The problem is getting low to middle income people to stop voting against themselves. Good luck with that, they all seem to think they are going to be billionaires someday so better keep those billionaire taxes low.
Either that or by bribing the wealthy with low taxes they might only ship out half the jobs overseas instead of all of them.
It's just dumbfounding. Election after election, over and over.
"The great bulk of the legal voters of the South were men who owned no slaves; their homes were generally in the hills and poor country; their facilities for educating their children, even up to the point of reading and writing, were very limited; their interest in the contest was very meagre—what there was, if they had been capable of seeing it, was with the North; they too needed emancipation.
-Ulysses S. Grant
People fighting or voting against their own self interest has gone on for a long time, sadly.
I've come to the conclusion that the logic becomes "well if I can't have it, no-one will". People basically trying to take away assistance/help to others by trying to vote it away from everyone, since they somehow perceive themselves as better than others suffering on the lower rungs on society.
This also explains why people try to vote away unions and benefits for teachers/schools, the very foundation of society, while they are okay with CEOs having multi-million annual stock bonuses while getting paid $1 to dodge taxes.
The biggest scam is that the wealthy have managed to convince even the poorest that they are just a "little hard work" away from being a successful owner of family business or the next Donald Trump. It is the American Dream.
So ... they should vote accordingly and just get their future selves those nice tax cuts for when they become wealthy.
There is also the good'ol "trickle down" trick. Vote for us and we'll trickle it down, we promise...
Steinbeck: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
I was pretty surprised when I learned about Huey Long - he was a genuinely left-wing US pre-war politician (including Governor of Louisiana and Senator).
I think your last sentence is painfully false. I don't think most people are OK with CEOs dodging taxes. I also don't think they have the slightest clue (I sure don't..) of what to do with it. These things are decided in the details (capital gains vs income in this case) that I think can very easily fly past most people. Then it comes down to rhetoric/politics, and no one ends up winning once it's at that point.
I also don't think that people are trying to vote away unions and benefits for teachers/schools, but unions/benefits for crappy teachers/schools. It's incredibly difficult for schools to get rid of bad teachers, and a decent number of people come into contact with it. This doesn't do anything for the other side of the equation — getting less bad teachers, but again, I don't think spite is the reason people vote against teachers unions.
"I've come to the conclusion that the logic becomes "well if I can't have it, no-one will"."
I don't think the poor who consistently vote Republican really care about the economics of social services. That's too removed and abstract a concept for them (ironic, given that it affects them directly). Instead, they're voting emotionally: on social values, and on the politics of identity and nationalism. These abstract concepts are very "real" to a lot of Americans, because they're the things people cling to and hold fast when everything else is taken from them.
Bear in mind that a lot of these people have seen social values work for them amidst their own circumstances. Those among them who work their asses off, keep out of trouble, go to church, stay clean, and don't overspend will do markedly better than their peers who slack off, abuse government assistance, and engage in reckless behavior. Meanwhile, a preponderance of military personnel are drawn from the families of the working poor -- so these folks eat, breathe, and sleep patriotism. They love America, even if the version of "America" they love is largely a myth.
Republicans have become masters of speaking the language of identity politics and values. They understand what tune these guys want to dance to, and they play it flawlessly. Meanwhile, Democrats are tonedeaf. Nevermind that Democrats may actually have the interests of the little guy in mind; they don't speak the little guy's language. And that makes all the difference.
Case in point: the Democrats consistently talk about "the middle class," and sometimes "the working class" or "the poor." Meanwhile, Republicans always talk about "Americans." They rarely even speak of classes or social divides. It's a brilliant rhetorical gesture, because it recognizes that the working classes don't enjoy hearing about how shitty their lives are. They don't like the labels. If you ask them, many of them won't even agree that they're "working class" or "poor." They're in denial, and it's a defiant denial. They're too proud to face reality, and when Dems constantly throw the reality of their misery in their faces, they get angry and resentful.
There is a huge difference between voting on compensation for public employees, and punitive taxation on private employees.
Plus the vast majority wouldn't vote for teacher pay cuts. There are a few exceptions, but look at the trends for education spending. America spends more per capita on education than most developed countries.
