Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Remember when the USA was #1, in education, innovation, and infrastructure, and why?

By

Rate charts for the Income Tax going back to the age of greatness for this country

When the USA was #1 in infrastructure, #1 in college graduates, #1 in technical innovation, and #1 in gross national product the maximum income tax rate was 90% and the top 5% paid at least 70%.

That was how the USA could afford to build the interstates, build the land grant college system, and fight wars without mortgaging their children.

There used to be a culture of honor where those who had more contributed more.  

Now we have a culture of greed, and “What is mine is mine” and who gives a !!#$$%!! about the country, the roads, the public higher education system, etc.  Now most of the wealthy & corporations say

Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what kind of tax break your country will give to you.

Thank you Ronald Reagan for gutting the honor and future of the USA with voo-doo economics based on greed and dismantling long term planning and honest revenue structures and regulation.

Good revenue planning means that infrastructure is paid for from current revenue, not borrowed money on the backs of children yet unborn.  In good years, we built and saved as a country; in lean years, we still funded our public education systems and were #1 in college graduates.

The wealthy paid their fair share, and viewed doing so as a matter of honor, not as somehow being robbed.

The culture of corporate greed, and income disparity is destroying the American Dream, and degrading this country into third world status.  Our birthrate in working families is falling because our tax policies and corporate greed have made children a luxury

We are not #1 in college graduates any more – but #12 and falling.  Our railroads are crumbling ruins, raising the costs to our businesses and isolating our producers of raw materials.  Our health care is the most expensive – but our life span is 24th at the last ranking, because profits come before health in our health care industry. We spend more of our GDP on health care than any major nation, to achieve this mediocre result as a result. And please, “family values”?  The USA is the least family friendly industrialized country in the world. We once did better than this for one another – and we still can do better than this for one another.

Sorry,  but greed is what is destroying the United States of America, not taxes.  Today’s national Democrats talk like the the Republicans of my youth in the 1950s and 1960s – today’s Republicans talk like the John Birch Society once did and would never nominate an Eisenhower or a Lincoln, but stands ready to try and repeal the 14th Amendment.

Rather than honest revenue planning, we are so far in hock to China and other creditor countries that we have placed national security and our children’s futures at risk.  Why?  Just look at the giveaways in the Tax Expenditure Budget, nationally  The tax expenditure budget is a national problem as well as a state bleedout.

Wake up and reclaim the American Dream, which was a belief in honor, shared responsibility, and democracy built on a new birth of freedom though that shared responsibility.  That very freedom was based on the Bill of Rights, and the later Amendments such as the 14th Amendment.

To forget words such as “honor”, “responsibility”,”fortitude, and “shared responsibility” is to put our children’s futures at risk.

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  1. (Because you guys need this more than we do)

    <

    p>… and unsupported assertions.  I mean, this is so all over the place that its hard to know where to start.  But, anyway,
    Your tax rates over time link is nice, and useful.  Did you notice how steep the rates were – not for the rich, but for everyone else?  Did you realize that in 1978 the tax rate for a married couple making over $47K was a stunning 50%?  And for an individual making $23K it was also 50%?  And it goes up from there, of course.  If you think taxing the middle class that heavily was the wealthy “paying their fare share”, then think again.  

    <

    p>Even putting aside the conventional wisdom that rich did not actually pay the high tax rates but rather sheltered their money, you haven’t even tried to show that the rich paid less taxes after Reagan’s tax cuts.  
    http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/in…
    http://www.freedomandprosperit…

    <

    p>The latter link has a nice table at the top of page 6, summarizing portions of the former, showing a dramatic 5X increase in the amount of taxes paid by people earning over 200k (which population itself greatly increased after the tax cuts.)

    <

    p>But, worse than that problem, you’ve failed to show any connection whatsoever between “how much the wealthy pay” and the various maladies that you’ve claimed are now among us.  One thing you might try would be to show that spending has dropped (which it hasn’t) therefore (all the problems because we aren’t spending enough).  But unfortunately for all of us, world wars aside, the federal government only ever seems to spend more and more.

    <

    p>So, I think that pretty thoroughly refutes the first half of your post.  I don’t really have the inclination to follow your stream of consciousness into healthcare, or the impact of “higher” taxes on birthrates (!!!???) but suffice it to say, I think you need to be a little more thorough in your research.  As it is your post is like an assumptions based coloring book.  Not good.

    • My post is not about proving assertions; I do that when I write a full brief on appeal.  I would not expect a full brief to be postable – or read on a blog.  The major focus of my post is not “proof” but highlighting and exploring a change in attitude from “interest in the common good” tod “as long as I get mine, who cares about anyone else” as an attitude towards government.

      <

      p>In failing to provide your crosspost link, you avoid having your own post reviewed.  I am not going to hunt for your post or assume as to where it is posted.

      <

      p>However – your base fallacy is that spending more in 2010 is “spending more” takeing into account inflation AND that those who earned $47k in 1950 are the equivalent to those who earn $47k today – nope, to have the spending power of $47k in 1950 you would need to earn more than $300k today.

      <

      p>A few examples;  A house that cost $4500 in 1950 would cost $3000k today; a car that cost $1500 in 1950 would cost over $30k today,  

      • I remember the gorgeous house my parents bought for $25,000 when I was 8 years old.  The same house sold for $300k when my own son was 8 years old and is worth more now.

          • I haven’t checked the algorithms for any of these calculators, so cannot confirm their accuracy – however, as to the assertions made by Demolisher, any one of these sites debunks him – for example, unless the spending on, say, public health services has grown 9 fold since 1950, it has not grown at all according to this value of the dollar over time calculation site

            <

            p>Similarly, unless spending on the interstate system has grown 900%, it has decreased, etc.

            <

            p>Seems I was too conservative, according to this inflation calculator, the value of $47k in 1950 would be $414,000k today.  That rather explains those income tax rates, back in the day.

            <

            p>Yet another calculator based on coinage

            • you’ve got the wrong year.

              <

              p>you didn’t look at the chart.

              <

              p>Anyway, how could anyone possibly believe that the government spends less now than it used to, except during WWII?

          • Beacuse the price of wood and paper has collapsed.  The line loses $1 million per year transporting these items.

            <

            p>And why has the price collpsed?  Because of enviornmental regulations, tax policies and NAFTA.  Not saying the regulations are bad, but they have taken a lot of profit out of wood.  Even the furniture factories around Moosehead are closing because they cannot compete with Chinese imports.  And of course, NAFTA opened the doors to cheaper wood/paper from Canada where a favorable exchange rate and greater supply of raw goods than Maine make tranporting south more profitable.

            <

            p>That spur wasn’t anything but an industrial link for fewer than a half-dozen companies; I don’t think it even had passenger service.  But the passenger service is being expanded from Portland to Brunswick this year, and will continue to Rockland.

            • I strongly suspect that the price of lumber is very closely linked to construction, and has collapsed because construction of new housing has likewise collapsed.

              <

              p>That is, unless there is some new environmental regulation that changed things over the last three years.

      • the cross post is under your own cross post at RMG, its identical so no need to review it.

        <

        p>All you’ve really done is crow out a leftist worldview, unsupported by anything really.

      • First off, failing to link a cross post is a “fallacy”?  And even if you didn’t think to look under your own RMG crosspost, who cares?  A cross post is the same post in 2 places.  

        <

        p>You can take up the quality of your post with stomv, if you like, he just set a pretty high bar here at BMG hehe.

        <

        p>Anyway, I refer to 1978 not 1950.  You can also look at 1979 and 1980, point being, prior to the Reagan tax cuts.

        <

        p>Finally, I refer to government spending rising, not personal spending.  If you look right at the chart that I provided for you, you can see that it is in terms of % of GDP, not constant dollars.

        <

        p>I’m glad you aren’t my attorney!

    • Back in the day (1933-1981), Republicans and Democrats had different world views, but they were both responsible world views.

      <

      p>Regan ushered in a new brand of Republicanism, which features:

      <

      p>- giving money to the wealthy in the bizarre belief that it would trickle down to working Americans (of course, it did not)

      <

      p>- “Deficits don’t matter”.  Republicans have been the big guns in increasing spending – AND they refuse to raise taxes to offset their staggering profligacy. (I guess basic math is for those liberal elites.)

      <

      p>Add to that:

      <

      p>- the high correlation between right wing policies and all manner of societal ills

      <

      p>- the embrace of triangulation as the ultimate strategy of the Democratic party (“yeah we suck, but we suck 1% less then the Republicans, so who ya gonna’ vote for chump!!!”)  This has led the US to a hard and fast movement of the “political center” to the far, far right as the Republicans move to the right to differentiate themselves from Democrats, and the Democrats chase them more.

      <

      p>An now the country is mightily fucked.  

      <

      p>To return America to greatness, we need to re-embrace doctrines and policies that worked for many years, and still work in all industrialized nations where they dominate.  Doctrines and policies so incredibly far to left of what we have today that Ike might even approve.

      • Liberty is.

        <

        p>But, to a true marxist of course you would think that tax cuts – taking less of someone’s income (though still a higher percentage than anyone else’s) is equal to “giving them” money.  You would have to believe that it isn’t their money to begin with in order to think that it is being given to them.  

        <

        p>Republicans have been the big guns in increasing spending?  What?  Obama, Reid and Pelosi are literally going hockey stick on us with respect to spending, deficit and debt.  

        <

        p>http://www.usgovernmentspendin…

        <

        p>Its gotten so bad that this year, the democrats didn’t even try to pass a budget.  

        <

        p>No budget?  Trillions in deficit spending?

        <

        p>Basic math indeed.  

        • Where do you get this stuff?  Eisenhower was a Marxist?

          <

          p>Look: the 30 year experiment with Reaganism has been an abject failure.  You seem to be suggesting that the solution is to embrace even more Reaganism.  Many of us disagree – we just want to return to what worked incredibly well for everyone for many years.

          <

          p>I don’t get what your fetish is for failed ideologies and policies.  We tried it, it fucked us up, we want it to stop.  I used to be a Republican too – but there came a point where I had to admit that the rightist policies just don’t work.

          <

          p>As to busting the budget – Republicans make Dems look positively parsimonious:

          <

          p>http://terraverde.files.wordpr…

          <

          p>Do you realize that Clinton was something like seven years from ending the national debt when your man took over and started crazy wars because he was too embarassed to ask for a prescription for Viagra?

