Our banks are sitting on a trillion+ dollars but demanding 18% returns and so investing overseas, not in American businesses. Great for the stockmarket – but not for workers. And WE bailed these bloodsucking Plutocratic Neobarons out. That does “suck”.
Entire factories shipped over seas – equipment, expertise, and patents – so long sustainable jobs and economy – and our own government picking up part of the tab. That does “suck”.
FDR got it right when he said that without freedom from want, we don’t want freedom (okay so I paraphrased a bit). Oddly enough, it takes a contagion of hope to move large numbers of Americans to vote – and out of poverty. What our Democratic Party is not doing is providing a credible vision of a future that is better economically than the present.
Further, 42% of our children are born out of wedlock, 72% and 62% in some demographics. When I graduated high school, that figure was 5%. Why isn’t marriage seen as “paying” or “better” than single parenthood by young men and young women? For the future of THIS country having this high number of out of wedlock, single parent children truly sucks.
Children with two parents, whether same or different sexes, have a poverty rate of less then 10%; with one parent, more than 40%.
These three issues, if not addressed by the Democratic Party will lead to continued “vote the incumbents out” and what Jim Caralis wrote so eloquently about as to why “we suck” as a party:
1. Failure to fight for “made in American” rather than “Sold cheap to Americans”; sustainable living wage jobs come from production, not consumption.
2. Explosive growth in ‘entitlements’ for children born out of wedlock rather than making marriage more financially rewarding than entitlements – 6% of children in two parent families need entitlements – 43% of out of wedlock children receive these entitlements. The Census shows in some areas 73% of children are born “out of wedlock” with the other parent employed. Are we paying our fecund young not to marry, and to remain in poverty?
3. The uncontrolled growth of bank greed is a HUGE driver of the decline of our economy. What happened to responsible, reasonable, sustainable profits? With our own banks sitting on trillions of dollars, refusing to invest in local small and medium businesses, and sending capital abroad to maximize profits, Wall Street battens and Main Street is on the dole collecting food stamps. Does President Obama really think India will buy steel from Ohio when the plants were all shipped to China?
Sorry, but a continuing failure to take on all three issues means our party will “suck” and throwing out incumbents will become a more and more popular sport. Whoever is in power must be the person to blame; not sure the trip to India will play as well on Main Street as it is on Wall Street, either. India is seeking its own gains, after all
Making Wall Street happy sure isn’t doing much good for Main Street, now is it? Sadly, food stamps are a sure thing these days, but a job after graduation doing useful work is not.
You don’t have to take just my word or Huffington’s – to mine Census figures go here
PS: Mine is a “multi vote” poll – pick every option you think would make a positive impact.
Agree broadly on the first three points: job creation, social cohesion, and real banking reform with teeth. Those should be the top three priorities of this administration and the new Congress. The nice thing is points #2 and #3 could be supported by the Tea Party. They hate the bank bailouts as much as progressives do and want tougher reform, and all conservatives should agree with a compassionate conservative push on helping working families. In theory. In practice anything Obama does is the work of a Muslim-Marxist plot to destroy America. The irony is conservatives are governing alongside these principles in Britain and doing a good job of it.
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p>Where I disagree is on some specifics. The first point in particular. Starting a trade war would be reminiscent of Smoot-Hartley which exacerbated the effects of the depression. Investing in high speed rail, green technologies, life sciences, and civil service jobs (nurses, firefighters, teachers, etc.) is crucial to job creation and our future. That is where the next middle class can come from. Factory jobs are the way of the past. Also India is not a country to be afraid of, the trip is crucial to ensuring a long term alliance with the worlds largest democracy. We have seen with India and the overtures to Vietnam that Obama is being very realistic and focusing on containing an aggressive China, we need these alliances, even from old foes, now more than ever. And India is about to be like another China, a middle class country hungry for American goods.
We still make a ton of cars, even if they are under foreign labels, that we sell overseas. Aerospace, defense, medicine, construction equipment and tools, food of all kinds, technology solutions, computers, electronic entertainment,luxury goods. Also even if American clothing and other goods are made overseas the money still goes here.
If you and your party stopped supporting tax breaks for outsourcing and tax shelter laws for corporations a lot of that money and jobs would be flowing back here where it belongs.
Why do middle Americans hate the bank bailouts? Aren’t the banks paying the bailouts back, with interest? I haave no problem witht he government helping out some companies if we get it back quickly but I do have problems with the bailouts that don’t return the money. I don’t hate the banks!
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p>Are you trying to say we don’t have enough civil service jobs? This country has never had so man of them. What we need is private business jobs, not civil servants.
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p>How about putting an incentive for a company for any job which is based in America?
…but I’m seething that these companies still paid out bonuses (supposedly for doing great work which they clearly weren’t if they needed a bailout) in the meantime.
