The one issue that is never brought up by our elected officials or candidates is how the real cost of living is destroying the American Dream. Whenever mentioned, it gets pushed back with inflation stats and brushed off as a non-issue. According to this debate performance. Mitt Romney is the only one who gets it. Here is what he said:
The people who are having the hard time right now are middle- income Americans. Under the president’s policies, middle-income Americans have been buried. They’re — they’re just being crushed. Middle-income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300. This is a — this is a tax in and of itself. I’ll call it the economy tax. It’s been crushing. The same time, gasoline prices have doubled under the president, electric rates are up, food prices are up, health care costs have gone up by $2,500 a family.
Middle-income families are being crushed. And so the question is how to get them going again, and I’ve described it. It’s energy and trade, the right kind of training programs, balancing our budget and helping small business. Those are the — the cornerstones of my plan. c-span.org-transcript
So why does this matter, and most especially why does this matter to women? Because women do the grocery shopping, the clothes shopping, many of them write the checks to pay the bills every month, and many manage the household budget. There is nothing more infuriating than watching ALL your hard earned money fly out the window for basic needs. Especially when the costs have increased at times in monthly increments, meaning that the prices rise so fast that you pay more this month than the month before. At the same time,it takes a year to earn your 3% raise, if you are lucky enough to get one.
I’ve talked about the cost of living before. All I get is inflation stats thrown in my face and then I get told inflation is good. Can we finally start talking about the devastating effects of the real cost of living, along with declining wages, and then do something about it? Mitt Romney can win with this talking point. I’m telling you, he can.
Here is the link to the transcript.
Even if the polls were showing 99.9% Romney and 0.1% Obama, I will still be voting Blue at every level this year. There is nothing that would convince me to vote Red this year, given Akins, the Douchebag Brown, the idiot who thinks the Big Bang is from the pits of Hell, the potential for Supreme Court vacancies over the next 4 years, having lived through 4 years of Romney already, and the list goes on and on from there.
Uh, no. I am trying to convince Democrats to take this very real crisis in our country seriously. I’m not saying at all that Romney has or is the answer. But it seems that President Obama doesn’t have an answer either. He needs to fix that, and quick.
What exactly do you want us to talk about when you say “can we finally start talking about the devastating effects of the real cost of living?”
Most economists are convinced that the closest we can get to a cost of living index is the Consumer Price Index. It’s not perfect but it’s the best measure we’ve found. So what does that show us?
Looking at the seasonally adjusted consumer price index for all items less food and energy (it’s common to exclude these two volatile categories of expense). By this metric, the cost of living growth under President Obama has been *slower* than any other recent President:
Obama’s first 39 months: 5.1 percent
George W. Bush’s last 39 months: 7.3 percent
George W. Bush’s first 39 months: 6.3 percent
Clinton’s first 39 months: 9.5 percent
Reagan’s first 39 months: 20.8 percent
Carter’s first 39 months: 32.5 percent
What about gas prices, you say? Romney says they doubled under Obama. Technically true-ish. They’ve gone from $1.93 to $3.81 a gallon. Almost double. But gas prices are highly volatile and there’s little that the federal government has shown it can do about this. Moreover, the average price was over $4.00 a gallon when Obama was running for office in the Summer of 2008. They fell dramatically with the economic crisis and stock market crash of Fall 2008, hitting a rock-bottom $1.93 a gallon just as Obama was taking office. It’s hardly fair to blame Obama for the steady rise in prices as the economy slowly recovered since that time.
Meanwhile, health care costs (the main other GOP bogeyman) have gone up significantly during Obama;s Presidency. By about 11%. BUT, that’s the lowest level of any previous similar period. They rose about 15% in each of GWB’s terms. About 14% in Clinton’s two terms. Almost 31% in the first Bush’s term and under Reagan. And 35% under Carter.
So, you tell me, why should the Democrats react to Mitt Romney’s lies about the cost of living under Obama?
And still, you’re trying to convince me that it’s an issue that doesn’t merit discussion.
is that 3/5 or more of this country has been taking a hit on wages for at least 30 years. This consolidation of pre-tax income, post-tax income and wealth at the top accelerated under Reagan, slowed down considerably in the last couple of years of Clinton, and accelerated again under Bush II even before the crash. Obviously we had a huge economic shock in 2008.
The President’s major sin, in my mind, has always been failing to push, in his first weeks in office, for a bigger stimulus and one weighted more toward stimulative uses rather than ineffective tax cuts. I believe he could have made a strong case that this was necessary. He certainly should have sold it better (“recovery act” rather than stimulus in all media, and making it clear this was distinct from TARP “Main Street’s bailout”).