I keep trying to formulate my take on this, and failing, but here goes anyway:
The democratic party and American leftists no longer understand non-college working people and, for the most part, no longer reach out to them. Working people think that the left today advocates either for weirdos or for the completely screwed up, and wants everybody to pay for its programs to help said weirdos and fuckups. There is some valid reason for this impression, with the Great Society programs and affirmative action in the sixties and seventies being partly funded by taxes on the middle classes, along with fiascos like school bussing and over-compensated hiring practices screwing over people who didn't feel like they deserved it. (And poor management of government agencies making them ineffective at cost effective delivery of services.)
However, working people don't see themselves as fuckups (because they're not), and they don't have a lot of patience with weirdos. So they aren't going to feel comfortable with the gay marriage/ social worker part of the left (the old union guys were socially very conservative for the most part).
Also, most of the left today seems to me to be made up of people who really have no connection to actual poor working class people, so there is automatically a divide that is mobilized by the Karl Roves of the world.
Furthermore, if you have ever been lower middle class or "working poor", you learn early that very traditional personal character values can make the difference between you and your family living in a truly shitty situation or rising out of the muck around you to actually have a decent marriage/ nice friends/ safe home. So when college educated lefties come around and tell them to have pity on fuckups and weirdos because its society's fault, or that personal character and traditional values don't matter, any working class person is likely to tell them to go to hell.
So today's Republicans mobilize personal character rhetoric, traditionalism rhetoric, and the cultural non-understanding between leftist leadership and working people, and -- voila, working people voting against their own interests.
Until the left figures out the working classes again -- which means taking the time to show up in the middle of the country, go to church, eat ribs, etc, etc -- Capital will continue to screw everyone. So quit whining about how stupid working class people are -- nobody represents their interests today, neither left nor right, but at least the Republicans pretend.
I think your analysis is close to home, but with one huge caveat: it really only applies solidly to the white working class, which is these days only about half the working class (though it depends on how you define "working class"). The black and hispanic working classes, which are a large portion of the country, are strongly organized within the Democratic Party, though the hispanic working class is a bit more split.
There are plenty of disconnects between them and the white middle-class wing of the party as well, especially around issues like gay marriage and separation of church/state, which tend to be seen as "rich white liberal" issues. But I think it's a bit more complicated than simple conservatism, and it's often more than balanced by significant left-leaning sentiment on economic issues. There is, for example, huge support for social safety nets, welfare systems, socialized healthcare, etc., among the non-white working class. If you put single-payer healthcare to a referendum in black working-class neighborhoods in Atlanta or Brooklyn, it'd pass by lopsided majorities. So I think the left wing of the Democratic party is fairly well in tune with that portion of their concerns, but most of the party is arguably out of touch by not being left enough on economics, promoting more of a middle-class, centrist liberalism that's roughly ok with the economic status quo and not very interested in major social-justice initiatives.
There's also no real cultural understanding between the GOP and this segment of the working class: a good showing for a Republican is 10% of the black vote, almost all of it coming from the wealthier portion (i.e., they only connect on class issues). But I agree that the Democratic connection is not great, either, especially if you take the national party; they're often seen as economic-centrist social liberals, less bad than the GOP but not really willing to fight for the working class on economics (or at least not succeeding at doing so).
> They're just, apparently, completely unable to actually get those initiatives through Congress.
There is a Progressive Caucus in Congress but they just don't have the numbers to pass anything, especially with a refusal for any sort of compromise from the Right. And there are simply too many Blue Dogs that will tow the line in the middle.
If someone were a "liberal", it would be best to get progressive candidates in Congress, not just any Democrats.
Ok, so the urban leftist elite don't get "Joe Six Pack". Then why don't the working people go left on their own?
Here's the thing: they did. They just don't know it. The rural populace gobble all sorts of government programs, from farm subsidies to electric power generation. Most of the solid Republican states receive more federal spending than they pay.
And the GOP knows it, so it keeps Farm Subsidies off the table while it takes pot-shots at NPR.
> However, working people don't see themselves as fuckups (because they're not), and they don't have a lot of patience with weirdos. So they aren't going to feel comfortable with the gay marriage/ social worker part of the left (the old union guys were socially very conservative for the most part).
