Dionne on the Dems.
Don’t forget, readers, we post content to the main site too. Today’s offering: E. J. Dionne Jr. on the Democrats’ chances in November: “The Power of Negative Thinking.”
Democrats have come up with a loud “no” of their own, asking voters to reject the Republican past one more time to avoid moving the country backward. The president makes this case by providing some reflections on driving. “When you want to move forward in your car, what do you do? You put your car in ‘D,’” he says. “When you want to go backwards, you put it in ‘R’—back into the ditch!”
It’s a nice line, but will it get enough of his party’s supporters to drive themselves to the polls? What’s missing from the Democrats’ campaign is a willingness to raise the stakes of the election. That may be the only way to inspire the party’s own supporters and move those independents still open to persuasion.
The principled case that must be made is that the brand of conservatism seeking power this year is irresponsible, incoherent, and untrue to the best of its own traditions. That’s clear enough at the most basic level of policy: Conservatives can say that they are deeply worried about deficits, or they can insist that tax cuts matter most. But when they say they can reduce taxes and trim deficits at the same time, they are either deluded or deceptive, and they are playing voters for fools.
Read the rest right here.
How real is the conservative Nov. win prediction when it seems that the polls are made by land line telephone interviews? My 18 children and grandchildren have no land lines[even though I'M a Bell pensioner!!!] all are Obama supporters as are most ‘landlineless young people’. have you noted the 13% land line disconnects every year,, are IPhone and Blackberry people being ignored? I say we have a copper wire disconnect in the media. .. so what’s up?
Good question about the polling business. And when you know at least some of the pollls are commissioned by interested parties, you begin to wonder how “disinterested” the polls are and/or their methodology.
Dionne’s own paper, the WashPost, has this about how much 2010 looks like 1994… a bit like sheep entrails: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/22/AR2010082202859.html
But then Politico’s John Harris raises some questions about Obama’s ability to rally the troops that is worth thinnking about and echoes Dionne’s points: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41356.html
Nice try Dionne – let’s see! You reduce taxes and people spend what they save as is their habit, and what they spend is taxed. You reduce taxes for the rich and upper middle class, they create jobs so people can work (and get taxed) and spend (and get taxed) – Doesn’t sound delusional or deceptive to me that you can cut taxes and people will spend and jobs be created. Let’s see! Obama can pass the Health Plan with 60 votes but waits till he loses the Massachusetts vote and then passes it by changing the rules – deceptive? Trying to make the point that only he can lead everyone to the Promised Land of free health care for only one trillion dollars (kept it at @ 780 million as “trillion” is a bad word) – deceptive? Do I hear 3 trillion? Some may reach the Promised land a little earlier than they want. Ask a few Medicare patients how it is going for them on their appointments and the bill hasn’t kicked in. With the “D” for Democrat and “R” for Republican there is also a “P” for pathetic. Yes he is!
“You reduce taxes for the rich and upper middle class, they create jobs so people can work (and get taxed) and spend (and get taxed)”
Anoften repeated mantra. And the proof is where?
Business are sitting on HUGE piles of cash and where are all of the jobs that they are eager to produce?
I hope they continue to sit on it until they know they can invest without losing money. That’s business!! There’s a purpose to business, to make money. They will create jobs when the economic environment is right, that is, people have money to spend. You can’t spend if you’re taxed to death and till death. You call it a “mantra” – I call it the “truth”.
The President’s D and R witticism reminds me of Jesse Jackson’s limp line in the 2000 election — “America, don’t go back into the bushes”.
Jim S. — It is a mantra. There’s not a shred of evidence to support the ideological notion that low taxes = economic growth and job creation. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence to contradict it. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the average annual growth rate of real GDP has been declining more or less steadily since the 1940s.
1940s 5.9
1950s 4,1
1960s 4.4 (note — the 60s saw corporate taxes at their highest rates)
1970s 3.3
1980s 3.1 (note — the 80s witnessed the beginning of dramatic slashes in
business taxes)
1990s 3.1
2000s 2.6
Also, as you say, the purpose of business is making money — not, let’s emphasize, making jobs. Businesses are not philanthropies. If money can be made without expanding employment, or by creating part-time employment without benefits, or without increasing real wages, it will be done — and it has been done, as the stagnant real wage levels of the last four decades demonstrate. The stagnation of real wages is the chief unnamed culprit in the sluggishness of the U. S. economy, as well as the main reason why capital increasingly must rely on financial bubbles to realize profits. (That’s why this is a systemic crisis of the entire system, not just a “financial meltdown.”) And as Jimmy Mac rightly says, corporate business is perched on Himalayan piles of cash: according to Barron’s, the total amount of “cash in the till” is $2 trillion. Business isn’t going to “make jobs” with that money; it’s more than likely to search out the next financial bubble. Obama’s much-vaunted “financial reform” isn’t going to prevent that.
