle class that has since been largely driving the growth of the economy.
The GOP keeps saying we can’t raise taxes on the “job creators” because it will discourage investment and job creation but they are already not creating jobs. The major corporations are sitting on 3 trillion on reserves waiting for the economy to improve before they invest. DUH! Until they invest and make new jobs so people have stable income the economy won’t improve. They claim to be the engine of the economy while they act like the caboose. If they won’t step up and create jobs then tax them and let the government use the money to create jobs. It worked before and it can work again.
BTW Brian, There’s a reason they call it “trickle” down and not “flow” down economics. The reason can be seen graphically in that second chart.
Something I’ve noticed over the last few years is that many people are cashing in meager assets they hold to pay current obligations. Some examples, people selling gold and silver jewelry, selling scrap metals like copper and steel, and logging woodlots.
Granted prices for commodities have been historically high and it has been a good time to sell, but I don’t get the feeling most people are reinvesting that cash. I think it is mostly going to pay bills. The woodlots meanwhile -at least near me – seem like they wont recover value for more than a generation. So what happens when those woodlot owners need cash to pay taxes next year? I guess the next step is to sell the land, and who has the money to buy?
The conservative message is so convoluted, so contradictory these days that it is no wonder voters are confused by them.
Just an example, for years conservatives have been saying that government spending was bad, that it was a drag on the economy, and that we needed to make cuts. Now they seem to be saying that the sequestration, which actually does cut government spending, is bad and will be a drag on the economy. This sort of mixed messaging is hard to follow.
Newt, there is a vast, vast difference between establishing a social safety need for the elderly and infirm and providing a cradle to grave living for those who choose not to work. I believe in helping people, not working to provide for myself and my family and every Tom, Dick and Harry that prefers to sit on the couch watching porn and drinking beer all day. Helping people is one thing, supporting an entire class of welfare recipients in it’s various forms is another. We have 8 MILLION people on disability. What percentage are truly disabled I don’t know, but I do know of several people receiving those benefits that spend the winter snowmobiling and the summer ATVing. Meanwhile I know people that are actually hurt that go to work every day. Who do you think is more deserving?
I would agree that we have become poorer through no fault of our own. We’re poorer because more and more of our income is taken before and after payday by taxes, regulations, etc., by devaluation of the dollar, by rising costs directly attributable to gov’t manipulation, taxation and regulation. I take offense at your statement regarding private property- “…these people would reject the premise of increased government involvement simply on an overriding belief in the sanctity of property as a condition of constitutionally-guaranteed freedom.” Yeah, I worked and earned what I have, no one gave it to me and you do not have the right, nor does the gov’t, to seize what I own anymore than I have a right to seize what you own.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting what you mean to say, but it sounds like the same old class warfare rhetoric spouted by every malcontent from Marx onward.
Jim, what resolved the debt after WW2 was a vigorous economy that was based in private industry, not gov’t stimulus.
“Jim, what resolved the debt after WW2 was a vigorous economy that was based in private industry, not gov’t stimulus.”
The fact that there was MASSIVE government spending around that time was just… what? Coincidence?
It clearly didn’t hurt the economy, since the two boomed in conjunction with one another. So what is your assertion, that all of that government investment was benign… neither helped or hurt?
No, but the spending was directed at that nasty military industrial complex. The Cold War was a big driver as was the increasing technology of the day. Ike borrowed from that precious Social Security “lock box” to build the interstate system, )which was a military item BTW). So how’d the never ending dip into SS work out for us?
Look, the thing to remember is that the gov’t didn’t rack up enormous debt even when they were spending a lot back in the post war era. They weren’t spending beyond their means. http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=200 That’s the big difference. And they didn’t have unfunded obligations we have to day to look forward to either. It would be great if we had a $100 million dollar deficit and that was all we had to consider. We don’t. And we don’t have the pent up consumer demand of the post WW2 era or the enormous manufacturing base that provided jobs to meet that demand. We darn didn’t have a nation with an average of over $7K in credit card debt, $4.00 gallon gas and dwindling oil reserves. The future was bright, it’s not so now. We already have record debt and deficit, more spending might make things better for a while, but what happens when the money runs out guys? After you rape the rich, who do you turn to? The not quite rich, and you rape them and it’s not enough so you go to the never was or will be rich and we end up raping ourselves.
