Mitt Romney's "off-the-cuff" remarks that nearly half of Americans are "dependent" on government and believe they are "victims" who are "entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to-you-name-it," were widely publicized. This is in fact old saw for a certain kind of anti-government conservative. I have given talks deep in conservative territory where courteous memebers of the audience would come up to me afterwards and say they agree we should pay taxes for infrastructure but not for giveaways "to those people."
But coming from a presidential candidate of one of the major parties, such remarks are stunning. Moreover, Romney later claimed he stood by them. He insulted half the American people; at least the people who spoke to me were talking about perhaps only one quarter of them! Romney also used the once-ubiquitous claim by conservatives that only half of Americans pay income tax.
There was widespread criticism of Romney's rhetoric, but the stronger case against his condescending and elitist remarks is to present the facts, of which he seems happily unaware. Fortunately, the
Tax Policy Center and the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have pointed out that the large majority of Americans pay federal taxes when payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare are included. The only Americans who don't pay taxes are some of the elderly, the poor, and the young.
But it is the dependency issue that requires real information. Income for the lower half of American earners has been growing very slowly since the late 1970s -- more or less when Ronald Reagan took office. Compared to economies overseas, the wage performance has been just plain bad.
Why? The declines of unions, the refusal to raise the minimum wage with inflation, and the increased pressure by Wall Street to minimize expenses in the short run -- typically labor expenses -- have all contributed. So have rapidly lost manufacturing jobs and globalization in general. Finally, on average economic growth was slow in the 1980s until the mid-1990s. Only in the late 1990s did growth push the unemployment rate down adequately to boost incomes for the lower half. In the 2000s, we had adequate growth but little job or wage growth. Without social programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit, the lower half would have hardly seen incomes grow at all.
Was dependency a cause of low incomes? This is easily refuted nonsense. Had social programs hurt rather than helped Americans, poverty rates would have been low in the 1950s. As Michael Harrington alerted America, the poverty rate was probably 30 percent in the 1950s. Finally, the U.S. government computed a poverty line -- a low one, mind you. It found the poverty rate at about 22 percent.
Why? Couldn't have been dependency. The War on Poverty had not yet begun. By the 1970s, however, the poverty rate was down to 11 percent. As Social Security expanded, elderly poverty rates fell from 50 percent to about 10 percent. And so on. These are the purposes of government, Mitt.
The GOP and the rich corporatra¬tists have made a mess of everything¬.
1. Before 1973, The inflation Adjusted Median Income rose at 2.5% per year:
1953 = $22,648
1973 = $34,762
2. From 1973 to 2009, Inflation Adjusted Median Income fell by $2,578.
1973 = $34,762
2009 = $32,184
http://www¬.census.go¬v/hhes/www¬/income/da¬ta/histori¬cal/people¬/P05AR_200¬9.xls
3. The same thing shows up in Weekly Earnings.
All earners:
1979 = $339
2008 = $339
No Change over 30 years
Men:
1979 = $412
2010 = $389
DECREASE of $23/week
http://dat¬a.bls.gov/¬cgi-bin/su¬rveymost?l¬e
4. While per capita GPD has doubled:
1969 = $21,021
2010 = $42,517
http://www¬.ers.usda.¬gov/data/m¬acroeconom¬ics/Data/H¬istorical¬RealPerCa¬p¬itaIncom¬eV¬alues.x¬ls
5. This is accomplish by shifting the income distributi¬on:
Share Of Aggregate Income by Quintile:
BOTTOM 20% - 1967: 4.0% 2009: 3.4% Change: -0.6%
LOWER MIDDLE - 1967: 10.8% 2009: 8.6% Change: -2.2%
MIDDLE CLASS - 1967: 17.3% 2009: 14.6% Change: -2.7%
UPPER MIDDLE - 1967: 24.2% 2009: 23.2% Change: -1.0%
UPPER CLASS - 1967: 43.6% 2009: 50.3% Change: +6.7%
http://www¬.census.go¬v/hhes/www¬/income/da¬ta/histori¬cal/inequa¬lity/H02AR¬_2009.xls
Bottom line message: WORK MORE, PRODUCE MORE, BUT GET LESS”
When obama loses the new "excuse" or reason will be the voter ID laws..