We also need to keep in mind that much of the money that corporations are hoarding is the result of increased “productivity” which oft-times comes at the expense of employment. People are laid off; wages are frozen or cut; personnel expenses across the board (including the cost of health insurance) are cut, in some cases by cost-shifting to the employees. The remaining employees are fearful of their jobs and keep a low profile, doing more and more for what becomes less and less. The gap between the highly compensated and the rest grows and grows.
Catholics who say that this is business might want to re-read Rerum Novarum and take some of Leo XIIIs to heart. Of course, “prudential judgment” is always trotted out as a justification for corporate and executive greed. Mt 25:40 apparently was not sufficiently attuned to Catholic cafeteria “prudential judgment.” More’s the pity. What did Jesus know about American economics?
That should have read “Leo XIII’s words to heart.”
Eugene – and your answer is: raise taxes, create more government jobs (half of the employees do not work), allow people who can’t afford homes to purchase them, spend a trillion dollars on healthcare, build a 1/2 billion dollar school in a state that is bankrupt, et cetera.
So what is your answer! Trust in the government over the private sector! Would you be satisfied allowing the government to keep all that we make and let them own the property? You cannot spend your way out of this – would you at least agree with that.
” Ask a few Medicare patients how it is going for them on their appointments and the bill hasn’t kicked in.”
I don’t know about appointments, but today I refilled a prescription that used to cost $60. Today it cost $30.
I asked the drug store lady if she had noticed reductions in the costs of medications since the health care bill. She said Yes. Hmm.
I have a father-in-law who had an eye appointment last month and it was cancelled – reason given by secretary: medicare patient. Same man went into the hospital on a Saturday morning with shortness of breath and was released Sunday at 4;00 pm: medicare. My wife is a hospital administrator and sees the difference in “attitude”.
“The stagnation of real wages is the chief unnamed culprit in the sluggishness of the U. S. economy, as well as the main reason why capital increasingly must rely on financial bubbles to realize profits. ”
Eugene –
YOu lost me here. How does this work? I can see why static wages reduce profits and hence reinvestment and jobs, but what about your next point? What’s the connection between financial bubbles and profits? Something to do with inflation?
Sorry to arrive late to the party. I’d like to begin by responding to your post, Jim S., at 2:47 pm yesterday.
“You reduce taxes for the rich and upper middle class, they create jobs so people can work (and get taxed) and spend (and get taxed) – Doesn’t sound delusional or deceptive to me that you can cut taxes and people will spend and jobs be created. Let’s see!”
A couple of points here: 1) In addition to Eugene McCarraher’s point about GDP, George W. Bush’s tax cuts (heavily weighted toward the rich) led to some the worst job creation years in US history—particularly for years that included economic growth. 2) For those who like tax cuts, approximately 40% of the Recovery Act (stimulus bill) was in the form of tax cuts. According to a recent study coauthored by John McCain’s economic adviser Mark Zandi, without the Recovery Act our economy today would be in much worse shape.
“Obama can pass the Health Plan with 60 votes but waits till he loses the Massachusetts vote and then passes it by changing the rules – deceptive?”
If I opposed the Affordable Care Act (Romneycare we call it here in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts), I too would be disappointed and frustrated that the Democrats were able to pass it despite Scott Brown’s election. However, Congressional Democrats didn’t pass the bill by “changing the rule”; they passed it in accordance with the rules.
Jim S., you weaken your arguments by being careless with your factual assertions. (By the way, this seems to be a characteristic Obama shares with Ronald Reagan. For the most part, he remains cool and unflappable while his opponents (some, not all) are reduced to spluttering and flailing about wildly and without much effect.)