          <

          p>Obama’s no gem, but he can’t be faulted for spending after being handed the flaming bag of poop from Bush.  In fact, he can only be faulted for spending like Hoover rather than spending like FDR – and now we have Hoover’s results, not FDR’s.

          • in discussing things with you Manny, you are just way way out there imo.

            <

            p>But, I can’t help but say:

            <

            p>1.  marxist philosophy is derived from the writings of marx, not from whatever you happen to think “worked well”.  If in some cases marxist ideas “worked out well” here, that would not make them any less marxist.  The main marxist linkage I’d point to is progressive income tax and entitlements  (wealth redistribution).

            <

            p>2.  how exactly has the last 30 years been an abject failure?  To me, North Korea is an abject failure.  Obama is a bad failure but not really yet an abject failure.  Entitlements programs and state pensions are definitely destined to be abject failures, although they haven’t finished failing yet.
            2b.  If your entire thesis is that lower income taxes destroyed the USA, you are going to need to back that up with something.  

            <

            p>3.  failed ideology = socialism

            <

            p>4.  your budget chart (which conveniently skips 2010 and projections beyond) hardly shows what you say it shows.  
            4b. Plus, bear in mind that Reagan wanted to cut spending but the DEMOCRAT CONTROLLED CONGRESS would not allow it.  Nothing he could do.  Dems have owned congress for far more time than R’s have, and the vast majority of spending initiatives aside from military come from them.  
            4c. Even part D, which I wish we did not have, would have been infinitely more costly if the D’s did it (which they would have) unless of course they used price controls, which I would say is far too unAmerican (not to mention ruinous to the pharma industry) to even consider doing.

            <

            p>5.  Consider that the war in Afghanistan was a response to 9/11.  You can make your own judgement about the war in Iraq, but I do not see any evidence that it was related to viagra.

            <

            p>6.  You don’t actually believe that Obama care is going to cut health care costs, do you?  Or end up being deficit neutral?  You think we’re really going to cut Medicare payments in half?

            <

            p>And so after all that anti spending anti debt hot air, you close by saying that Obama hasn’t spent enough.

            <

            p>Well done, Manny, well done.

            <

            p>

            • I agree that we’ll not agree anytime soon, if you’re thinking that Ike was a Marxist, and if you’re thinking that the US has become a better place over the past 30 years.

              • and make up something that I didn’t say about Ike.

                <

                p>Well, at least you can see why I see no point in discussing things with you.

          • “This bill would bust the budget by nearly a billion dollars,” contended the President in a toughly worded message to Congress, alget buster,” as Reagan had charged; indeed, the $ 14.2 billion measure actually costs $ 2 billion less than the original Reagan proposal. Contened House Democratic Floor Leader Jim Wright of Texas: “The claim that the bill is over budget is as phony as a three-dollar bill.”

            Equally damaging to the President’s cause were loud howls from those whose programs were at stake, especially the elderly. Lobbyists from senior-citizen groups claimed that nearly 55,000 older Americans who are now being paid to perform community-service jobs, such as driving buses and delivering Meals-on-Wheels, would be thrown out of work. Many Republicans were irked that the White House had not forewarned them in August that Reagan might veto the bill; they approved the legislation then, and now resented being asked to switch their votes on a measure with popular appeal.

            …
            Then, just before the vote, Speaker Tip O’ Neill attacked Reagan’s original rejection of the bill as “a dastardly political move by a man with a stone heart.” Added O’Neill, with familiar hyperbole: “By vetoing this measure, the President wants us to make a choice between weapons and handicapped children.” The Speaker had sensed the mood of the House: 81 Republicans abandoned Reagan to join 220 Democrats in overriding the veto; only 13 Democrats joined 104 Republicans to sustain it.

            <

            p>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS…

            <

            p>Oh, those were the days!

            <

            p>But at least his defense spending destroyed the U.S.S.R., a good dividend, that.

            • myth that needs correction.

              <

              p>You posted —

              But at least his defense spending destroyed the U.S.S.R., a good dividend, that.

              <

              p>Great myth, but not true.

              <

              p>Check the price of oil during that period of time.
              It might seem that OPEC did it for us.

              <

              p>Hindsight being 20/20, nuclear, biological and chemical arsenals are unaccounted for, the turmoil created questionable and much else.

              <

              p>It took 12 years to recover from the piss poor economic policies of Milton Friedman and the Trickle Down guys then. I won’t live long enough to see this cleaned up.  

              • OK so you’re going to say that Reagan did not destroy the USSR, and as your refutation: OPEC “might have”, without any backup?

                <

                p>Goodness, at least you could say that the USSR collapsed on its own as the inevitable result of central planning.  But boy, it sure took long enough.

                <

                p>Convenient for Reagan fans that it happened right after they lost the arms race and faced a serious advocate for human freedom who engaged deeply with them.

                <

                p>Then again, I guess your hints about unaccounted for weapons might outweigh the newfound freedom of millions of people.

                <

                p>Or maybe you’re just mad that communism failed.

            • Would you care to elaborate on how little Reagan’s defense spending increases were, in contrast to the human services spending that was forced on him?

    • You wrote:

      Your tax rates over time link is nice, and useful.  Did you notice how steep the rates were – not for the rich, but for everyone else?  Did you realize that in 1978 the tax rate for a married couple making over $47K was a stunning 50%?  And for an individual making $23K it was also 50%?  And it goes up from there, of course.  If you think taxing the middle class that heavily was the wealthy “paying their fare share”, then think again.

      <

      p>I used an inflation calculator, and converted 47,000 1978 dollars to today. I got $157,122.01 — an aggregate inflation of 234.3%. Similarly, a single taxpayer who earned 23,000 1978 dollars would today receive $76,889.49.

      <

      p>I think that a 50% marginal rate on a married couple earning more than $150,000 is perfectly reasonable. I think that 50% marginal rate on a single taxpayer earning over $75,000 is perfectly reasonable.

      <

      p>Here is a chart showing household income distribution by quintile, citing 2004 Census Data.

      <

      p>In that chart, the lower limit of the “Top 20%” of households is $157,176.

      <

      p>You seem to live in a world where households in the top 20% by income are not “wealthy” — the rest of us live in a world where the top 20% is the definition of “wealthy”.

      <

      p>I think the overall package of government services that we collectively bought in 1978 is significantly — no, compellingly — superior to what we receive today.

      <

      p>I think that a modern first-world society requires a minimum threshold of effective government services. Those services cost money. I think the evidence is all around us that we well below that threshold.

      <

      p>In short — thirty years of right-wing voodoo economics and greed-is-good religious dogma have devastated our government and gravely harmed our economy, society, and culture in the process.

      • Inflation adjust it, then see how much higher the rates were in 1978.  Then ask yourself:  would you accept such an increase right now?  I hope so.

        <

        p>As for superior services in 1978, I don’t really have a strong opinion there but it seems like at a minimum you now have a considerable amount of free prescription medicine that you did not previously, as well as a forthcoming broader amount of free healthcare that most of you dems seem to like.  Would you agree?  What in terms of government services has gotten worse?  

        <

        p>Your opinion about a first-world society, is, of course, your opinion.

        <

        p>To prove your final point, however, you should try to show how we are spending less than we used to on things (“due to right wing economics…”)  because in all of the charts i have seen, both income taxation and spending as a percentage of GDP go more or less only in one direction over time.  Guess which direction.

        <

        p>I have linked some good material in this thread, maybe you could use it to find support for your feeling about the specifics of all the harm you allege.

        <

        p>

      • and encourage the underground economy.   “think that a 50% marginal rate on a married couple earning more than $150,000 is perfectly reasonable. I think that 50% marginal rate on a single taxpayer earning over $75,000 is perfectly reasonable.” Have you really thought this through?  We’ll never get out of this recession by attempting to tax our way out. As you will see in November, Americans do not want a socialist country.

        • You claim that “my” 50% tax rate “will only kill initiative and encourage the underground economy.”

          <

          p>I suggest that the top quintile (top 20% by household income) is hardly the demographic that participates in the “underground economy” in any significant way, at least as I understand the phrase “underground economy.” The underground economy is dominated folks who earn significantly less than that, for whom a 50% marginal tax rate is an academic fantasy.

          <

          p>If the “initiative” of the upper 20%, by household income, will be “killed” by a 50% marginal rate, then you in essence agree with AmberPaw’s assessment as stated in her thread-starter:

          <

          p>

          There used to be a culture of honor where those who had more contributed more.  

          Now we have a culture of greed, and “What is mine is mine” and who gives a !!#$$%!! about the country, the roads, the public higher education system, etc.

          <

          p>I am not suggesting that we should “tax our way out” of this recession. I am, instead, suggesting that the right-wing culture of selfishness and greed is contributing to the overall dysfunction of our society.

          <

          p>In my view, the utter collapse of our economy was brought about in large part by the evisceration of necessary government regulation — particularly of the financial sector. The economic and social policies of the right wing have been tried — and they failed miserably.

          <

          p>Now, we have to repair the damage. Part of repairing that damage is rebuilding our government. That takes taxes, and the top 20% is far more able to afford those taxes then the rest of this devastated and suffering economy.

          • how we got in this predicament–“In my view, the utter collapse of our economy was brought about in large part by the evisceration of necessary government regulation – particularly of the financial sector. The economic and social policies of the right wing have been tried – and they failed miserably.” But let’s not make a bad situation worse by overtaxing those who contribute most to capital formation and jobs.  And yes, I know several small business men who right now are in the process of using the underground economy to their advantage to lower their tax liabilities.  If you have ever run a small business you will know how many opportunities there are to do this and stay under the radar.

            • the large ones, anyway. The small ones aren’t trying to borrow because they don’t see enough buyers for their products/services.

              <

              p>Taxes become a consideration once you start showing a profit, but first you have to think you’ll profit.

    • I did calculate using inflation calculators that the marginal rate kicked in once that family was earning $152,861.31 in 2009 dollars.  Frankly, I don’t have a problem with a marginal tax rate that high on a family’s one hundred and fifty three thousandth dollar.

        • It might well include some of my money.  Taxes are the price of civilization, after all (OWH).

          • people to work and create. We’re not talking the truly rich or old money here; rates for those people could be 50% or more. The price of civilization is not confiscatory taxation of those who actually work and produce;  have you missed what is going on in Greece, Portuagal, Ireland and Spain lately??

            • set the top tax rate at 91%, civilization ended?

