by Jacob Davies
(Eric Martin: Frequent commenter, and occasional blogger in his own right, Jacob Davies, has agreed to pitch in on the front page in order to provide a fresh perspective, and needed relief for (and from) yours truly. Below is Jacob's first of what we hope are many contributions)
I'm sure many of you have already read Krugman's column yesterday. Whether you agree with his prescription or not, this much seems certain:
Unemployment — especially long-term unemployment — remains at levels that would have been considered catastrophic not long ago, and shows no sign of coming down rapidly.
Austerity is in fashion among conservatives lately, and at first glance that may seem like a good philosophical match for conservative values. The emphasis on regressive tax cuts and reductions in redistributive measures & social safety nets are justified by a belief that the market economy is essentially meritocratic, that those who earn more deserve to keep what they earn, that reducing the amount they earn distorts the necessary incentives towards difficult and expensive education, hard work, and risky investment, and that redistributive measures reward those who are unproductive, lazy, or not endowed with great talent.
This is an appealing story. It has a grain of truth to it. There are lazy, dishonest, incompetent, and stupid people in the world, and the idea that they will get their comeuppance is pleasant. Some of them will.
Unfortunately, the idea is more wrong than right. Unemployment is corrosive towards the very values that conservatives hold high: family cohesion; hard work; honesty; marriage; child-raising; lawfulness. The punishments do not affect only, or even predominantly, the unworthy, and plenty of those unworthies who caused the crisis have escaped without significant harm. There is a great, but long, piece from the Atlantic from March that is worth reading in full, but there are a few choice quotes that make this clear:
Joblessness corrodes marriages, and makes divorce much more likely down the road… The gender imbalance of the job losses in this recession…when combined with the depth and duration of the jobs crisis – poses "a profound challenge to marriage," especially in lower-income communities.
The stigma against out-of-wedlock children has by now largely dissolved in working-class communities … among adults with no college degree, changes in income have no bearing at all on rates of childbirth.
Communities with large numbers of unmarried, jobless men take on an unsavory character over time. These white working-class communities – once strong, vibrant, proud communities, often organized around big industries – they’re just in terrible straits. The social fabric of these places is just shredding. When young men can’t transition into formal-sector jobs, they sell drugs and drink and do drugs.
Once we start getting detailed data on the conditions of inner-city life since the crash, we’re going to see some horror stories – and in many cases a relapse into the depths of decades past. "The point I want to emphasize," Wilson said, “is that we should brace ourselves."
Mass unemployment is a crisis for traditional values; in light of which, one might ask why those who profess admiration for those values are fighting so hard against attempts to address it.
“that may seem like a good philosophical match for conservatives”
Well, it’s a good philosophical match for conservatives who choose to become sociopaths.
“and the idea that they will get their comeuppance is pleasant”
In general, I suppose, but in the specific cases, I don’t find it pleasant that the “incompetent”, for example, should be denied medical care as, what, justice?
Why not just kill the incompetent? I guess because the sociopaths attend church on Sunday, unless they stay in bed and read Ayn Rand, dreaming of looking up Dagny Taggert’s skirt.
I find it more pleasant when sociopaths get their comeuppance.
As an aside, shouldn’t the word have been “comedownnance”.
“that may seem like a good philosophical match for conservatives”
Well, it’s a good philosophical match for conservatives who choose to become sociopaths.
“and the idea that they will get their comeuppance is pleasant”
In general, I suppose, but in the specific cases, I don’t find it pleasant that the “incompetent”, for example, should be denied medical care as, what, justice?
Why not just kill the incompetent? I guess because the sociopaths attend church on Sunday, unless they stay in bed and read Ayn Rand, dreaming of looking up Dagny Taggert’s skirt.
I find it more pleasant when sociopaths get their comeuppance.
As an aside, shouldn’t the word have been “comedownnance”.
The emphasis on regressive tax cuts and reductions in redistributive measures & social safety nets are justified by a belief that the market economy is essentially meritocratic, that those who earn more deserve to keep what they earn, that reducing the amount they earn distorts the necessary incentives towards difficult and expensive education, hard work, and risky investment, and that redistributive measures reward those who are unproductive, lazy, or not endowed with great talent.
Or not. I think the austerity idea is that we’ve already borrowed so much money that the drag on the economy to pay it back–a dollar borrowed is a taxed dollar deferred–cannot be tolerated and maintain a private sector. The “us vs. them” dichotomy is more a product of reductionist progressive mind set than it is the attitude of the country. No one likes unemployment and we all know good people who are without work. But few outside progressive circles believe more government spending–incredibly inefficient spending in which the government picks the winners–is the answer. Unless everyone who loses a job is going to be given a lifetime government job–again at taxpayer expense and doing who knows what to justify their position on the government payroll–they will only find work if it exists in the private sector. Government spending is not producing a vibrant private sector. Taking money from an employer detracts from and certainly does not enhance that employer’s ability to expand.
The G20 is pretty much uniformly cutting government spending. What do they know that Paul Krugman doesn’t?
The emphasis on regressive tax cuts and reductions in redistributive measures & social safety nets are justified by a belief that the market economy is essentially meritocratic, that those who earn more deserve to keep what they earn, that reducing the amount they earn distorts the necessary incentives towards difficult and expensive education, hard work, and risky investment, and that redistributive measures reward those who are unproductive, lazy, or not endowed with great talent.
Or not. I think the austerity idea is that we’ve already borrowed so much money that the drag on the economy to pay it back–a dollar borrowed is a taxed dollar deferred–cannot be tolerated and maintain a private sector. The “us vs. them” dichotomy is more a product of reductionist progressive mind set than it is the attitude of the country. No one likes unemployment and we all know good people who are without work. But few outside progressive circles believe more government spending–incredibly inefficient spending in which the government picks the winners–is the answer. Unless everyone who loses a job is going to be given a lifetime government job–again at taxpayer expense and doing who knows what to justify their position on the government payroll–they will only find work if it exists in the private sector. Government spending is not producing a vibrant private sector. Taking money from an employer detracts from and certainly does not enhance that employer’s ability to expand.
The G20 is pretty much uniformly cutting government spending. What do they know that Paul Krugman doesn’t?
A belief that those that got are more meritorious than anyone else.
How is this differennt from Social Darwinism?
How is it different from the old Calvinist belief that God shows favor or disfavor for individuals by making the good thrive and the bad suffer?
I can see how the central thesis of conservatism–that markets favor the good and punish those who deserve it– is a handy belief for the chronically empathy-impaired.
However this conservative belief is hypocritical as well as selfish since very few self proclaimed conservatives support themselves. Example: that parasite in Arkansas who sucked up over a million dollars in tax subsidies which provided him with the income to pay for a bill board that proclaims that Democrats are the party of parasites.
All of the red states and red areas of states are full of hypocrites of that sort. Eastern Washington, where the economy is based on Bonneville Power, farm price supports, subsidized access to public land and resources, Social Security and federal jobs, is the Republican side of the state full of voters and politicians who call themselves conservatives.
A belief that those that got are more meritorious than anyone else.
How is this differennt from Social Darwinism?
How is it different from the old Calvinist belief that God shows favor or disfavor for individuals by making the good thrive and the bad suffer?
I can see how the central thesis of conservatism–that markets favor the good and punish those who deserve it– is a handy belief for the chronically empathy-impaired.
However this conservative belief is hypocritical as well as selfish since very few self proclaimed conservatives support themselves. Example: that parasite in Arkansas who sucked up over a million dollars in tax subsidies which provided him with the income to pay for a bill board that proclaims that Democrats are the party of parasites.
All of the red states and red areas of states are full of hypocrites of that sort. Eastern Washington, where the economy is based on Bonneville Power, farm price supports, subsidized access to public land and resources, Social Security and federal jobs, is the Republican side of the state full of voters and politicians who call themselves conservatives.
No one likes unemployment and we all know good people who are without work. But few outside progressive circles believe more government spending–incredibly inefficient spending in which the government picks the winners–is the answer. Unless everyone who loses a job is going to be given a lifetime government job–again at taxpayer expense and doing who knows what to justify their position on the government payroll–they will only find work if it exists in the private sector. Government spending is not producing a vibrant private sector. Taking money from an employer detracts from and certainly does not enhance that employer’s ability to expand.
Austerity does not give money to employers, it takes money away from employers.
Government jobs include teachers, firefighers, police officers, sanitation workers and doctors at state hospitals.
Those are good jobs. Those jobs are being cut because of austerity measures.
The salary money that those people would spend in the private sector would do much to help other private employers and kick up revenue and economic growth.
This is what you do in a recession. Classic Keynesian economics. Unfortunately, while our federal government injected a stimulus, our state and local governments instituted severe austerity measures which negated the federal stimulus, with overall government spending relatively flat.
The G20 is pretty much uniformly cutting government spending. What do they know that Paul Krugman doesn’t?
They think that the bond market might eventually get skittish about lending money to governments absent austerity. They don’t know that, they fear it. Though there is zero indication that this is happening, the bond market is actually moving in the opposite direction.
It is a mistake what the G20 is talking about, and will lead to a deeper, global slump.
No one likes unemployment and we all know good people who are without work. But few outside progressive circles believe more government spending–incredibly inefficient spending in which the government picks the winners–is the answer. Unless everyone who loses a job is going to be given a lifetime government job–again at taxpayer expense and doing who knows what to justify their position on the government payroll–they will only find work if it exists in the private sector. Government spending is not producing a vibrant private sector. Taking money from an employer detracts from and certainly does not enhance that employer’s ability to expand.
Austerity does not give money to employers, it takes money away from employers.
Government jobs include teachers, firefighers, police officers, sanitation workers and doctors at state hospitals.
Those are good jobs. Those jobs are being cut because of austerity measures.
The salary money that those people would spend in the private sector would do much to help other private employers and kick up revenue and economic growth.
This is what you do in a recession. Classic Keynesian economics. Unfortunately, while our federal government injected a stimulus, our state and local governments instituted severe austerity measures which negated the federal stimulus, with overall government spending relatively flat.
The G20 is pretty much uniformly cutting government spending. What do they know that Paul Krugman doesn’t?
They think that the bond market might eventually get skittish about lending money to governments absent austerity. They don’t know that, they fear it. Though there is zero indication that this is happening, the bond market is actually moving in the opposite direction.
It is a mistake what the G20 is talking about, and will lead to a deeper, global slump.
Unemployment is a conservative value. That’s how conservatives tell who is worthy of living a tax- subsidized life style and who isn’t.
Unemployment is a conservative value. That’s how conservatives tell who is worthy of living a tax- subsidized life style and who isn’t.
The G20 is pretty much uniformly cutting government spending. What do they know that Paul Krugman doesn’t?
You could ask this another way:
“What did Herbert Hoover know that Paul Krugman doesn’t?”
The answer: How do take a recession and turn it into a depression by pulling back government spending at EXACTLY the wrong time.
Enter, John Maynard Keynes. Which brings about a third variation of the question:
“What do the G20 countries and Herbert Hoover know that Paul Krugman and Keynes don’t?”
Answer: see above.
The G20 is pretty much uniformly cutting government spending. What do they know that Paul Krugman doesn’t?
You could ask this another way:
“What did Herbert Hoover know that Paul Krugman doesn’t?”
The answer: How do take a recession and turn it into a depression by pulling back government spending at EXACTLY the wrong time.
Enter, John Maynard Keynes. Which brings about a third variation of the question:
“What do the G20 countries and Herbert Hoover know that Paul Krugman and Keynes don’t?”
Answer: see above.
Horseshit. Utter, fncking bunk.
Horseshit. Utter, fncking bunk.
Slarti: Horseshit. Utter, fncking bunk.
Isn’t there supposed to be a mod around somewhere to remind people of the no-profanity rule…
…oh, right.
It’s more effective, by the way, to cite the tons of conservatives arguing for increasing employment than it is just to get mad and post contradictory profanity.
Of course, then you’d have to find those conservatives arguing that the important thing is spending to create jobs, a la New Deal and FDR, and not cutting public funds to slash jobs, a la … well, modern conservatives.
Much easier just to lash out with profanity, right.
Slarti: Horseshit. Utter, fncking bunk.
Isn’t there supposed to be a mod around somewhere to remind people of the no-profanity rule…
…oh, right.
It’s more effective, by the way, to cite the tons of conservatives arguing for increasing employment than it is just to get mad and post contradictory profanity.
Of course, then you’d have to find those conservatives arguing that the important thing is spending to create jobs, a la New Deal and FDR, and not cutting public funds to slash jobs, a la … well, modern conservatives.
Much easier just to lash out with profanity, right.
[I will quickly note that I am thoroughly unworthy compared to prior inhabitants of the front page, but that I hope to start some interesting discussions. ObWi became the blog I read first & last in large part because of the comment threads, which are a miracle of coherent, respectful, thoughtful discussion on an internet full of trolls and fanatics. In particular, there are actually non-insane discussions between conservatives & progressives here.]
John Thullen – I don’t endorse the idea that people should “get what’s coming to them”. I just understand why that idea is appealing.
McKT – I believe you when you say that’s why you oppose more spending, and I could be persuaded that it’s really the major motivation for austerity measures, but I’m not convinced. For one thing, the conservative politicians opposing more spending largely supported (rather ineffectual) Keynesian measures in the form of Bush’s second tax cut. For another, what they actually say frequently has what wonkie called Calvinist overtones. For instance, Senator Kyl, earlier this year:
“Unemployment insurance doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”
But few outside progressive circles believe more government spending–incredibly inefficient spending in which the government picks the winners–is the answer.
Gallup poll from June 17th:
“Would you favor or oppose Congress passing new legislation this year to approve additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy?”
Favor – 60%
Oppose – 38%
No opinion – 2%
On a “dollar spent is a taxed dollar deferred”, I agree. But the same is true of a mortgage, or a business loan. Borrowing to invest is often worthwhile, especially when interest rates are very low.
I have another post on what measures I think would be effective. Permanent employment of all the unemployed by the government is not one of them.
In large part the slump in investment and hiring is because of a lack of expectation of an increase in consumer spending & business investment in the near future. It’s a self-reinforcing dynamic and the private sector has shown in past slumps that it is unable to break out of it before severe damage is done – if everyone hired & invested those investments would pay off, but if only a few firms do, they are likely to lose money. In that situation the government can drive expectations of employment and therefore future consumer spending and private investment through its own spending. I think the historical record shows that as the only way to break out of a major slump like this one.
[I will quickly note that I am thoroughly unworthy compared to prior inhabitants of the front page, but that I hope to start some interesting discussions. ObWi became the blog I read first & last in large part because of the comment threads, which are a miracle of coherent, respectful, thoughtful discussion on an internet full of trolls and fanatics. In particular, there are actually non-insane discussions between conservatives & progressives here.]
John Thullen – I don’t endorse the idea that people should “get what’s coming to them”. I just understand why that idea is appealing.
McKT – I believe you when you say that’s why you oppose more spending, and I could be persuaded that it’s really the major motivation for austerity measures, but I’m not convinced. For one thing, the conservative politicians opposing more spending largely supported (rather ineffectual) Keynesian measures in the form of Bush’s second tax cut. For another, what they actually say frequently has what wonkie called Calvinist overtones. For instance, Senator Kyl, earlier this year:
“Unemployment insurance doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”
But few outside progressive circles believe more government spending–incredibly inefficient spending in which the government picks the winners–is the answer.
Gallup poll from June 17th:
“Would you favor or oppose Congress passing new legislation this year to approve additional government spending to create jobs and stimulate the economy?”
Favor – 60%
Oppose – 38%
No opinion – 2%
On a “dollar spent is a taxed dollar deferred”, I agree. But the same is true of a mortgage, or a business loan. Borrowing to invest is often worthwhile, especially when interest rates are very low.
I have another post on what measures I think would be effective. Permanent employment of all the unemployed by the government is not one of them.
In large part the slump in investment and hiring is because of a lack of expectation of an increase in consumer spending & business investment in the near future. It’s a self-reinforcing dynamic and the private sector has shown in past slumps that it is unable to break out of it before severe damage is done – if everyone hired & invested those investments would pay off, but if only a few firms do, they are likely to lose money. In that situation the government can drive expectations of employment and therefore future consumer spending and private investment through its own spending. I think the historical record shows that as the only way to break out of a major slump like this one.
McKinney I can’t agree with you on: “Or not. I think the austerity idea is that we’ve already borrowed so much money that the drag on the economy to pay it back–a dollar borrowed is a taxed dollar deferred–cannot be tolerated and maintain a private sector.”
This is an example of taking a generally true principle and failing to see the cases where it isn’t true, or isn’t as relevant. If we maintain 10% systemic unemployment, we have enormous immediate problems, and won’t be able to pay back our debt without massive inflation anyway. Short term government spending can definitely help with that.
The fairer response is that modern politicians (and this has to include most Democrats AND Republicans) can’t be trusted to actually follow the Keynesian prescription and cut those programs, raise taxes, and dramatically pay down the debt during the expansion cycle.
You’re absolutely right about that, and it is going to be a problem. We should definitely apply maximum pressure then, and call out those, including I strongly suspect many here, who won’t want to do that. But those future likelyhoods (and they are VERY likely) don’t change the present nor the correct course of action for the present.
The problem, and it is a problem in this country, is that neither party follows the Keynesian prescription in an expansion. Democrats spend wildly (see California and New York 1998-2008) and Republicans cut taxes precipitously and spend at a very high clip (see federal government 2000-2008). That is a political culture that is going to have to change.
But trying to change it now runs into two problems. First, it actually is the wrong prescription for the current situation. Second, you look like someone who doesn’t react to the current situation out of hardhearted ideology, rather than practical minded austerity. If you are going to change the political ethos it isn’t likely to be out of crazy seeming rigidity.