I'm not sure if this was always the case though. In the 60s and 70s it seemed that the weirdos and labor guys were able to work together because they had the same goals. And we have seen this recently with the labor protests in Wisconsin: they were started by university TA's but picked up by sanitation workers, cops, firefighters and the like.
I don't think it's fair for the working class folks to just write off everyone else just because they're "weirdos." Social issues can be just as important economic ones. Plus I think it's extremely shortsighted that someone will not be able to work with me on shared goals just because I don't go to church or eat ribs. I know these are just examples you brought up, but it's dangerous for people to never reach beyond "one of us."
The mistake of the Democratic Party was to abandon the unions and to embrace corporations as a source of funding. This continues to this day as Obama never supported the Wisconsin workers.
Forgive my reply to myself, but I have been thinking about this all day. Here are some random thoughts, partly for my own edification, but partly because the conversation seems to be lingering:
I actually think the "core" of the democratic part / left is the marginalized on one hand, and those that minister to them on the other. The white working class aren't really marginalized like they were in the depression and earlier, so don't fit in anymore -- but the super poor are marginalized, so they fit. Non-whites are interesting -- 40 years ago, blacks and latinos were marginalized as weirdos, except they were poor too (double whammy -- like being gay AND broke all the time). Now that we are actually becoming a less racist and homophobic society (slowly and imperfectly, but definitely) these folks lose their marginalization and drift away from the core since social conservativism and personal character ideologies become more appropriate, unless they go to college and become social workers and join the ministering class rather than the ministered-to class. The Republicans see this with latinos and keep trying to bring them in; they haven't succeeded yet, but they will, just like they did with Italians and Catholics.
The other, maybe dominant group now, in the democratic party are those folks who would have been "Rockefeller Republicans" back before Reagan and Goldwater redefined the party. My family is in this camp, and so are, I think, all the smart capitalists who run/ own businesses that require lots of infrastructure and educated employees -- the Hewletts and the Packards, Bill Gates, Hollywood, Google, the rest of the educated "blue" USA. These guys rightly understand that simplistic market bullshit and simplistic christian bullshit are not appropriate to a complex industrial economy. Remember, Carnegie ordered the slaughter of unionizing steelworkers, but he also understood his world was completely fucked without universities and libraries to make his engineers and managers. He could have been a Clinton democrat today.
A couple of replies to people:
Yeah, Eric Hoffer is great -- I only read the true believer, but it made a huge impression on me; I am sure I repeat him without knowing it.
To the guy who asks why the Joe Sixpack world doesn't evolve its own leaders (forgive me if I paraphrase too brutally): because they lack the training or they wouldn't be joe sixpacks in the first place... It is mostly the managerial class (myself) or the owning class (my friends at prep-school) who have the know-how to organize people into social systems like political parties, churches, businesses, and the like. The working class have great hand-eye coordination, but pretty crappy social and language skills (sorry for the gross generalization, but I think you understand what I am trying to say); those that do have these skills tend to drift upward into the managerial class. When there is no room for these smart organizers to promote, they get involved in union politics or communist cells (or avoid the question altogether by getting involved in the arts/ drugs/ weird religious things / whatever.)
So here is my parting thought: There is a vacuum organizing the working class today, and if someone put their finger on the cultural stuff like the Republicans do, but also fought for working people's actual interests, it could be a WILD ride. Just saying.
So at what point are the "working poor" not stupid by voting for taxes against the rich instead of tax cuts for the "working poor".
All the stuff you said is media nonsense and frankly suggesting that the republicans in any way represent the working poor is, well, nonsense. What you seem to be wanting is some sort of friend who can tell you that gays or gay marriage is bad, church is good, though I bet you or the working poor never go, and that character matters, but that this friend of yours takes a lot of your money you desperately need in order to take less from filthy rich people that actually do not need it at all does not seem to matter to you at all or indeed this characteristic of this friend of yours does not seem to bother you at all.