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p>We’ve never had so many civil servants? Does that mean you disagree with Baker’s accusation that 3200 teachers were cut under Deval Patrick? Besides a job is a job, and those in the public sector are probably the most important to be filled for society to function. Why are private jobs better than public ones? If anything I would argue the opposite.
the public job salaries and benefits? Are you advocating socialism? If so put me on the gravy train in one of these “jobs” and you can support me.
For one, I can think of a lot of public school teachers who have contributed a heck of a lot more to the good of the community then many of the bankers in the private Wall Street bureaucracy, and at a fraction of the cost.
You must be aware that there are some pretty incompetent teachers and principals out there in both the public and private domains, just as there are some honest bankers. The point I am trying to make is that private jobs help grow the economy (which in turn helps the public sector); public jobs have to be paid by those who work in the private sector. The fact of the matter is that someone has to pay these six figure salaries of police, firepeople, and teachers, and the gravy boat is running dry.
Which districts are those? I’m certified to teach history and wish to apply! In those departments only the very top people (police chief, fire chief, school superintendent, maybe a couple of immediate subordinates) get paid six figures. Plus we all pay private sector salaries by being consumers too. If you think about it we all pay each other’s salaries in the end.
web site to see what teachers in Boston are making now; and recently the Globe did a series on what the town of Norwell is paying its teachers (in the 90’s); and I am sure that the Brooklines and Lexingtons are not far behind. Good luck to them, but the money is drying up. We need a healthy private economy to support our largesse.
…if you refer to a link that you also provide it. I recall looking at Boston’s recently. I think they were in the higher five-figures than many communities, but the average at least nationwide is mid-five figures, with MA averages slightly higher. In principle given the value of their work to a functioning society I think high five-figures for teachers is entirely appropriate. The only reason I don’t go for broke and ask for six figures is the abbreviated year. This is an area where I say don’t tell me what we can’t afford; just find the money!
and this one, too:www.boston.com/yourtown/norwell/news/highest_paid_norwell_town_employees
In my perfect world teachers everywhere would make about that much, though I suspect there is a lot of advanced education and seniority behind those figures as well. That chart was for the highest paid employees so I don’t know what starting salaries might be. The Herald link just showed an image with no information.
when times get tough we all have to pull in our belts a little bit and not forget who is paying the bills.
I know that there are incompetent teachers and honest bankers.
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p>My point is that incompetent teachers are at worst: pressured to shape up, let go if they don’t have tenure (the first three years weed out a number of them), and in any case still do not even make the “six figures” you claim after they’ve been around for years.
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p>Incompetent bankers, on the other hand, (and there are plenty): helped destroy the economy with terrible business decisions, received billions from the government to bail them out, are encouraged to keeping making the same sort of short-sighted decisions that caused the problem in the first place, and in return STILL (even in the midst of a financial crisis) make more money in a year than teachers will make in a lifetime and end up using a portion of their extra money to contribute to Republicans in order to reduce their tax rates.
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p>We have teachers starting at $40K a year and bailed-out investment bankers making millions. Yet Republicans constantly bash “public workers” and want to continue showering the wealthiest with tax breaks. Tell me how that makes a lot of sense.
I was making mid-seventies 12 years ago when I retired from public schools. My colleagues who are still there are in high eighties to low nineties, depending upon how many advanced degrees they have. Good luck to them. All I am saying is that these public jobs depend upon the largesse of the private sector and taxes on same. Don’t kill the golden goose by getting greedy. And, by the way, the only teachers I know who are making 40 G’s or less are those who are teaching in parochial schools where they expect you to teach for the greater glory of god (ugh).
teachers? Never-never land.
…in a VERY wealthy community.
private school.
First of all, the starting public teaching salary for a number of communities is around $40K, and sometimes lower. Apparently you haven’t been in the business for a while?
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p>Second, given that the absolutely tippy-top of the pay scale is just about $100,000 — which includes only those people with long seniority, educational bonuses, etc. — your remarks about “six-figure” teachers is hyperbole and is quite misleading. The average of all teachers is probably around $60K.
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p>In any case, I’d be interested in your response about whether it makes sense to complain about “greedy” teachers and public workers while advocating for slashing the taxes of the same wealthy bankers whose greed helped ruin the economy.
bankers, and I share your disgust for the unconditional bailouts. The only teachers that I know who are making low 60’s right now are those without advanced degrees. There probably are some back-water towns that are only paying minimums, but the better schools and school systems (Newton, Brookline, Lexington, Concord, etc.) are all at least in the mid eighties to low nineties for your average teacher. You don’t have to take my word for it; all of those salaries are part of the public record and are available on request. I don’t think that I used the word “greedy,” by the way.
Starting salary for a teacher in Springfield for 2011 is $36,300. Top salary — 25+ years and above masters + 45 — gets you $70,803.
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p>Given that most teachers don’t get Masters + 45, average top salary is probably closer to the $65k range. That’s Masters + 15 with 25 years of experience.
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p>For teachers at an age where they are starting to have a family to raise — about 10 years of experience — the salary is about $53,000. That’s not very much these days in an absolute sense. Seems like a lower middle class salary.