If the GOP and their enablers (Lieberman, Blue Dogs, etc. had blocked a bigger request from the White House, the Dow would have gone down dramatically (as it did when TARP lost in the House) and Obama could have put incredible public pressure on the Maine Senators to cave even without concessions. Take to the airwaves, portray all opponents as blocking recovery for the American people, and it would have passed before long.
That might have led to significant economic progress. Of course, Obama didn’t do that and the GOP blocked any future stimulative measures. So the ARRA kept us from 15% unemployment, but didn’t get us back to sufficient prosperity to avoid the 2010 debacle. It’s hard to prove a negative. That Obama joined the Tea Party people in making deficit reduction a key priority, with the economy still in the dumps, was Huge Mistake Number Two.
The truth is things are improving though not as fast as anyone would like, in large part thanks to GOP obstruction. There’s been steady, if slow, improvement in the private sector, partially offset by all the public sector layoffs necessitated by Obama’s bad budget deals. A GOP return to power would almost certainly make things worse for the middle class, as GOP policies been doing for three decades. I don’t know how you convey that to voters, but they better come up with something.
I have been grumbling that Obama did not buck his own party by embracing the Bowles-Simpson plans– which were killed in Congress, in part by Ryan. That would have given him the edge to hammer Romney on debt/budget issues, which he is now having trouble doing, at least in that last debate. So he wound up getting his stimulus, but not the one he wanted, but didn’t advocate for what he wanted, and is now stuck with what he got. He wound up getting debt reduction, but not how he wanted, but didn’t really make any kind of stand about anything, other than token populist positions on taxes on the rich.
In a lot of these budget/finance issues, he acted more like a mediator than a negotiator, never really setting his own positions with any kind of clarity. Yes, things have been slowed by GOP obstruction, but because of the way that things were handled, it is now harder than it should be to make that case clearly.
… might (would probably) have paid dividends in employment and economic outlook by now that would have made a need to use Simpson-Bowles to hammer Romney nonexistent.
did a study on this. Trying to save on stimulus generally results in a smaller economy in the long run and worse not better debt.
I think it’s the wrong game. We’ve needed more stimulative spending, not less, from 2008-12 and borrowing costs are essentially nothing right now. If ever there were a time to run deficits (other than the 1930s) this would be it.
But Obama still has a better record than Paul Ryan. Perhaps embracing Simpson-Bowles more openly would allow him to cite a specific plan, with a “balanced approach” (favorite Dem candidate buzzword this year), but Ryan should have no credibility on budget issues. His own budget is a cruel joke, with numbers based on assumptions having no basis in reality. Ditto Romney’s “plan” if he still has that plan this week.
I couldn’t agree more that Obama has failed to identify a clear position and fight for it in any of these battles. He has generally started with a compromise position and compromised from there. There was a joke I heard about Obama buying a used car. He told the guy his “final offer” was 25% more than asking price. The guy sold it to him for a bit more than that, then called the cops and said the black guy stole his car.
It’s a plan devised by two avowed enemies of Social Security that, surprise, calls for benefit cuts (and I’m expecting Obama, if re-elected, to embrace this to my horror). The plan is heavily titled toward still more spending reductions at a time when public spending is lowest, as a share of GDP, in 50+ years. And (a) the wealthiest Americans have been making out like bandits for 30+ years; (b) those same people pay a historically low effective tax rate; (c) many of them just crashed the global economy.
The three biggest predictors of financial crashes are (1) income concentrated at the top; (2) low taxation of the wealthy; (3) under-regulated securities markets. Romney-Ryan are for all three and Simpson-Bowles does nothing to counter that ethos.
The plan’s anti-government philosophy is evident in its attempt to cap federal spending at a specific percentage of GDP, which (like the balanced-budget amendment), sounds good until you realize it would preclude counter-cyclical deficit spending. Which we may need again sometime soon, after the next speculative bubble bursts, given the unwillingness to regulate derivatives, etc. Even Mitt agrees now that Dodd-Frank was too weak.
I get that liberals don’t like Bowles Simpson. But liberals do not command enough votes to win national elections or enact legislation.
And Republicans didn’t like Bowles Simpson, either. Indeed was they that killed it dead, with an able assist from one Congressman Paul Ryan. There was an opportunity to ruin their credibility on their big debt reduction issue, which opportunity was lost.
In reality, he couldn’t embrace Simpson Bowles, even tactically, because it would have made his liberal base so very sad. But he couldn’t pretend that neverending deficit spending is no problem, either, because it is only not a problem inside the liberal bubble.