There has to be an end plan to all this. You can’t keep spending without paying for it.
I see the points here but I also see this problem. That wealthy individuals are paying the highest tax rates in almost 30 years. Here is one story from the left leaning Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/03/taxes-on-the-rich_n_2801206.html
It looks like the democrats insistence that raising that higher may be the answer seems odd. We are in the soup.
“President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress say the wealthy must pay their fair share if the federal government is ever going to fix its finances and reduce the budget deficit to a manageable level.
A new analysis, however, shows that average tax bills for high-income families rarely have been higher since the Congressional Budget Office began tracking the data in 1979. Middle- and low-income families aren’t paying as much as they used to.”
RC, your ideology has blinded you to what is happening. Do you think the top 1% are piling up the assets while everyone else is getting poorer in relation because the government is taxing us too much?
Have you never played Monopoly?
The graph shows evidence that the stimulus saved the economy from collapse. About 2007-2008 the economy went into free fall and government spending helped to stop the collapse, then the economy began to stabilize and government spending began to drop back toward more normal levels. A pretty good illustration of how Obama saved the economy.
Here’s a good graph of consumer debt that shows why the economy couldn’t stabilize in 2007-2008, because individual debt levels were far too high. Neither Ayn Rand nor Allan Greenspan saved us from that debt.
http://www.google.com/#sclient=tablet-gws&hl=en&q=american+consumer+debt+graph&oq=consumer+debt+graph&gs_l=tablet-gws.1.2.0j0i30j0i5i30.0.0.3.354.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les%3B..0.0…1ac..5.tablet-gws.me5e6epfBJc&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&bvm=bv.43287494,d.dmg&fp=d963ec24362ee56&biw=1024&bih=644&biv=i%7C0%3Bd%7CXQq2LyB94D8qZM%3A
Sorry for that link. did it on an iPad and didn’t realize the length.
Let’s try some other links. How about this site that charts the price of commodity metals.
You can look at copper, for example, and see that there is a massive drop in the price of copper very similar to the collapse in government revenue in the beginning of 2008. Check other common industrial and housing metals like steel or aluminum and you see a nearly identical drop.
http://www.metalprices.com/p/CopperFreeChart
Okay, one more thing then I’ll shut up.
Since nobody else is going to point it out, if you look at the chart above you can see that there was a sharp drop off in government revenue at the beginning of the Bush 2 term and a coincident rise in government debt — all leading to the economic collapse.
The ideas that the Republicans are selling are shown not to work.
Rancid says “what resolved the debt after WW2 was a vigorous economy that was based in private industry, not gov’t stimulus.”
Um yeah. The jobs were in private industry but the government paid them to build highways, paid schools to educate vets, etc. Private industry didn’t do it on their own initiative. Those are exactly the sort of things Obama proposed in his jobs plan. He wasn’t talking about hiring federal workers.
“the thing to remember is that the gov’t didn’t rack up enormous debt even when they were spending a lot back in the post war era. They weren’t spending beyond their means.”
Another ummm yeah. The top tax rate was 90%. The government didn’t have to “borrow” money. They had tax revenues to cover it. So was that terrible and onerous? Probably to the rich in the short run but over time it obviously benefited them too. Directly if they owned companies that got the government contracts and indirectly if they sold goods and services to the new middle class. Now the GOP doesn’t want to tax or spend and that is a prescription for stagnation at best.
Conservatives (Republicans) seem to treat this huge gap in income equality like they do climate change. They try to deny that it exists and then say that it is just a naturally occurring event. Are the one percenters working so much harder than the average person that it justifies their capturing all of the additional income gains from our economy? Hardly. It is the result of premeditated policies that reward capital rather than labor. The same website Brian Mann quotes above has an article about a study that shows the reduction in tax rates for Capital Gains and Dividends is the largest contributor to the growth in income inequality. Again, this was a calculated change, not some natural event:
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/low-capital-gains-tax-rates-fuel-record-inequality
Deliberate economic, trade and tax polices the past 30 years have benefited those with investable capital at the expense of those who provide the actual labor for economic growth. Both parties are responsible for both our current debt and the enormous growth of wealth inequality. Some examples include Reagan’s trickle down economic nonsense, Bush one’s “no new taxes”, Clinton’s NAFTA and ending Glass-Steagall, Bush two’s wars and tax cuts and Obama’s bailout of Big Banks and Wall Street. The common theme is the overwhelming influence of large multi-national corporations and wealthy elite over both political parties to promote policies that enable concentration of power and wealth in an endless cycle of government of, by and for the one-percent.
