- To oppose and prevent the massive cuts in government programs called for by Republicans, Democrats and activists on the political left need to reach mainstream Americans with a deep message about the harm caused by severe cuts and avoid using a term that confuses voters.
Austerity: 1) the quality or state of being austere; 2) A-an austere act, manner, or attitude; B-an ascetic practice; 3) enforced or extreme economy. (Merriam-Webster on-line)
Now how many of those terms do you use in daily conversation?
Democrats and allied organizations are attacking the Ryan budget as an “austerity budget.” Reckless Republican cuts are criticized broadly for the “austerity” it will impose on the American people. This is a poor choice of words.
The word austerity is not widely used or understood. “Austerity” does not trigger compassionate emotions or liberal political responses from most people. It is not evocative. It does not resonate with meaning for most people.
When Democratic and progressive leaders use “austerity” to criticize conservative proposals they are not helping their cause. Rather, by using that term they stunt voters’ understanding of conservative politics and the harm cuts to government programs will inflict on the majority of Americans. Using this term, Democrats and activists only confuse their potential supporters and erect a linguistic obstacle to wider acceptance of their critique.
In fact, it’s in the kid’s version of the Merriam-Webster dictionary that the meaning of austerity is really spelled out: “Austere: …living a harsh life with few pleasures.” This is the meaning, this is the impact, of conservative economic and fiscal policies that Democrats and advocates need to explain in real-life terms with examples.
The Ryan budget, the debt ceiling battle and tax cuts for multi-millionaires are opportunities to elevate the debate over policies to create jobs and renew our economy. Democrats and progressives will help Americans understand the connection between conservative proposals and the harmful real-life consequences if they avoid using a blanket term that confuses voters.
Substitutions for austerity: severe, reckless, harsh, destructive, harmful, damaging, cruel, dangerous
taking money from the 95% to further reduce taxes on the 5%. Which is what it is.
Since the 1950s, the total federal tax burden on America’s wealthiest has dropped by two-thirds, while it’s doubled on a median income.
How’s this for a sales pitch: “Attention Working Americans: We’ll halve your taxes by restoring taxes on the wealthy to the rates they used to be at. By the way, back in those days, unemployment was low, everyone’s standard of living was going up quickly, and a single wage earner could support a middle-class family.”
Manny I think you are on the right track, but I still think our framing is off/non-existent.
We need to be thinking freedom, justice, and other core American values and then we need to tie it all back to something voters can relate to: their friends, family, and neighbors who are suffering.
We need to talk about values and do our best to stay away from the policy minutia.
On the surface it looks like they borrowed ‘austere’ from the Brits, who also use ‘scheme’ to describe fundraising, programs, etc., and that term has quite a negative aura here.
It is a political, and, psychological thing. Use the right words to swoon voters, and they won’t think you will make decisions that hurt them…a bit of quasi-circumlocution…
I think it should be framed in economic terms. People don’t realize that Republicans believe that you, me, and 99% of the country are making too much money. This is their underlying tenet – they want to drive down the amount of money that people earn. They want to drive up the amount that we pay for goods and services.
Although the terms above — “severe, reckless, harsh, destructive, harmful, damaging, cruel, dangerous” — invoke emotions, they don’t really describe the philosophy that well, and run the risk of being overused and being not believable when uttered for every Republican proposal.
Is the problem a lousy economy and government debt, or is the problem that the rich don’t pay enough taxes? For the other side, isthe problem a lousy economy and government debt, or is the problem that taxes are too high?
Still sounds like a snake-oil pitch, opposed at least to the GOP snake-oil, but snake oil nonetheless.
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As far as the Ryan budget goes, it does indeed appear to be a dead letter. Doubtless Democrats will try to use it a lot in 2012, but I can’t imagine anyone other than people who already were going to vote for Democrats are going to care about a position taken on an old budget. There will be new issues that actually seem relevant by next fall.
One wonders why the Senate majority leader did his GOP colleagues the favor of killing this issue dead when no one was really paying attention, rather than letting the issue burn on and damaging them. He doesn’t seem like much of a strategist, that Reid. Why is he majority leader, anyway?
“Austerity” might be a new term applied to the American experience but it is one that makes frequent appearances with reference to poorer countries. I like its use because it implies that the GOP plans to treat the U.S. economy as if it were a third world economy. It gives it an uncomfortable foreign feel.
The choice of words, though, is secondary to having a narrative. The Republicans have narratives:
1. The recession was caused by over-regulation. Over-regulation, per the GOP, is always messing up the economy so of course it caused the recession.