              <

              p>Damn! I missed that in history class.  I was taught that America prospered mightily during the 50s.

              • one guy in the neighborhood who owned a car (we kids all came running out to see and touch it in 1953); there was one neighbor who had a telephone and everyone used it to take and make calls; a well-to-do neighbor had a TV and invited all of us in to watch Milton Berle’s Texaco show. We shopped at the local First National and bought vegetables and fruits in cans, pratically nothing fresh. Let’s not glorify the past; you’ll end up sounding like a conservative who wants to go back to the good ol’ days.

                • Therefore, he wasn’t wealthy.

                  <

                  p>The point, of course, is that working Americans made tremendous progress during the 1950s, and everyone else made good progress too.  This progress that continued more-or-less unabated until Reaganism began its relentless destruction in 1981.

                • four years of Jimmy Carter.  And, by the way, King Solomon didn’t drive a SUV, either;  nor did he have a blackberry, etc.  By our American standards he, indeed, was not wealthy. As Russians I lived with in 1980’s used to say, “God Bless President Reagan, the first American President to tell the truth about our Evil Empire!” (Said as a toast with vodka in the room without a telephone)

                • You’ll be giving it a big thumbs up: “wealthy 12-year-olds!”, you’ll tell us.

                  <

                  p>Carter was a disaster?  Really?  On what basis?

                  <

                  p>Reagan was the first president to speak poorly of the Soviet Union? Really?  Those other presidents built nuclear stockpiles for fun?

                  <

                  p>Holy crap.  One of us is living in an alternative universe.

                • about the Evil Empire.  For that reason he was loved by most Russians in the 80’s, especially those who had relatives in camps like Kolyma.  I know that it really hurts you liberals to admit the influence Reagan had in the downfall of the old Sovok; thank God he was not like Jimmy Carter.  Pandering never earns respect.

                • On a worldwide basis, the US is something like 12th of 59.  That’s pretty damned good, considering the poverty that exists in some areas.

                  <

                  p>If Mass was a country, we’d be 3rd or 4th in the world, a spectacular showing.

                  <

                  p>Our education system could improve, but it’s quite good.

                • I know he created a new cabinet department, but we have yet to see any real national standards, curricula, etc.

                • There’s a huge pile of bullshit stinking the place up. Reagan was not the first to “tell the truth” about the USSR. He may have been the first to use comic-book rhetoric to describe it, but presidents since Eisenhower all described it accurately.

                  <

                  p>Carter did not pander; he spoke the truth as he saw it. If we had followed his advice on energy independence, for instance, we wouldn’t be having our kids killed in the Middle East today.

                • The country imploded from staggering debt that was brought on by an unsustainable economy and the war in Afghanistan. You really need to pick up a Russian history book, preferably one not written by a Neo-Con like Richard Pipes.

                • I lived there in the Sovok and saw that it self-destructed because of the many contradictions to human nature that are built into any socialist system. To make such a statement that Reagan had no hand in the self-destruction of the system is to be a bit ideologically blind. His insistence on placing intermediate missiles in Europe along with developing StarWarsDefense system hastened that collapse. (both of these initiatives were opposed by the liberal establishment, of course).  The only bullshit stinking up the place is that of liberal apologists who still can’t own up to their complicity in the torture and murder of millions of political dissidents in the gulags of Siberia.  And for that, Gorbochyov does deserve credit.  He stopped that practice completely in late 1988, so that by 1989 people were able to express their ideas freely.  For that he deserves all the credit in the world.  But remember that he was trying to save the system from itself, not trying to replace it.  

                • I only remember the meme perpetrated by McCarthyites and their ilk that liberals tolerated the crimes of the Soviet Union. Hence your exaggeration above that liberals have blood on their hands. Certainly there were members of the American Communist party that blindly defended the Soviet Union, but quite a few of their ‘comrades’ broke with them when the crimes of Stalin and subsequent leaders became known. I wasn’t born, but Kennedy and Johnson seemed to have tried to contain the ‘red menace’ (see: Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam). So much for your liberal bashing.

                  <

                  p>You may want to read the actual history rather than parrot anecdotal evidence or moldy right-wing talking points from the ’80s.

                • I was there.  You are talking to a first source.  I don’t have to read books on the left or the right to know what my own experiences were.

                • You were there – OK.

                  <

                  p>Were you there – in the USSR – during the Carter Administration? If so, maybe you don’t know as much about Carter as you think you do. Same question and comment for the Reagan Administration.

                  <

                  p>On the other hand, if you were here when those guys were president, I don’t think you know any more about what caused the Soviet collapse than anybody else who wasn’t there at that time.

                • Edgar doesn’t seem to realize this. One person’s experience of the Bush administration may have been rosy, while another’s may have been horrific. Historians look at the social, economic, and political occurrences together, and not one person’s story in isolation.

                  <

                  p>Edgar, as an Armenian, was a minority in the Soviet Union, and minorities were often persecuted, repatriated, or sent to gulags. I would be interested to find out when he came to the US also.  

                • I took the name to honor the Armenian family in the Caucusus with whom I lived in 1989 because of the great love and generosity which they showed to me.  I learned of their history and struggles and admired what they were able to accomplish in spite of the communists. You can call me Edgar, as my friends do.
                  Now, as far as anecdotal evidence is concerned:  the only ones who have (or had) a rosy view of communism were the party hacks (apparatchiks) who were no different from the hacks we have on Beacon Hill, interested in feathering the nests of their family and friends.  

                • The SU was a corrupt, murderous regime. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s improved all that much. Now instead of wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the apparatchiks, it’s concentrated in the hands of the billionaires and former KGB operatives. Yuck.

                  <

                  p>Edgar, I assumed you were Armenian by your moniker. 🙂

                • Now I feel guilty that I gave you a hard time on the preceeding post by questioning your use of anecdotal evidence on the Amorello post.  Best wishes, Edgar.

                • You can’t erase my existence; the fact is that I have lived in both the old Sovok and contemporary Russia for long periods of time. I have been involved with contemporary Russian events and people for almost forty years. And as one who suffered through the 18-20% rate of inflation during the Carter fiasco please don’t tell me that I don’t know what I experienced. The simple fact of the matter is that you guys will never accept the successes of the Reagan administration vis-a-vis the old SSR. I don’t know why I am even trying to discuss this topic with avowed ideologues of the left.

                • Because I present facts about the collapse of the Soviet Union, I’m an idealogue? Too funny. No one here is defending the Soviet Union, or the way you were treated.
                  No one is dismissing your experience or your existence. If you read my post, you will see that I’m well aware of the way ethnic minorities were treated in the old SU. I wrote my senior project on the Ukranian famine as genocide.  

                  <

                  p>I suffered through working 3 jobs to pay back student loans with double digit interest in the Reagan era. This has no bearing on history; it is my experience and it is the experience of many students in my generation. It isn’t the experience of the wealthy during that time.

                  <

                  p>No one is dismissing your PERSONAL experience during those times. Your interpretation of the wider HISTORY of the SU during the 80s is wrong according to the majority of historians, many of whom are Russian. Your interpretation is colored by ideology, so it’s pretty funny that you label me an idealogue when what I’ve presented are facts. As your hero Reagan said, ‘Facts are stupid things’. You and Fox News obviously adhere to that philosophy.

                • On another stream re poor Amorello you were quick to refer to “anecdotal” evidence in an attempt to prove racial discrimination by the police.  Because I’m white my anecdotal experience doesn’t count?? “wait a minute, statistics and anecdotal evidence doesn’t support this?”(Haverill Cops Beat the Piss Out of Matt Amorello) And there are plenty of historians, including Russian, who would agree with my take on the history of the SSR.

                • I provided lots of links to statistics and anecdotal evidence on that Amarello thread. And PP chose to whine about facts, but let some very tasteless posts by her fellow travelers go. I also defended Amarello-the cops should be investigated, and the guy needs help with his addiction/depression. Were you guys this forgiving with Gallucio?

                • I don’t see anyone advocating the imitation of the Soviet Union.

                  <

                  p>All postwar Presidents did their share of containing Communism, but Mikhail Gorbachev deserves the lion’s share of the credit for reforming his country, which given what I have read about Gorbachev was just as likely to happen had Mondale won in 1984 or Dukakis in 1988.

                  <

                  p>Carter is probably one of history’s most underrated Presidents.

                • I must call attention to a line that is so patently false as this.

                  <

                  p>Your point is, of course, that working Americans made tremendous progress during the decade when American manufacturing had the filed to itself.  So what?  It would have been a shock if they didn’t.

                  <

                  p>By the end of the 60s, they didn’t, which is why the phrase “Rust Belt” originated then, not in the 80s.  It didn’t help that the products of American manufacturing acquired a reputation for poor quality then that has not yet been effectively shaken.  Along with the large increases in energy costs, which began after 1967 and hit in earnest in 1971, and which acted like a zero-benefit tax, this put the economy into prolonged recession.  The oil shocks in 1973 piled on with rather severe inflation that lasted throughout the decade.

                  <

                  p>So, if you were lucky enough to have a job, everything you had saved (and the value of your paycheck) was rapidly eroding.

                  <

                  p>And this was a golden age for the American worker?  That is preposterous nonsense, the equivalent of “Ronald Reagan was personally and solely responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

      • Obviously there are a whole bunch of people making between $150K and $250K who Obama even considers not needing to pay more taxes.

        • and there are huge houses on the water. When I see them I have to say I’m  jealous. Maybe we should “demand” that these people give up their ocean front homes for 50% of the summer and let others live there rent free. When they complain, we can say “hey, you get to stay there the other 50% of the summer so stop your complaining”. And then we can reply to their complaint of losing 50% of the summer with the overused… “I’d love to have that kind of problem”.

          <

          p>Then there’s the nice cars, fancy homes, jewelry… which we all collectively should get to share with these fat cats…

          • you want the majority of their money, why not take their vacation homes, their jewelry, their fancy cars…

            • that the distribution of wealth is way out of line.

              <

              p>It makes no sense that a CEO can “earn” more in one single day than some individuals who report to that CEO earn in an entire year. Much of the “earning” during the last decade was not the result of producing innovative products, but of executing financial schemes that bilked the victims out of their homes and savings.

              <

              p>I find it offensive to read about a company that loses money for its stockholders, lays off employees, and continues to give its top management huge compensation packages.