McKinney I can’t agree with you on: “Or not. I think the austerity idea is that we’ve already borrowed so much money that the drag on the economy to pay it back–a dollar borrowed is a taxed dollar deferred–cannot be tolerated and maintain a private sector.”
This is an example of taking a generally true principle and failing to see the cases where it isn’t true, or isn’t as relevant. If we maintain 10% systemic unemployment, we have enormous immediate problems, and won’t be able to pay back our debt without massive inflation anyway. Short term government spending can definitely help with that.
The fairer response is that modern politicians (and this has to include most Democrats AND Republicans) can’t be trusted to actually follow the Keynesian prescription and cut those programs, raise taxes, and dramatically pay down the debt during the expansion cycle.
You’re absolutely right about that, and it is going to be a problem. We should definitely apply maximum pressure then, and call out those, including I strongly suspect many here, who won’t want to do that. But those future likelyhoods (and they are VERY likely) don’t change the present nor the correct course of action for the present.
The problem, and it is a problem in this country, is that neither party follows the Keynesian prescription in an expansion. Democrats spend wildly (see California and New York 1998-2008) and Republicans cut taxes precipitously and spend at a very high clip (see federal government 2000-2008). That is a political culture that is going to have to change.
But trying to change it now runs into two problems. First, it actually is the wrong prescription for the current situation. Second, you look like someone who doesn’t react to the current situation out of hardhearted ideology, rather than practical minded austerity. If you are going to change the political ethos it isn’t likely to be out of crazy seeming rigidity.
those who earn more deserve to keep what they earn
My personal opinion, based on my limited and not-particularly-subtle understanding of economics, is that it’s not good for the country to be as deeply in debt as we are.
Maybe it’s necessary in order to weather the current financial storms, maybe it’s not. But in and of itself, it’s better to not be as deeply in debt as the nation currently is.
So, it would be good pay that down.
The money is basically going to come from the people who live here. We will apparently be asked to make some sacrifices in order to put ourselves on a better financial footing.
The sacrifices we will be asked to make will probably include reductions in benefits like entitlements and the various “social safety net” transfer payment programs.
The sacrifices we are far less likely to be asked to make are an increase in marginal rates on very high earners.
And that’s mainly because of the principle that JD outlines above. We don’t want to punish people for doing well, because then they will be less motivated to contribute whatever it is they contribute to the economy as a whole.
The comment I have to make here is that some people do, in fact, earn the very high compensation they receive, and some do not.
There is a reason that some kinds of compensation are called “unearned income”.
To my knowledge, there really isn’t anything in our tax code or other public policy that distinguishes between the income that flows from actual entrepreneurial participation in productive enterprises — efforts that actually do create value and employment — and income that flows from financial speculation.
It’s all just capital gains.
My prediction is that the lion’s share of the sacrifices, both in absolute terms and in proportion to what folks actually own and earn, will be made by people whose livelihoods primarily comes from working.
And I think that sucks.
Rich people threaten to go Galt, and remove their productivity from the economy.
The US unemployment rate is currently 9.7%. That is the U3 number, which excludes people who have simply given up on finding work.
The U4 number includes those people. The U4 rate is 10.2%, which means that one out of every 200 people who could be working and would like to work have simply given up on finding work.
They’ve gone Galt. Not talked about it, not whined about it on blogs, not put it on their bumper sticker.
They’ve just said f**k it and packed it in, because there’s no work to be had.
1 out of every 200 people in the total potential workforce of this nation is a lot of people.
Add in the marginally attached folks and the folks who can only find part-time work and the number is 16.7%.
The heart of an economy is the creation of value. Value is created by people who *do things*.
The vast majority of those people have seen none of the wealth that has been created by the incredible increases in productivity that have occurred in this country over the last generation. A lot of them have lost jobs and homes. A lot of them have gone bankrupt.
A lot of them have just said to hell with it and walked away.
People who refuse to contribute their lovely green money to the economy because they are going to have to pay an addition single-digit number of points of their return to the feds are not, IMVHO, a really serious problem. The vast, and I do mean vast, majority of them aren’t going to go anywhere. They’re going to bitch, and then they are going to continue to invest their $$$. Whatever miniscule handful decide they are going to cash in their chips and walk away are not going to make the economy stand or fall.
People who freaking walk away from the whole shooting match because there is simply no place for them — that is a problem.
And the fact that there is no place for them is a very, very real problem.
I’m sick of worrying about whether wealthy people who derive their income from financial speculation feel sufficiently appreciated for their noble contribution.
We need the money, they have it. They can pony up. They can afford it, and they’ll survive the gross insult of being asked to chip in.
Folks who actually participate at a hands-on level in creating businesses and jobs, I’m fine with giving them a break. But you gotta create your jobs here, otherwise no cookie for you.
But if we keep screwing the middle class, soon there will not be one, and then you will see some truly profound changes to our good old USA.
The economy is more than the f***ing DJIA.
those who earn more deserve to keep what they earn
My personal opinion, based on my limited and not-particularly-subtle understanding of economics, is that it’s not good for the country to be as deeply in debt as we are.
Maybe it’s necessary in order to weather the current financial storms, maybe it’s not. But in and of itself, it’s better to not be as deeply in debt as the nation currently is.
So, it would be good pay that down.
The money is basically going to come from the people who live here. We will apparently be asked to make some sacrifices in order to put ourselves on a better financial footing.
The sacrifices we will be asked to make will probably include reductions in benefits like entitlements and the various “social safety net” transfer payment programs.
The sacrifices we are far less likely to be asked to make are an increase in marginal rates on very high earners.
And that’s mainly because of the principle that JD outlines above. We don’t want to punish people for doing well, because then they will be less motivated to contribute whatever it is they contribute to the economy as a whole.
The comment I have to make here is that some people do, in fact, earn the very high compensation they receive, and some do not.
There is a reason that some kinds of compensation are called “unearned income”.
To my knowledge, there really isn’t anything in our tax code or other public policy that distinguishes between the income that flows from actual entrepreneurial participation in productive enterprises — efforts that actually do create value and employment — and income that flows from financial speculation.
It’s all just capital gains.
My prediction is that the lion’s share of the sacrifices, both in absolute terms and in proportion to what folks actually own and earn, will be made by people whose livelihoods primarily comes from working.
And I think that sucks.
Rich people threaten to go Galt, and remove their productivity from the economy.
The US unemployment rate is currently 9.7%. That is the U3 number, which excludes people who have simply given up on finding work.
The U4 number includes those people. The U4 rate is 10.2%, which means that one out of every 200 people who could be working and would like to work have simply given up on finding work.
They’ve gone Galt. Not talked about it, not whined about it on blogs, not put it on their bumper sticker.
They’ve just said f**k it and packed it in, because there’s no work to be had.
1 out of every 200 people in the total potential workforce of this nation is a lot of people.
Add in the marginally attached folks and the folks who can only find part-time work and the number is 16.7%.
The heart of an economy is the creation of value. Value is created by people who *do things*.
The vast majority of those people have seen none of the wealth that has been created by the incredible increases in productivity that have occurred in this country over the last generation. A lot of them have lost jobs and homes. A lot of them have gone bankrupt.
A lot of them have just said to hell with it and walked away.
People who refuse to contribute their lovely green money to the economy because they are going to have to pay an addition single-digit number of points of their return to the feds are not, IMVHO, a really serious problem. The vast, and I do mean vast, majority of them aren’t going to go anywhere. They’re going to bitch, and then they are going to continue to invest their $$$. Whatever miniscule handful decide they are going to cash in their chips and walk away are not going to make the economy stand or fall.
People who freaking walk away from the whole shooting match because there is simply no place for them — that is a problem.
And the fact that there is no place for them is a very, very real problem.
I’m sick of worrying about whether wealthy people who derive their income from financial speculation feel sufficiently appreciated for their noble contribution.
We need the money, they have it. They can pony up. They can afford it, and they’ll survive the gross insult of being asked to chip in.
Folks who actually participate at a hands-on level in creating businesses and jobs, I’m fine with giving them a break. But you gotta create your jobs here, otherwise no cookie for you.
But if we keep screwing the middle class, soon there will not be one, and then you will see some truly profound changes to our good old USA.
The economy is more than the f***ing DJIA.
Seb: Well said.
Seb: Well said.
The challenge is to figure out what the government (or anyone else) can do which will constructively get those working class people back into real jobs. Just extending unemployment isn’t it. Just adding government make-work jobs isn’t it. Subsidizing companies or industries which are no longer viable isn’t it — think buggy whip manufacturers.
I don’t have a total solution either, although it is obvious that some kind of training or re-training will have to be part of it. But it will have to be training that fits the people it is designed to help. Some people simply cannot, for example, learn to be software developers. Just as some people cannot, not don’t want to but cannot learn to do agricultural work.
As an aside, shouldn’t the word have been “comedownnance”. — Thullen
Comeuppance is the right word, John. Think wedgie. 😉
The challenge is to figure out what the government (or anyone else) can do which will constructively get those working class people back into real jobs. Just extending unemployment isn’t it. Just adding government make-work jobs isn’t it. Subsidizing companies or industries which are no longer viable isn’t it — think buggy whip manufacturers.
I don’t have a total solution either, although it is obvious that some kind of training or re-training will have to be part of it. But it will have to be training that fits the people it is designed to help. Some people simply cannot, for example, learn to be software developers. Just as some people cannot, not don’t want to but cannot learn to do agricultural work.
As an aside, shouldn’t the word have been “comedownnance”. — Thullen
Comeuppance is the right word, John. Think wedgie. 😉
I won’t hold my breath waiting for Jesurgislac to pearl-clutch over russell’s comments with the same vigor that she did over mine.
If anyone’s tender sensibilities were offended by my choice of language, I’ll be glad to replace some of the offending characters with asterisks.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for Jesurgislac to pearl-clutch over russell’s comments with the same vigor that she did over mine.
If anyone’s tender sensibilities were offended by my choice of language, I’ll be glad to replace some of the offending characters with asterisks.
russell: Well said+.
russell: Well said+.
I can see how the central thesis of conservatism–that markets favor the good and punish those who deserve it– is a handy belief for the chronically empathy-impaired.
This I don’t get at all. The market doesn’t make moral choices. It is just the market. It provides incentives for certain behavior, most of which I agree is “good,” but that is really besides the point.
I think the premise that conservatives are somehow in favor of unemployment, which is the tone of the post, is complete, utter bunk. Conservatives and liberals may differ on how to get out of this slump, but neither is in favor of unemployment.
Conservatives don’t see the government as the answer to every question. It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals. Conservatives tend to see charities as the right avenue to express their empathy. Maybe that makes certain positions on government action seem “empathy-impaired.”
This seems more like “I say Communist you say Calvinist.”
I can see how the central thesis of conservatism–that markets favor the good and punish those who deserve it– is a handy belief for the chronically empathy-impaired.
This I don’t get at all. The market doesn’t make moral choices. It is just the market. It provides incentives for certain behavior, most of which I agree is “good,” but that is really besides the point.
I think the premise that conservatives are somehow in favor of unemployment, which is the tone of the post, is complete, utter bunk. Conservatives and liberals may differ on how to get out of this slump, but neither is in favor of unemployment.
Conservatives don’t see the government as the answer to every question. It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals. Conservatives tend to see charities as the right avenue to express their empathy. Maybe that makes certain positions on government action seem “empathy-impaired.”
This seems more like “I say Communist you say Calvinist.”
Then Slarti, fix the first curse word, “Horsesh*t”; cause well that’s the offending one, not the fncking second one. Ya’ll have called folks on that sort of it.
And it isn’t because of our tender little ears, but from what I’ve seen posted, people reading at work. I don’t buy it, but that’s what it is.
—
On a more positive note, Sebastian, a-friggen-men. Everyone wants to be Santa Claus, no one wants to be the Grinch, and I don’t know a way around this – raise taxes and yer doomed, don’t raise taxes and you are doomed; but at least in the latter you can get some stuff done for your constituents.
Then Slarti, fix the first curse word, “Horsesh*t”; cause well that’s the offending one, not the fncking second one. Ya’ll have called folks on that sort of it.
And it isn’t because of our tender little ears, but from what I’ve seen posted, people reading at work. I don’t buy it, but that’s what it is.
—
On a more positive note, Sebastian, a-friggen-men. Everyone wants to be Santa Claus, no one wants to be the Grinch, and I don’t know a way around this – raise taxes and yer doomed, don’t raise taxes and you are doomed; but at least in the latter you can get some stuff done for your constituents.
Jacob:
I realize that YOU don’t endorse the idea.
Jacob:
I realize that YOU don’t endorse the idea.
It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals.
Cite, please. And, that aside, so what? It has no bearing on the effects of austerity during recession.
It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals.
Cite, please. And, that aside, so what? It has no bearing on the effects of austerity during recession.
Conservatives don’t see the government as the answer to every question. It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals.
HSH, this is an oft-misinterpreted statistic.
It doesn’t adjust for income, and it has a less-than-comprehensive definition of charity.
Conservatives don’t see the government as the answer to every question. It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals.
HSH, this is an oft-misinterpreted statistic.
It doesn’t adjust for income, and it has a less-than-comprehensive definition of charity.
Our roads and bridges are in pretty bad shape according to the ASCE. Our electrical grid could use some serious upgrading for future capacity and updating with newer technologies to improve efficiency. We lack broadband communications relative to other industrialized nations. We could use more rail transit. Addressing all of these things will grow the economy over the long terms and will directly put people to work in the short term. I don’t see what’s so effing hard about figuring out productive ways to spend government money. We don’t need to make work, because it’s sitting there begging to be done. You can argue that we just can’t spend the money regardless, but I don’t know why we have to assume that the money will necessarily be wasted.
Our roads and bridges are in pretty bad shape according to the ASCE. Our electrical grid could use some serious upgrading for future capacity and updating with newer technologies to improve efficiency. We lack broadband communications relative to other industrialized nations. We could use more rail transit. Addressing all of these things will grow the economy over the long terms and will directly put people to work in the short term. I don’t see what’s so effing hard about figuring out productive ways to spend government money. We don’t need to make work, because it’s sitting there begging to be done. You can argue that we just can’t spend the money regardless, but I don’t know why we have to assume that the money will necessarily be wasted.
HSH, this is an oft-misinterpreted statistic.
Sure. That’s why I asked for a cite, to get a look at the particulars. It’s a silly stat on its face.
HSH, this is an oft-misinterpreted statistic.
Sure. That’s why I asked for a cite, to get a look at the particulars. It’s a silly stat on its face.
This I don’t get at all. The market doesn’t make moral choices. It is just the market.
I agree with this. I wish more people recognized and embraced this simple truth.
The market has exactly as much intent, and as much moral valence, as does the weather, or fluid dynamics.
Public policies, however, are all about choices. Choices which cannot be made without considering their effects on people, and which are therefore moral choices.
Whatever we do to address our national financial situation is going to have to balance a number of competing interests and priorities. We will have to choose.
Some will argue that millions of people being out of work is preferable to other costs we might incur.
Other folks will argue the opposite.
In the actual social and political context that we happen to live in, in the US, at this point in time, the folks who will prefer to pay in the coin of wasted human life and labor — the true cost of 1 in 8 people who would like to work being unemployed or underemployed — are going to be more likely to self-identify as conservative than not.
You may, as conservative, object to that, but it is what it is. Nobody here is making it more or less so. It’s just a fact.
Perhaps you will object strongly enough to reconsider, and perhaps sever, your association with American conservatism.
If that’s how it plays out, I can only applaud you.
This I don’t get at all. The market doesn’t make moral choices. It is just the market.
I agree with this. I wish more people recognized and embraced this simple truth.
The market has exactly as much intent, and as much moral valence, as does the weather, or fluid dynamics.
Public policies, however, are all about choices. Choices which cannot be made without considering their effects on people, and which are therefore moral choices.
Whatever we do to address our national financial situation is going to have to balance a number of competing interests and priorities. We will have to choose.
Some will argue that millions of people being out of work is preferable to other costs we might incur.
Other folks will argue the opposite.
In the actual social and political context that we happen to live in, in the US, at this point in time, the folks who will prefer to pay in the coin of wasted human life and labor — the true cost of 1 in 8 people who would like to work being unemployed or underemployed — are going to be more likely to self-identify as conservative than not.
You may, as conservative, object to that, but it is what it is. Nobody here is making it more or less so. It’s just a fact.
Perhaps you will object strongly enough to reconsider, and perhaps sever, your association with American conservatism.
If that’s how it plays out, I can only applaud you.
HSH: It comes from a book, “Who Really Cares” by Peter Brooks.
Here is a write up of some of the problems with the book:
“Who Really Cares” is creating a stir in philanthropy circles — and garnering acclaim from conservative pundits like ABC News’s John Stossel and the radio host Michael Medved — but is it to be trusted? At the AEI forum, Alan Abramson, director of the philanthropy program of the Aspen Institute, said that one should treat Brooks’s sweeping conclusions with caution, given the “softness of the data” on charity in general. (He noted that Brooks himself concedes that we don’t even know with certainty whether 50 percent or 80 percent of adult Americans donate to charity.)
Other scholars, like Paul Schervish, a sociologist and head of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, express doubts about the claims, though he found them hard to check on short notice. “One thing he does do,” Schervish says in an interview, “is to go to different data sets depending on what he wants to be proving.” Among other sources, Brooks uses IRS data, the University of Michigan’s General Social Survey, and surveys conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. […]
At the AEI session, the Aspen Institute’s Abramson said that Brooks failed to note that much charitable giving in the “religious” category goes toward things “that don’t have a whole lot to do with compassion or helping people in need,” including ministers’ salaries, church upkeep, and Sunday School. In a sense these donations are like membership dues. Set aside gifts to one’s own temple, church, or mosque, Abramson added, and “I’m not sure there’s a heck of a lot there,” in terms of variations among different groups. (Of course, some giving to houses of worship clearly does end up being used for charity.) […]
Brooks’s red state-blue state comparisons are also drawing scrutiny. He triumphantly points out that of the 25 states that give the most per capita to charity, 24 went for President Bush in the 2004 election. And in a striking passage, he observes that residents of both San Francisco and South Dakota donate about $1,300 per family to charity, even though the average San Franciscan family makes $80,000, while the average South Dakotan family makes $45,000.
