It really isn't a cliff; most people don't pay taxes in January; Congress will have time to fix things after the first of the year and has often written tax and spending bills that are retroactive.
One of the advantages of delay is that a "tax increase" on Dec. 31st, i.e. not extending Bush tax cuts, becomes an opportunity for "tax cuts" on January 1st. The Obama/Democratic program of maintaining the lower tax rates for the middle class, becomes "tax cuts" in January. The higher rates, for those with incomes over $250,000, does not become a tax increase: it would simply remain as part of the agreement reached between Congress and the President, as part of the bargain to cut the deficit and debt. The Republican House agreed to this as the fall-back position for cutting the deficit.
This whole "cut the deficit" mania came from the Tea Party caucus in the House: it's miss-timed. The Great Recession has driven most of the current deficit by stimulus and aid to people in distress, and collecting less revenue because fewer people are working.
The whole mechanism of government spending more in a recession in order to ameliorate misery, despite revenue shortfalls, was an innovation of the New Deal. It's not surprising that reactionary Republicans want to repeal the practice.
Consider what would have happened if we'd adopted the balanced budget amendment long advocated by "fiscal conservatives": as revenue went down in the financial collapse of 2008, government would have been required either to raise taxes on those still working, and/or to cut expenditures--on food stamps, schools and everything else, even Defense. The result would have been an ever deeper, broader and self-reinforcing hole in the economy and mass misery. Today we'd still be in a deep depression with no way to dig ourselves out. We'd be in worse shape than Europe.
Once we've spent enough to create jobs (and hopefully to restructure the economy), then is the time to raise taxes on those who currently can't afford it, or to find other ways to balance the books: now is not that time; the economy is still too fragile and too many people are still out of work.
However, to avoid the so-called cliff, to begin to reduce the deficits in ways the nation can afford, raising taxes on high income earners makes sense. They do not "create jobs," from their rising incomes. The corporations they own will hire when there is demand for the goods and services they produce. Not before. High-income earners have garnered almost all the increased wealth since the start of the Great Recession: they are largely sitting on it, or investing it elsewhere.
The Republican insistence on lower tax rates for the wealthy is like the Roman Senate in 476 refusing to raise their taxes to pay the Ostrogoth palace guard. That action precipitated the "fall of Rome."
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
O'Reilly & Romney on "Gifts and Stuff"
Has anyone else noticed: the line Romney handed his donors--and via a surreptitious recording, the rest of the American people--is the same trotted out on Election night, not by Romney, but by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. It was O'Reilly who blithered on first about why the election was going Obama's way: those "gifts and stuff" Obama had given out to blacks, Hispanics, women, the poor and the middle class.
Romney was simply parroting the nastiness of Fox News and then going further to all but say that 52% of the electorate was dependent on government largess, so of course they voted for Obama. What's a poor powerless multi-multi-millionaire going to do?
Is the Romney-O'Reilly contention true?
What is this "stuff"? Both O'Reilly and Romney speak as if these were bribes given to greedy people, in order for them to vote for Obama. However, when they mention specifics, what do they list: immigration reform, contraception for women, same-sex marriage and higher taxes for, er, "job creators". Unmentioned, except in the Republican primaries was the expansion of Food Stamps (officially SNAP), which has become critical to survival for a lot of people chronically unemployed.
Are these bribes, or are these policy intentions? Immigration reform is something this country has needed for a long time, since it's estimated we have 12 million illegal aliens living in the shadows, and a lot of hiring "under the table," which may work to employers' advantage, but is not a sustainable policy. Is immigration reform a "gift," or is it a needed reform of a broken system?
What is democracy, anyway? Some conservative wags have suggested that Rove and Adelson would have been better off just distributing the money they spent for political ads on directly buying votes. Hah hah.
Same-sex marriage has become something a majority of people feel is justified. So, is Obama's endorsement of it a gift, or a response to changing cultural attitudes?