              <

              p>The extremes of wealth and poverty are not part of a healthy society. I am not suggesting that we should have a society in which everyone earns exactly the same amount, regardless of the contribution made. What we have now is a society in which a small number of very powerful people take unfair advantage of the hard work of those under them and grab the lion’s share for themselves.

              <

              p>The top 1% have more wealth than the bottom 50% combined. These people would still be fabulously wealthy even with half of their wealth. So yes, I would like to see some of that wealth re-distributed. That top 1% benefits disproportionately from the services that government provides, e.g. physical infrastructure, a stable banking system, stable courts, and an educated workforce to name just a few. It is only fair that they contribute more.

              <

              p>Before the current wealth distribution became so unequal, the top 1% were still doing just fine.

              • Before the current wealth distribution became so unequal, the top 1% were still doing just fine.

                <

                p>How far back in history do we have to go before you are happy? Sounds like most of this country’s forefathers had much more money than the average schlep. So, how far back?

                • See http://www.rollingstone.com/po…

                  <

                  p>

                  In 1969, General Motors was the country’s largest corporation aside from AT&T, which enjoyed a government-guaranteed monopoly on phone service. GM paid its chief executive, James M. Roche, a salary of $795,000 — the equivalent of $4.2 million today, adjusting for inflation. At the time, that was considered very high. But nobody denied that ordinary GM workers were paid pretty well. The average paycheck for production workers in the auto industry was almost $8,000 — more than $45,000 today. GM workers, who also received excellent health and retirement benefits, were considered solidly in the middle class.

                  <

                  p>

                  Today, Wal-Mart is America’s largest corporation, with 1.3 million employees. H. Lee Scott, its chairman, is paid almost $23 million — more than five times Roche’s inflation-adjusted salary. Yet Scott’s compensation excites relatively little comment, since it’s not exceptional for the CEO of a large corporation these days. The wages paid to Wal-Mart’s workers, on the other hand, do attract attention, because they are low even by current standards. On average, Wal-Mart’s non-supervisory employees are paid $18,000 a year, far less than half what GM workers were paid thirty-five years ago, adjusted for inflation. And Wal-Mart is notorious both for how few of its workers receive health benefits and for the stinginess of those scarce benefits.

                • better in terms of the distribution of compensation between rank-and-file workers and the CEOs.

                  <

                  p>I fully acknowledge and appreciate that employment barriers to women and minority groups have been significantly lowered. But this improvement did not require that CEO compensation go through the roof.

          • In the dot-bomb period, I had what felt like a very nice income. I was able to live comfortably and add to my savings in spite of higher taxes. I would be happy to see the same employment opportunities and tax rate again.  

      • Because I’m not a marxist, I want people to eat their babies.  Great.

        <

        p>”From those according to their ability, to those according to their need”, right?

        <

        p>Oh wait – it was under communism that this actually happened:

        <

        p>http://www.distributedrepublic…

        <

        p>

        To collectivize the land in a “great assault on the peasantry,” Stalin used starvation as a weapon, particularly against the Ukrainians. This policy resulted in the death of roughly 6 million people, including 4 million in Ukraine. Here in kharkiw in 1933, the peasants became indifferent to the daily phenomenon of death. Cannibalism was so widespread that the government printed posters that said: “Eating your children is an act of barbarism.“

        <

        p>Nice philosophy, amber!

        <

        p>

        • Silly name calling, like calling me a Marxist, only diminishes and demolishes YOUR credibility even further, though I admit THAT is hard to do at least in my opinion.

          <

          p>Marxism, a discredited philosophy from Germany in the 1860s, has nothing to do with being an FDR democrat, or a proponent of fiscal responsibility, long range planning, strong infrastructure – and a demolisher of Voo Doo economics.

          <

          p>The concept of a Commonwealth, the philosophy of joint responsibility for the future, and a belief that how well a society cares for its own is more important than how wealthy a hereditary elite becomes was once known as democratic ideals.

          <

          p>The Gordon Gecko character who trumpeted “Greed is Good” could well speak for the far right Voo Doo economist who believes that poverty is the deserved result of being inferior.

          <

          p>Kind of like the Puritan idea of the “deserving poor” put into an 18th Century send up so very well by Jonathan Swift.

          • Where did that come from?  I can’t imagine.

            <

            p>I’m happy that you think marxist is a bad word, but there are plenty of people here on BMG who sympathize – even one poster who quotes marx in his sig.  But most lefties commune with marx on the core tenet which I quoted for you above.

            <

            p>”From those according to their ability, to those according to their need.”

            <

            p>I’m fairly sure you agree, too.  How else would you justify taking 90% of someone’s income?  Again, I can’t imagine.

            <

            p>Unfortunately for you, you are only able to understand my disagreement as some kind of support for riches, and heredity or some nonsense.  In truth, I support liberty above almost everything else.  People like you struggle immensely with liberty because in a free society inevitably people do not end up equal.  So you are happy to take away peoples’ liberties in the name of the communal good.

            <

            p>As I’ve said elsewhere, people did not come to America for the free handouts.  They came for the freedom.

            • Build a Straw Woman – blow her over.  That is not productive discussion at all.

              <

              p>Collective responsibility for infrastructure (to repeat) is not Marxism.

              <

              p>Saying no one has any responsibility to pay for infrastructure and if someone has 10 billion dollars they should have equal responsibility to another citizen with $10,000 dollars, and by the way, no one has any responsibility to feed anyone else’s hungry baby, or to pay for roads to drive on – THAT in my view is social engineering – anyone with less money should just sit by the side of the road, die, and be subsumed into the turf as happened during the great famine while the wealthy exported Irish grain, and the great dying continued.  

              <

              p>THAT whole scenario is what a modest proposal was written about.

              <

              p>My concern stems, if you will, from the Book of Genesis, and Cain’s question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” – not from Marxist ideology.

              <

              p>My answer to Cain’s question would be “Yes” – your answer would appear to be “no”.  No one else is your responsibility, Demolisher.  If they are not as strong and successful as you – just let them die off, please.  That is what you appear to me to be saying.

              <

              p>People came to America, my people, to be safe and to give their children a better life, with liberty.

              <

              p>Without freedom from starvation, freedom of speech will go away.

              <

              p>FDR, who was no “Marxist”, said it well in his Four Freedoms Speech

              <

              p>To quote Roosevelt

              The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
              The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.
              The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.
              The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor– anywhere in the world.
              That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.

              • You ask for the end of straw people and then proceed to paint me as hoping for people to starve as I walk by them!  

                <

                p>Then you somehow imply that you are only talking about infrastructure?  And also that I think – what – rich people shouldn’t have to pay for it?

                <

                p>In any case, I am unable to find freedom from starvation anywhere in our constitution or its amendments.  I guess the founders didn’t think of that one, even though I imagine it might be possible to actually starve in America back then.

                <

                p>FDR obviously conflates freedom with entitlement in his third point, but, that works for him since he is the one who started the whole awful entitlements ponzi scheme.

                <

                p>So. Anyone who objects to progressive income tax supports social engineering.  Good to know.

                • They are assistance that we collectively decide to provide to segments of the population that are in need through no fault of their own. Many of these segments include our family members, e.g. the elderly or disabled.

                  <

                  p>Many of us still believe that such assistance indeed does “promote the general welfare”.

            • “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need” sounds like a pretty good philosophy to me.  Sure as heck beats the trickle-down supply side theories that got us into this mess.  Karl Marx articulated it – so what?  Let’s debate the merits rather than calling names.  I prefer to live in a society where we are all in this together than just looking out for number one.  Also, don’t give me this freedom nonsense.  We can do all the diarist is suggesting and still have our Bill of Rights, equality under the law, free and regular elections.  I’d MUCH rather have the income levels that might qualify me for the 90% rate than what I’ve generally made which qualifies me for a refund.

                • Then again even Marx claimed not to be a Marxist by the end of his life since he saw his ideas being twisted for nefarious ends.  I’m probably more Keynesian, but I wonder sometimes whether my philosophy is closer to pure capitalism than what passes for it these days.  A truly FREE market would leave people FREE to pursue happiness without the game being so rigged in favor of the superrich.  There would be rules to ensure the health and safety of products and services so entrepreneurs can compete without resorting to unethical tactics and dangerous products.  When I think of pure capitalism I think of small businessmen who invest their own sweat and resources and have a real stake in their business and it’s reputation.  I believe the whole shareholder/stock market aspect has corrupted capitalism to an extent that even Adam Smith would not approve.

        • anyone to the left of John Birch?

          <

          p>I can’t think of any political views other than John Birch/KKK/birthers vs the Marxists, can you?

  4. It reminded of what Greg Palast wrote in 1998 before G.W. reinvented “trickle down” and Grover Norquist encouraged drowning government in a bath tub.

    <

    p>The article was included in one of his books and is no longer available on-line, so pardon posting it in its entirety.

    <

    p>

    Tinker Bell Pinochet and the Fairy Tale Miracle of Chile
    The London Observer
    Sunday, November 22, 1998
    SAO PAULO – Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother, Tinker Bell and Senator Augusto Pinochet have much in common.

    All three performed magical good deeds. In the case of Pinochet, he is universally credited with the Miracle of Chile, the wildly successful experiment in free markets, privatisation, de-regulation and union-free economic expansion whose laissez-faire seeds have spread from Santiago to Surrey, from Valparaiso to Virginia.

    But Cinderella’s pumpkin did not really turn into a coach. The Miracle of Chile, too, is just another fairy tale. The claim that General Pinochet begot an economic powerhouse is one of those utterances, like “Labour’s ethical foreign policy,” whose truth rests entirely on its repetition.

    Chile can claim some economic success. But that is the work of Salvador Allende – who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after his death.

    In 1973, the year the General seized the government, Chile’s unemployment rate was 4.3%. In 1983, after ten years of free-market modernisation, unemployment reached 22%. Real wages declined by 40% under military rule.

    In 1970, 20% of Chile’s population lived in poverty. By 1990, the year “President” Pinochet left office, the number of destitute had doubled to 40%. Quite a miracle.

    Pinochet did not destroy Chile’s economy all alone. It took nine years of hard work by the most brilliant minds in world academia, a gaggle of Milton Friedman’s trainees, the Chicago Boys. Under the spell of their theories, the General abolished the minimum wage, outlawed trade union bargaining rights, privatised the pension system, abolished all taxes on wealth and on business profits, slashed public employment, privatised 212 state industries and 66 banks and ran a fiscal surplus.