Why the difference? Brooks quotes the “director of a major San Franciscan foundation” as suggesting that “this a pretty godless place.”
But John Havens, associate director of Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, points out that once you correct for cost of living, the San Franciscan family earns only 15 percent more than the South Dakotan. Indeed, in the Boston College center’s ranking of states by personal generosity — a ranking that corrects for cost of living and tax burden — blue states do fine: Of the top five states, four — New York, California, Connecticut, and Maryland — are blue.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/12/10/who_gives/
HSH: It comes from a book, “Who Really Cares” by Peter Brooks.
Here is a write up of some of the problems with the book:
“Who Really Cares” is creating a stir in philanthropy circles — and garnering acclaim from conservative pundits like ABC News’s John Stossel and the radio host Michael Medved — but is it to be trusted? At the AEI forum, Alan Abramson, director of the philanthropy program of the Aspen Institute, said that one should treat Brooks’s sweeping conclusions with caution, given the “softness of the data” on charity in general. (He noted that Brooks himself concedes that we don’t even know with certainty whether 50 percent or 80 percent of adult Americans donate to charity.)
Other scholars, like Paul Schervish, a sociologist and head of the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, express doubts about the claims, though he found them hard to check on short notice. “One thing he does do,” Schervish says in an interview, “is to go to different data sets depending on what he wants to be proving.” Among other sources, Brooks uses IRS data, the University of Michigan’s General Social Survey, and surveys conducted by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. […]
At the AEI session, the Aspen Institute’s Abramson said that Brooks failed to note that much charitable giving in the “religious” category goes toward things “that don’t have a whole lot to do with compassion or helping people in need,” including ministers’ salaries, church upkeep, and Sunday School. In a sense these donations are like membership dues. Set aside gifts to one’s own temple, church, or mosque, Abramson added, and “I’m not sure there’s a heck of a lot there,” in terms of variations among different groups. (Of course, some giving to houses of worship clearly does end up being used for charity.) […]
Brooks’s red state-blue state comparisons are also drawing scrutiny. He triumphantly points out that of the 25 states that give the most per capita to charity, 24 went for President Bush in the 2004 election. And in a striking passage, he observes that residents of both San Francisco and South Dakota donate about $1,300 per family to charity, even though the average San Franciscan family makes $80,000, while the average South Dakotan family makes $45,000.
Why the difference? Brooks quotes the “director of a major San Franciscan foundation” as suggesting that “this a pretty godless place.”
But John Havens, associate director of Boston College’s Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, points out that once you correct for cost of living, the San Franciscan family earns only 15 percent more than the South Dakotan. Indeed, in the Boston College center’s ranking of states by personal generosity — a ranking that corrects for cost of living and tax burden — blue states do fine: Of the top five states, four — New York, California, Connecticut, and Maryland — are blue.
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2006/12/10/who_gives/
one more graff worth highlighting
“And can it really be, as Brooks says, that charitable givers are the most tolerant people in America, expressing warm feelings toward every “minority” group in the land — including union members, feminists, and homosexuals — if charitable givers are also disproportionately right-wing?”
one more graff worth highlighting
“And can it really be, as Brooks says, that charitable givers are the most tolerant people in America, expressing warm feelings toward every “minority” group in the land — including union members, feminists, and homosexuals — if charitable givers are also disproportionately right-wing?”
We could use more rail transit. Addressing all of these things will grow the economy over the long terms and will directly put people to work in the short term.
And these are the sorts of things I’m in favor of when it comes to government spending in a recession. I think building infrastructure is a good use of the money in such circumstances.
It doesn’t adjust for income,…
Eric: Yeah, but it gets worse for liberals, right? I mean, from what I understood, liberals actually had higher incomes. At least liberal families.
And, that aside, so what? It has no bearing on the effects of austerity during recession.
No, it was relevant to the “empathy impaired” comment. I don’t think the motives behind the austerity measures are to hurt families.
We could use more rail transit. Addressing all of these things will grow the economy over the long terms and will directly put people to work in the short term.
And these are the sorts of things I’m in favor of when it comes to government spending in a recession. I think building infrastructure is a good use of the money in such circumstances.
It doesn’t adjust for income,…
Eric: Yeah, but it gets worse for liberals, right? I mean, from what I understood, liberals actually had higher incomes. At least liberal families.
And, that aside, so what? It has no bearing on the effects of austerity during recession.
No, it was relevant to the “empathy impaired” comment. I don’t think the motives behind the austerity measures are to hurt families.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for Jesurgislac to pearl-clutch over russell’s comments with the same vigor that she did over mine.
Pearls before Slartibartfast. Oh dear.
Look, Slarti, the issue for me is words which trip workplace filters (or library filters – the public library Internet connection, I find, tends to pearl-clutchingly filter websites that use words that are a shanda far die kinder). Foolish though this is, it’s the way these filters are set, and furthermore, it amused me to an ironic point that of ObWing’s few posting rules, there you were breaking one.
Meantime, Slarti, bc, if you’re so sure conservatives are in favor of full employment, do go find the prominent modern conservatives arguing strongly that Action Should Be Taken, Money Should Be Spent, to drive down unemployment.
Mere grandstanding that “we’re in favor of employment” cuts no ice, scares no bears, wins no pearls: what are conservatives prepared to spend to ensure full employment?
As HSH notes, there’s no shortage of aging infrastructure that could use a New Deal run of spending.
I won’t hold my breath waiting for Jesurgislac to pearl-clutch over russell’s comments with the same vigor that she did over mine.
Pearls before Slartibartfast. Oh dear.
Look, Slarti, the issue for me is words which trip workplace filters (or library filters – the public library Internet connection, I find, tends to pearl-clutchingly filter websites that use words that are a shanda far die kinder). Foolish though this is, it’s the way these filters are set, and furthermore, it amused me to an ironic point that of ObWing’s few posting rules, there you were breaking one.
Meantime, Slarti, bc, if you’re so sure conservatives are in favor of full employment, do go find the prominent modern conservatives arguing strongly that Action Should Be Taken, Money Should Be Spent, to drive down unemployment.
Mere grandstanding that “we’re in favor of employment” cuts no ice, scares no bears, wins no pearls: what are conservatives prepared to spend to ensure full employment?
As HSH notes, there’s no shortage of aging infrastructure that could use a New Deal run of spending.
If anyone’s tender sensibilities were offended by my choice of language, I’ll be glad to replace some of the offending characters with asterisks.
I can haz freaking Dingbats?
Hmmm, maybe not.
There’s always the Johnny Dangerously fallback:
Bastages!
Farging icehole!
I spend too much time with jazz musicians, whenever I hear an obscenity I think something really good just happened.
If anyone’s tender sensibilities were offended by my choice of language, I’ll be glad to replace some of the offending characters with asterisks.
I can haz freaking Dingbats?
Hmmm, maybe not.
There’s always the Johnny Dangerously fallback:
Bastages!
Farging icehole!
I spend too much time with jazz musicians, whenever I hear an obscenity I think something really good just happened.
Eric: Yeah, but it gets worse for liberals, right? I mean, from what I understood, liberals actually had higher incomes. At least liberal families.
No, see the Red State/Blue State comparison in the excerpts above.
Also, the generall statistical weakness.
Eric: Yeah, but it gets worse for liberals, right? I mean, from what I understood, liberals actually had higher incomes. At least liberal families.
No, see the Red State/Blue State comparison in the excerpts above.
Also, the generall statistical weakness.
Fine. If sh*t is one of those, you might have let us know. There are many, many instances of that having passed unnoted, and we’ll buckle down and start whacking folks who let the sh*t fly, if that’s an issue.
It’s even appeared in the posts themselves, on occasion. Maybe we should fix that.
What does this even mean? Is there some universally agreed-upon definition of “full employment? I’ve seen it used when unemployment is 5% or even 6%.
Can I guarantee you that all conservatives will be willing to do absolutely everything to guarantee everyone a job? No. I don’t know anyone who wants high unemployment, either.
And, of course, the set of all conservatives is not comprised solely of Republicans in public office. Or even of Republicans, period.
Fine. If sh*t is one of those, you might have let us know. There are many, many instances of that having passed unnoted, and we’ll buckle down and start whacking folks who let the sh*t fly, if that’s an issue.
It’s even appeared in the posts themselves, on occasion. Maybe we should fix that.
What does this even mean? Is there some universally agreed-upon definition of “full employment? I’ve seen it used when unemployment is 5% or even 6%.
Can I guarantee you that all conservatives will be willing to do absolutely everything to guarantee everyone a job? No. I don’t know anyone who wants high unemployment, either.
And, of course, the set of all conservatives is not comprised solely of Republicans in public office. Or even of Republicans, period.
Not being sarcastic, there. If there are real problems with sh*t and other words that have been used almost regularly in posts and comments, I am quite willing to take the time and go redact those as needed.
Not being sarcastic, there. If there are real problems with sh*t and other words that have been used almost regularly in posts and comments, I am quite willing to take the time and go redact those as needed.
@ Eric
It comes from a book, “Who Really Cares” by Peter Brooks.
The fact that Stossel and Medved endorse the book should tell you all you need to know, and its not good.
conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals.
that wouldn’t be because conservatives want the higher tax deductions, woulD it?
@ Eric
It comes from a book, “Who Really Cares” by Peter Brooks.
The fact that Stossel and Medved endorse the book should tell you all you need to know, and its not good.
conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals.
that wouldn’t be because conservatives want the higher tax deductions, woulD it?
Don’t tell those stupid conservatives that it would be more advantageous in terms of net income to not donate at all.
Don’t tell those stupid conservatives that it would be more advantageous in terms of net income to not donate at all.
I don’t think conservatives are in favor of unemployment any more than those who favor law and order are in favor of imprisonment, per se. I think that there is a strong tendency to think that unemployment/underemployment is a necessary corrective and provides an incentive to gain an education, work hard, and invest for the future.
Which is of course true to some limited degree, especially under normal, high-employment circumstances. Some unemployment is unavoidable (although I put the desirable level rather lower than the 5% that you usually hear) and undoubtedly has some incentive effects.
But mass unemployment is another beast altogether. During periods of mass unemployment, hard work, education, & investment do not pay off. Belief in the value of work is destroyed. Solid families do not form without reliable incomes, especially when it’s men who can’t get work. The effect is not a renewed appreciation for the virtues of work, but destruction of stable family values.
Nobody is in favor of that, but so far as I can see, it is conservatives (including a few conservative Democrats) who oppose measures that would reduce unemployment, and therefore it’s on them to explain themselves.
I actually think things are much, much worse than they appear. Two things are responsible for keeping up appearances: the long extension of unemployment benefits, and the reluctance of banks to foreclose on houses. When those props go away a lot of people are suddenly going to be flat broke and homeless. It’s going to be bad.
I don’t think conservatives are in favor of unemployment any more than those who favor law and order are in favor of imprisonment, per se. I think that there is a strong tendency to think that unemployment/underemployment is a necessary corrective and provides an incentive to gain an education, work hard, and invest for the future.
Which is of course true to some limited degree, especially under normal, high-employment circumstances. Some unemployment is unavoidable (although I put the desirable level rather lower than the 5% that you usually hear) and undoubtedly has some incentive effects.
But mass unemployment is another beast altogether. During periods of mass unemployment, hard work, education, & investment do not pay off. Belief in the value of work is destroyed. Solid families do not form without reliable incomes, especially when it’s men who can’t get work. The effect is not a renewed appreciation for the virtues of work, but destruction of stable family values.
Nobody is in favor of that, but so far as I can see, it is conservatives (including a few conservative Democrats) who oppose measures that would reduce unemployment, and therefore it’s on them to explain themselves.
I actually think things are much, much worse than they appear. Two things are responsible for keeping up appearances: the long extension of unemployment benefits, and the reluctance of banks to foreclose on houses. When those props go away a lot of people are suddenly going to be flat broke and homeless. It’s going to be bad.
I’m sort of tired of people on both sides who claim that their tribe is morally superior in every way. I’m a lefty, but restrict my claims of moral superiority to the claim that leftist policies are more likely to be compassionate than rightwing ones. On the individual level I know conservatives who are personally very generous–I have no idea whether it is true that as a group they give more than the average liberal, but if it is one should probably look at the details. As someone said, giving to one’s church is to some extent rather like being part of a social organization and paying dues–I know that’s true of me. It’s much more than that, but there is an element of this involved.
On my side I’ve heard liberals proclaim smugly that secular liberals have better family values in terms of divorce rates and so on. Again I have no idea if this is true, but if it is the reasons for it are probably complicated and not a reason for bragging.
I’m sort of tired of people on both sides who claim that their tribe is morally superior in every way. I’m a lefty, but restrict my claims of moral superiority to the claim that leftist policies are more likely to be compassionate than rightwing ones. On the individual level I know conservatives who are personally very generous–I have no idea whether it is true that as a group they give more than the average liberal, but if it is one should probably look at the details. As someone said, giving to one’s church is to some extent rather like being part of a social organization and paying dues–I know that’s true of me. It’s much more than that, but there is an element of this involved.
On my side I’ve heard liberals proclaim smugly that secular liberals have better family values in terms of divorce rates and so on. Again I have no idea if this is true, but if it is the reasons for it are probably complicated and not a reason for bragging.
conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals.
Not again…..
Suffice it to say that for some issues, personal and private charity is a sufficient solution, and for others, less so.
10% unemployment is about 14 million people without work.
14 million is larger than the population of any individual US state other than CA, TX, NY, or FL.
17% un- or underployment (U6) is 23.8 million people without a job, not even trying to find a job anymore, or only working part-time because full time work is not available to them.
That’s more than any individual state other than CA or TX. It’s about equal to the total population of the 18 smallest states combined.
It’s a lot of people.
And really, you should more or less double that, because those percentages are against the working population of the country, which at 140 million is a bit less than half the total population. A lot of those folks who are out of work have dependents.
So we’re *really, really* talking about a lot of people.
Nothing wrong with charity, it’s just not clear to me that it scales to the problem at hand.
Nobody thinks government is the answer to every problem. Lots of us think government is a very good answer to problems that are relatively large in scope, and that have large implications for public, common, civic life.
And nothing says you can’t address things through *both* private and public means.
conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals.
Not again…..
Suffice it to say that for some issues, personal and private charity is a sufficient solution, and for others, less so.
10% unemployment is about 14 million people without work.
14 million is larger than the population of any individual US state other than CA, TX, NY, or FL.
17% un- or underployment (U6) is 23.8 million people without a job, not even trying to find a job anymore, or only working part-time because full time work is not available to them.
That’s more than any individual state other than CA or TX. It’s about equal to the total population of the 18 smallest states combined.
It’s a lot of people.
And really, you should more or less double that, because those percentages are against the working population of the country, which at 140 million is a bit less than half the total population. A lot of those folks who are out of work have dependents.
So we’re *really, really* talking about a lot of people.
Nothing wrong with charity, it’s just not clear to me that it scales to the problem at hand.
Nobody thinks government is the answer to every problem. Lots of us think government is a very good answer to problems that are relatively large in scope, and that have large implications for public, common, civic life.
And nothing says you can’t address things through *both* private and public means.
Conservatives don’t see the government as the answer to every question. It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals. Conservatives tend to see charities as the right avenue to express their empathy.
And luckily there are more than enough well-funded charities in the US to ensure that all those out-of-work families continue to be sufficiently clothed, fed, and sheltered until things pick up again. Good work, conservatives!
Conservatives don’t see the government as the answer to every question. It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals. Conservatives tend to see charities as the right avenue to express their empathy.
And luckily there are more than enough well-funded charities in the US to ensure that all those out-of-work families continue to be sufficiently clothed, fed, and sheltered until things pick up again. Good work, conservatives!
Belief in the value of work is destroyed.
This.
One in every two hundred people who are able to work and are interested in working, have simply stopped looking for work.
That’s 700,000 people who have, plain and simple, given up, because our economy can find no useful thing for them to do.
700 thousand.
I actually think things are much, much worse than they appear.
As always, what JD said.
Belief in the value of work is destroyed.
This.
One in every two hundred people who are able to work and are interested in working, have simply stopped looking for work.
That’s 700,000 people who have, plain and simple, given up, because our economy can find no useful thing for them to do.
700 thousand.
I actually think things are much, much worse than they appear.
As always, what JD said.
“The market does not make moral choices. It is just the market.”
A woodchipper or a crocodile don’t make moral choices either. You get an arm caught in one or the other and they just do what they do.
“The market does not make moral choices. It is just the market.”
A woodchipper or a crocodile don’t make moral choices either. You get an arm caught in one or the other and they just do what they do.
SATSQ: IGMFY.
SATSQ: IGMFY.
Re 30% more giving…”Suffice it to say that for some issues, personal and private charity is a sufficient solution, and for others, less so.”
I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t raised for the purpose of weighing in on whether private charity ought to be the sole solution to the unemployment problem, but rather as a response to wonkie’s relatively nasty psuedo-summation of conservatism.
Re 30% more giving…”Suffice it to say that for some issues, personal and private charity is a sufficient solution, and for others, less so.”
I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t raised for the purpose of weighing in on whether private charity ought to be the sole solution to the unemployment problem, but rather as a response to wonkie’s relatively nasty psuedo-summation of conservatism.