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p>It seems to be grossly unfair that some wealthy communities are able to pay in the high $90s when the need for top-class teachers is clearly higher in the poorer communities. Even if you point to the poor results being achieved in Springfield to justify lower salaries — then wouldn’t salaries in the “mid eighties to low nineties for your average teacher” attract better teachers to the system?
some economic stimulus would do a lot more to help the schools there–put those kids’ parents back to work, repair the roads, bridges, railroads, schools, parks there–build & staff childcare centers. That would do much more to raise prospects for kids to learn in Springfield by taking the pressure off their families.
with husband/wife and kids afford to buy even a starter home in today’s economic situation? I didn’t realize that the salaries were so low in Springfield. How about East Longmeadow?
…teach, protect the public, etc. more power to you. I’d be happy to support your work. Public service is a high calling. Instead of being jealous of how great it supposedly is (decent benefits but in many cases comparable private sector jobs pay more), we should work to make private sector employment just as good.
According to Krugman, Smoot-Hawley was not important in the previous depression:
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p>http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.c…
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p>We need to protect US jobs now. Taxes should be restructured to their 1950s levels, back when the wealthiest Americans paid at a higher rate than working Americans (vs. the inverse situation today).
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p>We need a new New Deal, and as in the 1930s, money needs to go directly to the savaged working class, rather than distributed in yet another DLC/Republican trickle-down scheme.
Krugman is no longer an economist but an ideologue who gets paid to spout nonsense. Few real economists take him seriously anymore, and that includes the liberals in my alma mater (Goolsbee, Wheagan, Leavitt)
How about you post a few predictions he’s made that’ve turned out to be wrong?
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p>I’ve been reading Krugman for 15 years, beginning with the book “The Age of Diminished Expectations”. He’s made many predictions, and virtually all have turned out to be spot on.
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p>I think the best test of how good someone is at their craft is the accuracy of their prediction – do you agree?
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p>Goolsbee is hardly a Liberal – as far as I can tell from poking around Google, he’s a DLC/third-way-er. Those folks call themselves Liberals, but actual Liberals are highly unwelcome in the Obama administration.
It looks to me as though Paul Krugman continues to be correct about as often as he ever did — which is nearly always. I invite you to offer the name of even one economist whose recent (or past) predictions have proved more accurate than Mr. Krugman.
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p>I don’t doubt that you no longer take him seriously — did you ever? I see far more ideological nonsense under your byline than his, especially when it comes to economics.
Thanks.
At least can you validate your well-paid claim?
“In early 1999, Krugman served on an advisory panel (including Larry Lindsey and Robert Zoellick) that offered Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues. He resigned from the panel in the fall of 1999 to comply with New York Times rules regarding conflicts of interest, when he accepted the Times’s offer to become an op-ed columnist.[113] Krugman later stated that he was paid $37,500 (not $50,000 as often reported – his early resignation cost him part of his fee), and that, for consulting that required him to spend four days in Houston, the fee was “rather low compared with my usual rates”, which were around $20,000 for a one-hour speech.[113] He also stated that the advisory panel “had no function that I was aware of”, and that he later interpreted his role as being “just another brick in the wall” Enron used to build an image.[114]
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p>When the story of Enron’s corporate scandals broke two years later, Krugman was accused of unethical journalism, specifically of having a conflict of interest.[115][116][117] Some of his critics claimed that “The Ascent of E-man,” an article Krugman wrote for Fortune Magazine[118] about the rise of the market as illustrated by Enron’s energy trading, was biased by Krugman’s earlier consulting work for them.[113] Krugman later argued that “The Ascent of E-Man” was in character, writing “I have always been a free-market Keynesian: I like free markets, but I want some government supervision to correct market failures and ensure stability.”[113] Krugman noted his previous relationship with Enron in that article and in other articles he wrote on the company.[113][119] Krugman was one of the first to argue that deregulation of the California energy market had led to market-manipulation by energy companies.[120]
Not ex-Clinton admin rates, but he ain’t going broke.
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p>I’m not seeing anything interesting in the Enron area, either.
Just as there is a difference between true collaboration and being a door mat.
Where do you think the line is?
There should be an analysis as there was over the automobile industry of the value of the industry and enterprise, and what kind of first aid or other efforts are needed to give enough respite for survival and regrowth, or competitive health.
Hey KB…the line for me is when I pick up an adorable Calvin Klein dress and it’s top dollar and made in China. It’s when I pick up a Jones of NY sweater and it’s made in China. It’s when I pick up an Eddie Bauer vest and it’s made in China. The line is when I am being charged prices that would seem to be predicated on a living wage in the US…but in fact, they’re getting cheap wages in China. So…I put them down now. I don’t buy designer clothing made in China. If I’m going to pay those prices, I want to support American workers.
And all of them bags for sale cost at least $10.00 for less than 50 cents worth of material. For now, I will use an old fanny pack or a ziplock bag.
Using your logic it was awful we switched to kerosene, put all those whalers in Nantucket out of work!