I hear the lawsuits ramping up already..
Obama the socialist vs. Romney the capitalist.
That's what this election is coming down to. The question is, are there more socialists in America now than there are capitalists?
Who would have thought years ago to even pose the question.
You know, there are 175 other countries who have less capitalism. Why don't you relocate to one of them?
Fire department
education
police
social security
medicare
roads
Good Grief!
For starters, I can take present as exhibit A his very own words that have appeared on the news the last two days, that he is in favor of re-distribution of wealth and income. Actually, that borders more on communism than socialism.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/09/19/obama_and_redistribution_the_shocking_ad_that_proves_he_favors_it_.html
I wonder at what point he said to himself: I'd make a good president?
Send in the clown. Don't bother, he's here...
And none of it was Obama's fault.
Real wages are wages after taxes and inflation have been taken into account. There is general agreement that real wages have stagnated since the 1970s.
What is ignored is the correlation between the stagnation of real wages and the severing of the last ties of the dollar to the gold standard.
In 1913 the Federal Reserve was created and granted a government-enforced monopoly on bank-note issue. (Only the Fed was allowed to print pieces of paper ostensibly representing claims to money--i.e. gold.) By 1929, there were twice as many 'dollars' as there was gold it represented claims to. To save the big New York banks at the expense of the economy, FDR first devalued 'dollars' from $20 to $35 a troy ounce, and then in 1933, by executive order, outlawed the use of gold as money by U.S. citizens.
Gold was still money for bankers and governments, who could still theoretically redeem dollars for gold--until 1971. That's when Nixon, again by executive order, "closed the gold window." At this point there were four times as many 'dollars' as there was gold they supposedly represented claims to.
Unrestrained by the obligation to redeem dollars for gold, the supply of dollars has been skyrocketing ever since, eroding their purchasing power, and thus stagnating wages.
Jeff Madrick is simply lying about history.
Yes, that was my point. And indeed the so-called 1%, motivated by greed, have decided to give the people less--or, more accurately, take more from the people. The question is: How did they do this?
A tiny group of political and financial elite have asserted for themselves the exclusive privilege of creating money out of nothing. They have access to it. You don't. They get away with it because almost no one understands how banking and the monetary system works. What people think they know is usually wrong, and they are so brainwashed by propaganda and the desperate need to believe in the ultimate benevolence of their rulers that they actually think that this tiny elite weald this incredible power for the greater good.
“The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from its profits or so dependent on its favors, that there will be no opposition from that class.” - Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild, 1744-1812
"And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale." -- Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, May 28, 1816
The standard that paper money can be tied to can be ANYTHING of value, including other natural resources, manufacturing production, and the productivity of people.
But you see, that would not suit the "market" (manipulating speculative bankers and currency traders) as they would no longer be able to sit at a keyboard and make billions at the expense of the bulk of the population.
Horrors upon horrors, those parasites might even then have to try to find a real job in the real world!
The bankers and the politicians hate gold and love paper dollars because to acquire the former, they must overtly tax people. To acquire the latter they simply print them. It is a form of theft that most people don't even recognize as theft.
Paper dollars are valuable in the market independent of their function as money because people are required to pay taxes with them or be put in jail and have their stuff taken away. Internationally, dollars are valuable because they are required when purchasing oil from any country under the thumb of the U.S. empire.
One last point: There is no such thing as 'intrinsic' economic value. All prices are ultimately derived from the subjective choices people make when they choose one thing and forego something else. For gold to serve as money, it doesn't matter whether you in particular value gold. All that matters is how likely you are to find someone else who does.
If you don't want politicians to suck up to voters, work to eliminating voting.
If you don't want politicians to suck up to campaign contributors, work to eliminate campaign contributions.
If Rmoney wants to hold up paying Federal taxes as an example of entitled scoflaws, then he has only to look in the mirror.
He doesn't pay income tax. He pays tax on capital gains, which are NOT considered income and are taxed at a lower rate; 15%. With deductions he pays even less.
Now, how about releasing ALL of the tax returns, Willard?
You simply assume things without any evidence to support your assumptions.
The New World nations strived above all else in their early years for self sufficiency. The self sufficiency has been sacrificed on the alter of "Globilisation" and Free Trade, whereby Koreans and Japanese make cars for Americans and Americans make cars for Koreans and Japanese. What nonsense that is.