The average person is not represented by Washington. Social Security is the least of our problems yet even Obama wants to make cuts. The real problem for the future is endless military spending and increases in medical costs. But these areas involve big money interests with lobbyists and campaign contributions to insure the government spigot of funds to these welfare queens continues to flow.
Again, both parties are responsible for deliberate decisions and policies that promote and protect the corporate/financial/military oligarchy at the expense of average citizens. At the same time they own the major cable and network news outlets and therefore can control the discussion and influence public opinion away from what really is going on by confusing the issues and diverting attention to trivial matters. Will enough people eventually see their ideology is divorced from reality and recognize what is really going on?
myown says: “Will enough people eventually see their ideology is divorced from reality and recognize what is really going on?”
Unfortunately; the answer is probably not until after TSHTF!
However it is kind of interesting that as government spending has increased as a percentage of GDP, poverty has also increased. It kind of makes the argument that government spending certainly is not the answer. Which makes sense, building aircraft carriers, spending money on government pensions, giving wealthy individuals health care, won’t make a dent in poverty.
People believe that government spending is largely about helping the poor or building a safety net, not true at all, government spending is about giving money to people who have influence on the government, people who favor government spending in the US are not helping the poor.
The gap in income inequality matches the INCREASE in government spending.
It all comes back to high cost energy. According to economist James Hamilton 10 out of the last 11 recessions followed a spike in fossil fuel prices. Our economy was built on cheap energy prices. Now prices at around 90 dollars a barrel choke off economic growth. As long as the economy is growing we can afford to service our personal, and government debt. When growth is hard to come by things start to unravel real fast, whether it is national budget deficits or a sustainable model for north country schools.
If our present situation were business as usual the usual cures, deficit spending or cutting taxes might make difference. This crisis is nearly five years old and the fact that neither quantitative easing or austerity as tried in Europe has worked should tell us we are in uncharted territory. Sending 3/4 of a trillion dollars over seas to pay our oil bill year after year after year has bled the vitality out of our economy.
True, but when we become a net exporter of energy this will likely change. We are on the verge of doing just that, we will be relishing high oil prices at that point, just as Saudi does or any of the other petro-states.
Working poor.
Hmmm.
The way you can have “working poor” is if the government takes away your money faster that you can make it.
JDM –
Actually, the average person earning $22,000 a year probably pays little or no Federal income tax and may even receive a bit from the government.
The reason a person earning $22,000 a year is “working poor” is because an adult, full-time employee at that rate is earning less than the amount needed to pay for basic things like rent, food, medical care and transportation.
As a consequence, those people rely heavily on things like government-provided healthcare, food and rent support, and so on. Which are paid for by taxes.
This is the ideological hokum that many (not all) Republicans are trapped in.
They don’t want to acknowledge a real-world problem — the rapid expansion of the working poor in America and an economic model that seems to foster that down spiral — because it would take more than a snappy one-liner to address.
–Brian, NCPR
Brian:
Speaking of things that you don’t want to acknowledge.
“As a consequence, those people rely heavily on things like government-provided healthcare, food and rent support, and so on. Which are paid for by taxes.”
You left off cable TV, Internet, cell phone, smart phone, etc.
How about we require directing their own resources toward food and health care before the government steps in.
JDM –
So you watch that video about wealth redistribution in America. You hear about good jobs vanishing, factories shutting down, companies cutting healthcare, shipping jobs overseas.
You hear about millions of Americans who are highly ambitious, educated, hard-working, who can’t find work — roughly 8 percent of us.
And the problem that you think needs addressing is the fact that there are too many slackers who want to feed on the government trough while staring at their taxpayer funded X-boxes all day?
I just don’t see the evidence for that. The idea that poor Americans are poor because they have failed morally, or been corrupted by their government, seems fanciful to me.