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p>Sorry I am not an isolationist, and if America wants to continue to lead the world and command economic and geopolitical influence it must engage it through commerical and cultural exchanges, not just military might. Free trade is the fastest, most proven, and easiest path to world peace. Also clothes are a hell of a lot cheaper than they were in my moms day when they were made here, adjusted for inflation and percent of living costs. We have access to the cheapest and the best goods in the world. You’re world is one where clothing and food costs are astronomical because only unionized workers make them. Where a whopper costs 10 bucks because the fry cook has to be paid a living wage.
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p>Instead of making our industries less competitive lets make our workers more competitive by training them to have better skills and to do better work. Lets turn our fry cooks into managers, into engineers, into technical workers, into green collar jobs. That would be so much more effective than a tariff. And sure I’m not a free market ideologue, some industries, mainly infrastructure and defence, ought to be given priority to be made in the US and we should focus on creating those jobs. Also maybe Obama should not have privatized NASA and kept 10,000 jobs in Ohio working on the Orion project to replace the space shuttle. Space exploration creates jobs and utilized talent and creates massive amounts of domestic technologies, it should not be viewed as a luxury, especially now that we are falling behind China and India.
This is not the equivalent of the switch to kerosene, this is mostly about social justice. And I’m not advocating tariffs…I’m advocating “don’t buy this sh**.”
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p>You know what this is? It’s about designers using RDE (rapidly developing economies) for their cheap labor so they can sell it at top prices to suckers like us. You can do want you want – as for me and my house, we’re going to keep that money in our own pockets instead of fattening the brand and the shareholders on the backs of people who can’t fight back, and work in terrible conditions. Is this what you want us to go back to? It’s exploitive and wrong.
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p>We can’t compete with cheap labor on the same playing field, JC. Do you think American workers can work for $1 a day and survive? And before you continue along with the “have our fry cooks be engineers” line….how many of those guys are out of work? What’s the demand for them?
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p>What we can do is change demand. We don’t have to be sheep; we are an enormous pack of consumers in our own right, and if we say “thanks, but no thanks” – the designers will get the message. Tell them to sell their crap somewhere else.
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The entire “free trade” notion is that US workers will be able to continue to compete by getting smarter and smarter. While I don’t doubt that many people have the capability of contributing more by getting more education, I doubt that getting advanced degrees is in everyone’s future.
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p>So that means we are pursuing an economy that cuts more and more people out of the picture. As the bar gets raised higher and higher — as we allow more and more competition from countries that are not competing fairly, either because they don’t have the same worker and environmental laws as us, or because their workers don’t have the same costs as ours (like a country that sends their best students to medical school for free, meaning that their doctors don’t have a few hundred thousand dollars in loans to pay back) — more and more people in this country have no way to live a middle class lifestyle.
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p>So are we better off paying a lot less for our clothing, but writing off a higher percentage of our population? I don’t think so. I think that this path gets us to where Europe was in the 1800’s, an economic system that compelled millions of people to migrate to the USA because there was ample opportunity here for anyone who wanted to work. Put in your fair day’s labor and you get a ticket to a better life, even if you were just some guy working in a factory.
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p>Justice4All is right — the price between the $1 it costs to make a sweater and the $99 that you pay for it is being skimmed off by a lot of highly paid corporate types who are living larger every year. Unfortunately, there are few choices left for consumers because it’s just about all made by slave labor these days.
The data wins points in my favor. More jobs were created under Bill Clinton, one of our most pro-free trade Presidents, than under any other. They were all high skilled, high tech, high degree kinds of jobs. Switching to a service economy has benefited us tremendously, more people go to school, there is greater demand but also greater aid and assistance. More women are in the workforce and in higher positions, good luck with that if we try to rebuild male dominated industries. More teachers, more doctors, and not enough engineers, nurses, healthcare workers, teachers, police officers, etc. There are lots of good jobs out there for people with educations and that is why that is the place where we should focus, not trying to deinvent the microchip to justify building more wheels.
that NAFTA really hadn’t kicked in until late in Clinton’s second term. I have worked in technology for 20 years, and we lost many of those high-tech, high-degree kinds of jobs. They went to India and China. We have to make things and impose tariffs. An economy cannot survive on service jobs alone.
Or European or Canadian because at least I know there’s not an 8-year old or political prisoner making my clothes. European is more expensive, but Filene’s Basement often has great stuff for much less than even the made in China crap.
Would you rather fund a middle class, decently educated, unionized European or Canadian worker or help an 8 year old who would otherwise be picking trash have a shot at getting him and his family out of poverty? Fair trade employees far less people and concentrates wealth in fewer hands. I would rather a coffee farm employee 1000 people at 8 dollars a day than a 100 people at 80 a day. That’s the choice.
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p>Also remember a lot of the stuff ‘made in America’ is from American Somoa or Guam which do not have minimum wages. Also many European countries, particularly in the East, have just as bad conditions as Asian factories.