I think this probably applies (and should BE applied) to a lot of things in general, Donald. Well said.
I think this probably applies (and should BE applied) to a lot of things in general, Donald. Well said.
To clarify that snarky mess of acronyms:
I don’t think conservatives are in favor of unemployment. Most are simply indifferent to the real-world human impact of its dogma when enacted into policy.
This isn’t even debatable. The examples exist across the spectrum of conservative ideology: being tough on crime, originalism and strict constructionism, states’ rights, economic policy–pick any area of conservative policy prescriptions and you’ll find a stance that places the powerful before the weak, the corporation before the individual, and a fetishistic worship of the purity of conservative principles without regard to how they impact real people.
To clarify that snarky mess of acronyms:
I don’t think conservatives are in favor of unemployment. Most are simply indifferent to the real-world human impact of its dogma when enacted into policy.
This isn’t even debatable. The examples exist across the spectrum of conservative ideology: being tough on crime, originalism and strict constructionism, states’ rights, economic policy–pick any area of conservative policy prescriptions and you’ll find a stance that places the powerful before the weak, the corporation before the individual, and a fetishistic worship of the purity of conservative principles without regard to how they impact real people.
At certain austere times in history, the economy, whose alledged pure rationality is mostly carried out by business, chooses too many losers, which can lead to irrational outcomes, like violence.
Then, the purely rational businessperson*will suddenly discover a certain type of morality with a call for the government, heretofore deemed irrational, ineffective, and inefficient in all of its other pursuits, to protect his or her rational property and life.
He might one day call and find out his previous rational decision to cut taxes and slash gummint spending lead the very government he deemed irrational to be ill-equipped to protect his rationalty.
Alternately, he may choose a few of the misbegotten losers to serve privately as his protection, which they will do happily because not being hungry seems like a rational choice, but ones hopes they wonder if using the tern “rational” to describe shooting into crowds of their fellow misbegotten losers is the right word choice.
George Will, like the arrogant, ignorant Jon Kyl cited above said the other day that unemployment compensation subsidizes unemployment.
That is not harmful or actionable in its mere utterance, but move a little closer to the 1000 people on unemployment applying for the 25 available jobs, month after month, who are also told by the same idiots that we can’t subsidize hiring by business, and we can’t let the government hire you, and we can’t increase the money supply because it may enable your hiring which wil lead to inflation, and we can’t subsidize free lentils because of the unforeseen effect it may have on the work habits of the lentil consumers and the lentil growers and the lentil charitable association, then the fact that Will is PAID for the privilege of saying such tripe could lead to some ugly unforeseen irrationalityfor George Will’s tart, patrician, rational world.
He might get his sport coat sleeve caught in a wood chipper or crocodileof a whole different rationality.
* Well, most of them aren’t THAT rational because they think to themsleves, being closet iirationalists: “There but for the grace of GOD, go I”, as the man or the woman they just laid off goes forth into John Kyl’s and George Will’s ruthless rational world.
At certain austere times in history, the economy, whose alledged pure rationality is mostly carried out by business, chooses too many losers, which can lead to irrational outcomes, like violence.
Then, the purely rational businessperson*will suddenly discover a certain type of morality with a call for the government, heretofore deemed irrational, ineffective, and inefficient in all of its other pursuits, to protect his or her rational property and life.
He might one day call and find out his previous rational decision to cut taxes and slash gummint spending lead the very government he deemed irrational to be ill-equipped to protect his rationalty.
Alternately, he may choose a few of the misbegotten losers to serve privately as his protection, which they will do happily because not being hungry seems like a rational choice, but ones hopes they wonder if using the tern “rational” to describe shooting into crowds of their fellow misbegotten losers is the right word choice.
George Will, like the arrogant, ignorant Jon Kyl cited above said the other day that unemployment compensation subsidizes unemployment.
That is not harmful or actionable in its mere utterance, but move a little closer to the 1000 people on unemployment applying for the 25 available jobs, month after month, who are also told by the same idiots that we can’t subsidize hiring by business, and we can’t let the government hire you, and we can’t increase the money supply because it may enable your hiring which wil lead to inflation, and we can’t subsidize free lentils because of the unforeseen effect it may have on the work habits of the lentil consumers and the lentil growers and the lentil charitable association, then the fact that Will is PAID for the privilege of saying such tripe could lead to some ugly unforeseen irrationalityfor George Will’s tart, patrician, rational world.
He might get his sport coat sleeve caught in a wood chipper or crocodileof a whole different rationality.
* Well, most of them aren’t THAT rational because they think to themsleves, being closet iirationalists: “There but for the grace of GOD, go I”, as the man or the woman they just laid off goes forth into John Kyl’s and George Will’s ruthless rational world.
Then by all means, let’s get cracking on not debating it.
After you, of course.
Then by all means, let’s get cracking on not debating it.
After you, of course.
I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t raised for the purpose of weighing in on whether private charity ought to be the sole solution to the unemployment problem
I may have read him wrong, but I think bc was presenting private charity as the preferred conservative alternative to government action.
Conservatives don’t see the government as the answer to every question. It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals. Conservatives tend to see charities as the right avenue to express their empathy.
One-upping wonkie’s comment was just a bonus.
In any case, people don’t want freaking charity. They don’t want it from bc, they don’t want it from Uncle Sam. They don’t want to take their kids to the food pantry, they don’t want to get their clothes from Goodwill, they don’t want to eat government cheese, they don’t want to stand in line at the grocery store worrying about what they are and are not allowed to buy with their food stamps.
People want to work.
People want to do useful, productive work, and in return they want to receive a reasonable share of the value that their labor creates.
And when things go awry, as they will, they want the burden of whatever sacrifices are required to get through the tough times to be shared across all sectors of the society, not just themselves.
I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t raised for the purpose of weighing in on whether private charity ought to be the sole solution to the unemployment problem
I may have read him wrong, but I think bc was presenting private charity as the preferred conservative alternative to government action.
Conservatives don’t see the government as the answer to every question. It’s why conservatives donate 30% more to charity than liberals. Conservatives tend to see charities as the right avenue to express their empathy.
One-upping wonkie’s comment was just a bonus.
In any case, people don’t want freaking charity. They don’t want it from bc, they don’t want it from Uncle Sam. They don’t want to take their kids to the food pantry, they don’t want to get their clothes from Goodwill, they don’t want to eat government cheese, they don’t want to stand in line at the grocery store worrying about what they are and are not allowed to buy with their food stamps.
People want to work.
People want to do useful, productive work, and in return they want to receive a reasonable share of the value that their labor creates.
And when things go awry, as they will, they want the burden of whatever sacrifices are required to get through the tough times to be shared across all sectors of the society, not just themselves.
Seb, JD, Eric, Russell, Wonkie, Catsy et al: first let me say that I am not an economist (but my son is and he is pretty bright). The Keynesian model, which you believe applies, if it has ever worked successfully before, has never been applied to a country (1) as large and diverse as the US with (2) the size deficit we currently have (3) during a recession of this size. The Great Depression model won’t cut it since, (a) whether Keynesianism helped or hurt the US is still a matter that smarter people than me debate and (2) the raft of government services we hold as essential today weren’t even imagined in 1929 or 1939. The point here is that government then was not a bloated monster with debt that approaches 60% of GDP.
The G20 isn’t being advised by Milton Friedman (more pity that) or libertarian philosophers masquerading as economists. Collectively, they have a lot of smart people who have concluded just the opposite of what elected politicians want to conclude and that is, we have to cut services and benefits. Politicians, particularly European politicians, like to give stuff away, not take it back. Would they be doing what they are doing if they really, really didn’t think it was necessary?
Applying the Keynesian approach when we have already spent so much money strikes me and many others as economic suicide. When austerity strikes, it is hard. That is essentially what austerity means. By definition, those at the margins, those most dependent on government largess, pay the higher price when government contracts. But incurring more debt that can’t be paid back does nothing but postpone the day of reckoning.
Eric, how does austerity impact on employers in a way that is significantly different than its impact on others? With respect, you’d raise taxes across the board on most employers to keep what generic conservatives (me, for example) see as bloated government going. Tax increases definitely retard growth. We may have to have increases, but if we do, generics such as myself should only go along if, first, government spending is frozen. Then, and only then, should a tax on the better off be imposed and then solely to reduce our enormous deficit.
Seb, JD, Eric, Russell, Wonkie, Catsy et al: first let me say that I am not an economist (but my son is and he is pretty bright). The Keynesian model, which you believe applies, if it has ever worked successfully before, has never been applied to a country (1) as large and diverse as the US with (2) the size deficit we currently have (3) during a recession of this size. The Great Depression model won’t cut it since, (a) whether Keynesianism helped or hurt the US is still a matter that smarter people than me debate and (2) the raft of government services we hold as essential today weren’t even imagined in 1929 or 1939. The point here is that government then was not a bloated monster with debt that approaches 60% of GDP.
The G20 isn’t being advised by Milton Friedman (more pity that) or libertarian philosophers masquerading as economists. Collectively, they have a lot of smart people who have concluded just the opposite of what elected politicians want to conclude and that is, we have to cut services and benefits. Politicians, particularly European politicians, like to give stuff away, not take it back. Would they be doing what they are doing if they really, really didn’t think it was necessary?
Applying the Keynesian approach when we have already spent so much money strikes me and many others as economic suicide. When austerity strikes, it is hard. That is essentially what austerity means. By definition, those at the margins, those most dependent on government largess, pay the higher price when government contracts. But incurring more debt that can’t be paid back does nothing but postpone the day of reckoning.
Eric, how does austerity impact on employers in a way that is significantly different than its impact on others? With respect, you’d raise taxes across the board on most employers to keep what generic conservatives (me, for example) see as bloated government going. Tax increases definitely retard growth. We may have to have increases, but if we do, generics such as myself should only go along if, first, government spending is frozen. Then, and only then, should a tax on the better off be imposed and then solely to reduce our enormous deficit.
Why did I know you’d be the one to misconstrue the clear idiomatic meaning of “not debatable”–meaning an assertion so overwhelmingly supported by evidence and examples that arguing against it is a sign of either ignorance or bad faith argument–in favor of the narrow literal interpretation that something is incapable of being debated at all in some metaphysical way? It’s times like this that give me sympathy for the way Jes goes off on you.
Instead of cherry-picking individual words or phrases and engaging in bad-faith literalism, why don’t you try giving a shot at a substantive rebuttal for a change. You could start by explaining why any of the examples I offered–which are hardly exhaustive–are in error. I would be delighted to hear a meaningful argument for why conservative ideology–as exemplified by elected Republicans, state and federal party platforms, and the policies that poll overwhelmingly well among conservatives–does not in fact prioritize adherence to its own dogma over the real-world effects of its policies on lower-income Americans. I would love to hear someone credibly argue why tax cuts (particularly for the wealthy) are the answer whether we have a surplus or a deficit and whether the markets are up or down, but we can’t afford $16 billion to extend unemployment benefits for those who can’t find work in order to benefit from those tax cuts. Do tell why the emphasis in conservative policy proposals on punishment over rehabilitation and obtaining convictions over protecting the rights of the accused are not prima facie evidence of indifference to the human impact of policy as long as the policy adheres to conservative ideology.
I don’t care about your personal anecdotes. I don’t care whether you, personally, espouse any of these principles. It is 100% ir-fscking-relevant. The fact is that these are the priorities of the state and national Republican parties, they are the priorities of the elected conservatives in office, and they are the face of modern conservatism. You and some other conservatives might find it distasteful, but your idea of what conservatism should be is as irrelevant to the Republican party as idealized Marxism was to the Soviet Union.
If you’ve got something to say that credibly rebuts any of this, by all means bring it. Show your work.
With respect, you’d raise taxes across the board on most employers to keep what generic conservatives (me, for example) see as bloated government going.
No sir, I would not. I actually have said on this blog that any increase in taxes should wait until we are out of the recession.
Applying the Keynesian approach when we have already spent so much money strikes me and many others as economic suicide. When austerity strikes, it is hard. That is essentially what austerity means. By definition, those at the margins, those most dependent on government largess, pay the higher price when government contracts. But incurring more debt that can’t be paid back does nothing but postpone the day of reckoning.
No, you have this backwards. Austerity hurts, but hurts worse in a recession, and can and has created depressions when implemented in such times.
Austerity hurts, but is necessary when times are going good, and tax revenues are up, and finances can be fixed without causing the economy to turn into a tailspin.
And the Keynesian model does and has worked in our country, and the debate about the Great Depression is not much of a debate at all. I’ve not seen any compelling debate, just people like Amity Shlaes and her fact-free advocacy on the one side, and reputable economists/historians on the other.
The G20 isn’t being advised by Milton Friedman (more pity that) or libertarian philosophers masquerading as economists. Collectively, they have a lot of smart people who have concluded just the opposite of what elected politicians want to conclude and that is, we have to cut services and benefits. Politicians, particularly European politicians, like to give stuff away, not take it back. Would they be doing what they are doing if they really, really didn’t think it was necessary?
I don’t question the necessity, just the timing (and as an aside, European elites have been wanting to pare back the welfare state for decades, it is the voters that stop them, not their ideological leanings). And arguing that people think it necessary therefore it must be the best possible policy is not exactly persuasive.
Again, Hoover thought it necessary to implement austerity measures while in a recession and the great depression happened.
Japan did the same thing, and got the lost decade. They were not Milt Friedman. They were smart. They thought they were doing the right thing. They weren’t.
Ireland did the same thing recently, and is experiencing prolonged unemployment. Ditto.
Eric, how does austerity impact on employers in a way that is significantly different than its impact on others?
In broad strokes, austerity leads to massive job shedding in the public sector: firefighters, teachers, cops, sanitation, transportation, medical, construction, etc.
Those people lose salaries and stop buying things, depressing demand.
With spending/demand down, employers are not generating sales and are not going to be hiring new workers.
This is particularly bad during a recession when demand/spending is ALREADY so depressed. That’s how you create a vicious, downward spiral.
Why did I know you’d be the one to misconstrue the clear idiomatic meaning of “not debatable”–meaning an assertion so overwhelmingly supported by evidence and examples that arguing against it is a sign of either ignorance or bad faith argument–in favor of the narrow literal interpretation that something is incapable of being debated at all in some metaphysical way? It’s times like this that give me sympathy for the way Jes goes off on you.
Instead of cherry-picking individual words or phrases and engaging in bad-faith literalism, why don’t you try giving a shot at a substantive rebuttal for a change. You could start by explaining why any of the examples I offered–which are hardly exhaustive–are in error. I would be delighted to hear a meaningful argument for why conservative ideology–as exemplified by elected Republicans, state and federal party platforms, and the policies that poll overwhelmingly well among conservatives–does not in fact prioritize adherence to its own dogma over the real-world effects of its policies on lower-income Americans. I would love to hear someone credibly argue why tax cuts (particularly for the wealthy) are the answer whether we have a surplus or a deficit and whether the markets are up or down, but we can’t afford $16 billion to extend unemployment benefits for those who can’t find work in order to benefit from those tax cuts. Do tell why the emphasis in conservative policy proposals on punishment over rehabilitation and obtaining convictions over protecting the rights of the accused are not prima facie evidence of indifference to the human impact of policy as long as the policy adheres to conservative ideology.
I don’t care about your personal anecdotes. I don’t care whether you, personally, espouse any of these principles. It is 100% ir-fscking-relevant. The fact is that these are the priorities of the state and national Republican parties, they are the priorities of the elected conservatives in office, and they are the face of modern conservatism. You and some other conservatives might find it distasteful, but your idea of what conservatism should be is as irrelevant to the Republican party as idealized Marxism was to the Soviet Union.
If you’ve got something to say that credibly rebuts any of this, by all means bring it. Show your work.
With respect, you’d raise taxes across the board on most employers to keep what generic conservatives (me, for example) see as bloated government going.
No sir, I would not. I actually have said on this blog that any increase in taxes should wait until we are out of the recession.
Applying the Keynesian approach when we have already spent so much money strikes me and many others as economic suicide. When austerity strikes, it is hard. That is essentially what austerity means. By definition, those at the margins, those most dependent on government largess, pay the higher price when government contracts. But incurring more debt that can’t be paid back does nothing but postpone the day of reckoning.
No, you have this backwards. Austerity hurts, but hurts worse in a recession, and can and has created depressions when implemented in such times.
Austerity hurts, but is necessary when times are going good, and tax revenues are up, and finances can be fixed without causing the economy to turn into a tailspin.
And the Keynesian model does and has worked in our country, and the debate about the Great Depression is not much of a debate at all. I’ve not seen any compelling debate, just people like Amity Shlaes and her fact-free advocacy on the one side, and reputable economists/historians on the other.
The G20 isn’t being advised by Milton Friedman (more pity that) or libertarian philosophers masquerading as economists. Collectively, they have a lot of smart people who have concluded just the opposite of what elected politicians want to conclude and that is, we have to cut services and benefits. Politicians, particularly European politicians, like to give stuff away, not take it back. Would they be doing what they are doing if they really, really didn’t think it was necessary?
I don’t question the necessity, just the timing (and as an aside, European elites have been wanting to pare back the welfare state for decades, it is the voters that stop them, not their ideological leanings). And arguing that people think it necessary therefore it must be the best possible policy is not exactly persuasive.
Again, Hoover thought it necessary to implement austerity measures while in a recession and the great depression happened.
Japan did the same thing, and got the lost decade. They were not Milt Friedman. They were smart. They thought they were doing the right thing. They weren’t.
Ireland did the same thing recently, and is experiencing prolonged unemployment. Ditto.
Eric, how does austerity impact on employers in a way that is significantly different than its impact on others?