Were Americans suddenly struck by moral malaise in the 1930s when the Great Depression struck?
How about the Panic of 1819, when the American economy and jobs fell off the map? Were the people back then addicted to government hand-outs?
All available evidence shows that American workers are more productive, work longer hours, with fewer benefits than ever before — yet they’re getting a smaller and smaller slice of society’s gains.
–Brian, NCPR
Always what the Republicans should do! Don’t the Democrats have to do anything? Aren’t there any realities they must face? It is a testament to the power of brainwashing that after more than four years of Democratic failure, we continue to be lectured about what conservative Republicans must do.
It would be nice for a start for conservative Republicans to look at the numbers and recognize the reality of what the numbers show. Then maybe we could work together to solve very real economic problems.
I am not sure looking at the numbers and the video if this can be a problem placed solely on the plate of the GOP.
Certainly right now they don’t seem to have good far reaching ideas to address income inequality and more importantly increases in poverty beyond we need a better economy. But neither do the Democrats at least in action and how they have governed for the past 4-8 years.
Cranking up government spending as a percentage of GDP has not worked either. The OP talked about government stepping in as a stable force during downturns, well they have done that and it has not really been effective, largely in my opinion because government spending in the US is still largely political; not based on logic or need but on the power of particular interest groups, be it military contractors, Unions, Government Employees themselves, large corporations etc.
The fact is we are becoming uncompetitive in the world and we need to change that. We should be supporting our industries and supporting education and training to fill positions in those industries.
Brian:
“And the problem that you think needs addressing is the fact that there are too many slackers who want to feed on the government trough while staring at their taxpayer funded X-boxes all day?
I’m not aware that X-boxes require a monthly subscription. Nice try at dodging the issue.
I think within the current crowd of 18 million food stamps recipients there are probably more-than-a-few who are also taking advantage of not having to pay for the necessities you listed.
But, it sounds like you and I agree that they should not do so.
Let’s mandate it so.
No food stamps until you cancel your cable-TV, satellite, smartphone, cell phone (including the “Obama cell phone”), etc.
Let’s face reality with reality.
Brian: “I just don’t see the evidence for that. The idea that poor Americans are poor because they have failed morally, or been corrupted by their government, seems fanciful to me.”
Not at all. To require prioritizing in spending is not a declaration of moral failure.
To receive benefits, proof of income is required. That’s not considered a moral failure.
I’m saying that proof of expenses is also required. That’s not a moral failure, either.
JDM –
No, you and I don’t agree. Your premise is that the fundamental problem is that Americans are lazy and luxury addicted and that government is picking up the tab and enabling their malaise.
It’s nonsense. It’s a fiction. And it’s insulting. The poor in America often work two, three jobs and still struggle to feed their children, to buy basic medicines, to find safe transportation.
What’s more, cell phones and the internet are basic parts of our modern economy. People who don’t have access to those are severely limited in their opportunities.
Your narrative falls squarely in the “if they’re so poor why do they have a satellite dish on their house” school of conservative thinking.
It’s a comforting narrative for people who don’t want to think about problems in the underlying economy, or challenges to their own ideological posture.
And I get it. It’s scary to think that something might be wrong with our fundamental approach to capitalism.
Finding solutions to the dramatic rise in income inequality will require real inquiry, research, thought.
And some of the best solutions will be conservative ones — I’m convinced of that.
But so far, too many conservatives aren’t doing that work. It’s easier to say that it’s all Barack Obama’s fault or the fault of lazy people who just want free handouts.
Fortunately, there is a new vein of conservative intellectual thought that’s grappling with some of the underlying problems — the rise of too big to fail banks, for example, and government subsidies for corporations that are already incredibly wealthy.
–Brian, NCPR
The Obama cell phone. Talk about a low information voter. I do agree the Democratic-controlled Senate should pass some legislation. Why on earth are they not doing so?
I have a theory about Democratic inaction. Could be wrong obviously.
I think Democrats are interested in a ‘grand bargain’ that cuts entitlements and spending in ways that will infuriate many in their base. Obama has signaled repeatedly that this is so. (Obviously, Republicans distrust his sincerity.)
But I suspect that Democrats are entirely unwilling to step forward with such a proposal that doesn’t have substantial GOP buy-in.