    Freed of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country took a giant leap forward … into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years of economics Chicago style, Chile’s industry keeled over and died. In 1982 and 1983, GDP dropped 19%. The free-market experiment was kaput, the test tubes shattered. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor. Yet, with remarkable chutzpa, the mad scientists of Chicago declared success. In the US, President Ronald Reagan’s State Department issued a report concluding, “Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management.” Milton Friedman himself coined the phrase, “The Miracle of Chile.” Friedman’s sidekick, economist Art Laffer, preened that Pinochet’s Chile was, “a showcase of what supply-side economics can do.”

    It certainly was. More exactly, Chile was a showcase of de-regulation gone berserk.

    The Chicago Boys persuaded the junta that removing restrictions on the nation’s banks would free them to attract foreign capital to fund industrial expansion.

    Pinochet sold off the state banks – at a 40% discount from book value – and they quickly fell into the hands of two conglomerate empires controlled by speculators Javier Vial and Manuel Cruzat. From their captive banks, Vial and Cruzat siphoned cash to buy up manufacturers – then leveraged these assets with loans from foreign investors panting to get their piece of the state giveaways.

    The bank’s reserves filled with hollow securities from connected enterprises. Pinochet let the good times roll for the speculators. He was persuaded, as Tony Blair said this month in another context, “Governments should not hinder the logic of the market.”

    By 1982, the pyramid finance game was up. The Vial and Cruzat “Grupos” defaulted. Industry shut down, private pensions were worthless, the currency swooned. Riots and strikes by a population too hungry and desperate to fear bullets forced Pinochet to reverse course. He booted his beloved Chicago experimentalists. Reluctantly, the General restored the minimum wage and unions’ collective bargaining rights. Pinochet, who had previously decimated government ranks, authorized a program to create 500,000 jobs. The equivalent in Britain would be a government program for 4 million workers.

    In other words, Chile was pulled from depression by dull old Keynesian remedies, all Franklin Roosevelt, zero Margaret Thatcher. (The junta even instituted what remains today as South America’s only law restricting the flow of foreigncapital.)

    New Deal tactics rescued Chile from the Panic of 1983, but the nation’s long-term recovery and growth since then is the result of – cover the
    children’s ears – a large dose of socialism.

    To save the nation’s pension system, Pinochet nationalized banks and industry on a scale unimagined by Communist Allende. The General expropriated at will, offering little or no compensation. While most of these businesses were eventually re-privatised, the state retained ownership of one industry: copper.

    For nearly a century, copper has meant Chile and Chile copper. University of Montana metals expert Dr. Janet Finn notes, “Its absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands.” (And not just any government hands. A Pinochet law, still in force, gives the military 10% of state copper revenues.)

    Copper has provided 30% to 70% of the nation’s export earnings. This is the hard currency which has built today’s Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 – Allende’s posthumous gift to his nation.

    Agribusiness is the second locomotive of Chile’s economic growth. This also is a legacy of the Allende years. According to Professor Arturo Vasquez of Georgetown University, Washington DC, Allende’s land reform, the break-up of feudal estates (which Pinochet could not fully reverse), created a new class of productive tiller-owners, along with corporate and cooperative operators, who now bring in a stream of export earnings to rival copper. “In order to have an economic miracle,” says Dr. Vasquez, “maybe you need a socialist government first to commit agrarian reform.”

    So there we have it. Keynes and Marx, not Friedman, saved Chile.

    But the myth of the free-market Miracle persists because it serves a quasi-religious function. Within the faith of the Reaganauts and Thatcherites, Chile provides the necessary genesis fable, the ersatz Eden from which laissez-faire dogma sprang successful and shining.

    Half a globe away from Chile, an alternative economic experiment was succeeding quietly and bloodlessly. The southern Indian state of Kerala is the laboratory for the humane development theories of Amartya Sen, this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Committed to income re-distribution and universal social services, Kerala built an economy on intensive public education. As the world’s most literate state, it earns its hard currency from the export of technical assistance to Gulf nations. If you’ve heard little or nothing of Sen and Kerala, maybe it is because they pose an annoying challenge to the neoliberal consensus.

    This week, the international finance Gang of Four – the World Bank, the IMF, the Inter-American Development Bank and the International Bank for Settlements – offered a $41.5 billion line of credit to Brazil. But before the agencies hand the drowning nation a life preserver, they demand Brazil commit to swallow the economic medicine that nearly killed Chile. You know the list: fire-sale privatisations, flexible labor markets (i.e. union demolition) and deficit reduction through savage cuts in government services and social security.

    Here in Sao Paulo, the public is assured these cruel measures will ultimately benefit the average Brazilian. What looks like financial colonialism is sold as the cure-all tested in Chile with miraculous results.

    But that miracle was
    in fact a hoax, a fraud, a fairy tale in which everyone did not live happily ever after.

    • basically, free market economic experiments have been a disaster in Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Russia, Poland and a variety of other countries, serving to destablize them politically and economically. Somalia is the poster child for free-market libertarian principles in action. I highly recommend her book.

      • Of the first round of Bush tax cuts, the phrase was coined about turning America into a Banana Republic.

        <

        p>How close we’ve come!

      • Among positive reviews, Joseph Stiglitz wrote in The New York Times that The Shock Doctrine is an “ambitious look at the economic history of the last 50 years and the rise of free-market fundamentalism around the world,” then added that Klein is “not an academic and cannot be judged as one”; John Gray, reviewing for The Guardian, describes the book as “both timely and devastating”[22].[23]

        <

        p>Among negative reviews, in a report for Cato Institute, Johan Norberg argued that Klein’s analysis is flawed on virtually every level and her historical examples do not survive scrutiny.[24] Tom Redburn, in The New York Times wrote “she essentially accuses Friedman of being the godfather of a Mafia-like gang … There’s a measure of truth about the dark side of globalization … but [corporatism] is a lot to lay on poor Milton.” He also claimed that Klein incorrectly groups neoconservatism with neoliberals like Bill Clinton as part of a single ideology.[25] In The Times of London, Cole characterized The Shock Doctrine as “lucidly written and comprehensively researched” but also criticized it as “lean[ing] heavily on partisan contributions from the cuttings library and the blogosphere.”[26] Jonathan Chait, senior editor of The New Republic, criticized Klein for repeatedly ignoring when the facts contradict her arguments (“But in full defiance of everything that we know about post-war Iraq, Klein proceeds to argue that what might superficially appear to be a total failure is, in fact, the successful culmination of the war’s purposes

        • Of course they wouldn’t like her book. The Times of London is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and Robert Cole, the reviewer, is known to lean to the right. Actually, her research into the IMF has been supported by the original architects of the Polish and Russian experiments with the free market.  

  5. Fed spending in 1950 was about 15% of GDP.  Now, it’s closer to 20% of GDP, but you’re getting stired up becaue there’s no 90% tax bracket.

    <

    p>Isn’t the key data point this:  how much is government spending now, versus then?  And, the answer is that we’re spending more now.

    • Our country has more inequality of wealth and income than it had at any time since the end of the Gilded Age in 1929.

      <

      p>A recent article on yahoo quoted some shocking numbers, e.g. the top 1% has more wealth than the bottom 50% combined.

      <

      p>Extreme inequality of wealth leads to extreme inequality of power, which we currently see. Insufficiently checked power in the hands of an elite few (of both major parties) leads to corruption.

      <

      p>The question should not be just how much is being spent, but whether it is being spent wisely.

      <

      p>Government spending doesn’t tell the whole story about inequality. A host of policies in areas such as labor, trade, finance, education, and civil rights matter too.

      • The Tax Expenditure Budget, which IS the direct result of the disparity of power and income, which is made worse and worse and worse as those with more lobby for MORE and MORE and MORE and those with less are further marginalized, and see their wages and prospects dwindle.

  6. In this old NR article here:  http://old.nationalreview.com/…

    <

    p>Some nice charts in there re: Reagan’s budget requests vs. what actually got spent, but my favorite stuff is about how tax receipts from the wealthy skyrocketed after the tax cuts.  For example:

    <

    p>

    The cumulative effects of the tax legislation during the Reagan years has been a substantial increase in the share of federal income-tax liabilities paid by the wealthy. In 1981, the wealthiest – the top 1 per cent – paid 17.6 per cent of total federal individual income taxes; in 1988, their share had increased to 27.5 per cent.

    <

    p>I also like this quote, for some reason:

    <

    p>

    For one thing, during the eight years of the Reagan Administration, only one tax bill, ERTA, reduced taxes for upper-income individuals and corporations. The central objective of the initial Reagan program, of which ERTA was a critically important part, was to reorient national economic policy. Instead of focusing on income re-distribution and aggregate demand management of the economy, the Reagan policy aimed at reducing the Federal Government’s intrusion into the nation’s economic life. It sought to provide a policy climate in which individuals’ incentives to pursue their own economic progress would not be frustrated by government tax, spending, regulatory, and monetary policies. ERTA’s role in this economic strategy was to reduce the disincentives of high and steeply progressive individual tax rates and the biases they exerted against working, saving, and investing, and to provide more realistic and more nearly neutral tax treatment of investment in plant, machinery, and other depreciable property.

    • I look at your second quote in a different way.

      <

      p>

      a policy climate in which individuals’ incentives to pursue their own economic progress would not be frustrated by government tax, spending, regulatory, and monetary policies.

      <

      p>This is the same policy climate that, once pesky regulations such as Glass-Steagall were gutted, ultimately gave us the Great Recession. Great job!

      • Didn’t have anything to do with fannie mae or freddie mac, or Barney Frank and his comrades pushing affordable housing did it.

        <

        p>The great recession will end as soon as we end the inevitable march towards government control of everything important.

        <

        p>And for pete’s sake, lets not keep bailing out auto companies and wasting stimulus money on cushy union government jobs.  In fact, lets just not do any more stimulus.  Deal?

        • were the least of the offenders, as they only took on conforming loans. The under-regulated banks took on the most dangerous loans (which they knew would not be repaid) that started the downward slide.

          <

          p>

          the inevitable march towards government control of everything important.

          <

          p>Huh? Like the last 30 years of de-regulation, started under Reagan didn’t happen? In a sense, you’re right. Conservatives (Republicans and ConservaDems) have been working hard to see that government does nothing good to control matters of importance. They’ve used the government to make it more difficult for unions to organize and for individuals to declare bankruptcy. Glass-Steagal oversight? Who needed that?