Contraception for women, paid for by insurance in the ACA, may be seen by O'Reilly as a gift to unmarried women (who voted for Obama by a large margin), but contraception is necessary for women of childbearing age, in order for them to control their own lives. The subsidy means that poor women as well as wealthy ones can decide on their own. Republicans apparently want them "barefoot and pregnant."
So, "gifts" were Democrats offering substantive policies--and Republicans were offering what? God's blessing on a child of rape?
Fox News, it turns out, was giving Romney his lines. Fox is the perfect representative of the .001%, the media arm of our contemporary Roman Senatorial class. Romney's remark about the 47% was how he really thinks. Only now it's 52%, and aren't we lucky enough people knew this, or intuited it, that they didn't vote for this empty shirt!
Romney was simply parroting the nastiness of Fox News and then going further to all but say that 52% of the electorate was dependent on government largess, so of course they voted for Obama. What's a poor powerless multi-multi-millionaire going to do?
Is the Romney-O'Reilly contention true?
What is this "stuff"? Both O'Reilly and Romney speak as if these were bribes given to greedy people, in order for them to vote for Obama. However, when they mention specifics, what do they list: immigration reform, contraception for women, same-sex marriage and higher taxes for, er, "job creators". Unmentioned, except in the Republican primaries was the expansion of Food Stamps (officially SNAP), which has become critical to survival for a lot of people chronically unemployed.
Are these bribes, or are these policy intentions? Immigration reform is something this country has needed for a long time, since it's estimated we have 12 million illegal aliens living in the shadows, and a lot of hiring "under the table," which may work to employers' advantage, but is not a sustainable policy. Is immigration reform a "gift," or is it a needed reform of a broken system?
What is democracy, anyway? Some conservative wags have suggested that Rove and Adelson would have been better off just distributing the money they spent for political ads on directly buying votes. Hah hah.
Same-sex marriage has become something a majority of people feel is justified. So, is Obama's endorsement of it a gift, or a response to changing cultural attitudes?
Contraception for women, paid for by insurance in the ACA, may be seen by O'Reilly as a gift to unmarried women (who voted for Obama by a large margin), but contraception is necessary for women of childbearing age, in order for them to control their own lives. The subsidy means that poor women as well as wealthy ones can decide on their own. Republicans apparently want them "barefoot and pregnant."
So, "gifts" were Democrats offering substantive policies--and Republicans were offering what? God's blessing on a child of rape?
Fox News, it turns out, was giving Romney his lines. Fox is the perfect representative of the .001%, the media arm of our contemporary Roman Senatorial class. Romney's remark about the 47% was how he really thinks. Only now it's 52%, and aren't we lucky enough people knew this, or intuited it, that they didn't vote for this empty shirt!
Monday, November 12, 2012
Letter to a Right-Winger
Workers create value; employers organize a workplace, but only when there is demand for products/services: employers DO NOT CREATE JOBS. Governments create jobs more directly than most investors. And produce value, like census data, standard weights and measures, highways, civil peace, international stability. If you want to know what it's like without government, look at Somalia.
You need taxes to pay for collective values. People with wealth, and owners of businesses benefit more from these collective goods than those who live in ghettos, or under bridges. So, they should pay more. Currently, they don't pay their fair share.
The current tax system is more skewed in favor of the rich than it has been since the 1920's. The money created from economic growth should not all go to the investor, but 95% of all increased value since 2008 has gone to investors, not workers. Is that a fair distribution of value? When you tax, or even if you don't tax, you distribute wealth.
While employers may play some positive role in providing goods and services, investors are much less important, since there is an abundance of capital in the world. Why do you think interest rates can be kept so low? Investment should not be valued more highly than people's work, but that is exactly what our current tax system does. It's unjust (capital gains or "carried interest" at 15%, work: 20-35%). Our current system steals value from workers and transfers it to investors. That's Robin Hood in reverse, and that's what Obama proposes to undo.
If we continue along the same path of taxing investors lightly, then we'll end up like a Third World country with a small wealthy class and a poor, desperate class. Don't be surprised if we end up not with a moderate Obama, but with a revolutionary like Venezuela's Chavez, who gained political traction because of the extremes of wealth and poverty in Venezuela. My mother's family lives there behind doors that look like safe vaults!