They know that if they propose and pass substantial limits on Social Security, Mecicare and Medicaid without also securing more revenue and GOP votes, they’ll be deeply vulnerable in 2014 and 2016.
Call it a lack of political courage or savvy politics.
–Brian, NCPR
Brian:
“Your premise is that the fundamental problem is that Americans are lazy”
No.
By-and-large, Americans are very industrious.
What would happen to your work ethic if, instead of having to go to work today, you received a check in the mail from the rest of us?
If there is any wide-spread American laziness, it is the government’s doing.
Why, even in Yellowstone, the government is wise enough to caution people:
“Don’t feed the bears”.
Why is that?
Are bears lazy?
No.
They can be *made* lazy by well-intended misguided charity, however.
JDM –
The working poor in America are not animals. Nor are they lazy. Both of the assertions I’ve just made are factual, not ideological.
Your comment reflects the crux of the conservative problem, boiled down to it lowest common denominator.
–Brian, NCPR
Knuckle, re your 7:48- Uh, not sure if you knew this but that big drop was due to 9/11 and the spending was too. Over 10 years later and you’re still trying to blame Obamas mess on Bush.
Brian:
The liberals have their ideological issues, as well.
You say, “The working poor in America are not animals.”
The working poor are yielding to animals who might get in the way of the Keystone pipeline.
The liberal view is to elevate animals above people.
And whether or not people are like animals (they are when it is convenient, they are not when it loses the argument), if you pay someone not to work….
….they will not work.
Brian-
What kind of head protection do you wear when reading and responding to all those continue to cite lazy , welfare-dependent Americans as the cause of economic inequality after you have laid out every possible factual and logical argument showing why this is not (for the great majority) the case ?
I know people who fit this description, but I know a great many more who are either legitimately disabled, or simply struggle on working and getting by as best they can.
Meanwhile, calls for reforming billionaire hedge-fund managers’ 15% income taxes rates are laughed off.
I have forwarded the video to 100 or so of my best friends, and hope they do likewise.
Beats doing nothing.
Brian, re your 8:17- All I can ask is, what planet do you live on? A cell phone is cheaper these days than a land line, a bottom of the line cell phone anyway. You need a phone to get a job. But the rest is nonsense. There is a huge difference between the poor kid with a 5 year old lap top poaching off his neighbors wi-fi and the poor kid with the latest $1500.00 laptop with the gaming package, the cable or sat TV with the $120.00 a month package and the 60″ flat screen. Those people are out there Brian, lots’ and lots of them. To deny they make up a considerable amount of that population is insulting. Where is the money coming from? Where does the part time min wage worker get the funding for the $100.00 sneakers, the latest games, the smart phone, etc, all while eating out 3 meals a day? They aren’t getting it from their equally poor relatives and they can’t all be selling dope. It’s coming from someplace Brian. They aren’t buying health insurance Brian, that comes from the State and County and so do their meds. A lot of them aren’t paying their rent or for their heat either. Painting this picture of todays working poor or welfare recipients as the Joad family is both insulting to anyone with eyes and factually inaccurate.
If we want to help people we need to have jobs available. We all aren’t going to be in the top 1% or 50% even. We can take all the money away form the top 10% and all it does is create a new top 10% that have less money than the old 10%, but still a lot more than many people. The wealth will always end up at the top. So take it from the Buffets and Gates and Kennedys and give it to the poor. Take it from the entertainers and sports stars and big business. All you’ve done is lower the bar on who is going to pay more taxes. That isn’t going to create jobs or offer more value for the dollar or make a big fix in things. It’s just a political answer to a problem that will always exist. Look at any communist or socialist nation in history or currently. Do you see any examples where the heads of the system, the politburo or whatever, aren’t in far better shape than the run of the mill guy? Does the NK leader look like he’s starving like his people are?
I know you guys mean well, but this whole wealth redistribution scheme is simply not going to fix the problem one little bit.
BTW- Americans by and large are lazy. Man is a lazy animal if he can be. No one works harder than he has to to achieve his goals. If your goals are to get by and not much more then that’s what you do. If your goals are to build a business then you are going to work towards that. But don’t even try to make the case Americans are just looking for the chance to work 18 hour days, 7 days a week. It’s not true.