          <

          p>We have had corporations making sure that the government does not do its job. Let’s see, the large banks, AIG, Bernie Maddof, BP, Massay Mining…we just need to give these guys more freedom from spoilsports like Elizabeth Warren.

          <

          p>Unions have historically made wages and working conditions better for all working people, unionized or not. I’ve never been a union member but I support them.

          <

          p>You will probably “win” this deal, as the political will does not exist for another stimulus. I would like nothing better than to see this recession end, not just on paper but in the form of full employment at living wages.

          <

          p>The historical evidence indicates that your suggestions of ceding all power to the large corporations will not get us there and will produce a “double dip” recession. See an earlier post on this thread that tells the story of Chile in the late 20th century.

        • In the same sense that yesterday’s brief rain was a direct result of the moisture that you personally released into the atmosphere by exhaling.

            • Did you know, fully 40% of all work absences happen on Mondays or Fridays? This is NEARLY HALF of all work absences! I think there’s a problem with people skiving off of work for a long weekend!!! We need to DO something! It’s hurting productivity!!

    • You don’t think getting out of the oil embargoes of the 70s had anything to do with it?  A variety of other policy changes?  Other tax policies?

      <

      p>Your own article cuts your legs out:

      <

      p>

      With the recovery beginning in late 1982, budget receipts expanded rapidly, on the average by slightly over 8 per cent a year, through fiscal 1990. By that year, budget receipts were 18.9 per cent of GNP. Whether the several substantial tax increases from 1982 through 1989 – particularly the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA) of 1982, the Deficit Reduction Act (DEFRA) of 1984, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86) – contributed to rather than retarded this growth in revenue is, at the least, debatable.

    • Some nice charts in there re: Reagan’s budget requests vs. what actually got spent, but my favorite stuff is about how tax receipts from the wealthy skyrocketed after the tax cuts.  For example:

      In 1981, the wealthiest – the top 1 per cent – paid 17.6 per cent of total federal individual income taxes; in 1988, their share had increased to 27.5 per cent.

      <

      p>I’m not sure how that “fact” proves that cutting taxes helps everyone in the economy. If the bottom 80% of the population loses their jobs tomorrow, then the amount of taxes paid by the wealthiest would skyrocket because the bottom 80% wouldn’t be paying anything. Likewise, if we shift our policies so far to the right where the wealthy are able to earn even more than they do, as a group they will pay more in taxes.

      <

      p>If the top tax rate was 90%, there would be no incentive for people to use slash-and-burn techniques to make oodles of money, because they’d see just 10% of those dollars. Not wanting to give 90% of their hard-earned income to the government, they would likely pay their workers better, lower prices, or invest more in research and development.

      <

      p>Our economy — 70% consumer-based — would work a lot better if consumers had more disposable income. This would create more opportunities for everyone.  

      • was a counter to the assertion that Reagan was a wild spender.

        <

        p>The second point was an assertion that wealthy pay more after tax cuts than they ever did before tax cuts.

        <

        p>Beyond that, I’m surprised that you think that the only way to earn a lot of money is by “slash and burn” techniques, rather than, say, innovation.  I guess that is the difference in (latter) believing that wealth can be created, vs. (former) believing that its all a zero-sum game.

        <

        p>Kind of a depressing outlook, really.

    • If you look at median nonsupervisory weekly earnings, (i.e., median individual blue collar income), it peaked in the late 1970s.  As things have gone downhill, families have needed two wage earners, and the numbers are badly cooked, which is why “official” family income doesn’t degrade over the past 30 years.

      <

      p>http://www.stateofworkingameri…

      <

      p>That the numbers are cooked is obvious – a family with two wage earners today can’t get by as well a one-wage-earner family could back in the dreaded Carter years.

      <

      p>If we can just go back to 12-year-olds working in the coal mines, we can keep “family income” propped up a while longer.  Marxists like me and Ike wouldn’t approve, but then, we’re only Marxists.

      • Like this:  

        a family with two wage earners today can’t get by as well a one-wage-earner family could back in the dreaded Carter years.

        <

        p>I mean, what do you mean by that?  By what measure?  That they can only buy a 2500sq ft house,  40+ inch TV, a couple European sedans and 15 ipods?  What do you mean, really?

        <

        p>People consume MUCH MORE than they once did.  Just look at older houses vs. newer houses in any town, the ones they built after WWII are miniscule.

        <

        p>Sometimes I think that what you 70’s fans really pine for the days of one-earner families. Not a bad thing, imo, but you should know that many women went to work out of personal choice rather than necessity, when the whole women’s lib thing became universal.  After that it became pretty unfashionable to be a “housewife” – so much that its almost a dirty word now.  

        <

        p>ANYWAY, the real thing I wanted to say is that if you look at your own numbers you can see that they show HOURLY wages being the highest they have ever been, circa 2007.  Hourly wages higher, weekly pay lower – hmmm – what could that mean I wonder?

        <

        p>

        • This is what you wrote –

          <

          p>

          People consume MUCH MORE than they once did.  Just look at older houses vs. newer houses in any town, the ones they built after WWII are miniscule.

          <

          p>Do you mean per capita? How ‘MUCH MORE’? Could you define this more specifically? Where did you find this information?

          <

          p>Where did you get this? —

          …you should know that many women went to work out of personal choice rather than necessity,…

          • on the declining birthrate, which you would know if you read her links.  (Though I am not sure that she did)  

            <

            p>The former is from pretty much all of my personal observations, and not supported by any statistics (gag) that I have at hand.  Maybe most of the dual income families that you know do not have ipods and flatscreens.  Is that the case?  

            <

            p>Better yet, maybe you have a statistic.

            <

            p>Hey, middlebororeview, are you a socialist by chance?  Or something similar with a new name because you don’t want to hear that word anymore?

            <

            p>I dare you to state something that you believe.

          • Of course the goods that consumers consume have become dramatically cheaper.  A 25″ TV in 1970 cost $599.00; you could buy the equivalent for less than half that today, without even accounting for inflation.  Cars are more expensive, but far less likely to kill me.  In 20 years, I went from paying $75/month for telephone service, including long distance, to $150 for unlimited phone, broadband internet, and cable TV.  This can’t just be dismissed.

            <

            p>In the same vein, the median hourly wage data cited above just happens to cover the period of the terminal decline of American heavy manufacturing– automobiles, steel, etc., which just happened to employ HUGE numbers of people.  Yes, a lot of good jobs were lost and not replaced with the same number of good jobs– and this is because of tax policy?

            <

            p>It is also simply true that the entry of women into the labor force expanded the labor force, which must have depressed wage/salary figures, in the same way that immigration does now.  (Who knows, or cares, if their entry was voluntary?)

        • But because some still have fixed-cost weekly benefits like health care, fewer hours turns into more $ per hour.  Which is why weekly earnings is the measure of merit.

          <

          p>As to all of the extravagances that you yammer about:

          <

          p>1. What percentage of houses in your town were built since 1980?
          2. How many flat screen TVs and ipods does it take to equal a single month’s mortgage?  Do you really think the TVs and iPods affect anything, big picture wise (pardon the pun).
          3. You have a point on some people and cars, although most folks drive Japanese cars from what I can see.  In any case, that isn’t enough to account for the current need for two full time incomes to get by.  (We drive two Fords although, of course, I wish I could by a Lada – the new Comrade Eisenhower model)

          <

          p>What’s really hurt us is “free” trade with microwage nations, bank deregulation, and trickle-down economics – not European sedans.

        • Then you might actually be able to understand. But this is the TRUTH, by the numbers, as studied by one of the most serious, objective people of our time.

          <

          p>

          • Pins down how households with children are particularly stressed financially.

            <

            p>What surprised me were the numbers about spending items that are actually down in inflation-adjusted dollars, including clothing, food, appliances.

            <

            p>Where does the money go, such that average families find it nearly impossible to save? Watch the video.

  8. Today’s Krugman column about the USA being going dark, and crumbling into third world status.

    <

    p>We can pay now – or we can continue the downhill slide while the anti-government haters of all but the rich crow, strut, and pontificate.

    <

    p>Very clear choice, in my opinion.

    • The lights are going out all over America – literally. Colorado Springs has made headlines with its desperate attempt to save money by turning off a third of its streetlights, but similar things are either happening or being contemplated across the nation, from Philadelphia to Fresno.

      <

      p>Maybe part of the problem here is working people have grown so sick and tired of the crime, taxes and other qualities of big cities that we have a “flight” to the suburbs to live their lives. The result is a thriving rapidly reproducing population which don’t work and strain the public service pool, which causes higher taxes and causes more working people to “leave” … NET— higher taxes will not help these cities keep the lights on.

      <

      p>

      Meanwhile, a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.

      <

      p>Do we really need as many paved roads as we have? How many miles of roads are paved and what is he annual costs of keep ing these millions of miles of roads paved (and plowed…)? As for costs in transportation… thanks to unions, government workers and regulations for raising the costs on all forms of transportation. The bridge repair on Winter St/RT 128 is a great example of how we waste our money wrt transportation.

      <

      p>

      And a nation that once prized education – that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children – is now cutting back. Teachers are being laid off; programs are being canceled; in Hawaii, the school year itself is being drastically shortened. And all signs point to even more cuts ahead.

      <

      p>Are we spending too little on education? Average teacher salary in Boston last year… $74K. Boston spends $817 Million to educate 56,340 children with 2008 per pupil expenditure of $13,849. Money will not fix the problem of poor parenting.

      <

      p>Krugman may be right about his observations but I think he’s dead wrong about the solutions.

      <

      p>A question for many of you, since the top 1% of the population makes as much as the bottom 50%… why are so many people against ore taxes?

      <

      p>or…

      <

      p>

      Extreme inequality of wealth leads to extreme inequality of power, which we currently see. Insufficiently checked power in the hands of an elite few (of both major parties) leads to corruption.

      <

      p>How can this inequality be supported by so many Republicans and Independents? Doesn’t our democratic vote stop this from happening? Will the next suggestion be Obama should be doing what is “right” for us, whether we like it or not? (example – Will Obama ‘circumvent’ Congress on immigration reform?)

      • I gave you a “4” because you argue that power cannot be unequal in a democratic society. That is plainly false, because voters can be manipulated, particularly when money is interjected into politics. Propaganda is designed to get people to vote against their own interests. Complex issues are harder to explain in an increasingly distracted society. Lying is permissible in a political campaign, and it has been discovered that if you lie often, no one can decipher the truth. Why else would so many people who earn under $100,000 become so passionate about eliminating the Estate Tax? Out of a sense of fairness for Paris Hilton? While at the same time not giving a lick about fairness for the unemployed?