I'm not sure what you're on about, because there's no party representing the left either. The US Democrats are a fair way to the right of the conservative party here in Australia, yet in my discussions with americans there are a great many people who would be considered left-wing here in Aus. There appears to be no choice for the left in the US, so how "the left better understanding the working class" would change things, I'm not sure.
This assumes low to middle income people are single issue voters and that issue happens to be the effective tax rate of billionaires. What's dumbfounding is that there are people who believe that wealth is zero-sum, and that by taking from the rich and giving to the poor, "justice" would be done, never taking into account what produces wealth or the fact that living standards have improved despite the rich getting richer. 99.9% of us will never become billionaires, but so what? If my neighbor has a nicer car than me, should I try to get the government to raise his taxes and decrease mine? Why not? Here's a possible reason: The conditions that permit my neighbor to drive a nice car are the same conditions that produce billionaires.
Just because I want Warren Buffet to be able to keep most of what he produces doesn't mean I believe I will be in his shoes one day, it just means that I don't trust people who are trying to take more of his money in order to improve my life. Warren may trust those people, but his life really doesn't need much improvement now, does it?
living standards have improved despite the rich getting richer.
Citation needed. Please explain how the living standard in the US can have improved if real wages have fallen. Oh wait, the answer is an incredible increase in consumer debt. That seems to be working out.
Please explain how the living standard in the US can have improved if real wages have fallen.
If by "real wages", you mean "wages adjusted for chained CPI" (this is what most people mean), the answer is because the basket of goods used to compute CPI has become larger.
I.e., consider the following scenario. In year 0, there is one good - food. A basket of food costs $100. In year 1, medicine is invented, and the cost of food goes up to $101. Inflation is 1%.
The basket of goods is modified to reflect the invention of medicine, and is now comprised of 50% food, 50% medicine. In year 2, the cost of medicine increases 10%, and food decreases by 2%. Chained CPI now reports an inflation rate of 3.45%. Is life worse in year 2 than in year 0? (This is a combined 2-year inflation rate of 4.5%.)
Of course not. In year 2, you are paying $99 for a basket of food. In year 0, you are paying $100 for food and Medicine doesn't exist.
I have yet to see anyone construct an inflation measurement based on a fixed basket of goods (which is held constant over the years) that shows real wages have gone down.
thanks for your response - do you have a link to any data that shows the outcome of holding the basket of goods fixed? i will try to find some as well, just thought you might have some data handy.
Data from 1970 - 2009, detailing living conditions for Americans as a whole. In recent years, many data tables have a column for Americans below the poverty line. Compare the data for living standards for the poor in 2009 to the overall population in 1973. By any reasonable measure of "living standards" I've been able to come up with, the data shows the poor in 2009 are doing well in comparison to the overall population in 1973.
I can't believe it either. Some even believe in the economists' equivalent of a cosmological constant: PPP, which when employed miraculously turns Louisiana into a richer place than Switzerland.
"Comparisons of national wealth are also frequently made on the basis of nominal GDP, which does not reflect differences in the cost of living in different countries (See List of countries by GDP (nominal) per capita). Using a PPP basis is arguably more useful when comparing generalized differences in living standards on the whole between nations because PPP takes into account the relative cost of living and the inflation rates of the countries, rather than using just exchange rates which may distort the real differences in income."
The problem with Economics is that, in trying to get a handle on the enormous complexity of its field, they constantly over-simplify. GDP, for example, is in itself a poor indicator of wealth.
If I sell you something for $10, you sell it back to me for $20, and I sell it back to you for $30, GDP is up $60.
But in all of Stupidtown, PPP is the village idiot. First, which basket of goods do you choose? Whatever you select will favor some cultures over others. Second, what about the quality of goods? Butter might be cost the same in terms of hours worked, but for that same amount, the Swiss get pure, mountain-made butter, whereas in LA they get corn-oil margarine. Then there's the flattened world. It used to be that you would earn more in Switzerland, but a couch, for example, would cost more. But now, both go to IKEA and the costs are nearly identical. A tablet computer? Flat-screen TV? Car? Those things essentially cost the same everywhere. When the Swiss go on vacation, their better income means they get a lot more and they go to much nicer places. Then there's taxes. The Swiss pay about the same percentage as in LA, but for that they get amazing things: free university, guaranteed health care, etc.