In broad strokes, austerity leads to massive job shedding in the public sector: firefighters, teachers, cops, sanitation, transportation, medical, construction, etc.
Those people lose salaries and stop buying things, depressing demand.
With spending/demand down, employers are not generating sales and are not going to be hiring new workers.
This is particularly bad during a recession when demand/spending is ALREADY so depressed. That’s how you create a vicious, downward spiral.
People want to do useful, productive work, and in return they want to receive a reasonable share of the value that their labor creates.
For the most part, I agree. Having managed law firms ranging from 12 to 100 employees, my sense is that about 15% of the work force, from entry level clerical staff up through licensed professionals, are and always will be modestly motivated, marginal performers. This is anecdotal, not statistical. I’ve had extensive dealings with local, state and federal employees. The percentage of under-motivated employees runs much higher. Again, this is anecdotal, not statistical.
And when things go awry, as they will, they want the burden of whatever sacrifices are required to get through the tough times to be shared across all sectors of the society, not just themselves.
I think this is true particularly for the 15% mentioned above and for many who work in the public sector. Most of the unemployed people I know have cut the hell out of their living expenses and are out looking for work. Asking for help from others is an anathema to almost all of them. Most of the people I know who still have jobs have also cut back and are saving against the day when they too might find themselves out of work.
People want to do useful, productive work, and in return they want to receive a reasonable share of the value that their labor creates.
For the most part, I agree. Having managed law firms ranging from 12 to 100 employees, my sense is that about 15% of the work force, from entry level clerical staff up through licensed professionals, are and always will be modestly motivated, marginal performers. This is anecdotal, not statistical. I’ve had extensive dealings with local, state and federal employees. The percentage of under-motivated employees runs much higher. Again, this is anecdotal, not statistical.
And when things go awry, as they will, they want the burden of whatever sacrifices are required to get through the tough times to be shared across all sectors of the society, not just themselves.
I think this is true particularly for the 15% mentioned above and for many who work in the public sector. Most of the unemployed people I know have cut the hell out of their living expenses and are out looking for work. Asking for help from others is an anathema to almost all of them. Most of the people I know who still have jobs have also cut back and are saving against the day when they too might find themselves out of work.
Tax increases definitely retard growth.
Good, bad, or indifferent, the US economy is driven by consumer demand. I’d actually say that, in and of itself, is not so great, but what makes the wheels turn here is people buying stuff.
So, tax increases retard growth. So does unemployment.
No paycheck, no spend. No spend, no growth.
I’m fine with reducing the national debt. I’m not fine with doing it on the backs of the middle class.
Tax increases definitely retard growth.
Good, bad, or indifferent, the US economy is driven by consumer demand. I’d actually say that, in and of itself, is not so great, but what makes the wheels turn here is people buying stuff.
So, tax increases retard growth. So does unemployment.
No paycheck, no spend. No spend, no growth.
I’m fine with reducing the national debt. I’m not fine with doing it on the backs of the middle class.
McTex: Generally speaking, I’m not opposed to balanced budgets and cutting spending.
Sebastian’s comment upthread is pretty much where I am. Russell too, at the top.
McTex: Generally speaking, I’m not opposed to balanced budgets and cutting spending.
Sebastian’s comment upthread is pretty much where I am. Russell too, at the top.
No sir, I would not. I actually have said on this blog that any increase in taxes should wait until we are out of the recession.
I missed that and I apologize.
Eric, how does austerity impact on employers in a way that is significantly different than its impact on others?
In broad strokes, austerity leads to massive job shedding in the public sector: firefighters, teachers, cops, sanitation, transportation, medical, construction, etc.
So, the harm to the private sector is the reduction in demand occasioned by a lay off of X percent of the public sector? Doesn’t the private sector have to pay in whatever the public sector releases in net payroll? Looks like an uneven dollar swap to me: pay in $100, get back $50 spread diffusely.
No sir, I would not. I actually have said on this blog that any increase in taxes should wait until we are out of the recession.
I missed that and I apologize.
Eric, how does austerity impact on employers in a way that is significantly different than its impact on others?
In broad strokes, austerity leads to massive job shedding in the public sector: firefighters, teachers, cops, sanitation, transportation, medical, construction, etc.
So, the harm to the private sector is the reduction in demand occasioned by a lay off of X percent of the public sector? Doesn’t the private sector have to pay in whatever the public sector releases in net payroll? Looks like an uneven dollar swap to me: pay in $100, get back $50 spread diffusely.
Good, bad, or indifferent, the US economy is driven by consumer demand.
If you want to generate consumer demand, suspend the employee side of FICA for people earning less than 150K a year and do so for two years. And, cut the s**t out of spending. Start with the Dept of Agriculture and end fricking crop subsidies. Then wait and see what happens. No new programs, no new agencies, no new nothing. Replace one agency with another, fine. But quit growing government.
Good, bad, or indifferent, the US economy is driven by consumer demand.
If you want to generate consumer demand, suspend the employee side of FICA for people earning less than 150K a year and do so for two years. And, cut the s**t out of spending. Start with the Dept of Agriculture and end fricking crop subsidies. Then wait and see what happens. No new programs, no new agencies, no new nothing. Replace one agency with another, fine. But quit growing government.
So, the harm to the private sector is the reduction in demand occasioned by a lay off of X percent of the public sector? Doesn’t the private sector have to pay in whatever the public sector releases in net payroll? Looks like an uneven dollar swap to me: pay in $100, get back $50 spread diffusely.
First, not just public sector jobs. The government also contracts with a lot of private sector companies, and those companies shed jobs during times of austerity as well.
Second, I’m not sure I follow the dollar swap formula you are using. Are you saying taxation is paying in, and then public sector payroll is created, and thus the private sector is getting a raw deal?
Again, if that is it, then I reiterate: I favor balanced budgets, and getting our bloated budget in line (defense is the biggest and bloatedest and first place I would apply the scalpel). Taxes need to go up as well.
However, I’m with russell in that I would not like to see this done on the backs of the middle class/working class, and either way, we should absolutely NOT try to do this during a severe recission/unemployment crisis.
Timing matters
.
I missed that and I apologize.
I could have been clearer. Not your fault in the slightest.
So, the harm to the private sector is the reduction in demand occasioned by a lay off of X percent of the public sector? Doesn’t the private sector have to pay in whatever the public sector releases in net payroll? Looks like an uneven dollar swap to me: pay in $100, get back $50 spread diffusely.
First, not just public sector jobs. The government also contracts with a lot of private sector companies, and those companies shed jobs during times of austerity as well.
Second, I’m not sure I follow the dollar swap formula you are using. Are you saying taxation is paying in, and then public sector payroll is created, and thus the private sector is getting a raw deal?
Again, if that is it, then I reiterate: I favor balanced budgets, and getting our bloated budget in line (defense is the biggest and bloatedest and first place I would apply the scalpel). Taxes need to go up as well.
However, I’m with russell in that I would not like to see this done on the backs of the middle class/working class, and either way, we should absolutely NOT try to do this during a severe recission/unemployment crisis.
Timing matters
.
I missed that and I apologize.
I could have been clearer. Not your fault in the slightest.
What I would like to understand is what other mechanism is going to get us out of this hole.
If austerity is the solution for returning to growth, what is the specific mechanism by which austerity will prompt increases of employment?
Deflation and economic contraction will increase the size of the debt relative to the economy even without new spending, making repayment more painful.
Things aren’t turning around that I can see. In May the economy added 41,000 jobs. We need it to be adding 600,000. Again, by what mechanism does austerity cause that figure to rise to the levels necessary?
What I would like to understand is what other mechanism is going to get us out of this hole.
If austerity is the solution for returning to growth, what is the specific mechanism by which austerity will prompt increases of employment?
Deflation and economic contraction will increase the size of the debt relative to the economy even without new spending, making repayment more painful.
Things aren’t turning around that I can see. In May the economy added 41,000 jobs. We need it to be adding 600,000. Again, by what mechanism does austerity cause that figure to rise to the levels necessary?
Pardon my lack of particular reference, but this thread has gone from the blatantly absurd “conservatives are for unemployment” to the equally absurd “conservatives don’t care about the human impact of unemployment”. Conservative have parents and children and spouses and partners and friends and neighbors and they certainly care about the impact of unemployment.
Rich conservatives(particular ones who have been wealthy a long time) often are less empathetic as they often don’t have the personal experience that drives the problems home. This is also true of rich Progressives.
In the halls of Congress you often get rich conservatives arguing with rich progressives; They rarely display any real empathy, it is almost always a Trading Places moment.
The personalization of these political and economic ideologies seems unproductive.
Charity, government spending and tax cuts for real businesses that employ real people are parts of the solution, in different measures based on your assessment of their potential impact.
Interestingly, the stimulus discussions we had last year had, at least, a much clearer discussion of the short and long term impacts of potential solutions, i.e. Government spending happened slower but was more efficient, tax cuts were quicker but didn’t have the same multiplier, deficits risk other cosequences, etc.
This seems like a weak rehash based on the slowly building conclusion that the answer pushed through by the Obama administration was, at best, inadequate or, at worst, just extended the pain. We are not at the point we can start reducing the deficit so let’s don’t.
For my part, spend as much as you want on expanding the electrical grid to 10 times exxpected need, make a ten year plan to make all power delivery (for anything) be in the form of electricity in ten years, make all alternative energy research focus on creating electricity as the ultimate delivery vehicle and put all of those trades people and engineers to work. True economic and clean energy growth combined, plus a good dose of incentive for new private industry.
We should do that as we bring every troop home from the Afghanistan and Iraq as quickly as possible (months not years) and reduce the defense budget by about 25% and rewrite HCR to cover people who don’t have coverage. Maybe we could save a little money too.
But thats just me.
Pardon my lack of particular reference, but this thread has gone from the blatantly absurd “conservatives are for unemployment” to the equally absurd “conservatives don’t care about the human impact of unemployment”. Conservative have parents and children and spouses and partners and friends and neighbors and they certainly care about the impact of unemployment.
Rich conservatives(particular ones who have been wealthy a long time) often are less empathetic as they often don’t have the personal experience that drives the problems home. This is also true of rich Progressives.
In the halls of Congress you often get rich conservatives arguing with rich progressives; They rarely display any real empathy, it is almost always a Trading Places moment.
The personalization of these political and economic ideologies seems unproductive.
Charity, government spending and tax cuts for real businesses that employ real people are parts of the solution, in different measures based on your assessment of their potential impact.
Interestingly, the stimulus discussions we had last year had, at least, a much clearer discussion of the short and long term impacts of potential solutions, i.e. Government spending happened slower but was more efficient, tax cuts were quicker but didn’t have the same multiplier, deficits risk other cosequences, etc.
This seems like a weak rehash based on the slowly building conclusion that the answer pushed through by the Obama administration was, at best, inadequate or, at worst, just extended the pain. We are not at the point we can start reducing the deficit so let’s don’t.
For my part, spend as much as you want on expanding the electrical grid to 10 times exxpected need, make a ten year plan to make all power delivery (for anything) be in the form of electricity in ten years, make all alternative energy research focus on creating electricity as the ultimate delivery vehicle and put all of those trades people and engineers to work. True economic and clean energy growth combined, plus a good dose of incentive for new private industry.
We should do that as we bring every troop home from the Afghanistan and Iraq as quickly as possible (months not years) and reduce the defense budget by about 25% and rewrite HCR to cover people who don’t have coverage. Maybe we could save a little money too.
But thats just me.
If austerity is the solution for returning to growth, what is the specific mechanism by which austerity will prompt increases of employment?
“Root hog, or die”.
The problem, according to some, is that unemployment benefits etc cause people to prefer the dole to actual employment.
So, they don’t take jobs they might otherwise take.
It’s unclear to me what those jobs are, exactly, and who is doing them if all of the folks on unemployment aren’t doing them.
Are there sectors of the economy that are currently starving for workers?
But it would appear that the cure for unemployment is to imbue folks with a healthy dose of fear of starvation and utter financial ruin.
‘Cos apparently there’s not enough of that going around yet.
If austerity is the solution for returning to growth, what is the specific mechanism by which austerity will prompt increases of employment?
“Root hog, or die”.
The problem, according to some, is that unemployment benefits etc cause people to prefer the dole to actual employment.
So, they don’t take jobs they might otherwise take.
It’s unclear to me what those jobs are, exactly, and who is doing them if all of the folks on unemployment aren’t doing them.
Are there sectors of the economy that are currently starving for workers?
But it would appear that the cure for unemployment is to imbue folks with a healthy dose of fear of starvation and utter financial ruin.
‘Cos apparently there’s not enough of that going around yet.
Marty, Catsy said:
I don’t care about your personal anecdotes. I don’t care whether you, personally, espouse any of these principles. It is 100% ir-fscking-relevant. The fact is that these are the priorities of the state and national Republican parties, they are the priorities of the elected conservatives in office, and they are the face of modern conservatism. You and some other conservatives might find it distasteful, but your idea of what conservatism should be is as irrelevant to the Republican party as idealized Marxism was to the Soviet Union.
So Catsy, at least, did not say
“conservatives are for unemployment”
or
“conservatives don’t care about the human impact of unemployment”
I believe you’re referring to wonkie, who was being hyperbolic in the pursuit of wit (which is no vice).
Marty, Catsy said:
I don’t care about your personal anecdotes. I don’t care whether you, personally, espouse any of these principles. It is 100% ir-fscking-relevant. The fact is that these are the priorities of the state and national Republican parties, they are the priorities of the elected conservatives in office, and they are the face of modern conservatism. You and some other conservatives might find it distasteful, but your idea of what conservatism should be is as irrelevant to the Republican party as idealized Marxism was to the Soviet Union.
So Catsy, at least, did not say
“conservatives are for unemployment”
or
“conservatives don’t care about the human impact of unemployment”
I believe you’re referring to wonkie, who was being hyperbolic in the pursuit of wit (which is no vice).
“Are there sectors of the economy that are currently starving for workers?”
Not disagreeing with any of your points, the answer to this question is yes. There are many parts of the IT sector where there is tremendous wage inflation pressure due to a shortage of qualified workers. Most of this is due to a sifnificant decrease in people going into IT becuase they fear their jobs will be offshored.
“Are there sectors of the economy that are currently starving for workers?”
Not disagreeing with any of your points, the answer to this question is yes. There are many parts of the IT sector where there is tremendous wage inflation pressure due to a shortage of qualified workers. Most of this is due to a sifnificant decrease in people going into IT becuase they fear their jobs will be offshored.
If you want to generate consumer demand, suspend the employee side of FICA for people earning less than 150K a year and do so for two years.
I bet that would put more cash into play, but it would do so at the cost of defunding SS by about half.
How would we make up that shortfall?
For the record, I’m not against cutting spending. I’m not against trimming back benefits. I’m not against austerity measures.
What I’m against is choosing to do so in ways that accept long-term unemployment rates at levels like 1 out of 10 people unable to find work even though they are actively looking, and an additional 6 to 7 percent either having given up entirely or able to find only part-time employment.
That is a freaking disaster in ways that extend far beyond the financial. Which is, I think, Jacob’s original point.
It’s our choice how we address this, and our choice who bears the brunt of the sacrifice.
When times are good, everyone should prosper, and when times are bad, everyone should feel it. That’s what “fair” means.
Everybody should be taking some of the hit, not just working people.
If you want to generate consumer demand, suspend the employee side of FICA for people earning less than 150K a year and do so for two years.
I bet that would put more cash into play, but it would do so at the cost of defunding SS by about half.
How would we make up that shortfall?
For the record, I’m not against cutting spending. I’m not against trimming back benefits. I’m not against austerity measures.
What I’m against is choosing to do so in ways that accept long-term unemployment rates at levels like 1 out of 10 people unable to find work even though they are actively looking, and an additional 6 to 7 percent either having given up entirely or able to find only part-time employment.
That is a freaking disaster in ways that extend far beyond the financial. Which is, I think, Jacob’s original point.
It’s our choice how we address this, and our choice who bears the brunt of the sacrifice.
When times are good, everyone should prosper, and when times are bad, everyone should feel it. That’s what “fair” means.
Everybody should be taking some of the hit, not just working people.
Some people worry that the world will run out of oil. Others worry that it will run out of money. The latter consider themselves realists.
In the realist view, spending some of the world’s finite stock of money to employ otherwise-idle people (on renewable-energy projects, say) would be bad for future generations: if we use up all the money now, our grandchildren won’t have any money left.
Far be it from me to call some people liberal and others conservative. I can only point out that “realists” have a strange view of reality.
–TP
Some people worry that the world will run out of oil. Others worry that it will run out of money. The latter consider themselves realists.
In the realist view, spending some of the world’s finite stock of money to employ otherwise-idle people (on renewable-energy projects, say) would be bad for future generations: if we use up all the money now, our grandchildren won’t have any money left.
Far be it from me to call some people liberal and others conservative. I can only point out that “realists” have a strange view of reality.
–TP
Because clearly, you’ve already decided who I am and what I stand for.
Sorry for being Captain Obvious about this kind of thing, but it seems there’s a need.
This is really the same as “not debatable”, so: circular. Might as well not argue it. In fact, might as well get cracking on not arguing it. Sorry, I know: Captain Obvious.
I would, but there seems to be an overabundance of unrebuttable generalities being tossed around.
I don’t care much for self-serving claims of how horrible conservatives are, either. But we both have to suffer, don’t we?
Start making verifiable claims, and I’ll respond to the facts. Or not. Make statements of opinion, and I’ll respond with opinion. That’s pretty much what started this whole exchange, if you care to look.
Any of what? There wasn’t anything there that I responded to that had anything rebuttable in it. Do your homework, and see.
Because clearly, you’ve already decided who I am and what I stand for.
Sorry for being Captain Obvious about this kind of thing, but it seems there’s a need.
