“When Medicaid was created, it wasn’t intended to become an entitlement for able-bodied adults,” said Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), introducing the proposal to include Medicaid work requirements in Republicans’ health care bill.
Did you catch that? According to Republicans, and far too many Democrats (some posting on BMG), if one is “able bodied” one ought to be thriving on ones own because poverty and/or the inability to pay for ones healthcare is a reflection on the individual, not the system.
Republicans tell the poor that it is immoral, in their minds, to offer financial aid to anyone who simply refuses to apply themselves and their “able body” into the work force. To them, getting a job is a simple. Just apply yourself. Never mind that when a Wal-Mart store in Washington D.C. planned their opening, they received more than 23,000 applications for 600 available positions, most of which pay less than $10 an hour.
Many Democrats are just as bad, telling these same individuals that any “able bodied” individual can do as they did, worked hard at the first job, went to school, improved their skill set, and voila, they are proud and prosperous. It’s not the system, it’s the individual. These Democrats are excited to help the individual with free college and free job training, but refuse to address the faults within the system.
The American working class is one of the most highly educated groups in the world, and we work more hours than any other working class in the developed world, while we suffer with the most expensive and grossly ineffective health care in the developed world. We are the most able people on the planet, but our equality, empathy, and justice is dis-abled.
I share many of your criticisms about where the Democrats could do better-but I have yet to see any Democrat on this site or in a policy making role endorse a work requirement for Medicaid. Access to care has always been thought of as a right, not a privilege or an obligation. Work requirements for welfare are one thing, I can disagree with the effects of that reform while conceding the intentions were coming from the right place. There are no good intentions associated with this “reform” other than cutting Medicaid via another name. One again separating people into the ‘deserving’ an ‘undeserving’ poor.
So while I contest your criticism of Democrats endorsing this bill-since to my knowledge none currently exist-I will happily join you in arguing that any who do have expelled themselves from the party in spirit. This is a penny wise and pound foolish proposal that actually will increase costs since its making access to preventative care that much more difficult for the poor and working families. We want them to get covered so their health care issues are treated at the source. It’s a whole lot easier to cover smoking cessation than lung transplants, and this is yet another penny wise and pound foolish “reform” from the folks who brought you AHCA and Medicare Part D.
I not not assert that there were any Democrats endorsing a work requirement for government assistance, only that their refusal to blame the individual more than the system adds support to the Republicans that do.
I sat through a presentation given by Senator Warren at last year’s state party convention. It was the highlight (the ONLY highlight) of the day. She spent the hour attacking the system, exposing the faults, and offering real solutions. Not once did she mention “lack of job skills and education” or “a larger work force” as the reasons behind the hammering of working class wages.
Elizabeth Warren has made the student loan crisis and the importance of making college available for everyone a centerpiece of her policies.
Ms. Warren does NOT share your anti-education views, and you insult her by claiming that she does.
Your attack on “many Democrats” is yet another spurious cheap-shot with no substance.
Who are these “many Democrats” who you claim are “just as bad”? I invite you to offer a link that shows Democrats embracing draconian attacks on the poor like the one cited by Mr. Palmer in your first paragraph.
Your relentless attacks on college and job-training programs, combined with your utterly false attempt to tar Democrats with the same brush as Republicans, have more in common with the daily venom offered by Mr. Limbaugh and his ilk.
Please stop claiming to be a Democrat while posting this rubbish.
I think the dichotomy between you two illustrates the divide in the current party and how to bridge it. I think there should be a real acknowledgement that the knowledge economy has created winners and losers, and unlike the asshole in the White House, the Democratic Party doesn’t believe in writing off any American as a loser. This is a huge opportunity for us and Ernie and John are totally right that the party is largely blowing it.
Where I get confounded by John is the constant anger directed at individuals and systems that have contributed or benefited from the knowledge economy. They aren’t the enemy. Education and healthcare is an engine for economic growth and Boston is right to be thankful we have it. The choice between having those industries and not having them is the difference between Pittsburgh and Detroit, Cleveland or Akron. We cannot understate how much of a positive role they play here.