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p>More good news as China and India get its Middle Class the outsources outsource to Southeast Asia and Africa ensuring that more third world countries can rise up and become profitable again. China under socialism and Mao had mass starvation and famine, under capitalism they are getting as fat as us.
There was a time in our country (your 5% numbertime) when people were embarrassed to have children out of marriage. There was a time when people who were overweight were embarrassed. But then we went through a time when it was wrong to single out overweight people, Oprah had shows where we should celebrate our bodies, no matter how big they were. Celebrities began having children out of wedlock and suffered no ill effects. The law became very rigid about unwed fathers financially supporting their children and the social net for unfortunate people became the default means of support for millions. America got fatter and nobody cared, don’t worry, be happy!
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p>I like your ideas of “reverting” back to an earlier time but we all know that it’s a lot easier to give people “entitlements’ than it is to take them back.
That government should have stepped in to a greater degree and tried to encourage marriage and fight obesity? That doesn’t seem compatible with your ideology, JohnD. For example, you say:
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p>To the extent that “celebrities” have been doing this (and that we care or should care about celebrities), what are the “ill effects” that should befall them?
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p>And what do the issues of out-of-wedlock children and obesity have to do with government “entitlements,” rather than a result of private, non-government action (such as the proliferation of McDonalds’ and Burger King)?
We’ve had some things in our society in the past that kept things in check. As I said, in the past we had a “stigma” for unwed mothers. Now of course, I’m sure it’s tough on a unwed mother anyway but the stigma may have prevented millions of other women from the same high possibility of a sad future. But if you remove the stigma, the rates go up. Same with celebrities. I think there are plenty of stories in the past of celebrities breaking our social morays and their careers being terminated. Nowadays, we have the Charlie Sheen’s of the world who break ethical, moral and legal packs with the public… but not only do they not get fired, their ratings “go up”. Too many of these role models do have an impact in kids (I don’t give a hoot what they do.).
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p>Entitlement… how many people are receiving public assistance in some form who are unwed mothers compared to 20, 30 or 40 years ago. The more unwed mothers, the more mouths for the social net to catch and help out.
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p>Throw them out on the street? Have them (and their children, who did nothing wrong) suffer? These are the real-life consequences to eliminating “entitlements” and other forms of social assistance.
Compared to 50 years ago, when fresh food was more common than packaged, there was much less obesity. Ingredients that are banned in other western civilized countries are put into our ‘foods’. Agribusiness has skirted what few regulations govern their industry, and made the packaged crap they produce cheap. Of course, these refined foods are the most affordable and least nutritious, causing an increase in obesity, diabetes, and other diseases of civilization. And of course, it’s easier and cheaper for people on fixed incomes or food stamps to feed their families with this packaged foods, as grass-fed meats and organic vegetables are pretty much out of grasp for most people. I suggest you read one of Michael Pollan’s books, or rent the movie ‘Food, Inc.’ to get a better understanding of agribusiness and the effect that lax or no regulations have had on American health. You could also read Sinclair Lewis’ “The Jungle” for an expose of the meat-packing industry back in the 1920s. Amazingly, it seems we’ve come full circle.
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p>BTW there were plenty of unwed mothers 50 years ago-they usually sent them away to have their babies. Like most conservatives, you pine for the good ole days that never existed.
“The only thing good about the good old days is that they’re gone”. I enjoy the progress we have made in the world and would never go back. That doesn’t mean we can’t point to things from the past and try to recapture certain things. You just did it yourself by saying food was better 50 years ago.
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p>Are you telling me you think the number of unwed mothers 50 years ago was even close to today’s numbers? Obviously this problem has been around from the beginning but I think it’s alot higher now. The increases seem to be similar across our society with whites increasing the most.
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p>Regarding your food comment, I totally agree with the lack of easily available healthy food. I have been on a diet for a few weeks and walking around Stop & Shop is frustrating since 90% of the food there is on my “DO NOT EAT” list. Everything is processed simple carbs loaded with sugar. The other problem with healthy food is it takes time to prepare it and people “on the go” to sales calls or wherever find it hard to quickly make/find “on the go” healthy food. My home made chicken soup is yummy, especially on cold days like yesterday, but you can only eat chicken soup so much. But apparently processed food is what people want since Stop & Shop is booming and healthy alternatives are hard to find.
If the dad has no job, then the mom is better off without him hanging around consuming resources she could be using for the kids.
I substitute teach and almost always buy the same school lunch offered to the kids, hardly a nutritious meal, which I thought the USDA required for school lunches.
I can’t remember a time in the past when people were embarrassed to be overweight. That whole phenomena is a recent development. And the fingers are pointed squarely at them, as though they are a disease ridden, lazy, irresponsible group of people. Being ridiculed, singled out and blamed for the health care crisis really helps someone to reduce stress and focus on a better life style. I am not overweight, but I know a few who are and they feel terrible about it. They feel depressed and guilty as charged by the Barbie and Ken dolls of the world. Weight loss is difficult, and not all people who are a little hefty should even bother trying. It’s just another way of controlling behavior and turning the people of this country into mirror images of the beautiful people that some people, people like you, think they should be. It’s also a way of taking the blame of the health care crisis away from the people who are to blame: the health care and health insurance industries.