This is really the same as “not debatable”, so: circular. Might as well not argue it. In fact, might as well get cracking on not arguing it. Sorry, I know: Captain Obvious.
I would, but there seems to be an overabundance of unrebuttable generalities being tossed around.
I don’t care much for self-serving claims of how horrible conservatives are, either. But we both have to suffer, don’t we?
Start making verifiable claims, and I’ll respond to the facts. Or not. Make statements of opinion, and I’ll respond with opinion. That’s pretty much what started this whole exchange, if you care to look.
Any of what? There wasn’t anything there that I responded to that had anything rebuttable in it. Do your homework, and see.
Let’s try another tack. Market theory posits that when the price of something goes up, more will be supplied. When applied to the labor market, there are problems. There are time constraints (24 hrs/day). Some people simply don’t believe it, but I guess they get to pick and choose which markets to apply market principles to.
Then there is the fact that, at some wage, a more or less rational person will trade leisure for income. This leads to the oft cited “backward bending supply of labor curve”, i.e., at some level, higher wages will lead suppliers to cut back the supply of labor.
Applied to the very rich, this would imply something along these lines: If we raised their taxes substantially, their income would be reduced and they would work more.
So my slogan is this: Get the rich off their asses. Raise their taxes.
Let’s try another tack. Market theory posits that when the price of something goes up, more will be supplied. When applied to the labor market, there are problems. There are time constraints (24 hrs/day). Some people simply don’t believe it, but I guess they get to pick and choose which markets to apply market principles to.
Then there is the fact that, at some wage, a more or less rational person will trade leisure for income. This leads to the oft cited “backward bending supply of labor curve”, i.e., at some level, higher wages will lead suppliers to cut back the supply of labor.
Applied to the very rich, this would imply something along these lines: If we raised their taxes substantially, their income would be reduced and they would work more.
So my slogan is this: Get the rich off their asses. Raise their taxes.
And, cut the s**t out of spending. Start with the Dept of Agriculture and end fricking crop subsidies.
These two sentences next to each other are, well . . .
Just for the record, US direct payments to farmers are about $20 billion a year, or $200 billion over a ten-year period. Over that same period, the Bush tax cuts cost the country $2.5 trillion in revenue — enough for 120 years of those subsidies. Just sayin’.
Also, the DoD budget is nearly $640 billion annually — 32x as large as ag subsidies. If you want to “cut the sh*t out of spending,” you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.
(Also, your own state of Texas would lose nearly $400 million annually, which would probably result in additional job losses. Again, JFTR.)
And, cut the s**t out of spending. Start with the Dept of Agriculture and end fricking crop subsidies.
These two sentences next to each other are, well . . .
Just for the record, US direct payments to farmers are about $20 billion a year, or $200 billion over a ten-year period. Over that same period, the Bush tax cuts cost the country $2.5 trillion in revenue — enough for 120 years of those subsidies. Just sayin’.
Also, the DoD budget is nearly $640 billion annually — 32x as large as ag subsidies. If you want to “cut the sh*t out of spending,” you’re going to have to do a lot better than that.
(Also, your own state of Texas would lose nearly $400 million annually, which would probably result in additional job losses. Again, JFTR.)
Jacob Davies queries: “Again, by what mechanism does austerity cause that figure to rise to the levels necessary?”
…………..crickets.
Not one of those supporting austerity here have even attempted an answer. That’s because there is none.
Jacob Davies queries: “Again, by what mechanism does austerity cause that figure to rise to the levels necessary?”
…………..crickets.
Not one of those supporting austerity here have even attempted an answer. That’s because there is none.
My point – can’t speak for others – was not that conservatives don’t care about unemployment. My intent was to try to figure out what good-faith counterbalancing motivations are stopping conservatives from supporting measures to reduce unemployment. That they are the ones preventing it from happening is a fact, both at the political level and among the rank-and-file.
There’s some IGMFY, there’s some “Make the Democrats fail so we can take back Congress and maybe the Presidency”, but in my experience there is little point in taking on the bad-faith motivations head-on; people acting in bad faith don’t care about your arguments anyway, and I don’t think anyone here is interested in defending those bad-faith motivations.
So I try to identify those good-faith arguments that are made to oppose spending, one of which I take to be a Calvinist – for want of a better term – belief about people getting what they deserve. I’m quite sympathetic to it, I think rewards are important in guiding decisions about education and hard work and investment and that of the imperfect systems available to us for determining rewards, the marketplace should usually be primary.
So having attempted to identify one reasonable good-faith argument (of perhaps several), I want to then argue against it – to say that solid evidence says that the current unemployment is not sending useful signals about the important of education and hard work, it’s actually dealing a massive blow to family stability and the work ethic. I think conservatives who are in good faith motivated that way are wrong, but not that they don’t care.
There’s a good-faith argument about the cost to be made too, and maybe that is the major motivation for most conservatives. For politicians I have a hard time taking it as good faith given how they acted from 2000-2006, but for rank-and-file conservatives it may be another matter. (Democratic politicians do stuff progressives hate too.) I think there’s a good counter to that, too, which is that mass unemployment will be very expensive, that deflation will make the debt harder to pay back, and that spending may wind up being substantially cheaper than not spending.
My point – can’t speak for others – was not that conservatives don’t care about unemployment. My intent was to try to figure out what good-faith counterbalancing motivations are stopping conservatives from supporting measures to reduce unemployment. That they are the ones preventing it from happening is a fact, both at the political level and among the rank-and-file.
There’s some IGMFY, there’s some “Make the Democrats fail so we can take back Congress and maybe the Presidency”, but in my experience there is little point in taking on the bad-faith motivations head-on; people acting in bad faith don’t care about your arguments anyway, and I don’t think anyone here is interested in defending those bad-faith motivations.
So I try to identify those good-faith arguments that are made to oppose spending, one of which I take to be a Calvinist – for want of a better term – belief about people getting what they deserve. I’m quite sympathetic to it, I think rewards are important in guiding decisions about education and hard work and investment and that of the imperfect systems available to us for determining rewards, the marketplace should usually be primary.
So having attempted to identify one reasonable good-faith argument (of perhaps several), I want to then argue against it – to say that solid evidence says that the current unemployment is not sending useful signals about the important of education and hard work, it’s actually dealing a massive blow to family stability and the work ethic. I think conservatives who are in good faith motivated that way are wrong, but not that they don’t care.
There’s a good-faith argument about the cost to be made too, and maybe that is the major motivation for most conservatives. For politicians I have a hard time taking it as good faith given how they acted from 2000-2006, but for rank-and-file conservatives it may be another matter. (Democratic politicians do stuff progressives hate too.) I think there’s a good counter to that, too, which is that mass unemployment will be very expensive, that deflation will make the debt harder to pay back, and that spending may wind up being substantially cheaper than not spending.
I agree, Marty should quit confusing himself with John Boehner, Rand Paul, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, Jon Kyl, George Will, the entire Republican caucus and the rest.
Sharron Angle, another non-Marty, recently said that it was God’s plan that she make abortion illegal even in the case of rape and/or incest. Which is another way of saying that the market doesn’t make moral choices, it just is.
Life for these people is a wood chipper without an off switch, no matter who or what or how many get caught in it. Life is a crocodile and nothing should be done at any time to limit its appetite.
These people aren’t Marty. I’ve described what they are, but why be redundant, and besides, I’m running out of synonyms for evil.
Go to MarketWatch (Wall Street Journal) and click on “The Three Biggest Lies About the U.S. Economy” by Brett Arends, their personal financial writer.
But, first, see that the stock market dropped 268 points — the NASDAQ was down 85 — and read the summary of why (guess, at best) it dropped. Government bond yields dropped, meaning bond prices rose.
Let’s see, what’s the news: The Republican Party and a few others refused to extend unemployment benefits; a program to ameliorate homelessness among male and female veterans was derailed by the Republican party and the other usual suspects, financial reform, f*cking unbelievably, is on life support; the International Bank of Settlements issued a statement encouraging austerity; Boehner wants to slash Social Security and spend the savings on eternal expensive war; the Brits and the Germans, as only they can do, are having an orgy of austerity; China, an austere people, are dying to get in on the austerity measures, you see the theme here ….
… all to impress the markets, and in the cae of the Republicans in Congress, to destroy their enemies.
What did the all-seeing markets miss today in this landscape paved with austerity that they would be so disappointed as to move their money from stocks to unproductive government bonds?
I agree, Marty should quit confusing himself with John Boehner, Rand Paul, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, Jon Kyl, George Will, the entire Republican caucus and the rest.
Sharron Angle, another non-Marty, recently said that it was God’s plan that she make abortion illegal even in the case of rape and/or incest. Which is another way of saying that the market doesn’t make moral choices, it just is.
Life for these people is a wood chipper without an off switch, no matter who or what or how many get caught in it. Life is a crocodile and nothing should be done at any time to limit its appetite.
These people aren’t Marty. I’ve described what they are, but why be redundant, and besides, I’m running out of synonyms for evil.
Go to MarketWatch (Wall Street Journal) and click on “The Three Biggest Lies About the U.S. Economy” by Brett Arends, their personal financial writer.
But, first, see that the stock market dropped 268 points — the NASDAQ was down 85 — and read the summary of why (guess, at best) it dropped. Government bond yields dropped, meaning bond prices rose.
Let’s see, what’s the news: The Republican Party and a few others refused to extend unemployment benefits; a program to ameliorate homelessness among male and female veterans was derailed by the Republican party and the other usual suspects, financial reform, f*cking unbelievably, is on life support; the International Bank of Settlements issued a statement encouraging austerity; Boehner wants to slash Social Security and spend the savings on eternal expensive war; the Brits and the Germans, as only they can do, are having an orgy of austerity; China, an austere people, are dying to get in on the austerity measures, you see the theme here ….
… all to impress the markets, and in the cae of the Republicans in Congress, to destroy their enemies.
What did the all-seeing markets miss today in this landscape paved with austerity that they would be so disappointed as to move their money from stocks to unproductive government bonds?
What did the all-seeing markets miss today in this landscape paved with austerity that they would be so disappointed as to move their money from stocks to unproductive government bonds?
Because of the widespread belief these are not czarist war bonds. Because they are denominated in dollars, of which there is an infinite supply. Because when all business ventures are failing, you’d have to be an idiot to turn down 30 yr. bonds promising to pay something at least. Anything.
Or because they simply, and perversely, wish to humiliate Sebastian.
Furthermore, those buying these bonds today have absolutely no regard for future generations of hapless widows and orphans and the burden this will place on them.
What did the all-seeing markets miss today in this landscape paved with austerity that they would be so disappointed as to move their money from stocks to unproductive government bonds?
Because of the widespread belief these are not czarist war bonds. Because they are denominated in dollars, of which there is an infinite supply. Because when all business ventures are failing, you’d have to be an idiot to turn down 30 yr. bonds promising to pay something at least. Anything.
Or because they simply, and perversely, wish to humiliate Sebastian.
Furthermore, those buying these bonds today have absolutely no regard for future generations of hapless widows and orphans and the burden this will place on them.
What I would like to understand is what other mechanism is going to get us out of this hole.
I bet that would put more cash into play, but it would do so at the cost of defunding SS by about half.
If FICA were rebated at incomes below 150K, two things would happen. First, those with jobs would have more disposable income. Second, hiring, to some unknown degree, would be stimulated because new hires could be brought in at 8% a year less. The rebate period would have to be phased back in over a 2-4 year period to avoid systemic shock, particularly at the small employer end.
A third thing that wouldn’t happen is that we would avoid the ridiculous and unproductive role of the the feds deciding how the economy gets stimulated. Let the taxpayers decide, with their own money.
How to pay for it? Cap spending. No new spending, across the board, no exceptions. Downsize our presence overseas dramatically. We can debate what our standing and reserve forces ought to look like some other time, but spending more money on bringing liberal democracy to the middle east is a loser.
Further, a federal hiring freeze. Let the public sector do what the private sector does when things get tight. The best case private sector solution is not lay anyone off, but rather let retirement and attrition accomplish the downsizing. Remaining employees will have to work harder. Sorry, sometimes life is hard.
An economist could explain what I’m going to try to say a lot better: when the public sector requires the huge portion of the gdp that ours is increasingly beginning to require, it shortens the supply of money available to expand the private sector. Spending has to be cut, fans of John Maynard Keynes notwithstanding.
How would we make up that shortfall?
If we raised their taxes substantially, their income would be reduced and they would work more.
A joke, right?
What I would like to understand is what other mechanism is going to get us out of this hole.
I bet that would put more cash into play, but it would do so at the cost of defunding SS by about half.
If FICA were rebated at incomes below 150K, two things would happen. First, those with jobs would have more disposable income. Second, hiring, to some unknown degree, would be stimulated because new hires could be brought in at 8% a year less. The rebate period would have to be phased back in over a 2-4 year period to avoid systemic shock, particularly at the small employer end.
A third thing that wouldn’t happen is that we would avoid the ridiculous and unproductive role of the the feds deciding how the economy gets stimulated. Let the taxpayers decide, with their own money.
How to pay for it? Cap spending. No new spending, across the board, no exceptions. Downsize our presence overseas dramatically. We can debate what our standing and reserve forces ought to look like some other time, but spending more money on bringing liberal democracy to the middle east is a loser.
Further, a federal hiring freeze. Let the public sector do what the private sector does when things get tight. The best case private sector solution is not lay anyone off, but rather let retirement and attrition accomplish the downsizing. Remaining employees will have to work harder. Sorry, sometimes life is hard.
An economist could explain what I’m going to try to say a lot better: when the public sector requires the huge portion of the gdp that ours is increasingly beginning to require, it shortens the supply of money available to expand the private sector. Spending has to be cut, fans of John Maynard Keynes notwithstanding.
How would we make up that shortfall?
If we raised their taxes substantially, their income would be reduced and they would work more.
A joke, right?
The biggest problem with the whole “austerity” crap pile going on is if it’s implemented, it will stunt growth, and leave us all worse off than we were before. And that will be the new normal. There’s more than one equilibrium for society, and the relatively prosperous for everyone eqilibrium we’ve been at isn’t the only, or even the most common one.
So, we get stuck at an equilibrium with 10% unemployment, and with massive income inequality, and lots of instability, and we’re back where humanity has been through lots of history. And we’ve bleed, worked, sweat, fought, lived, and died to get away from that. And the “austerity” idiots are going to push us back into it, because of Invisible Bond Vigilantes, or because they think they’ll be one of the people on top because they’re just that awesome (plenty of libertarians), or because they’re more interested in making sure that “unworthy” people don’t get “handouts” than in helping raise the whole society, including themselves up, or because they’re loyal toadies of the would-be overclass.
So, hey, cut Social Security, fire teachers and police, let our roads fall apart, but heaven forbid we borrow money, or raise taxes on the people who ran the economy off a cliff and/or have siphoned almost all of the economic growth over the past thirty years into their own giant coin-filled vaults.
The biggest problem with the whole “austerity” crap pile going on is if it’s implemented, it will stunt growth, and leave us all worse off than we were before. And that will be the new normal. There’s more than one equilibrium for society, and the relatively prosperous for everyone eqilibrium we’ve been at isn’t the only, or even the most common one.
So, we get stuck at an equilibrium with 10% unemployment, and with massive income inequality, and lots of instability, and we’re back where humanity has been through lots of history. And we’ve bleed, worked, sweat, fought, lived, and died to get away from that. And the “austerity” idiots are going to push us back into it, because of Invisible Bond Vigilantes, or because they think they’ll be one of the people on top because they’re just that awesome (plenty of libertarians), or because they’re more interested in making sure that “unworthy” people don’t get “handouts” than in helping raise the whole society, including themselves up, or because they’re loyal toadies of the would-be overclass.
So, hey, cut Social Security, fire teachers and police, let our roads fall apart, but heaven forbid we borrow money, or raise taxes on the people who ran the economy off a cliff and/or have siphoned almost all of the economic growth over the past thirty years into their own giant coin-filled vaults.
This is Palin-esque word salad, almost entirely without meaningful semantic content.
That’s the question I just asked myself, Slart, after reading that gibberish. I have re-read your litany of tu quoque responses three times now in an attempt to find a substantial point in it–without success.
Pay more attention.
I made a number of empirically evaluable assertions about the priorities of conservative ideology. The party platforms and stated priorities of elected Republicans are a matter of fact and record, and the actual human impact I describe as a result of those policies is also a matter of fact and record. Countless elected Republicans are on record making both votes and statements that regard reducing the deficit and discouraging “laziness” as being more important than providing health care or unemployment assistance for families. These are facts, and you don’t get to have your own. You took issue with my characterization of those facts as “not debatable”, but neglected to actually offer any support for why you think my assertions are inaccurate. When challenged to provide a substantial response instead of snark, you responded with tu quoque nonsense and breezy conflation of the opinions I’ve stated with the facts that underlie those conclusions. You quoted a line about “not caring” about your personal anecdotes out of context–said context being a paragraph of statements about how it’s irrelevant whether or not individual conservatives believe X, when X is the unequivocal agenda of elected Republicans–using it for yet another tu quoque rejoinder, and demonstrating that you didn’t bother to process the context by spending half your comment whining about how I’m pigeonholing you with all those other mean people.
When multiple people–with different politics from different countries and walks of life, over a period of years–raise the same issues with the substance-free way you deflect and avoid debate, you might want to consider that the problem isn’t with them.
This is Palin-esque word salad, almost entirely without meaningful semantic content.
That’s the question I just asked myself, Slart, after reading that gibberish. I have re-read your litany of tu quoque responses three times now in an attempt to find a substantial point in it–without success.
Pay more attention.