In Sweden and Canada, people don't have to lock their doors even in Stockholm and Toronto, because those countries have fairer taxes and higher levels of equality.
Do you want people desperate, or relatively satisfied and willing to support the status quo? If you want stability and civil peace, you have to pay for it. If you have more, then you should pay more: you've benefited disproportionately. Does a black son of a waitress in a central city have your advantages? He struggles not because he's lazy, or stupid, but because our system intensifies his disadvantages; it should eliminate them.
Obama is no revolutionary Robin Hood; he's attempting to rectify a system that favors only a tiny proportion of the population. If that imbalance continues it will impoverish us all, not enrich us--except for the tiny few, like the Roman Senators of Fifth Century Rome prior to the Empire's collapse.
You need taxes to pay for collective values. People with wealth, and owners of businesses benefit more from these collective goods than those who live in ghettos, or under bridges. So, they should pay more. Currently, they don't pay their fair share.
The current tax system is more skewed in favor of the rich than it has been since the 1920's. The money created from economic growth should not all go to the investor, but 95% of all increased value since 2008 has gone to investors, not workers. Is that a fair distribution of value? When you tax, or even if you don't tax, you distribute wealth.
While employers may play some positive role in providing goods and services, investors are much less important, since there is an abundance of capital in the world. Why do you think interest rates can be kept so low? Investment should not be valued more highly than people's work, but that is exactly what our current tax system does. It's unjust (capital gains or "carried interest" at 15%, work: 20-35%). Our current system steals value from workers and transfers it to investors. That's Robin Hood in reverse, and that's what Obama proposes to undo.
If we continue along the same path of taxing investors lightly, then we'll end up like a Third World country with a small wealthy class and a poor, desperate class. Don't be surprised if we end up not with a moderate Obama, but with a revolutionary like Venezuela's Chavez, who gained political traction because of the extremes of wealth and poverty in Venezuela. My mother's family lives there behind doors that look like safe vaults!
In Sweden and Canada, people don't have to lock their doors even in Stockholm and Toronto, because those countries have fairer taxes and higher levels of equality.
Do you want people desperate, or relatively satisfied and willing to support the status quo? If you want stability and civil peace, you have to pay for it. If you have more, then you should pay more: you've benefited disproportionately. Does a black son of a waitress in a central city have your advantages? He struggles not because he's lazy, or stupid, but because our system intensifies his disadvantages; it should eliminate them.
Obama is no revolutionary Robin Hood; he's attempting to rectify a system that favors only a tiny proportion of the population. If that imbalance continues it will impoverish us all, not enrich us--except for the tiny few, like the Roman Senators of Fifth Century Rome prior to the Empire's collapse.
Thursday, November 8, 2012
We Won!
I remember when Harold, the school's maintenance man, came into the dining room as we kids were eating breakfast, and announced to my father: "We won!" The president re-elected was Truman, and the year was 1948.
Money didn't play such an outsized role in 1948 as it did in 2012, but the most important thing: "money," as the song goes, "doesn't buy you love." That was proven pretty decisively in 2012; money didn't buy love for Romney.
Tuesday night I stayed up until NBC declared Obama's victory--I didn't hear about Karl Rove's objections until the next afternoon. Obama really did win and it wasn't as close as Truman over Dewey.
Obama didn't campaign against a "do-nothing" Congress, but he could have; perhaps he should have. Considering Republican obstruction in Congress, it's extraordinary that Obama won on his accomplishments and his character--despite my evangelical friend's deeply held belief that Barack is the Antichrist.
What justifies Obama the Antichrist label? Maybe that he won? Or maybe that he's black, but doesn't act like a 'Yassuh, no Suh' N….., but as a powerful, articulate, well-educated man, who happens to be black.