What we all in fact agree on is the need to force these industries and individuals profiting off of them to pay their fair share to the commonwealth. They don’t. We also need to acknowledge that folks like Jeff Imelt can’t keep playing us for suckers. He loves Boston so much we didn’t need to bribe him to come here. We don’t need to bribe anyone to come here. End the GE credits, film credits, and other tax incentives that aren’t needed and redirect that money toward improving Gateway Cities and reconnecting them to Boston via better transit. That’ll go a long way toward fixing the housing crisis and income inequity in the region. We can leverage our regions strengths to solve its weaknesses. I don’t think anyone here is satisfied with what Massachusetts is-and frankly we agree more than we disagree on what it should become.
There is a striking difference between the following two statements:
“I think there should be a real acknowledgement that the knowledge economy has created winners and losers”
“Many Democrats are just as bad, telling these same individuals that any “able bodied” individual can do as they did, worked hard at the first job, went to school, improved their skill set, and voila, they are proud and prosperous.”
Democrats are NOT “just as bad”. Democrats do NOT attack medicaid. Democrats are NOT proposing to slash anti-poverty efforts (emphasis mine):
Please note that last paragraph — Mr. Trump’s proposal would “eliminate loan programs that subsidize college education for the poor.”
It is Mr. Trump and the Republicans who attack the poor and working class. It is Mr. Trump and the Republicans who attack subsidies that help the poor attend college.
Democrats do NOT mount such attacks.
Democrats also have surrendered the potent rhetoric of class warfare to the right for the past 30 years or so. Bob Neer openly questioned my call to class warfare back in 2o13 during my Tale of Two Commonwealths piece. Ignoring that framing led to our loss of the Corner Office in 2014 and loss of the White House in 2016.
So Tom you are entirely right that the GOP in actuality is doing nothing different under Trump than it did under Reagan-Bush. Its cutting every aid and benefit that lifts working people up. My mother got grants to attend Bunker Hill and earn an Accounting Degree.. The grants ended with Reagan’s 1982 budget. Her boyfriend at the time was a typical Reagan Democrat, a union carpenter and Navy vet who had a hard on for the 500 ship Navy while the woman he kept proposing to wanted to go to school and work and couldn’t thanks to those cuts his man signed into law. He was repeating the lie about the Welfare Queen while his own girlfriend relied on foodstamps to get by. I’ve always resented that myth precisely since it demonized women like my mom.
Democrats like Tip O’Neil and Ted Kennedy stuck up for my mom. But what was TANF if not a sop to the racist welfare queen myth and a short term way for the Democrats to win back Joe Six Pack again? It worked politically-as a policy its been a disaster. My sister has had a far harder time getting out of poverty than my mom did, and it’s because there is substantially less aid available to her than there used to be. And today Joe Six Pack is relying on those programs since his back gave out, or the plant closed, or both. He needs Medicaid too. Which is why support for an expanded welfare state is at an all time high.
Yet when Trump talked about job losses to foreign trade, investing here at home, and fighting for the forgotten man and woman my brother in law considered voting for him-despite the fact that my sister and him would literally be left homeless without some of these programs. And its because rhetoric matters more than policy. It may even matter more than results, especially since Democrats are hesitant to take credit for anything.
So I do not doubt you’re correct Tom-our problem is too many people in purple states and districts across the country have grown up without knowing this history and without knowing that the Democratic Party is the true workers party. And efforts by some in the professional class to keep us a socially liberal fiscally centrist haven for their effete elitism isn’t going to win them back. Cory freakin Booker isn’t gonna win them back. Deval Bain Capital Patrick isn’t gonna win them back. We need real leaders who speak blue collar and live blue collar if we want to win again and protect the gains we have made.
Democrats do NOT mount such attacks. That is true. A full frontal assault is not their style. I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I would strongly recommend that you read Winner-Take-All Politics
How Washington Made the Rich Richer–and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, by By Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson AND endorsed by Senator Elizabeth Warren. In it, the authors point out that while the Democrats rarely make a full frontal attack on the working class, they do take some critical sniper shots on occasion that have a devastating effect on labor. We’ve all see Chuck Schumer and Senator Hillary Clinton defend big banks and Wall Street. Senator Cory Booker aggressively defends Big Pharma. There are countless examples that illustrate the disconnect between the working class and the elected Democrats.
Schumer, Clinton, and Booker are/were Senators from NY/NJ. Wall Street and Pharma are hometown industries. Warren, Ted Kennedy, et al also defend hometown industries — even rent-seeking or inefficient ones like medical devices and defense.
I don’t even disagree with you, but there are parochial reasons for those particular Senators’ actions. People who work in those industries vote. And of course the industries have lobbyists.