I made a number of empirically evaluable assertions about the priorities of conservative ideology. The party platforms and stated priorities of elected Republicans are a matter of fact and record, and the actual human impact I describe as a result of those policies is also a matter of fact and record. Countless elected Republicans are on record making both votes and statements that regard reducing the deficit and discouraging “laziness” as being more important than providing health care or unemployment assistance for families. These are facts, and you don’t get to have your own. You took issue with my characterization of those facts as “not debatable”, but neglected to actually offer any support for why you think my assertions are inaccurate. When challenged to provide a substantial response instead of snark, you responded with tu quoque nonsense and breezy conflation of the opinions I’ve stated with the facts that underlie those conclusions. You quoted a line about “not caring” about your personal anecdotes out of context–said context being a paragraph of statements about how it’s irrelevant whether or not individual conservatives believe X, when X is the unequivocal agenda of elected Republicans–using it for yet another tu quoque rejoinder, and demonstrating that you didn’t bother to process the context by spending half your comment whining about how I’m pigeonholing you with all those other mean people.
When multiple people–with different politics from different countries and walks of life, over a period of years–raise the same issues with the substance-free way you deflect and avoid debate, you might want to consider that the problem isn’t with them.
Of course …
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/dead_right.html
“The thing that makes capitalism good, apparently, is not that it generates wealth more efficiently than other known economic engines. No, the thing that makes capitalism good is that, by forcing people to live precarious lives, it causes them to live in fear of losing everything and therefore to adopt – as fearful people will – a cowed and subservient posture: in a word, they behave ‘conservatively’. Of course, crouching to protect themselves and their loved ones from the eternal lash of risk precisely won’t preserve these workers from risk. But the point isn’t to induce a society-wide conformist crouch by way of making the workers safe and happy. The point is to induce a society-wide conformist crouch. Period. A solid foundaton is hereby laid for a desirable social order.
Let’s call this position (what would be an evocative name?) ‘dark satanic millian liberalism’:”
Of course …
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/dead_right.html
“The thing that makes capitalism good, apparently, is not that it generates wealth more efficiently than other known economic engines. No, the thing that makes capitalism good is that, by forcing people to live precarious lives, it causes them to live in fear of losing everything and therefore to adopt – as fearful people will – a cowed and subservient posture: in a word, they behave ‘conservatively’. Of course, crouching to protect themselves and their loved ones from the eternal lash of risk precisely won’t preserve these workers from risk. But the point isn’t to induce a society-wide conformist crouch by way of making the workers safe and happy. The point is to induce a society-wide conformist crouch. Period. A solid foundaton is hereby laid for a desirable social order.
Let’s call this position (what would be an evocative name?) ‘dark satanic millian liberalism’:”
“A Federal hiring freeze”
The federal civilian workforce, not counting military and postal workers, has fluctuated between about 2.1 million workers and 3.1 million workers since 1946. It is currently about 2.75 million. (I’m going to do more work on this, because explaining this stuff pisses me off).
So the Federal government has roughly kept employment at steady levels despite the growth in Federal revenues (input) and expenditures (output) since 1946.
Youda thunk, given the absolute ignorant bullsh*t flung around by bullsh*tters that none of this represents increasing productivity on the part of the federal workforce.
But we need another effing hiring freeze, do we?
What are the savings from this hiring freeze?
How bout a number? I’ll wager its a shotglass of spit compared to the annual Federal budget, not to mention the deficit.
Fire all 2.8 million Federal workers. How much are you saving? I have a rough idea, but I doubt anyone else does, so I’ll keep it to myself for a few days.
It’s less than 14 trillion, or whatever it is we need to balance the federal budget.
Put those people in line with the rest of the poor sods standing in line for the 25 jobs available in the private sector. I’m sure everyone will appreciate the competition.
Sorry, sometimes life is hard.
“A Federal hiring freeze”
The federal civilian workforce, not counting military and postal workers, has fluctuated between about 2.1 million workers and 3.1 million workers since 1946. It is currently about 2.75 million. (I’m going to do more work on this, because explaining this stuff pisses me off).
So the Federal government has roughly kept employment at steady levels despite the growth in Federal revenues (input) and expenditures (output) since 1946.
Youda thunk, given the absolute ignorant bullsh*t flung around by bullsh*tters that none of this represents increasing productivity on the part of the federal workforce.
But we need another effing hiring freeze, do we?
What are the savings from this hiring freeze?
How bout a number? I’ll wager its a shotglass of spit compared to the annual Federal budget, not to mention the deficit.
Fire all 2.8 million Federal workers. How much are you saving? I have a rough idea, but I doubt anyone else does, so I’ll keep it to myself for a few days.
It’s less than 14 trillion, or whatever it is we need to balance the federal budget.
Put those people in line with the rest of the poor sods standing in line for the 25 jobs available in the private sector. I’m sure everyone will appreciate the competition.
Sorry, sometimes life is hard.
“But, first, see that the stock market dropped 268 points — the NASDAQ was down 85 — and read the summary of why (guess, at best) it dropped. Government bond yields dropped, meaning bond prices rose.”
Well let’s see, here are the two key announcements for todays drop:
First China’s growth was measured wrong by the Conference Board
Then The new Financial Regulations create requirements for 1 trillion dollars of reserves and credit for derivatives companies
Plus consumer confidence was reported down 10 points from 62 to 52 in one month.
Not a good day of news but not a guess.
“But, first, see that the stock market dropped 268 points — the NASDAQ was down 85 — and read the summary of why (guess, at best) it dropped. Government bond yields dropped, meaning bond prices rose.”
Well let’s see, here are the two key announcements for todays drop:
First China’s growth was measured wrong by the Conference Board
Then The new Financial Regulations create requirements for 1 trillion dollars of reserves and credit for derivatives companies
Plus consumer confidence was reported down 10 points from 62 to 52 in one month.
Not a good day of news but not a guess.
“Fire all 2.8 million Federal workers. How much are you saving? I have a rough idea, but I doubt anyone else does, so I’ll keep it to myself for a few days.”
Thats true John, however, for the sake of completeness there are 1 million less people in the military (1.5M from 2.5M since 1962)so we should be pretty impressed with their productivity.
In addition the average Federal employee has gotten their share of those productivity gains note here
“Fire all 2.8 million Federal workers. How much are you saving? I have a rough idea, but I doubt anyone else does, so I’ll keep it to myself for a few days.”
Thats true John, however, for the sake of completeness there are 1 million less people in the military (1.5M from 2.5M since 1962)so we should be pretty impressed with their productivity.
In addition the average Federal employee has gotten their share of those productivity gains note here
From Marty’s second link:
As a simpleton, I’d like to understand what this means, let alone what it has to do with a drop in the DJIA.
–TP
From Marty’s second link:
As a simpleton, I’d like to understand what this means, let alone what it has to do with a drop in the DJIA.
–TP
If FICA were rebated at incomes below 150K, two things would happen. First, those with jobs would have more disposable income. Second, hiring, to some unknown degree, would be stimulated because new hires could be brought in at 8% a year less
So, I take it that, “If business owners didn’t have to pay so much in taxes they could afford to pay people more?” is no longer operational as a conservative talking point?
If FICA were rebated at incomes below 150K, two things would happen. First, those with jobs would have more disposable income. Second, hiring, to some unknown degree, would be stimulated because new hires could be brought in at 8% a year less
So, I take it that, “If business owners didn’t have to pay so much in taxes they could afford to pay people more?” is no longer operational as a conservative talking point?
Bobbyp, it would be nice if you would quit with the sarcasm when attempting to club us with an economic theory which appears to be believed by about one single economist guru.
Bobbyp, it would be nice if you would quit with the sarcasm when attempting to club us with an economic theory which appears to be believed by about one single economist guru.
Phil, you appear to be agreeing with McKinneyTexas but it is phrased as disagreement. Isn’t he saying that if people were taxed less it would stimulate the economy.
BTW, Keynes and Friedman both thought that tax cuts in a recession were a very effective stimulus.
Phil, you appear to be agreeing with McKinneyTexas but it is phrased as disagreement. Isn’t he saying that if people were taxed less it would stimulate the economy.
BTW, Keynes and Friedman both thought that tax cuts in a recession were a very effective stimulus.
Well, the problem with tax cuts in a recession is that people tend to want to save and pay off debt rather than consume when times are bad. The government is really the spender of last resort in these situations.
I also found it kind of hilarious that McKinneyTexas was describing with evident approval the cutting back on spending of the people he knew, when it is exactly that which turns a recession into a depression. Y’know, what is good for the individual isn’t actually good if too many people do it, Paradox of Thrift kinda thing.
But, whatever, I guess at worst they’ll just “heighten the contradictions” until the time comes when we line the them up against a wall and shoot them. They’ll probably back down before that happens, though, like they did in the 1930’s.
Well, the problem with tax cuts in a recession is that people tend to want to save and pay off debt rather than consume when times are bad. The government is really the spender of last resort in these situations.
I also found it kind of hilarious that McKinneyTexas was describing with evident approval the cutting back on spending of the people he knew, when it is exactly that which turns a recession into a depression. Y’know, what is good for the individual isn’t actually good if too many people do it, Paradox of Thrift kinda thing.
But, whatever, I guess at worst they’ll just “heighten the contradictions” until the time comes when we line the them up against a wall and shoot them. They’ll probably back down before that happens, though, like they did in the 1930’s.
So, the “paradox of thrift” means we should shoot those who save?
So, the “paradox of thrift” means we should shoot those who save?
Good to see you again, jrudkis.
No, the paradox of thrift does NOT mean we should shoot those who save. It means we have a choice:
1) Sit back, let savers save, allow demand to keep dropping, and watch even more investment dry up because no capitalist worth his salt is going to invest when demand is dropping. That will make even more people think they’d better save, reducing demand even more. Pretty soon, we have all sorts of idle productive capacity because good capitalists are not so dumb as to keep producing goods and services that have no customers.
2) Throw government into the mix: let government help savers save by offering to pay interest on their savings. In English, this is known as government borrowing money, i.e. running a deficit. Unlike all those indiividual savers, government can be confident about spending — even spending borrowed money. By spending, which means buying things and hiring people, government turns itself into a customer for goods and services. This emboldens good capitalists to invest, it emboldens ordinary people to consume, it raises demand for labor, and all of a sudden you get what happened in 1940-45: major growth of economic output thanks to massive government deficits. (All that shooting and bombing and stuff was historically important, but economically speaking it was the massive growth in government debt, not the blood and gore, that finally pulled the US economy out of the Great Depression.)
Naturally, we can reject the choice between those two options. We can let The Economy bumble along and wait for it to sort of revive … in the “long run”.
–TP
Good to see you again, jrudkis.
No, the paradox of thrift does NOT mean we should shoot those who save. It means we have a choice:
1) Sit back, let savers save, allow demand to keep dropping, and watch even more investment dry up because no capitalist worth his salt is going to invest when demand is dropping. That will make even more people think they’d better save, reducing demand even more. Pretty soon, we have all sorts of idle productive capacity because good capitalists are not so dumb as to keep producing goods and services that have no customers.
2) Throw government into the mix: let government help savers save by offering to pay interest on their savings. In English, this is known as government borrowing money, i.e. running a deficit. Unlike all those indiividual savers, government can be confident about spending — even spending borrowed money. By spending, which means buying things and hiring people, government turns itself into a customer for goods and services. This emboldens good capitalists to invest, it emboldens ordinary people to consume, it raises demand for labor, and all of a sudden you get what happened in 1940-45: major growth of economic output thanks to massive government deficits. (All that shooting and bombing and stuff was historically important, but economically speaking it was the massive growth in government debt, not the blood and gore, that finally pulled the US economy out of the Great Depression.)
Naturally, we can reject the choice between those two options. We can let The Economy bumble along and wait for it to sort of revive … in the “long run”.
–TP
How would we make up that shortfall?
If we raised their taxes substantially, their income would be reduced and they would work more.
A joke, right?
Not a joke at all. Google “labor-leisure.”
Or think about this. Suppose you make $100/hr pre-tax, and can control the niumber of hours you work. You pay 30% in taxes, so if you work 2000 hours a year you make, after tax, $140K.
Now suppose taxes are cut to 25%. If you continue to work 2000 hours your income will go to $150K. But, gee, maybe you are perfectly happy with $140K. You only need about $187K pre-tax to have $140K after-tax, so maybe you cut your work hours to 1870/yr and take 130 extra hours (three weeks plus) off.
Would that be a crazy thing to do? Of course not. And obviously the logic applies in reverse.
How would we make up that shortfall?
If we raised their taxes substantially, their income would be reduced and they would work more.
A joke, right?
Not a joke at all. Google “labor-leisure.”
Or think about this. Suppose you make $100/hr pre-tax, and can control the niumber of hours you work. You pay 30% in taxes, so if you work 2000 hours a year you make, after tax, $140K.
Now suppose taxes are cut to 25%. If you continue to work 2000 hours your income will go to $150K. But, gee, maybe you are perfectly happy with $140K. You only need about $187K pre-tax to have $140K after-tax, so maybe you cut your work hours to 1870/yr and take 130 extra hours (three weeks plus) off.
Would that be a crazy thing to do? Of course not. And obviously the logic applies in reverse.
I think that conservative politicians should be judged by their actions.
And this is the pattern: the conservative politician supports all sorts big government interventions that support jobs in his or her state while supporting cuts in taxes for the wealthy and blaming any budget imbalances on welfare Cadillacs or immigrants or whoever the bogeyperson du jour happens to be. The conservative politician advocates deregulation and blames any catastophes that result on everybody except the conservative politican. Whenthe catastrophe is economic and lots of people still can’t find jobs and their unemployment runs out the conservative continues to shovel tax dollars to the conservative voters in his/her district but votes against an extention of unemployment benefits.
And yes I know some conservatives are Democrats and collaborate with this selfishness and hypocrisy.
Selfishness and hypocracy appear to me to be fundamental conservative values, based on how conservative politicians act.
I think that conservative politicians should be judged by their actions.
And this is the pattern: the conservative politician supports all sorts big government interventions that support jobs in his or her state while supporting cuts in taxes for the wealthy and blaming any budget imbalances on welfare Cadillacs or immigrants or whoever the bogeyperson du jour happens to be. The conservative politician advocates deregulation and blames any catastophes that result on everybody except the conservative politican. Whenthe catastrophe is economic and lots of people still can’t find jobs and their unemployment runs out the conservative continues to shovel tax dollars to the conservative voters in his/her district but votes against an extention of unemployment benefits.
And yes I know some conservatives are Democrats and collaborate with this selfishness and hypocrisy.
Selfishness and hypocracy appear to me to be fundamental conservative values, based on how conservative politicians act.
All that shooting and bombing and stuff was historically important, but economically speaking it was the massive growth in government debt, not the blood and gore, that finally pulled the US economy out of the Great Depression
I think there is a strong argument for the destruction of all other industrial bases as one reason the government spending in 1940-45 made a difference. No one else could produce but us.
Perhaps we are just blowing up the wrong stuff this time.
All that shooting and bombing and stuff was historically important, but economically speaking it was the massive growth in government debt, not the blood and gore, that finally pulled the US economy out of the Great Depression
I think there is a strong argument for the destruction of all other industrial bases as one reason the government spending in 1940-45 made a difference. No one else could produce but us.
Perhaps we are just blowing up the wrong stuff this time.
No one else could produce but us.
Think about that for a minute, though. If no one could produce but us, how could anybody pay “us” to produce for “them”?
Somebody had to pay for the production of P-51s and Liberty ships and all that, and that “somebody” was “us” — in the form of our federal government. Which paid “us” with borrowed money. Money that it borrowed from who? From “us” of course.
It’s not like “we” had a lot of money to lend, in 1938-39, so you might wonder how that could possibly work. But work it undeniably did.
–TP
No one else could produce but us.
Think about that for a minute, though. If no one could produce but us, how could anybody pay “us” to produce for “them”?
Somebody had to pay for the production of P-51s and Liberty ships and all that, and that “somebody” was “us” — in the form of our federal government. Which paid “us” with borrowed money. Money that it borrowed from who? From “us” of course.
It’s not like “we” had a lot of money to lend, in 1938-39, so you might wonder how that could possibly work. But work it undeniably did.
–TP
Bobbyp, it would be nice if you would quit…”
The pure unredeemed pettiness of that remark is simply astounding. Take two aspirin and get a good night’s sleep.
Happy 4th of July
Bobbyp, it would be nice if you would quit…”
The pure unredeemed pettiness of that remark is simply astounding. Take two aspirin and get a good night’s sleep.
Happy 4th of July
Hello, all.
It has been many, many months since I have paid a visit.
Up late with that glorious combination of insomnia and depression — which isn’t exactly being helped right now by watching Anderson Cooper’s dutiful reporting on, among other things, those poor, poor oil-covered sea turtles and pelicans — I was delighted to see that Eric gave a guest forum to Jacob, who did a fine job with it.
To quote JD: “Unfortunately, the idea is more wrong than right. Unemployment is corrosive towards the very values that conservatives hold high: family cohesion; hard work; honesty; marriage; child-raising; lawfulness.”
Well said.
However — instead of the more generic and too general “conservaties” —
I’d go with right-wing, out-of-their-mind zealot Republicans who forgot long ago, ever since the Clinton Administration, what their party once stood for, not to mention that it once held some honor and dignity.
Meanwhile, to state the obvious, this economy — the seemingly endless 10 percent employment; the jittery Dow and all of those who shudder with it (held hostage by their unstable 401k funds and shrinking hopes of retiring sooner rather than later); May housing sales down by a record 33 percent; consumer confidence plummeting (and more Americans thinking the country is on the ominous “wrong track” than the right track in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll); the Obama Administration’s continued and shameful coziness with big business and big banks — still sucks.