        <

        p>I also find it interesting that you appear to view the problems in urban areas as the simultaneous moral failings of many separate individuals. I think a more reasonable answer is that the same economic system is simultaneously working against all those people. I believe that as lower-skill jobs have been eliminated via globalization, automation, and mega-merger consolidation, we have cut off a large part of our society. We have not yet figured out what to do about this growing underclass, except to jail them when they inevitably screw up and scream at them for being lazy.

        <

        p>This economy is not my grandfather’s economy. My grandfather would not have been able to build his own house, send his kids to school, and allow my grandmother to stay at home on a salary he would earn today with his high school diploma. Could he have gone on to college and done something different with his life? We’ll never know — but is it realistic to set the bar at “college education or poverty”? Is that a system that fits into the Land of Opportunity?

        <

        p>I know I’m not going to convince you, because your inherent belief in the infallibility of the markets coupled with the fallibility of the human mind simply does not allow you to see the world like I do. But maybe what I say can be food for thought for others.

      • are the great de-equalizers. Office holders of both parties must beg for huge sums of money in order to run competitive campaigns. Once in office, they face enormous pressure to honor their big donors rather than their constituents.

        <

        p>Small donors, meaning most people, face an uphill battle in getting heard. In addition to campaign contributions, the wealthy have more resources to put into other influences on public opinion, such as  think tanks, media outlets, and (sometimes astro-turf) advocacy groups.

        <

        p>Advertisers in the major media by definition must have a lot of money. These advertisers influence not only the opinions expressed but the choice of which facts get air time.

  9. The initial post relies on the same sort of logic as does “We have had a lot of snow, and therefore global warming must be a hoax.”

    <

    p>My great-grandpa was alive in this golden age as well, so if we could only find a way to re-animate his decaying corpse, then everything would be great.

    <

    p>Following this is 70-something posts of ideological “did not, did too, he started it, did not, did too.”

    <

    p>Post-war American manufacturing could afford to employ vast numbers of people, and pay them huge wages, because manufacturing everywhere else had been conveniently destroyed.  As soon as manufacturing began anew in Europe and Japan– and began at all elsewhere in the world– this position of privilege and dominance ended.  Neither taxing the bejesus out of the wealthy, nor not taxing the wealthy, will cause this golden age to return.

  10. Or Social Security Old Age Survivors and Disability Insurance tax rates and what has happened to them over time.  Focusing solely on the income tax leaves out another tax which has continued to go up to reflect a combination of increased benefits, increased life expectancies and increased SSI payments.

    <

    p>A chart is available here http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgDa…

    <

    p>In short a self employed person would have paid a total of 2.25% in 1951, 4.51% in 1961, 6.9% in 1971, 8.0% in 1981, and 12.40% in 1991 and 2001. So there has been a shift in tax burden from income taxes to SS OASDI taxes that needs to be factored into the tax discussion, particularly for small, self employed businesses.  And, let’s not forget that this does not include medicare taxes which are over 3% for self employed as well.

    <

    p>It is a discussion that needs to be held.  I appreciate Amber for putting it forward.  I agree with some of her points, don’t agree with others, but appreciate her willingness to put out her thoughts and argue her positions.  She regularly posts at both RMG and BMG and has always been upon to discussion and debate.  Keep it coming, it is needed from all political ideologies.

    • Real progress of any kind happens one step at a time.

      <

      p>In my life, anything ignored regularly breaks down.  No dentist – cavities.  No oil changes and filter changes – cars break down.  Failure to regularly inspect and resurface roads, roads break down.

      <

      p>Lack of long range planning means no prudent reserve, and no liquidity to deal with disasters, whether Katrina, or wildfire or earthquake, without borrowing and massive dislocations.

      <

      p>Again, the parable of Joseph and the Pharoah comes to mind.  Pharoah had his dream of the seven fat cows being eaten by the seven lean cows in the parable.  In the parable, Joseph is a handy prophet who tells Pharoah that the fat cows are prosperous years, and the thin cows are coming famine, and arranges that granaries be built, and resources stored during the good years.

      <

      p>Imagine if instead in the parable about Joseph and Pharoah, in the good years, people cut back on growing grain, and ate more because no one warned their leadership, and there was no long range planning.  There would have been mass starvation.

      <

      p>In our “good years” the State cut its revenue, and spent more rather than looking ahead, and building a prudent reserve.  We are all paying for that now.

      <

      p>However, I do not see solid long range and regional planning, or not very much long range planning.  The current situation is, in main, a failure of logistics and planning.

      <

      p>You do not cut your way out of a failure of logistics, or out of a failure of planning when scarcity or emergencies occur.  Do I have solid suggestions as to improvements in both logistics and planning in many areas?  Yes, I do.  I suspect some of your do, as well.

      <

      p>One of my suggestions would be to go from 265 emergency call centers to 12-15, which is doable with current technology, freeing up a large number of police and firefighters to do police and fire work.  The 12-15 number is based on the work done in Maryland and in Michigan with which I am directly familiar.

      <

      p>Okay – your turn – what logistical failures, planning failures, duplication of effort, etc. do you know about and how would you fix each?  Time to stop pounding the problem and propose some solutions.  

      • I am a proponent for combining services into regions wherever possible.  By regions, I do not mean back to the county level services which proved to be too big and too cumbersome to work in far too many cases.

        <

        p>However, I do believe that certain services can be combined with the savings being principally at the executive level which would result in savings that could either be used to put more “boots on the ground”, to build a sufficient rainy day fund, or to, if conditions warrant, to pare back taxes, first sales taxes then income taxes.  (Please take note of where I put the tax cuts and which order.)

        <

        p>Here are some areas that could be done within regions:

        <

        p>1) School administration – I have spoken with far too many teachers who convey stories of out of touch superintendents and other senior administrators.  These are the most expensive school employees we have.  Why not “share” one across a couple or more towns?  We are heading towards common core anyways so why not common leadership?

        <

        p>2) Libraries – Not only could the cost of certain less-used books be shared across multiple towns, but we could also save on senior administrators.

        <

        p>There are probably many more, but we face a wave of retirements and reduced funding so let’s look at ways we can further spread costs for services across larger user bases provided, of course, results are the same or better than without consolidation.

        • (1) So if the complaint is that they’re already “out of touch”, spreading them even thinner, so that they spend even less time exposed to teachers or students, will help?  Erm, seems backward.

          <

          p>(2) This already happens in Boston metro.  Minuteman Library Network.  The result: greater access to works for patrons, and I’m sure that the libraries take the MLN inventory into consideration when choosing which media to acquire.

          <

          p>This is not to suggest that (2) shouldn’t be emulated elsewhere — I’m all for it.

          <

          p>

          <

          p>I’d like to see states help with town IT.  Why is each town designing it’s own web site from scratch, when the vast majority of items are the same for each town?  I could imagine 5 templates: small town, medium town, large town, small city, medium city.  Large cities are likely to specialized and have probably already invested heavily.  It’s not just the web site.  Each town has databases for voting, for property tax, for street trees, for dozens (hundreds!) of things.  The state should prioritize based on the quality of town-DBs and value, and start designing and rolling out quality DB IT for towns to use, free.  Should the town or state host it?  Dunno.  Lots of details to work out.  Still, the 351 reinventions of the same wheel in IT over and over again in the Commonwealth is a colossal waste.

      • Then how do you explain the USA going from a tiny backwater rebellious English colony to the greatest nation on Earth – all before FDR?

        <

        p>Central planning had nothing to do with it.

        <

        p>Luckily for us our dedication to freedom persevered through the 20th century.

        • Saying that a lack of long-range planning is not saying “all good comes from central planning,” and it is fundamentally dishonest of you to claim it is. Not surprising, though.

        • …THIRTEEN English colonies to a single nation long before FDR.  Did you miss the memo about how it took just a few years for the Revolutionary generation to realize the Articles of Confederation just weren’t cutting it?  How about the one about how we were so divided over the basic concept of liberty that we fought a Civil War over it?  I’ll grant the pendulum of federalism swings to varying degrees, but we have consistently been stronger when we act as one nation and our history has been one of consolidation over time.

    • It’s true that life expectancies have increased.  The thing is — it hasn’t impacted OASDI.  Why?  It turns out that if you are 1 week old, your expected lifetime is longer than it was 50 years ago.  But, if you’re 65, it isn’t.  Why?  We’ve done amazing work at reducing infant mortality, child mortality, and even workplace mortality.  Also, wars have had a tremendous impact on expectancy.  However, if you reach 65, you’ve made it past all of that stuff.  You’ve also paid in to OASDI that whole time.

      <

      p>The increased life expectancy has increased the odds that you make it to social security — but it has not substantially increased number of years you’ll collect once you make it there.

      <

      p>Here’s a chart which demonstrates what I’m getting at (though the source may be flaky; others I’ve seen have the same shape):

      <

      p>

      <

      p>Notice that 0ver 100 years, there’s not much increase for “at 65” (under 10 years for women, fewer than 8 for men), and “at 85” (perhaps 2 years?).  Now, half-ish of that growth is post-1960… women have gained about 4 years since then for “at 65”, men about 5.  This despite that life expectancy for women has gone up 30 in the past century, and 25 for men, from birth.

      <

      p>

      <

      p>So, there’s been some increase in life expectancy for post-65, but not very much.  It’s simply not a driver in the changing financial outlook of SSI.

      • Notice that 0ver 100 years, there’s not much increase for “at 65” (under 10 years for women, fewer than 8 for men), and “at 85” (perhaps 2 years?).  Now, half-ish of that growth is post-1960… women have gained about 4 years since then for “at 65”, men about 5.

        <

        p>Life expectancy increases of 12+% (by your numbers) aren’t substantial?

        <

        p>Forget the 100 year change; that’s not relevant.  Consider the change since SS inception, 1940.  Life expectancy from age 65 has gone up 20.5% for men and 33% for women.

        <

        p>Now before you quibble that my percentage versus actual years added confounds your point consider the data and then the math.  

        <

        p>39.5 million 65 year olds in 2000, living an addition 4 years, at say $20,000 per year.  Perhaps there are other variables that impact the defict, but the change is life expectancy from age 65 appears substantial.