I tend to ascribe the disconnect between the Dems and the working class at least as much to cultural issues as to actual economic concerns. The Dem coalition has been an uneasy one for generations now. This is a good look:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2017/05/23/how_hillary_clintons_party_produced_bernie_sanders_133963.html
I like what I’ve read of Hacker and I’ll look for the book.
I take partial issue with that since people no longer vote on parochial issues. Senate races are increasingly nationalized. Brown had top notch constituent services and it didn’t save him from having a voting record that was too conservative for Massachusetts in a cycle when liberal turnout was highest.
Similarly Schumer could choose to vote with his party and his base-of which he ostensibly is a national leader-and vote against the parochial interests of his state and get little pushback.
The issue here also isn’t saving local jobs but pleasing well heeled local donors. And pleasing donors at the expense of expanding our base of voters is no longer a choice any progressive can afford to make. So I dispute that on both counts with Booker and Schumer.
When Teddy saved bases it was to save blue collar jobs in Massachusetts-something modern Democrats should do more of. I don’t view Schumers or Bookers record on Pharma or Wall Street in the same light. You can make an argument medical device manufacturers employ a diverse enough and large enough workforce to justify Sen. Warren’s vote. She also verbally assented to the GE subsidies. But I also think the net impact her support really had on ‘saving/creating’ local jobs is negligible. It’s not like the GM bailout-Pharma could easily survive a medical device tax and GE would’ve come here without incentives.
It comes back to both/and, short-term/long-term. JTM wants every job to pay a living wage and for more jobs at all levels to be available. I’ve yet to see any Democrat dispute that, but that is for this generation. Going forward we need to make sure that everyone has access to opportunities to advance and reap the rewards of such advancement as well.
JTM wasts what Adam Smith recommended in his comments about capitalism:
A man must always live by his work, and his wages must at least be sufficient to maintain him. They must even upon occasions be somewhat more; otherwise it would be impossible for him to bring up a family, and the race of such workmen could not last beyond the first generation.
The reality of American “capitalism” is that it socializes the costs and privatizes the risks of capitalism. Walmart and Dunkin and all the rest can afford to pay a wage that will not sustain “a race of such workmen” because they have been able to externalize the real labor costs through government programs that subsidize insufficient wages.
In no uncertain terms, our tax dollars are being used to invest in workers at Walmart and Dunkin and all the rest while the profits from those workers go directly to the owners of Walmart, etc.
Of course we need “opportunity” and “job growth” and “advancement” in the labor market…..but those ignore the reality that when ANY business pays a non-sustainable wage for ANY labor, the difference is eventually made up by the taxpayers.
I think you’re saying that Dems focus too much on raising the ceiling, when you want to raise the floor. Am I right?
I want to raise the floor for us and then lower the ceiling for them. Yup I agree with your assessment.
You used the word “code”. I agree with your use of the word here. It is apropos. Republicans us coded speech. They are using it here.
code: a system of symbols (such as letters or numbers) used to represent assigned and often secret meanings
With coded speech the system of symbols that represent secret meanings also have a surface meaning. Two meanings.
Fr’instance, the Confederacy said “states rights” when the secret meaning was “pro-slavery.”
However…
“States rights” also has a specific, and politically meaningful definition that has nothing directly to do with ‘pro-slavery.’ It is an ABSOLUTELY necessary component of Constitution. So not all people who say ‘states rights’ are pro-slavery…. but everybody who was pro-slavery said ‘states rights.’ It is entirely possible to make a cogent, informed and constitutionally valid argument FOR states rights and be violently opposed to slavery. This is exactly and precisely the reason for the coded speech: the cloak of legitimacy over the illegitimate.
So when you say…
You are lumping Republicans and their secret meaning (coded speech) with Democrats who possibly agree with– or, at the least, are thoughtful about — the surface meaning.
Please don’t do that…
Why not? Why be afraid of the truth? There are Democrats who think the economic model we have is okay, and the low paid working class citizens simply need to “improve their skill set and education”. They are wrong. They are just as wrong as the Republicans who think that the poor are lazy.
As I say below, please be specific. Who are you talking about?
We are New Democrats!
Industrial-era policies won’t work in an office economy – that’s why we support policies that will equip Americans with the skills and resources they will need to adapt and thrive in an economy filled with fierce competition from all corners of the globe.
We believe in fiscally responsible and sustainable policies that put America’s future first.
I asked the “New Dem Pac” what were the “industrial” policies and why won’t they work in an office? No reply.