So he had a classic base-vs.-middle problem. He could have chosen one, and pushed from a position of strength. He chose neither, and sort of fudged a baby splitting, appearing weak in the process.
I’ve gone around this with you before — what do you expect to accomplish by discussing this?
I think most of us agree with you that the middle class is being crushed. More importantly, the “middle class” — as it existed up to something like the Reagan era — doesn’t exist any more. About 50% of American families are one paycheck away from poverty. That’s not “middle class”.
The problem is wealth concentration, and a GOP/Romney victory will only make that worse. Barack Obama and the Democrats have spent the past four years doing everything humanly possible turn the momentum back towards working people and get the economy back on track — the GOP has blocked every step at every opportunity (because the GOP would rather see America suffer than see Barack Obama re-elected).
What, other than helping defeat Barack Obama, do you think further “discussion” of this will accomplish?
I get your concerns. You state them clearly. Poignantly.
What I’ve never been able to understand is what you actually advocate. The difficulty with this issue is not convincing progressives that it is a problem. The difficulty is identifying something actionable, something we can build a movement around, some Act of Congress we can get passed.
I’d say the same thing about the Occupy movement: concern is expressed, but concern without purpose gets one no where.
Mitt Romney should not be the only candidate speaking to these concerns. Obama has a hard time with this, since he’s the one with a four-year record to defend. He can’t say things are crappy now; people will blame him. He can’t say too much that it’s the GOP’s fault; it sounds weak, even if it’s true, and swing voters don’t get the details of the filibuster anyway.
He’s got to hew a middle course, saying things are on the mend, slowly but surely, from the disaster he inherited, but of course it’s not good enough yet and of course he feels your pain. I think he could say something like, “Every day I get up and do everything in my power to make things better for the middle class in this country. When you look at where we were when I took office, we’ve made real progress. But I know it’s not enough and I offer these specific proposals to finish the job of restoring American prosperity.”
That’s basically what he’s been trying to do all year in his ads, etc. He didn’t make the case at the debate but I hope (and expect) he will rectify that in the next one. But if Romney’s saying what he said, and pinning it on Obama, and Obama doesn’t come back with his own vision for the economy, Obama will lose.
away from glorify ridiculous profits and huge wealth. I advocate sharing the message that such profits and wealth are the result of high costs to consumers, lower wages to workers, and fewer jobs. We can’t seem to get there though, because the candidate likely to say such a thing doesn’t seem to exist. There is no support from either party for that message, including the Democrats. We need to get past the fear of or lack of interest in talking about this and start having the courage to push back that it is unconscionable that we have fewer jobs, lower wages and higher prices in order to achieve ridiculous profits and Wall Street payouts. Until we all do that, and especially allow our officials and candidates to say it with our enthusiastic support, nothing is going to change. It has little to do with taxes or stimulus programs, it has to do with gutting corporate ability to skim off – in large amounts – the paychecks of the working middle class. Here is another idea. President Obama should start using Executive Orders to sharply cut the ability of wall street to set the price of oil and gas. That rip-off alone is very much responsible for the decline of prosperity on Main St. Not to mention how much it increases the cost to run Federal, State and local government. I would really like to know how much of the debt/deficit is due to energy costs. That would be interesting.
I still don’t understand what you actually advocate.
Saying you advocate “changing the culture” is kind of like saying you advocate changing the weather. While it would be good to change the culture in the way you propose, I have no idea how one does that.
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I can’t make any sense of that. First petroleum is a world market and the President cannot dictate to Saudi Arabia and Iran. Second, in our form of government, the President — rightly — lacks such powers. Otherwise President Palin would be able to issue executive orders shutting down the “lamestream media” and President Perry would shut down Planned Parenthood.
Which I really don’t appreciate very much. Let me explain to you about how the culture of America can change with plenty of effort and persistence. Here are some examples: a woman’s right to choose and to vote for that matter, ending slavery, gay rights, just to name a few. Kbusch, if you don’t want help, then don’t.
With a little creativity, I’m sure an executive order could be written to help in some way. Ha, ha, ha about the price of oil being set based on supply and demand. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
May I as well?
if you want to dig in deeper, by all means do it. It’s a free country afterall. It insults me that you are actually questioning the validity of the idea that that we can change the culture of America. You are denigrating my contribution by making it seem like you don’t get it, when I know you are smart enough, thoughtful enough, and worldly enough to get it. Instead of trying to help, you push back and make me work to explain something that no-one here needs explained. I don’t have time for it. It’s such waste.
What idea? How? It’s as if you complain enough SOMEONE ELSE will figure out what to do FOR YOU.
regarding your statement
Actually, that has been a huge difficulty.
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