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p>Instead of pointing fingers at these people because the are different and making them feel like they are committing the crime of the century, perhaps it’s time to do a study on how the chemicals in food, plastics, teflon and other containers are affecting our health. I’m also happy to wave good-bye to the Old Food Pyramid where it was suggested that you eat 6-11 servings of Bread, Cereal, Rice and Pasta per day as part of a healthy diet. That’s a lot of food in and of itself. I think it’s important to never take what the current consensus is on what is the right thing to do as a blanket remedy for what supposedly ails the country. Chances are we will find out two decades from now that they were wrong.
Perhaps because I lived around people who didn’t find it a positive or time worthy thing to stand around and judge other people. It’s the “liveandletlive” philosophy.
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p>Apparently you grew up around people who were bullies and spent a lot of time ridiculing and trying to control those who were not like you. That makes you a perfect Republican.
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p>Now I suppose that you could say that I am judging you. I’m not actually judging you, I am fighting back. That is because you, people like you and your basic beliefs prevent me and other people like me from being who we are. You go beyond judging and actually try to enforce compliant behavior. You are imposing on my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
I’m afraid I have to get out of my liveandletlive skin and jump into my “fight for freedom” suit. Then it’s not judging, it’s self-defense, in order to protect me and others like me from forced compliance of your perception of perfect. OK
I am overweight and I have heard the remarks from way back when I had to wear “husky” sized pants in grammar school. I was bullied and didn’t bully anyone about their weight. Still don’t (usually). I wasn’t trying to say we should force people to wear a scarlet “W” on their foreheads, I simply meant that we entered an age of “fat is beautiful” (www.fatisbeautiful.com) and maybe that has helped make our country fatter. So I don’t encourage publishing the names of fat people in the newspaper but I also don’t think we should glamorize it.
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p>As for judging people, yes I do judge people and I think we all do. I’m sure you do.
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p>Matter of fact, this sounds pretty judgmental about Republicans…
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p>And regarding this remark…
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p>I don’t want to enforce complaint behavior and I think most conservative people don’t want to either. The “problem” comes up when we have to pay for it. If a self reliant person wants to have a child out of wedlock, pays for the upbringing by themselves, doesn’t require any more social services than the average person, raises those children so they don’t suck on the public teat any more than anyone else… I and most other conservatives could not care less about their choices. But… when this self reliance doesn’t occur, then yes I do care. Celebrities doing this is not a direct concern but the “glorification” of these role models is a concern.
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p>It’s funny how the old axiom about “whose ox is being gored” comes to play on most issues of “liberty”. When conservatives say things like we need wire tapping and other devices to preserve our security we hear people quoting Ben Frankilin…
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p>But can you explain why these same “liberty-lovers” will tell you why we need to ban smoking, ban trans-fats, require seat-belts, motorcycle helmets, mandate health insurance, R19 insulation…” What happened to freedom?
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ideas. Progressives would do well to think about them.
But the Buddhist concept that people cannot and will not do what they cannot imagine holds true.
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p>Therefore, the concept of a marriage tax break, and “entitlement” to education that leads to work that pays better than nonwork may well be critical – to both the economy and healthy tax receipts…as well as meaningful lives based on other than consumption and instant gratification.
though I’m not sure how much good a marriage tax break would do. The decline in marriage rates is a considerably deeper social problem, with many reasons for it, than could be patched up by a tax break (or, in fact, by any sort of government initiative).
not the cause. Young girls with choices and hope of an education and career are much less likely to become young single mothers.
The cure for youthful parenthood is a prospect for success.
As opposed to the right to food stamps for a baby.
Might be the smartest thing you’ve said on BMG and this might be your best post. Democrats, partly because the party has become so much more affluent, have forgotten who their constituency should be-working people, particularly working families of all stripes. Once we appeal to peoples economic aspirations we can get them to come back. We also need to be more culturally neutral. The country is more diverse than San Francisco or Nashville and both parties should stop trying to impose their vision of American society on everyone else. Also a lot more needs to be done to empower states and local government, since that is the place where most Americans get their services. We have to utilize faith based groups and non-profits as well. I really think David Cameron’s vision of a ‘big society’ is a great blueprint for America and for the Democratic party. Also encouraging more cooperatives and worker owned businesses is a good way to get worker and capitalist on the same page and looking out for each others interests. Costco is a great model of that in the US, In and Out Burger another. Britain is experimenting with providing better corporate tax rates for companies that profit share and become cooperatively owned, and we will see what dividends it reaps.
…but our platform is consistent with regards to opposition to things that hold people back. We fight for everyone, but especially those who haven’t always had a voice, be it laborers, women, minorities, LGBT, etc. I don’t understand this theory that fighting for the working class and social liberalism are somehow mutually exclusive. I actually think their quite mutually consistent.