So the issue there is that office economy policies won’t work in a post-office economy either. That is something both ‘sides’ within the Democratic Party have to come together on discovering. We can’t go back to Fordism but the status quo isn’t working either-what’s next?
What “issues” are they talking about? They refuse to say. What’s next? A shared economy where the government encourages generous profit sharing and/or employee owned companies for starters. It’s a very old idea.
Why not what? This is just hanging out there…
non sequitur.
I don’t know that any given Democrat thinks the present economic model is ‘ok’ (whatever it is you think you mean by that…) nor does the Democratic party, or anyone in it, make the distinction between low paid workers needing to improve and educate and anybody else needs to improve and educate.
The ‘industrial model’ (such as it was) involved, for example, factory workers doing the same work, in the same factory, building the same items, for the same company, over the entirety of their career…. 20, 30 or 50 years. Almost nobody does that any more. The ONLY people who do that are the ones protected by strong unions: teachers, firefighters, police and other civil service positions.
So somebody working in a factory today is going to be out of a job in two or three years. This is not desirable but it is the truth. They are not going to find another factory job with exactly the skills they have now. They will need to find more skills and get more education. This is not limited to ‘low paying’ jobs. Ask anybody who writes code for a living (a career not even an option 40 years ago) how many companies they have worked for over the last decade. I’ll wager a lot of money (and I’m not a betting man) that not a one of them is with the same company they were with a decade ago. Same goes for any middle-management type you ask.
Not to mention that the best, and most tried-and-tested, methodology of going from a low=paying job to a higher paying job is to acquire more skills and to get more education. It really is just that simple.
I wish you would be specific when you say “many Democrats” … as noted above, I don’t really know of any Dems — certainly not locally — who support a work requirement for Medicaid or any other type of medical benefit. Practically every Dem I’ve ever known supports absolutely universal health care, no exceptions. That includes Bill Clinton in 1993, who threatened to “take this pen” and veto any health care bill that didn’t cover everyone.
I am referring to the Dems (take your pick, there’s plenty of them) who see the cure for the current wealth disparity to be “more education and increased job skills”. That is patently false and not supported by the data.
Please cite a Democrat who views more education and increased job skills as a “cure for the current wealth disparity”. Such statements from you turn the truth upside down.
More education and increased job skills are needed WHATEVER WE WE DO about wealth disparity. Even if the wealth disparity issue were solved, today’s workers need more education and increased jobs skills.
Your animus against these vital efforts makes it difficult or impossible for me to bridge the gap between us.
I guess you did not attend the state party convention two years ago, There were several making this case.
Here, I will try to make it easy for you:
If “smarts and skills” were behind the widening wealth gap in the USA in the period of 1970-today, then we would expect that this gap was most pronounced between the 30% of us with college degrees and the 70% without. In other words, the massive wealth gap would have a clear line dividing us as “college educated and well off” versus “no college and poor”.
This is not the case.
The gap did not widen along the 30/70 line. It widened between the 99/1 line and even more pronounced between the 99.99/.01 line. Is it your contention that this .01% has the wealth because they have more smarts & skills? That is simply not supported by the data.
More education and increased job skills are needed WHATEVER WE WE DO about wealth disparity. …as is wearing our seat belts. flossing, and avoiding foods with trans fats…but NONE OF THESE were the cause of the recent wealth disparity increase.
And nobody is saying they were.
You are making a counter-argument against an asymmetry, but you are using symmetry as your guide. Pointing out that someone who got rained upon needs an umbrella, is not the same thing as calling them stupid for going out in the rain without an umbrella…
Look: the villains in the piece are capitalists: they have devised methodologies and have learned a nimbleness that is, frankly, cruel. Any given factory in any given city at any give moment can up and disappear. This is now, a hard and fast truth. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it. Nor, is this situation limited to factories. Operation departments on big companies can be handed over to New Delhi with the same alacrity: 40 year old operations managers with a $80k/yr salary have found themselves without a job as abruptly and as callously as has a $11.50/hr factory worker.
When, as on the occasion of many examples that can be cited, some random factory does up and disappear the people who are left behind are bereft. It is not their fault they are bereft. It is not through lack of skills that they are bereft. But they are left behind. They are willing to work. They are able to work. Their previous employer, because some share-holder pressured a bean-counter to increase the profits, up and robbed them of their job.