The winners are the Mutli National Free Traders and the International Bankers that finance it all. The losers are the people.
Bernanke is about to go on another QE spree to the extent of $40 billion per month, but it is all allocated to his Banker mates and will be used to "buy" their "mortgage backed securities", more aptly described as "toxic assets". The money supply will expand, the Bankers till will be full again, but the consumer's pockets will still be empty.
Empty Pockets = no purchases = stagnant economy = no growth. Imagine the difference if the $40 billion per month expansion was directed into the economy in such a way as it finished in consumers pockets. Therin lies the problem.
Our deficit is lower now then the 1.4 trillion dollar deficit that Bush left.
The largest % of those people are in the south, and Romney is going to win all those states.
Most of those 53% in the other category? Blue states.
Simply look at which states are net takers from the Fed, virtually the entire south takes more money from the Fed then it takes in.
The blue states, just the reverse. My state of WA gets about 87 cents of Federal largesse and services for ever tax dollar we pay in, while Mississippi gets about $2.10 for every dollar?
Tells us again, Mitt, those victims of dependency, where are they and who are they going to vote for?
My state, WA states, has a HUGE military prescence, Joint Base Ft Lewis McChord, Bremerton Navel station, Coast Guard, etc....
How come WE get .82 cents per dollar, compared to ALL the southern states.
Also, NATIVE AMERICANS skew the numbers? Again, we in WA have 3-4 times the native American populations of places like Missisippi and South Carolina.
Wow, usually conservatives are just wrong, but that's not even close enough to BE wrong, it's just loony....
Apparantly, nearly half of Americans pay no federal income taxes, or, if they do, they get the money back, so you point is misleading.
Obama and the Democrats go to millions of people who do not pay any federal income taxes and say, "The rich (who actually pay most of the taxes) should pay their "fair share;" they should pay more." What rot. Class warfare, pure and simple.
There is too much "need" out there. A lot of it (more than half?) is false; synthetic, created, preventable, and was avoidable. It is the result of many factors: Foolish lifestyle choices, drug use, producing children out of wedlock, adoption of the victim and entitlement mentalities, excuse making, lack of a work ethic, acceptance of the idea that it is the government's job to provide you with a cradle to grave living, i.e., the nanny state, and the liberal position that certain designated groups are not to be held accountable. Patronizing? Demeaning? Disgusting? Yes on all three, and all done for left-wing political profit.
We spend so much money on this false, avoidable need that we have little left for those who truly need our help-people who are physically or mentally unable to care for themselves and those who need temporary help. That's where the money should go; and not to those who shouldn't have needed it to begin with.
No one's gonna deny that people make bad decisions, but what are you gonna do about it? Let them starve or steal? Watch their children go hungry. What about the people who no fault of their own lost everything in the housing crisis and ensuing recession? Let the churches deal with it? You're living in Romneyville.
Only about 18% of the population doesn't pay any taxes because they receive more in government assistance. Do you know who they are? More than half are elderly poor and disabled people. Another large percentage is children. So you have less than 8% who pay no taxes and receive govenment assistance- and they live in poverty- most of them don't stay on welfare.
You're confused with bias and full of disdain. Enough already.
The result has been a rapid increase in the rate of borrowing, (long term debt to meet short term needs) in order to meet spending obligations. It's approaching 4 years now with no budget making it to mark up, and President Obama promised to cut the deficit by 50% by the end of his first term, or at the very least, to have a plan to do so. Increasing the top marginal rate, (the Buffet Plan) would yield 8-10 billion dollars per year, which wouldn't even fund the Department of Energy for 6 months.
EIC is definitely redistribution and a net consumption of tax dollars, and what's the percentage of people who collect that?
Increasing tax rates has NEVER increased tax revenue. In fact the opposite has occurred, going back to the Kennedy administration. Consider: 2025, SS and Medicare will consume 16-18% of GDP. 2035: Servicing debt will require 16-18% of GDP. Unless we do something to slow it down. Consider that by 2035, just to break even on servicing debt and SS and Medicare, nearly 40% of GDP will be requires.
We're already at 103% GDP to debt, and the trajectory is steepening, rapidly.