Ann — Since corporate business can’t find opportunities to realize profits in the sphere of production (the static wages limiting consumption), they’ve increasingly turned to speculative investment: real estate, the exotica of “derivatives,” etc. Hence the necessity of bubbles: first it was tech stocks in the 90s (then the 2000 bust), then real estate to avert an even deeper crash (which then imploded in 2007-08). What economists call FIRE (finance, insurance, and real estate) now comprises over a third of GDP. That’s what Kevin Phillips and others are talking about when they cite the “financialization of capitalism” over the last four decades. As many have noted, the U.S. economy is increasingly not geared to making stuff but quite literally to making money. That’s not a real economy, in my view, and, I trust, in the view of many others.
Jim S. — Yes, raise taxes on the wealthy. If they can’t buy an extra martini at the country club, neither you nor I should weep. Yes, we should provide housing for people who can’t afford it — what’s the alternative, letting them shiver and rot in the street? Yes, I’m in favor of single-payer health care system; if people want to spend a trilliion on health care, let them. (I’d rather see that than see it spent on the Pentagon.) No, I don’t trust “the private sector” — long a misnomer, by the way — but I also think the government is pretty much a corporatist state, at this point. Yes, we could spend our way out of this — I agree with Paul Krugman that Obama didn’t provide anything close to an adequate stimulus, and now he’s lost his chance to provide another. As an unashamed socialist, I think the only real solution lies in workers’ control of production and exchange, but I know very well that I’ll go to my grave without seeing it. In short, I’m a pessimist about our current economic woes. The Republicrats will never stray from the agenda dictated by their corporate paymasters.
The ‘market’ insiders know that the trillions in corporate vaults will be used in acquistitions now that stock prices are stalled.. The ‘game’ now is to guess who will be taken over.those taken over will eliminate more jobs and build big profits for the very very few. the result is no jobs and more for the market correct guessers. As for the trickle down enthusiasts , how do Hampton houses and Lambergini cars trickle down? The Dow volativity bouncing is the other game.. also no jobs with that. Wall Street is laughing at the ‘right’ but hopes for a ‘right’ victory so regulation goes away. also No traders are seen at Park51 protests.. they are busy with flash trading..again they are laughing at the ‘right’. Their joke now is ‘how can you trade on . anchor babies’?
Luke- where do you get your facts – there are economists are both sides – with all those FACTS of yours you should have been able to see what was ahead- I moved my 401K to a safe fund 12 months before the crash when I saw who was running the Congress – that was my hint – “nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong” (60s VietNam song)- they were all wrong – both sides
if you want to pay more taxes then go ahead and do so – I’ll give you the address – if you want to join the Obama Health Plan then go ahead and do so – are you volunteering for both? No, you want to volunteer me and everyone else to join you because you state some figures and think you are right I have volunteered one thing: to cancel your 2012 vote out.
Jim S said (and some seem to agree with him) “You reduce taxes for the rich and upper middle class, they create jobs so people can work (and get taxed) and spend (and get taxed) – Doesn’t sound delusional or deceptive to me that you can cut taxes and people will spend and jobs be created. Let’s see!”
One can make a decent technical argument that low taxes on the rich (including the rich corporations) will lead to the creation of more capital that can be invested. But there is no case that can be made that this investment will necessarily go towards job creation nor that when it does go to job creation, it will go to the creation of jobs in the United States.
Capital seems the highest return. Sometimes the highest return comes from building businesses that create jobs. Most recently, the highest returns come from various kinds of financial speculation and it has been this way for more than a decade. I think (and I think that you should think) that fueling speculation with more dollars is a bad idea. It may follow, then, that a good idea would be to stimulate demand at the lower end so that higher returns come from production rather than speculation and then and only then do things that will free up capital for investment in production, since that is where it will be most likely to go. But until that happens, the rich serve everyone better by being taxed.
All of this goes to a deeper problem: as much as I love this country, many of us have lost our imagination – we can no longer imagine our country being out of debt – we cannot even imagine someone telling us the truth – no one wants to understand each other – I can understand the typical Commonweal position that we should tax to acquire money just as a business might charge more to stay alive – what I do not get is how we can continue to spend – isn’t it intelligent to first stop spending (Health Care)? And please do not respond how much is going to be saved! The typical Commonweal position is that if it’s a social program that helps the poor then that’s OK – and I love your idealism, and individually and collectively as a Church we should “break every yoke”, but as country we cannot do everything. Commonweal’s position always seems to be that government can. Look how much we as a Church already do in this country! And imagine how much we can do every day instead of spending our time worrying about what the government can do. Let’s get to work!
So your plan, then, Jim, is to use the time freed from having to worry about government intrusion to help the poor?