Some now say Obama is a brilliant politician; I agree. But Obama's win, and that of the Democratic candidates who won a majority of Senate seats, despite the $100's of millions deployed against them, won because, in a democracy, numbers of voters ultimately prevail against raw cash. And Americans, like any people not cowed by authoritarianism, reacted to attempts to suppress them with impressive, stoic determination to push back and prevail. They may have voted in greater numbers than in the previous election when Republicans didn't so actively try to suppress the vote.
That's the strongest message and mandate in this election. Issues like global warming, collective bargaining rights and even inequality were often ignored by both sides--a defeat for democracy--but such a surge of money into the campaign (the money raised by billionaires and spent by "super-pacs"), encouraged Republicans to be more open and more aggressive about their extremist policies.
That was a good thing, because of the reaction: Americans reacted to the concerted effort to buy their votes through indirection, and they didn't like it. They turned out in droves in response to the attempts at voter suppression, and apparently ignored, or discounted, the negative ads flying nationwide. They may also have voted more decisively for Obama because of his real action in the face of Hurricane Sandy.
The day after the election, we still had a slowly diminishing empire, an artificially created "fiscal cliff," and need for a real stimulus to bolster jobs growth. And we still had Republican control of the House. But, for the moment, we've dodged the ultimate takeover of the selfish class, our equivalent of Roman Senators in the Fifth Century.
That's something to be thankful for.
Money didn't play such an outsized role in 1948 as it did in 2012, but the most important thing: "money," as the song goes, "doesn't buy you love." That was proven pretty decisively in 2012; money didn't buy love for Romney.
Tuesday night I stayed up until NBC declared Obama's victory--I didn't hear about Karl Rove's objections until the next afternoon. Obama really did win and it wasn't as close as Truman over Dewey.
Obama didn't campaign against a "do-nothing" Congress, but he could have; perhaps he should have. Considering Republican obstruction in Congress, it's extraordinary that Obama won on his accomplishments and his character--despite my evangelical friend's deeply held belief that Barack is the Antichrist.
What justifies Obama the Antichrist label? Maybe that he won? Or maybe that he's black, but doesn't act like a 'Yassuh, no Suh' N….., but as a powerful, articulate, well-educated man, who happens to be black.
Some now say Obama is a brilliant politician; I agree. But Obama's win, and that of the Democratic candidates who won a majority of Senate seats, despite the $100's of millions deployed against them, won because, in a democracy, numbers of voters ultimately prevail against raw cash. And Americans, like any people not cowed by authoritarianism, reacted to attempts to suppress them with impressive, stoic determination to push back and prevail. They may have voted in greater numbers than in the previous election when Republicans didn't so actively try to suppress the vote.
That's the strongest message and mandate in this election. Issues like global warming, collective bargaining rights and even inequality were often ignored by both sides--a defeat for democracy--but such a surge of money into the campaign (the money raised by billionaires and spent by "super-pacs"), encouraged Republicans to be more open and more aggressive about their extremist policies.
That was a good thing, because of the reaction: Americans reacted to the concerted effort to buy their votes through indirection, and they didn't like it. They turned out in droves in response to the attempts at voter suppression, and apparently ignored, or discounted, the negative ads flying nationwide. They may also have voted more decisively for Obama because of his real action in the face of Hurricane Sandy.
The day after the election, we still had a slowly diminishing empire, an artificially created "fiscal cliff," and need for a real stimulus to bolster jobs growth. And we still had Republican control of the House. But, for the moment, we've dodged the ultimate takeover of the selfish class, our equivalent of Roman Senators in the Fifth Century.
That's something to be thankful for.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Bribes Literal and Legal
I don't live in a battleground state, but Friday I received three unattributed flyers and another only identified as Republican by the micro-print postal stamp code: all were negative ads. One was against the incumbent Republican State Senator, possibly from the Independence Party; the Republican ad was against the Democratic challenger. The only TV ad I saw (I watch TV rarely) was also unlabeled, in lurid colors, against the Democratic Congressional challenger of the tea-flavored incumbent Congressman.