I know you and I have had our arguments over the Catholic church, but a lot of Catholic moral/political philosophers including Chesterton and Dorothy Day were interested in a concept called Distributionism, a sort of third way between capitalism and socialism that relied on local governance and essentially finding ways to create benevolent CEOs and corporations that work for their workers as well as their shareholders. I think if you look past its Catholic origins you might find it quite attractive and complementary to what you are saying. Anyway check out the wiki summary(which in rare form is actually quite accurate) and see if it attracts you. Essentially if you think the state ought to act for the general welfare of the people, than you can buy into this, even if it has Catholic undertones and auspices.
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p>As Chesterton would say on the unfettered free market “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few”
Thanks!
I think this summarizing quote seems to suit your own aspirations nicely
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p>”distributism seeks to subordinate economic activity to human life as a whole, to our spiritual life, our intellectual life, our family life”
and both houses of Congress had Republican majorities.
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p>And everyone prospered mightily.
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p>It’s not “distributism”. It’s “doing stuff that’s been proven to work, time after time.”
The 90% tax bracket did not take money from the rich and give it to the poor. It simply forced the rich to abandon thinking about making gobs of money in a short period of time.
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p>Think about it. If there was a 90% tax bracket for any income over $200,000, and you owned a company, and you started getting closer and closer to $200,000 in earnings, what would you do? Pay yourself a salary over $200,000? No way — horrible rate of return on that one. You’d hire some extra workers to make your business stronger in the long run. Workers who maybe wouldn’t be bringing in an immediate benefit, but who position your business to exist for a long time, as long as you will want to work at it.
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p>The way I see it, the tax rate is the valve that governs how much money flows to either domestic labor or global capital. If the rate is too low, rich people will cash out and try and make even more money wherever they can — speculation is rampant. If the rate is too high, growth will stagnate because there isn’t any capital to fund big new ideas.
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p>Unfortunately, Republicans have succeeded in making any discussion about tax rates taboo. I think that they should be raised or lowered on the wealthy based on economic conditions. It should be a balancing act that can be fine-tuned. Why just on the wealthy? Because they are the ones fueling the capital markets. Poor people are simply consuming.
For nearly five decades, we have built an economy upon a foundation of employing technology to increase business productivity — building better widgets while reducing labor costs. We have succeeded. Beyond the wildest imagination of a 1950-s era economic planner. We have simultaneously doubled the workforce (by adding women) and transformed America from an agrarian to an urban culture — the number of Americans who work for themselves farming their own land is a tiny fraction of what it was in, say, 1950.
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p>There is a maximum to the number of widgets any culture can buy, and we have reached it. Figuratively speaking, we can only wear so many shirts, and our closets are full. The manufactured goods that we require today are made far less expensively by untrained third-world workers operating industrial equipment designed and produced in first-world economies.
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p>We have relied on labor, generally measured by the hour, as our primary mechanism for distributing the wealth generated by our society. That mechanism simply doesn’t work any longer. Most of the value of the modern economy is in the intellectual property held by the handful of entities that control the technology we rely on. That value is most emphatically not measured by the hour, month, or year — the designer of an industrial robot works no harder than anybody else, yet creates thousands or millions of times the value created by the unskilled workers who operate the resulting equipment.
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p>I suggest that we are facing an unintended and unforeseen consequence of two generations of technology revolution: we have, literally, made the skilled worker as irrelevant to the modern first-world economy as the skilled farmer.
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p>Unless we deconstruct our entire economy (which may happen anyway, but that’s a different discussion), we need to change our mechanism for distributing wealth.
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p>Sadly, this fundamental reality makes for very bad politics, especially with an illiterate and innumerate electorate. I fear our children and grandchildren are in for a very bumpy ride.
sinking backwards to socialism?
Rejecting every aspect of “socialism”, “communism”, and “fascism” as we analyze the challenging task we face is, in my view, as destructive as rejecting every aspect “capitalism”, “corporatism”, or any other economic theory.
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p>The point is that the mechanism we use to allocate wealth in our society is broken. No matter whether it’s Republicans, Tea Partiers, Democrats, Socialists, Communists — anybody who tells you that one or another tweak is going to “fix” the “unemployment problem” is lying. There is no fix. The jobs are not coming back, especially for unskilled labor.
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p>It isn’t that America isn’t wealthy — we are astoundingly wealthy, by any standard. The problem, of course, is that our wealth is concentrated in the topmost one percent. That, itself, is compelling evidence that our current model of relying on labor to distribute wealth fails.
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p>I suggest that the hazards (to our ourselves, our children and our grandchildren) of doing nothing far exceed whatever risk we face of “slipping backwards to socialism” (whatever THAT means).
now sinking into as a result of having overexpanded entitlements in order to distribute wealth. You can call their problems by any name that you choose; I prefer the word “socialism.”