2. Housing policies favoring the less well-off caused the economic collapse. Whenever we give stuff to people who don’t deserve it bad things happen.
3. The soaring national debt caused by spendthrift Democrats caused the recession and Democrats are just trying to make it worse.
Those are their stories. Yes, they are wrong and stupid. But they have traction. Lots of it. Simply yelling “reckless! reckless!” doesn’t undermine these Republican stories — especially when there’s a whole bunch of Fox commentators, er, candidates pushing them.
1. pure hogwash
2. There is a significant kernel of truth here, whether you like it or not.
3. At this point, even if it were politically possible, spending another few hundred billion on mythical “green jobs” and another quickie subsidy to allow local government to spend more than it is able for another year isn’t going to be helpful. In any event, the advocacy of something that is politically impossible is just as much a fantasyland policy, based solely on hallucigenic ideology, as Pawlenty’s proposal to just “grow” the economy at 5%.
Regarding the second point, the people who received mortgages they couldn’t afford were victims, not perpetrators. The perpetrators were the mortgage companies like CountryWide who knew full-well that they couldn’t afford them.
The crime was bundling worthless debt obligations with essentially NO collateral as top-grade paper. That crime was perpetrated by the white-collar high-rollers that the GOP has always represented. The perpetrators were able to pull off their heist because the GOP pulled the regulators off the street.
We all paid, and are continuing to pay, the price.
The urge to separate the world into black hats and white hats is rather useless in this context.
1. Various circumstances, including but not limited to sustained trade deficits sustained over decades, lead to a lot of capital looking for a home. A bipartisan failure, at best, and not even clearly subject to political intervention. Banning imports maybe? Wasn’t that Ross Perot?
2. Easy credit conditions after 2000, after the Fed lowered and then lowered interbank rates– made borrowing really cheap. Technically a Republican policy, but I don’t think that Democrats at the time were advocating provoking a recession in 2000 in order to avoid a worse recession later, nor do I remember them carping to get the rates back up and slow the economy mid-bubble.
3. Government policy encouraged subprime lending as a means of getting lower income people into owning their homes. Pushed by Democrats. Embraced for a time by Bush–“the ownership society” (I think he thought that mortgages make Republicans) but later renounced by Republicans looking to deflect blame for the conflagration. But, at core, this was an initiative pushed by the Clinton administration, and briefly me-tooed by Bush during the brief flowering of compassionate conservatism.
4. As easy credit drives up prices, and the more profitable loans are going to risky borrowers, credit standards collapse utterly, as loans are made solely on collateral value and investors look for better returns. This process is greatly accelerated by the multiple layers of leverage allowed by the totally unregulated derivatives market, and a Bush administration decision to reduce capital requirements which allowed investment banks to overload on systemic (too-big-to-fail) risk. Though now associated with the GOP, these de-regulation decisions weren’t exactly opposed by anybody, and indeed still aren’t except by lip service.
5. And lastly, predatory lending. The biggest bat-and-switchers, Countrywide and Ameriquest, collapsed outright. These loans certainly seem to be more talked about than seen though. Most loans that I have seen described as “predatory” in my practice are more rightfully described as “subprime.” That is, a loan made to someone who should really be a tenant and not an owner.
All of these conditions necessary but not sufficient to cause the firestorm. And our esteemed Democrats in Congress: ignore factors 1, 2, and especially 3; make a lot of noise on 4 without actually doing anything at all; and “fixing” 5 by making a new government department which will eventually mandate that there be more paperwork to ignore at real estate closings, and will dramatically reduce access to credit by the poor.
Potemkin policy, driven by ideology rather than reality.
And I’m supposed to treat these guys as the responsible ones?
Where does the concept of “securitized mortgage” fit into your bunkum schema?
Meanwhile, in your (2), (3), and (4), I fear you miss the role that illusory “growth” played in the popularity of the Bush administration. Let’s not forget that the during the runup, the GOP owned the House, the Senate, and the White House.
However finely you want to carve it up, the fundamental truth remains: the banking and finance industry was out of control. It was, like Enron, running up illusory gains based on a Ponzi scheme that HAD to fail sooner or later.
I’m not talking about JUST predatory lending, I’m reminding us that the ENTIRE INDUSTRY was essentially fraudulent. That’s why it’s been so hard to unwind, because the truth is that the major players (like BoA) still have a solvency problem.