The Obama campaign has solicited my wife and I at least five times a day. Each. I have given small amounts several times and used Obama's phone tool; my wife has given more. Democratic Senatorial and Congressional candidates from Washington and Montana to New Mexico and Massachusetts have solicited me, plus at least five progressive Democratic organizations, and the DCCC, DGA and DSCC. That's only the political groups!
Occasionally, I've given really small amounts ($3.00) to Democratic groups or candidates, but it finally occurred to me: the whole campaign is an enormous business, a sector subset of Entertainment. I've encouraged them--I and all the other millions giving to both parties. But we don't get the kind of returns from the mega-bucks that billionaires "donate."
Neverthelss, I'm investing in the continued viability of Social Security, Medicare, and a universal right to health insurance: my investment will pay me back in kind if Obama wins. So will the aid programs for people in need, like fully funding Food Stamps and expanding grants to education. None of this makes me money; some save money for everyone. All maintain social stability.
Why does someone like Sheldon Adelson pledge to spend "whatever it takes," more than $100 million, to defeat Obama? What does he get out of it, if Romney wins? Adelson is under investigation and may be charged a felony: bribing Chinese officials with $600,000 to $1million, to set up gambling casinos in Macao, China's "autonomous" ex-Portuguese colony. He's likely violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to build the largest gambling complex in the world. He could go to jail, or, he could have a new President, Romney, name an Attorney General who would find a way to dismiss the charges.
How much is that worth to a billionaire worth $25 billion, a good part of it from Macao?
If Obama wins, this should be a whole new source of revenue. An invigorated DOJ could search for other sources of income: Wall Street bankers, private fund speculators like Bain Capital: people gambling with other people's money for their own gain.
Maybe that's the kind of money politics we really need! Take Crime Out of the Suites--To Pay Our Debts. Expropriate ill-gotten wealth and fund services for people they squeezed it from.
That would make it politically possible to reverse the apparently inexorable rise of our contemporary Roman Senators: the super-rich who increasingly monopolize the wealth we all produce.
The Obama campaign has solicited my wife and I at least five times a day. Each. I have given small amounts several times and used Obama's phone tool; my wife has given more. Democratic Senatorial and Congressional candidates from Washington and Montana to New Mexico and Massachusetts have solicited me, plus at least five progressive Democratic organizations, and the DCCC, DGA and DSCC. That's only the political groups!
Occasionally, I've given really small amounts ($3.00) to Democratic groups or candidates, but it finally occurred to me: the whole campaign is an enormous business, a sector subset of Entertainment. I've encouraged them--I and all the other millions giving to both parties. But we don't get the kind of returns from the mega-bucks that billionaires "donate."
Neverthelss, I'm investing in the continued viability of Social Security, Medicare, and a universal right to health insurance: my investment will pay me back in kind if Obama wins. So will the aid programs for people in need, like fully funding Food Stamps and expanding grants to education. None of this makes me money; some save money for everyone. All maintain social stability.
Why does someone like Sheldon Adelson pledge to spend "whatever it takes," more than $100 million, to defeat Obama? What does he get out of it, if Romney wins? Adelson is under investigation and may be charged a felony: bribing Chinese officials with $600,000 to $1million, to set up gambling casinos in Macao, China's "autonomous" ex-Portuguese colony. He's likely violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to build the largest gambling complex in the world. He could go to jail, or, he could have a new President, Romney, name an Attorney General who would find a way to dismiss the charges.
How much is that worth to a billionaire worth $25 billion, a good part of it from Macao?
If Obama wins, this should be a whole new source of revenue. An invigorated DOJ could search for other sources of income: Wall Street bankers, private fund speculators like Bain Capital: people gambling with other people's money for their own gain.
Maybe that's the kind of money politics we really need! Take Crime Out of the Suites--To Pay Our Debts. Expropriate ill-gotten wealth and fund services for people they squeezed it from.
That would make it politically possible to reverse the apparently inexorable rise of our contemporary Roman Senators: the super-rich who increasingly monopolize the wealth we all produce.
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