I’m not afraid of socialism necessarily and European countries take care of their people. Frankly the “European Dream” in many ways looks like a better deal than the “American Dream” right now.
and France lately?
…and in times like these maybe a bit of belt tightening is in order, but since WWII western Europe has consistently offered much better working and living conditions. My understanding is much of the trouble right now stems from monetary policies rather than Europe’s willingness to provide for its people. Even conservative governments on that side of the Atlantic recognize this as a fundamental value.
I can think of several ideas that would help.
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p>1) Use a “fair trade” standard to implement tariffs. This would make it less attractive to move labor from the US to developing countries that do not adhere to our labor, environmental, and social standards. Effect would be higher-priced goods, but more domestic workers to consume them, more money flowing within our borders.
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p>2) Allow for easier formation of unions. This would put the brakes on the race to the bottom for labor when there are too few jobs. Effect would be that it would be harder to get a job, but once you had one, harder to be throw out of work at a whim. Would also add to the cost of goods and services but would create more middle-class workers.
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p>3) More flexible work weeks. Although we now have two-earner families — double the amount of people in the workforce — it is not reasonable to suggest that women go back to not working. But families mostly have two choices right now — 0 hours of family labor, 40 hours of family labor, or 80 hours of family labor. Maybe people need more than 40 but not 80. Make it easier for people to set hours that are lower than 40 (or 40+!)
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p>4) Shorter work weeks. Everyone laments the decline of the family, if we really have reached the peak production, then it’s time for workers to kick back and relax and enjoy the fruits of labor. Why 40 hours in a work week? Just because? Why not make it 35? Or maybe 30? Isn’t it better if more people are working fewer hours versus less people working more hours? That’s one reason I saw the “flagger” bill as a good thing — it spread the dollars around to more people. And no, that’s not socialism. This would favor entrepreneurs, who could work as much as they wanted — they just couldn’t make their workers work more than 30-35 hours or so.
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p>5) Limit the size of businesses in some way. Every merger and acquisition results in “redundancies”. Yes, it’s more efficient if 10 accountants handle $100 million in sales volume for one company than 15 accountants handling $100 million in sales volume for 3 companies, but the efficiencies gained by eliminating 5 accountant jobs harm the economy if there is no better use for that labor. Think about the ultimately efficient company — one employee does everything (aided by technology). More efficient = fewer jobs. A side effect is that more companies = more innovation and a more resilient economy. One company going down doesn’t throw as many people out of work. More opportunities locally for people too, this strengthens the family because kids don’t have to move away to get a job in their area of interest, a local company may exist to employ them.
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p>On this note, I think that we should prevent massively “vertical” companies because the “taller” a company’s business, the harder it is to compete. What are the odds of someone starting up a new car company? Low, because the car companies do it all. But what if the steps to making a car were somehow more component-based? Odds are there would be more competition in a “shorter” space, such as designing and making bodies for cars. You don’t need as much skill, experience, or capital to design a car body versus designing a car production system.
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p>Just some thoughts. I don’t see simple redistribution as being either palatable or desirable — people need to work to live, idleness breeds problems. I just think that people are not idle by choice, the way many Republicans think.
http://www.poorandstupid.com/i…
Predicting a crisis if John Kerry wasn’t elected http://www.economist.com/node/…
http://blogs.reuters.com/great…
Krugman infuriates me because he no longer speaks credibly as an academic, instead he is a political and a policy advocate for a social democratic vision of economics. The problem is he has been called out repeatedly for bending empirical data to back his personal conclusions, and for writing as an ‘objective’ economist when he makes his columns, which often time are barely about economics at all but veer into politics and religion quite often. If he quit his position at Princeton to become an opinion columnist I would respect him, but he is no longer a true academic in that he teaches and allows an open expression of ideas even if he personally disagrees with them. The Chicago School and Austrian Schools are always wrong, Smith is wrong, only Keynes (who was horribly wrong on a host of issues) and thus Krugman is right. His historical evidence is usually quite poor. He never backs up any of his assertions with academic quality evidence and citations.
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p>I have had professors, both liberal and conservative, spout their views outside of the classroom in forums and the like. We have a lot of neocons, some violently pro-Israel, but within the classroom when they are discussing other concepts they disagree with they give them a fair shake. We got Mearsheimer who is an avowed ant-war activist, anti-Israel activist, and a bit of a paleocon. Yet in class, he gives fair weight to ideas that disagree with his.
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p>A good counter example is Charles Lipson. He is a neoliberal who voted for McCain, voted for Kirk, and has lawn signs for IL republicans outside his home. He and Ambassador Bolton had a fine time with one another at one event. That said, when he went on the BBC or writes for Real Clear Politics he does so dispassionately and as a real analyst. Never once did he say who he voted for the night we both did radio commentary for the BBC and he accurately said why Obama won and why McCain lost. Thats the difference.
Great work, Amber. Sorry to be late to this thread.
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p>But I simply can’t sit by while you accuse my good friend Jim Caralis of using profanity.