  11. Back in the seventies by my account.  Before we exported the electronics industry to Malasia, the end mill industry to China and the shoe machinery industry to I forget where.  Corporate can search my wife, mandate that she can not sue the company in a court of law in the country which claims she is a peasant thereof plus they can also demand injections of substances which have rendered formerly normal teens dependent wards of the state mentally on a permanent basis.  Yes that is my testimony about the H1N1 swine flu for profit marketing/compliance efforts.  For all the excellent life saving efforts the good people in the medical industry do accomplish this thing was a blight on that stellar record this baby boomer will never ever forget.

  12. On a worldwide basis, the US is something like 12th of 59.  That’s pretty damned good, considering the poverty that exists in some areas.

    <

    p>If Mass was a country, we’d be 3rd or 4th in the world, a spectacular showing.

    <

    p>Our education system could improve, but it’s quite good.

  13. This is what happened:

    <

    p>First, the nation poured BIG $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ into infrastructure and education, and had PROTECTIVE TARRIFFS to keep cheap imports out.

    <

    p>We discovered things and made things.

    <

    p>Then, we went for free trade, and all the jobs went to third world nations with slave wages. Infrastructure was neglected and has crumbled, and the cost of school has gone through the roof.

    <

    p>And now we’re in a Depression.

    <

    p>What can be done?

    <

    p>Have the GOVERNMENT ITSELF start a lot of infrastructure projects. Give FREE TRAINING to the unemployed, and pay $25 per hour to work these projects.

    <

    p>That will give people paychecks that they will spend, and will set up what needs to be set up.

    <

    p>It’s radical, but it would work. It’s time for political rulers with GUTS that will get it right and ignore the radio-jock gasbags.

    <

    p>To all BONEHEADS: PLEASE, insult me. Flip me off. I beg you. Your insults are nothing, getting the economy going and building the future in this nation is everything.

    • bubble destined to burst.

      <

      p>Someone more inclined can look up the actual statistics, but during the Bush reign, I remember reading a statistic that something like 75% of new jobs and economic activity originated from the housing construction – putting people in homes they couldn’t afford.

      <

      p>A friend, single mom with 2 kids, bought her first home with no documentation and didn’t discover until the closing that her monthly payments exceeded her GROSS pay by $14 per month. An unnecessary family trauma that destroyed this family.

      <

      p>The ONLY way to get things going is government sponsored jobs, in spite of Republican obstruction, letting the tax cuts expire, cessation of incentivizing slave labor jobs that escape reasonable regulation.

      <

      p>This made me re-consider our purchases of imported goods:
      Chinese Fur Farms

      <

      p>We have an old, historic housing stock in the Bay State.

      <

      p>Instead of screaming for low wage dead end jobs that SLOT BARNS would create, why aren’t unions demanding large scale WEATHERIZATION projects that would never face export, would reduce energy costs to financially strapped families and create nothing but positive results?  

      <

      p>

      • When it comes to gambling, I agree with Patrick’s position.

        <

        p>Even so, I wouldn’t mind it if we maintain the gambling status quo in this state.

        <

        p>Either way, casinos are not going to be the Rock that the economy is built on, here or anywhere. A limited number of jobs would be created there, and a limited number of people would go there.

        <

        p>We need something deeper, that makes needed goods and services and puts more people to work.

        <

        p>Weatherization projects? That’s a great idea, but there are other things that could be started in addition to that.

        <

        p>I would have the federal government grab unemployed people “By The Shirt Collar”,and  train them for free making and installing solar panels on the roofs of every building.

        <

        p>The factory would be owned by the federal government. The installers would be paid by the federal government, at $25 per hour. The building owner would be paid $250 for letting them install the solar panels. The panels would be owned by the electric utility company. I would do it this way so that they just get installed without depending on the building owners having cash on hand to buy the panels for themselves.

        <

        p>Radical? Yes, but a great idea for getting jobs and electricity without buying fuel.

        <

        p>And these 2 ideas are just the beginning of what really needs to be done.

        • To avoid boring some, allow me to suggest
          United to Stop Slots in Massachusetts

          Middleboro Remembers

          <

          p>When that blog was begun, it was with the intent of posting pertinent articles, so there is a lengthy category list on the right side. Check out the statistics for Las Vegas, home foreclosures 5 times the national everage, the nation’s highest dropout rate, lowest educational attainment, high crime, high poverty, high suicides.

          <

          p>As a very important point of information in the debate, GAMBLING ADDICTION has the lowest rate of self-referral and the highest rate of suicide. Areas surrounding casinos experience increased personal bankruptcies, increased child and spousal abuse, increased money-related crimes including embezzlement.

          <

          p>Spectrum Gaming, the same Industry mouthpiece that prepared a BENEFIT report for Governor Patrick for $189,000. also prepared a report for the CT DOSR that included many of those issues – including DUIs and ‘hot bunking.’

          <

          p>Small business creates 85% of new jobs.

          <

          p>For $600 million, you get a SLOT BARN, not some euphemistcally labeled attraction.

          <

          p>SLOT BARNS destroy local business by sucking discretionary income from local economies.

          <

          p>Harrah’s determined that 90% of their profits originated from 10% of their patrons and then marketed, targeted, pursued and pursuaded their loyalty.

          <

          p>That’s GAMBLING ADDICTION.

          <

          p>The business model is based on compelling patrons to ‘PLAY TO EXTINCTION’ (their term, not mine). That means until they have exhausted their financial resources, drained the kids’ college fund, maxed credit cards and mortgaged the house.

          <

          p>Not only will you get a small number of low wage dead end jobs, certainly not the grossly overstated jobs projected, the cost to the Commonwealth and to impacted cities and towns will further stress budgets.

          <

          p>A federal study determined that for every $1 in gambling revenue the cost to taxpayers is $3.

          <

          p>Senator Tucker offered some simple math here:
          Casino Dollars Will Simply Pour In! Not!

          <

          p>That’s before we consider this: Gambling Addict Costs $13,000 A Year

          <

          p>Ryan Adams posted this:

          In Las Vegas, it takes 266 casinos to
          bring in $11.6 billion in gross
          revenue,
          which translates into $924 million in
          tax revenue.

          <

          p>

          The state lottery of Massachusetts brings in more revenue than Las Vegas’s 266 casinos.

          Posted here:
          Exploding Myths: Lottery

          <

          p>In my experience, the more you learn about SLOTS, the more you oppose them.

          <

          p>SLOTS have been called the “Crack Cocaine of Gambling” for good reason.

          <

          p>Exploitation of one group is not acceptable public policy for a Commonwealth that forged the foundations of our Democracy.  

          • There certainly are some out of control gambling addicts.

            <

            p>Today, under the status quo, most of these types are probably getting their “fix” at nearby Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun.

            <

            p>Regardless of what is done about gambling in Massachusetts, the real problem is simple:

            <

            p>BROKE JOBLESS PEOPLE WITH NO MONEY TO DO ANYTHING.

            <

            p>You need something that will give jobs to many people that have OK pay. Then, they WILL spend money, and that will get the economy going again.

            <

            p>In no way, shape, or form can anyone serious be proposing that all of the unemployed people would be employed at a casino/ slot parlor. Even with the largest conceivable casinos being build and staffed, there is no way that that number of people would be hired.

            <

            p>What I’m saying is that something has to be done to get jobs OUTSIDE OF CASINOS/SLOTS and REGARDLESS OF CASINOS/SLOTS.
            No set of policies on gambling can solve the jobless crisis in Massachusetts. There are only so many gamblers, and anything built will only be so big. What is needed is to get a high number of jobs in a wide variety of industries. That is what will hire the greatest numbers. And that will be needed, casinos, slots, or not.

            <

            p>

    • They are repaving roads that don’t need it – and our infrastructure is still crumbling?

      <

      p>What exactly do you mean by this?  Do you have any data or good examples?

      • …are getting to the point of deliberately UNPAVING the roads as a way to cut back.  Others are turning out street lights.  Here in MA there have been proposals to pay directly for police protection and Lawrence has made drastic cuts to fire services thus leaving neighboring towns to pick up the slack.  I’m generally not an alarmist, but we really are reaching crisis levels in some cases.

      • This country is big enough for there to be some of everything.

        <

        p>Are they unnecessarily paving a road somewhere? Sure.

        <

        p>Meanwhile, part of I-93 near Boston has collapsed. I don’t know the details, but the road basically crumbled.

        <

        p>THAT ought to be addressed.

        <

        p>And it’s not just roads. It’s trains, it’s sewer projects in some areas, it’s all sorts of different things that have to be done.

        <

        p>The infrastructure IS crumbling in a lot of places. It does need repair, and people need the jobs.

        <

        p>Just how much unemployment, poverty, and misery are worth giving to lots of innocent people just so that every corrupt crony and sweetheart deal can be rooted out?

  14. It’s politically unlearned to believe that Eisenhower’s tax policy was good. He ran on a promise to cut taxes, but when he got in, he was captured by budget hawks who wanted to keep taxes high and balance the budget. This is how he managed to lose control of both houses of Congress two years after he was elected. He was re-elected because the competition, Adlai Stevenson, wanted to raise taxes even higher.

    <

    p>Political victory comes not from good policy, but from having the best policy of the available choices.

    <

    p>

    • The middle class did great as did everyone else.

      <

      p>The sky didn’t fall.

      <

      p>The wheels of the economy didn’t grind to a halt.

      <

      p>And the debt got paid down.

      <

      p>It worked.

      <

      p>What’s the problem?

      • As a practical matter, to have the USA “get better” will take cooperation between the various ideologies – and non-ideological pragmatists, though.

        <

        p>No one ideology has all the solutions.  Get used to it.

      • There were a lot of poor people who didn’t see their lives improve during the 50s, as there are a lot of poor people in the world now who could really use roaring economic growth. However Amber is apparently ready to throw out all the expansion taken place since 1958.

        <

        p>Why is it people who have it made are so ready to put the brakes on and cut growth down to something just good enough?  

  15. “keep the lights on” or “pave the roads”…

    <

    p>Globe

    <

    p>

    Despite an economic downturn and widespread job and wage cuts for many workers, outgoing state Auditor A. Joseph DeNucci has awarded a 5 percent raise to his staff, retroactive to July 1.

    A DeNucci spokesman defended the raises, which he said would cost about $350,000 through the end of the year, as just compensation for a staff that has not seen a pay boost in nearly four years and has taken 11 furlough days over the last two years, a concession equivalent to a 4 percent

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