President Obama is faced with a very real dilemma. Our major banks are still very fragile. The fraud they committed during the Bush era was staggeringly large, and as a result our major banks still have a major solvency issue. Even a mild second-dip in real estate will cause huge problems for BofA. If President Obama is too aggressive in prosecuting the very real crimes that almost surely occurred, the result will be to draw attention to the fragility of the current banking system at a time when it cannot withstand another shock.
Regarding white and black hats, let me just review the comment history:
If you feel that it is “useless” to attempt to differentiate victim from perpetrator when discussing how millions of Americans have lost their homes and their retirement, then perhaps you might rethink the “Kernel of truth” you claim in the GOP narrative.
The GOP DOES blame the collapse on its victims. No matter how rapidly you wave your hands, the collapse was still caused by the banking and finance industry. The collapse didn’t just “happen”, it was caused. There were perpetrators.
Like it or not, those perpetrators were not the millions of people who lost their homes. I think the facts show compellingly that those perpetrators were the banking and finance industry, and were therefore overwhelmingly Republican. You apparently disagree.
that you’re going to pound reality into the narrative that you already believe in order to reach the conclusion that you have already reached.
Absent either Democratic policy priorities or Republican policy priorities, there would have been no bubble, and hence no pop. Worse, in your, and your parties’ effort to yammer on about “predatory lending” you/they forgot to fix the policies that ACTUALLY caused the crisis. Is the derivative market regulated effectively now? No. Are measures being taken to ensure that risk does not accumulate in a too-big-to-fail financial institution? No.
But, dang it all, we’re going to get those predatory lenders, with disclosure forms! Wait, are we going to restrict mortgage lending to high-risk people? Damn right! Lenders have to keep the credit risk of loans they originate. Great! Oops, unless those loans are “Qualified Residential Mortgages”– which are legally defined as low-risk. Here’s where you expect that the 20% down payment will be required, but no: Democratic AND Republican lawmakers, all of whom declined to define what a low-risk mortgage is in their legislation, now say they don’t want down payments to be a factor because that might mean that poor people can’t get loans. So much for discouraging subprime lending; once again, it will be subsidized, as it was before.
Well, OK then, we’ll just ban various kinds of high risk consumer lending, such as check-cashing stores, payroll lenders, pawn shops, and rent-to-own, because they charge interest rates that would not be appropriate for moderately well-to-do borrower; they’re PREDATORS! Thus “helping” those high risk borrowers by depriving them of access to legal credit, and leaving them to rely in a pinch on extra-legal/non-legal credit. Quite the accomplishment, that, Democrats.
jested the Pilot. And though he did not stay for an answer, this time he did leave a forwarding address.
Happy days.
You wrote:
The emphasis on “predatory lending” is yours, not mine. I didn’t even use the phrase in my comments here. I said nothing about “check-cashing stores, payroll lenders, pawn shops, and rent-to-own” — that’s all your elaboration on words I never said.
The “creative” instrument that caused this problem was the “securitized mortgage”: taking notes that are shaky to begin with and slicing and dicing them into a gazillion pieces, reassembling them, giving the result a fancy new name, and then pretending the exercise somehow increased the value of the underlying properties.
As I understand it, the problem is also not limited to the victims of classic “predatory lending” schemes. During the Bush administration, increases in consumer spending were fueled to a great extent by second (and third, and fourth, and …) mortgages, in most cases to middle-class home-owners (and speculators). The banks were only too happy to let the appraised values run up, the government was only too happy to relax the constraints (including tax constraints) on how the proceeds from those mortgages were spent, and so Aunt Mary and Uncle John borrowed against the (paper) equity of their home to replace the wage increases that did not happen during the period.
It made great politics for the GOP, because the administration could claim the economy was doing great. The banking and finance industry loved it because they were making money hand over fist — money they were effectively stealing from homeowners. A huge swath of middle-class homeowners loved it because it kept them alive during a time when real wages were falling.
The whole house of cards eventually came down because it had to come down, like every other Ponzi scheme.
The sad truth is that we destroyed our economy between 2000 and 2008. The illusory growth in real estate prices, together with the bubble caused by consumers spending funny-money, obscured the rot that was eating away the foundations of our economy.
The squawking about the “collapse” of the economy since 2008 is precisely like the complaints of the Enron shareholders about the money they “lost” in the Enron collapse. The growth itself was fraudulent; there was no money to lose.
The only economic policy you’ve heard me harping on is the dire necessity of reversing the extraordinary concentration of wealth that is strangling the consumer economy. More three-card monty games around consumer credit are NOT going to fix anything.
I am convinced there is a bug in the javascript that runs these pages. I am quite certain I clicked the correct link in this response to CMD. I think there’s some sort of race condition or similar Javascript bug.