Finally, there's the wet-finger test. If the weather models show that it should be sunny and you step outside and it's wet, please consider that despite what you read: it's raining. I'm American but I've lived in Switzerland, and I must humbly admit that there's nowhere in America that comes close to being as wealthy as Switzerland.
Visit Baton Rouge and then visit Zurich. You will laugh your ass off at the notion that LA is 10% off of Switzerland's wealth. You will then laugh at economists themselves as the poorest of weather scientists who simply don't know how to walk outside.
That's interesting. From my subjective observations while traveling in Louisiana and in Switzerland I'd say people in Switzerland are living much better. Where does all that GDP go?
i don't think you can really make an argument that the GDP graph given in the google link is applicable to what i said. but if you can, i'd be interested to hear it.
Look at the amount of time the average American has to work in order to by food. It's much less than it used to be. The only reason it feels like we have less money is because we have more stuff to spend it on.
That just proves my point. Once again, we feel poor because we have so much more stuff to spend money on. Houses in America today are HUGE compared to what was acceptable in the past. A nice house today would have been considered outrageously opulent 40 years ago.
This was also primarily caused by a housing bubble. A bubble that was created in part because of government intervention causing increased demand for houses (mortgage interest deduction, low interest rates).
I think there is a point about fairness as well. Taxes are progressive for a reason. Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greater burden.
Warrent Buffet is perhaps giving away a lot of what he maybe would have given in taxes but plenty of billionaires or super rich just spend it on their spoiled sons and daughters, some who end up in rehab, spent a tremendous amount of resources to create a parallel society where meritocracy applies only to some people and/or just waste it in obscene luxuries such as a 10k bottle of champaign, etc and to boot it all, at the end of the day, they are rich only because they are in many ways not paying the working people the proper wages so that they can pay themselves obscene amounts. I mean, how much more smart are the bank CEOs who got us in this mess to start with to justify a salary 100 times more than others working there.
But even on a practical rather that political level, for most of these supper rich, the difference between 1 million or 2 million does not mater but in some silly psychological keeping up with the jones nonsense and for many even the keeping up with the jones does not apply because they are the jones. But for a lot of "working poor" lowering the taxes from 25% to 17% makes a real difference, a difference of a kind which may mean that their children will properly be looked after and have all the support to say study and do well in school.
Finally, you say you want Warrent Buffet to keep the money and you don't want people to take it away from him. Well, I don't want people to take my money away through taxes either. No one does. Its not about want, or even opinion, its about fairness. Some of the deficit was built up because the rich pay so little and to ask the non rich to bear all the burden is a double wammy. No wonder you have 250k people protesting in Israel and kids burning chain stores in London.
1) the rich (top 10%) pay almost 70% of taxes. I wouldn't call that "so little"
2) you can't just take property from people based on a such wildly misused and subjective term as "fairness". Running a government is necessary for society to function. Everybody benefits, especially free-riders, crony corporations, politicians, and bureaucrats. The rich have the resources to fund a big chunk of the government, and they get a lot out of it too, sometimes to our detriment.
3) what does our deficit have to do with protest and riots in other countries?
I don't think I'm going to be a billionaire someday, and if I did I couldn't care less about tax rates.
I do think however that maybe I'll be able to retire some day before I die. But the likelihood of this is very much affected by LTCG rate, wouldn't you agree?
Now how is it even fair that long term capital gains taxes even exist? I make some money, I pay taxes on it. I buy whatever instrument I hope will be the best at preserving the value of it (since I know if I just stuff the money under the mattress, I won't be able to buy much with it in say 40 years). After 40 years, the nominal price of the thing I bought will have gone up, chiefly due to inflation. When I sell it, I pay taxes again. How is it not double taxation?
That's not really a counter argument. You stated republicans stand for small government, not democrats. You were given concrete examples which disprove what you stated. Arguing that the democrats are just the same is simply stating that republicans do not stand for small government.
Either that or by bribing the wealthy with low taxes they might only ship out half the jobs overseas instead of all of them.
It's just dumbfounding. Election after election, over and over.