Grant – that’s my plan – do my part as an individual disciple, as a husband and father, as a professor) along with trying to pay back the IRS for this years taxes -not look to others first – I love the poor too – Grant, how much money would you like to help the poor? What other programs do you want in place? Is there a money figure?
I have said this before and I will continue to reflect on it: I cannot understand how I can be so theologically aligned with Commonweal (i.e. Father Imbelli’s mind-expanding spiritually-moving pieces) and yet so far from its editors on the practical end.
When it comes to preserving the health and welfare of the people of this country, I want more tax dollars spent, not less. When it comes to ensuring the viability of the Social Security and Medicare systems for future generations, I want ALL income subject to those taxes, not the status quo. When it comes to unearned inheritance income (unless you consider being born to well-to-do parents earning something), I want it taxed to the same extent that earned income is taxed, not less. When it comes to enforcement of product and food safety, I want more tax dollars spent, not less. When it comes to providing quality public education, particularly at the primary level, I want more tax dollars spent more WISELY, not less. When it comes to highly compensated individuals and corporate welfare, I want fewer tax breaks given, not more. When it comes to military spending, I want the taxes that are applied being done so for actual needs, not more pork for corporations and political jurisdictions that have the most clout.
“I cannot understand how I can be so theologically aligned with Commonweal (i.e. Father Imbelli’s mind-expanding spiritually-moving pieces) and yet so far from its editors on the practical end.”
Jim S–I think I may be your (evil) twin.
Jimmy Mac – there is no money!! There should be no more bailouts!! Stop spending!!
Jim S, there’s lots of things that are just more efficiently done at a large level that can only be coordinated by something like the government. I don’t just include the military, the police and the fire department. There is also the road and rail system, the postal system, the public health system (in terms of disease control), airline traffic management, shipping management, long distance hauling regulation and lots of other things. The idea that the private sector and only the private sector can run anything is not only a myth, it’s a lie.
Regarding the medical system, the “free market” has simply failed and from a pure business point of view (if not a patriotic point of view) our medical system has become a tremendous drag on the national economy and those who have state run systems have obtained an overall competitive advantage over us. The reasons for this are complicated. But I’ll tell you as someone on a couple of boards of organizations that have a lot of foreigners in them, after the drinks start coming the topic always comes up and I am the only one not laughing.
There is money in the system to pay for a decent national health care system and the current Obama legislation is not, simply not, some kind of scheme to pay for everyone’s health care via taxes. But like any other form of insurance (including Social Security, which is also no more and no less than a form of insurance) it is what we call (in my business) an actuarial fact that efficiency comes with larger populations and the largest available population in the United States is the population of the United States. There is no business on earth that can manage a business involving an entire population better than the national government. We seem to be the last developed country in the world to get this.
Jim S. There could be more money if the tax system was fixed and made fairer.
Let’s eliminate tax deductions for mortgage interest paid. Why should non-home owners subsidize those buying homes? Neither Canada nor England allow this and, guess what, people buy houses there.
Let’s eliminate tax deductions for charitable contributions. If it really is a charitable act, there should be no consideration for the tax deductibility in order to make the contribution.
Those 2 changes alone would significantly increase the ability of the government to fund things that are NEEDED by the greater majority of citizens.
Equitably tax corporations and the highly compensated. Get equitable taxes from inheritances.
If there is no money, why is it still OK to pour obscene amounts of money down the military ratholes? Why is it OK to retain the Bush tax breaks for the rich and favored? Why are many Wall Street traders allowed to treat their earnings as capital gains rather than the income that they are and therefore subject to the same income tax rates that the rest of us pay?
Jimmy Mac- I’m not voting for you – you want to take away my home deduction – forget that – tax the Churches first.
Ah, yes: leave MY welfare alone. Tax someone else’s.
BTW, I support taxing any and all property owned by churches that is not DIRECTLY related to the primary mission of that church. This included rectories, schools, rental property, parking lots, etc.
Jimmy Mac – to be honest, with all your taxing we’ll be able to take over the world.
“Ah, yes: leave MY welfare alone. Tax someone else’s.”
Jimmy Mac –
Sen. Russell Long of LA was the Senate expert on taxes. He said the American philosophy of taxation was, “Don’t tax you, and don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.”
Jimmy Mac – to be honest, with all your taxing we’ll be able to take over the world.
Nope, just take care of our little 310 million person world.