They lost their jobs because their previous employer was callous and unthinking. Their next employer is equally likely to be just as callous and unthinking as their last. They need jobs and education to weather the shifting tectonics of the very imperfect capitalist system that we have. So they need to get another job. They will also need to be able to do this job change several more times over the course of their careers. They will need skills and education they don’t, at the moment possess. The fact that they don’t possess these skills is not why they lost their jobs.
And so, to alleviate distress and to keep them off the dole, the government, says the Democrats, needs to make sure that these workers can gain the skills they need to keep up with the ever-changing employment landscape. It’s not their fault the landscape is ever-changing… but it is ever-changing. That’s just a simple, clear, fact. No Democrat, of which I am aware, blames them for the ever-shifting employment landscape. No Democrat, of which I am aware, likes the fact of the ever-shifting employment landscape.
All that Democrats are saying is, unless/until we can change it for the better, to deal with the fast moving economy workers will have to be fast moving themselves and government can help them do that.
As Bill Clinton once said, “If you find a turtle on a fence post, you can be sure that someone put it there.” It’s the same with the wealth distribution in Massachusetts and the USA. Someone put is that way.
Our wealth disparity problem (1970-present day) was caused by the economic system that WE put in place with the elected officials WE sent to Beacon Hill and Washington D.C. It is not because “It’s global economy” or “”more women and minorities have joined the work force” or a lack of job skills and education or any other reasons. It is not a natural phenomenon, it is man made. Employers are callous and unthinking because the law allows them to be. Their employers bow to the shareholders and not them because that is a law that was written into law by our elected legislators. We have a minimum wage that cannot sustain an individual because our laws permit it.
Nobody disputes that. What some are disputing is your characterization of Democrats as people who, somehow, blame the turtle.
The turtle didn’t get up there on its own. It’s also not going to get down on its own.
Once the turtle is up there on the fence it is going to die If it doesn’t get down. It sucks that it is up there. But leaving it there, in the full knowledge that it will die, would be an even bigger cruelty, doncha think?
Some Democrats played a role in placing that turtle on the fence post. Some Democrats continue to support keeping that turtle on that fence post.
The “turtle on the fence post” is the belief that markets know best, that less government is better government, that entrepreneurs and not government programs and research are the keys to a shared prosperity. People who admire the turtle on the fence post admire the “self made man” and believe in a meritocracy. People who like the turtle where it is will tell the poor that they simply need more education and better skills and that is the problem, not the turtle.
That’s not what you said. You’re changing your tune. You said Democrats actually blamed people for their situation, analogous to blaming the turtle for its position on the fence.
Now you want to play ‘blame the Democrats” for helping the turtle to get there. That might be a legitimate beef. It’s not, however, the beef you started off with… You started off denigrating random, and unnamed, Democrats by accusing them of blame low-paying workers for not having the job skills and education they need when nothing of that sort took place.
You started this whole thing by (righteously) pointing out the coded speech Republicans use to hide their agenda and by (unrighteously) equating Democrats policy proposals with acquiescence to that hidden agenda. If Democrats agree so readily and so quickly and so openly, why do the Republicans feel the need to hide their agenda behind coded speech?
Here’s the total punchline to the joke that’s been going around political circles for years, and didn’t begin with Bill Clinton:
“When you’re driving down a country road and you see a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that’s a post turtle. You know he didn’t get up there by himself. He doesn’t belong there; you wonder who put him there; he can’t get anything done while he’s up there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down.”
Indeed. So what’s your point? Do you also oppose wearing seat belts?
Increased smarts and skills are needed so that people can thrive and prosper in an economy that values smarts and skills — even AFTER the current wealth concentration problem is solved.
Once more you ignore what I wrote so that you can flame about something else. What part of the following is unclear:
I am not claiming that smarts and skills are behind the widening wealth gap. I never have. Neither have the Democrats who are advocating smarts and skills.
I find it ironic that we violently agree. The wealth gap widened along the 99.99/00.01 line. I have ALWAYS agreed that smarts, skills, work, and pretty much everything else cited has NOTHING to do with the widening wealth gap.
No Democratic leaders that I know are claiming that “smarts and skills” will close the wealth gap.
Well show me some then — who put the argument the way you describe. Otherwise I don’t really know whom you’re talking to/about.
Even those Democrats aren’t endorsing a work requirement for Medicaid. I think we can argue against this entirely Republican policy without bringing up unrelated disputes left over from the primary.