To my untrained eye, I’d believe we are headed for the dreaded double-dip recession, bad news for Dems in November — and something (along with the 72-day-and-counting BP mess, truly his Katrina) even the Great Obama won’t overcome in 2012.
I can only bear witness to what I live and see.
In March and April, I enjoyed back-to-back 15-car months, a total, give or take, necessary to pay this worker’s bills and have a little extra — and the first time since the economic downslide in the car business that began in late 2007 that I achieved such solid success.
What a relief.
What a turnaround.
Not.
In May, I sold 7 cars.
June: 6.
So, you go from 30 cars in two months — some long-awaited prosperity (and job security; I was nearly fired last December) — to 13 cars in two months (the number needed in a single month to make ends meet).
For now at least, March and April, were a sad aberration.
I am now seeing the same shit I saw in 2008 and 2009 and, in some ways, worse: Due to the Great Recession and all of the bankruptcies and foreclosures and lst jobs and wages that have gone with it, we see bad credit after bad credit day after day.
I recenty ran a 356 — in nine years, the only time I saw a score under 400 (mind you, ideally you’d better be at least a 650 in this economy) once, and that was a 398.
Forget it hurting my ability to make a living. I will tell you it takes a toll on you emotionally, if you have a heart — and granted, many of my colleagues do not — looking customer after customer in the eye and telling them they don’t come close to being able to buy an automobile, revealing to them just how low their credit has fallen. (Many customers, previously 650s and above, are shocked to find out that they are no longer credit-worthy.)
Meantime, just today I had to take out a $2200 loan from my 401k — leaving only $2200, which represents the company’s match, and, therefore, cannot be touched — in order to stay afloat after making less than $5000 the past two months.
And so it goes.
For me.
And for many million Americans less fortunate than I.
P.S. Big Russ, TP, Bernard, my dear ObWi friends — I dropped Comcast: my new email address is tonygott@verizon.net
One last thing, OT, watching the Kagan hearings, I offer this observation: Is there a bigger asshole in the Senate than Jeff Frigging Sessions?
Hello, all.
It has been many, many months since I have paid a visit.
Up late with that glorious combination of insomnia and depression — which isn’t exactly being helped right now by watching Anderson Cooper’s dutiful reporting on, among other things, those poor, poor oil-covered sea turtles and pelicans — I was delighted to see that Eric gave a guest forum to Jacob, who did a fine job with it.
To quote JD: “Unfortunately, the idea is more wrong than right. Unemployment is corrosive towards the very values that conservatives hold high: family cohesion; hard work; honesty; marriage; child-raising; lawfulness.”
Well said.
However — instead of the more generic and too general “conservaties” —
I’d go with right-wing, out-of-their-mind zealot Republicans who forgot long ago, ever since the Clinton Administration, what their party once stood for, not to mention that it once held some honor and dignity.
Meanwhile, to state the obvious, this economy — the seemingly endless 10 percent employment; the jittery Dow and all of those who shudder with it (held hostage by their unstable 401k funds and shrinking hopes of retiring sooner rather than later); May housing sales down by a record 33 percent; consumer confidence plummeting (and more Americans thinking the country is on the ominous “wrong track” than the right track in the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll); the Obama Administration’s continued and shameful coziness with big business and big banks — still sucks.
To my untrained eye, I’d believe we are headed for the dreaded double-dip recession, bad news for Dems in November — and something (along with the 72-day-and-counting BP mess, truly his Katrina) even the Great Obama won’t overcome in 2012.
I can only bear witness to what I live and see.
In March and April, I enjoyed back-to-back 15-car months, a total, give or take, necessary to pay this worker’s bills and have a little extra — and the first time since the economic downslide in the car business that began in late 2007 that I achieved such solid success.
What a relief.
What a turnaround.
Not.
In May, I sold 7 cars.
June: 6.
So, you go from 30 cars in two months — some long-awaited prosperity (and job security; I was nearly fired last December) — to 13 cars in two months (the number needed in a single month to make ends meet).
For now at least, March and April, were a sad aberration.
I am now seeing the same shit I saw in 2008 and 2009 and, in some ways, worse: Due to the Great Recession and all of the bankruptcies and foreclosures and lst jobs and wages that have gone with it, we see bad credit after bad credit day after day.
I recenty ran a 356 — in nine years, the only time I saw a score under 400 (mind you, ideally you’d better be at least a 650 in this economy) once, and that was a 398.
Forget it hurting my ability to make a living. I will tell you it takes a toll on you emotionally, if you have a heart — and granted, many of my colleagues do not — looking customer after customer in the eye and telling them they don’t come close to being able to buy an automobile, revealing to them just how low their credit has fallen. (Many customers, previously 650s and above, are shocked to find out that they are no longer credit-worthy.)
Meantime, just today I had to take out a $2200 loan from my 401k — leaving only $2200, which represents the company’s match, and, therefore, cannot be touched — in order to stay afloat after making less than $5000 the past two months.
And so it goes.
For me.
And for many million Americans less fortunate than I.
P.S. Big Russ, TP, Bernard, my dear ObWi friends — I dropped Comcast: my new email address is tonygott@verizon.net
One last thing, OT, watching the Kagan hearings, I offer this observation: Is there a bigger asshole in the Senate than Jeff Frigging Sessions?
The US unemployment rate is currently 9.7%. That is the U3 number, which excludes people who have simply given up on finding work.
The U4 number includes those people. The U4 rate is 10.2%, which means that one out of every 200 people who could be working and would like to work have simply given up on finding work.
russell, I’m going to disagree with the detail by way of agreeing with the thesis: those figures imply that 0.5% of the total population (10.2% – 9.7%) is out of work and has given up, not 0.5% of the unemployed population. It’s more like 5% or so of the out-of-work population. One in twenty unemployed people has given up hope of finding work.
So you’re wrong, in the sense that you’re a lot more right than you thought you were.
The US unemployment rate is currently 9.7%. That is the U3 number, which excludes people who have simply given up on finding work.
The U4 number includes those people. The U4 rate is 10.2%, which means that one out of every 200 people who could be working and would like to work have simply given up on finding work.
russell, I’m going to disagree with the detail by way of agreeing with the thesis: those figures imply that 0.5% of the total population (10.2% – 9.7%) is out of work and has given up, not 0.5% of the unemployed population. It’s more like 5% or so of the out-of-work population. One in twenty unemployed people has given up hope of finding work.
So you’re wrong, in the sense that you’re a lot more right than you thought you were.
Not that Catsy has exactly merited any response, but:
I invite Catsy to look up tu quoque, and then point out where I have done that. Or retract, as appropriate.
I’m still stuck at zero, but: unless you’ve pointed out how unemployment is itself a conservative value, as wonkie claimed (and perhaps you just need to use smaller words, because I’m not seeing it), then you’ve failed to make your point.
Eh? You started out with “not debatable”. And a steaming mess of assertions is not, in any universe I’m comfortable in, a fact-filled argument.
Anyway: done with you. You’re arguing by assertion, and you’re conflating conservative’s different set of priorities regarding unemployment with a deliberate drive to create unemployment. Which doesn’t even make sense on any level, because conservatives have at various times controlled Congress (and have in recent memory controlled both Congress and the White House), and bills and policies aimed at separating folks from their jobs just aren’t in evidence.
Not that Catsy has exactly merited any response, but:
I invite Catsy to look up tu quoque, and then point out where I have done that. Or retract, as appropriate.
I’m still stuck at zero, but: unless you’ve pointed out how unemployment is itself a conservative value, as wonkie claimed (and perhaps you just need to use smaller words, because I’m not seeing it), then you’ve failed to make your point.
Eh? You started out with “not debatable”. And a steaming mess of assertions is not, in any universe I’m comfortable in, a fact-filled argument.
Anyway: done with you. You’re arguing by assertion, and you’re conflating conservative’s different set of priorities regarding unemployment with a deliberate drive to create unemployment. Which doesn’t even make sense on any level, because conservatives have at various times controlled Congress (and have in recent memory controlled both Congress and the White House), and bills and policies aimed at separating folks from their jobs just aren’t in evidence.
And a steaming mess of assertions is not, in any universe I’m comfortable in, a fact-filled argument.
Tu quoque, Slarti.
And a steaming mess of assertions is not, in any universe I’m comfortable in, a fact-filled argument.
Tu quoque, Slarti.
I wonder whether ‘tu quoque’ now changes from the meaning ‘auch du'(you too) to ‘du mich auch’ (up yours, lit. you me too) 😉
I wonder whether ‘tu quoque’ now changes from the meaning ‘auch du'(you too) to ‘du mich auch’ (up yours, lit. you me too) 😉
A cry of bullsh*t does not qualify as tu quoque, J. But possibly you left something out in favor of brevity?
A cry of bullsh*t does not qualify as tu quoque, J. But possibly you left something out in favor of brevity?
If FICA were rebated at incomes below 150K, two things would happen. First, those with jobs would have more disposable income. Second, hiring, to some unknown degree, would be stimulated because new hires could be brought in at 8% a year less.
My guess on this is that (a) is true and (b) is not.
If you put more money in most folks’ pockets by way of a tax rebate, a lot of it will get spent.
If you give back the employee portion of FICA, I’m very doubtful that this will encourage employers to hire more people.
Employers hire people when they believe that doing so will make them money. In general, that is when there is demand for what they make or do that they cannot currently meet because the folks on hand can’t scale up to it.
No demand, no hire, even if the labor is available at a discount.
That’s my take.
There might be some indirect effect on hiring — more spendable cash creates more demand and so more incentive to hire. There is likely also some margin where employers are on the fence about hiring and a two-year FICA holiday will push them over the edge, but my guess is that that margin is pretty small.
I’d also point out a small contradiction here. If you want the spending money benefit of the FICA holiday, you have to actually give the money to the employee. It doesn’t work if the employer holds onto it.
I think you gotta pick one.
Regarding federal spending, we all have our favorite thing to cut. One man’s fat is another man’s meat. Not saying there aren’t places to trim, just saying that noting that is the easy part, the hard part is coming to an agreement about what goes and what stays.
And as always when folks talk about “cutting out the waste”: over half the budget is DOD, Medicare, Medicaid, SS, and debt service. That’s where the money goes. Debt service is not negotiable (I hope), so if you want to make a really useful dent in the size of government (by which people usually mean $$$$) you’re going to have to take on the military and/or the entitlements.
Good luck.
If FICA were rebated at incomes below 150K, two things would happen. First, those with jobs would have more disposable income. Second, hiring, to some unknown degree, would be stimulated because new hires could be brought in at 8% a year less.
My guess on this is that (a) is true and (b) is not.
If you put more money in most folks’ pockets by way of a tax rebate, a lot of it will get spent.
If you give back the employee portion of FICA, I’m very doubtful that this will encourage employers to hire more people.
Employers hire people when they believe that doing so will make them money. In general, that is when there is demand for what they make or do that they cannot currently meet because the folks on hand can’t scale up to it.
No demand, no hire, even if the labor is available at a discount.
That’s my take.
There might be some indirect effect on hiring — more spendable cash creates more demand and so more incentive to hire. There is likely also some margin where employers are on the fence about hiring and a two-year FICA holiday will push them over the edge, but my guess is that that margin is pretty small.
I’d also point out a small contradiction here. If you want the spending money benefit of the FICA holiday, you have to actually give the money to the employee. It doesn’t work if the employer holds onto it.
I think you gotta pick one.
Regarding federal spending, we all have our favorite thing to cut. One man’s fat is another man’s meat. Not saying there aren’t places to trim, just saying that noting that is the easy part, the hard part is coming to an agreement about what goes and what stays.
And as always when folks talk about “cutting out the waste”: over half the budget is DOD, Medicare, Medicaid, SS, and debt service. That’s where the money goes. Debt service is not negotiable (I hope), so if you want to make a really useful dent in the size of government (by which people usually mean $$$$) you’re going to have to take on the military and/or the entitlements.
Good luck.
Slarti: But possibly you left something out in favor of brevity?
Yes.
Hartmut: I wonder whether ‘tu quoque’ now changes from the meaning ‘auch du'(you too) to ‘du mich auch’ (up yours, lit. you me too) 😉
Slarti responded to the truism that high unemployment is a conservative value with a steaming mess of assertions. His assertion that the original truism was the first steaming mess strikes me as a classic tu quoque.
Possibly mistaking himself for Penn, he claims this was a cry of bullsh*t, but he may have missed that Penn & Teller do spend some time demonstrating that BS is BS with fact-filled assertions.
Wonkie is right: I think that conservative politicians should be judged by their actions.
And this is the pattern: the conservative politician supports all sorts big government interventions that support jobs in his or her state while supporting cuts in taxes for the wealthy and blaming any budget imbalances on welfare Cadillacs or immigrants or whoever the bogeyperson du jour happens to be. The conservative politician advocates deregulation and blames any catastophes that result on everybody except the conservative politican. Whenthe catastrophe is economic and lots of people still can’t find jobs and their unemployment runs out the conservative continues to shovel tax dollars to the conservative voters in his/her district but votes against an extention of unemployment benefits.
High unemployment is a conservative value. To claim otherwise, Slarti would have to do the work of showing that conservative politicians do not, for the most part, behave exactly as wonkie describes.
Or else, of course, flounce off the thread declaring that he just knows we’re all wrong.
Slarti: But possibly you left something out in favor of brevity?
Yes.
Hartmut: I wonder whether ‘tu quoque’ now changes from the meaning ‘auch du'(you too) to ‘du mich auch’ (up yours, lit. you me too) 😉
Slarti responded to the truism that high unemployment is a conservative value with a steaming mess of assertions. His assertion that the original truism was the first steaming mess strikes me as a classic tu quoque.
Possibly mistaking himself for Penn, he claims this was a cry of bullsh*t, but he may have missed that Penn & Teller do spend some time demonstrating that BS is BS with fact-filled assertions.
Wonkie is right: I think that conservative politicians should be judged by their actions.
And this is the pattern: the conservative politician supports all sorts big government interventions that support jobs in his or her state while supporting cuts in taxes for the wealthy and blaming any budget imbalances on welfare Cadillacs or immigrants or whoever the bogeyperson du jour happens to be. The conservative politician advocates deregulation and blames any catastophes that result on everybody except the conservative politican. Whenthe catastrophe is economic and lots of people still can’t find jobs and their unemployment runs out the conservative continues to shovel tax dollars to the conservative voters in his/her district but votes against an extention of unemployment benefits.
High unemployment is a conservative value. To claim otherwise, Slarti would have to do the work of showing that conservative politicians do not, for the most part, behave exactly as wonkie describes.
Or else, of course, flounce off the thread declaring that he just knows we’re all wrong.
So, I take it that, “If business owners didn’t have to pay so much in taxes they could afford to pay people more?” is no longer operational as a conservative talking point?
I wasn’t aware this was a conservative talking point. It has a certain logic to it: money that doesn’t go out in taxes is available for distribution to employees. The fallacy is that anything I pay an employee is not subject to tax, but it does cut into my bottom line (the trade off being that if I underpay my employees, they jump ship at the first opportunity and you can’t hire quality people by paying chump change). The more salient point is that, in the aggregate, money left in the private sector, can produce expansion. It isn’t guaranteed that expansion will follow since no prudent business owner will expand beyond his/her customers’ willingness to buy.
But you are still off point: I am simply saying that administratively and practically, the quickest, easiest way to stimulate consumer demand is to give consumers an 8% across the board immediate increase in cash by cutting their FICA for two years and then phasing it back in over the next two to four years.
Change of subject to the labor/leisure thing: what a crock. Sorry, that’s what it is. Tax people at such punitive levels that they are forced to work extra hours just to make ends meet will make the Tea Party look like pacifists.
My anecdotal experience in a fee for service industry is considerable. Generally, the fee for service industry consists of specialized trades and professional services. Still generally, the business model tends toward small to middle sized operations with a base of “journeymen” and a limited number of more experienced, long time in service owners. The other model is the solo practitioner. Again, this is someone with an established client/customer base that typically comes with substantial time in service and an established level of quality attendant to the services rendered. Thus, it is the more seasoned, experienced, i.e. older, craft people and professionals who control the customer base. The marginal hours, those over 2000, take the most out of you, particularly as you get older. Further, as you get older, your needs decrease due to having put your children through school, saved a little money and generally cut back on your costs. Further still, nearly everything a trade or profession does carries with it potential liability, whether its failing to properly fix a leak and flooding a home or committing some form of professional malpractice. And then, for the non-solos, there is the administrative hassle of being in business. The paperwork required by local, state and federal entities is astonishing. Add to that the paperwork generated by insuring, banking etc. needs that any small business requires and you have at least one full time person who does nothing but track paper, all of which the owner has to oversee. Punitive taxation doesn’t inspire people to work harder, it infuriates them and causes them to seek other means of getting by, usually by significantly reigning in personal consumption and needs. Bottom line: the people this ridiculous concept targets are the least likely to be the compliant little minions the theory requires. They will do, as they’ve done all of their lives to achieve a degree of success and that is adapt. It is fantasy to think that the work aspect of successful professional and craft people is easy. It is the polar opposite of easy. This brilliant idea of taxing those with the most experience into submission would produce the opposite result and cause massive cutbacks in payroll and consumption. If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home. We’ll get by just fine on what I can make on my own.
So, I take it that, “If business owners didn’t have to pay so much in taxes they could afford to pay people more?” is no longer operational as a conservative talking point?
I wasn’t aware this was a conservative talking point. It has a certain logic to it: money that doesn’t go out in taxes is available for distribution to employees. The fallacy is that anything I pay an employee is not subject to tax, but it does cut into my bottom line (the trade off being that if I underpay my employees, they jump ship at the first opportunity and you can’t hire quality people by paying chump change). The more salient point is that, in the aggregate, money left in the private sector, can produce expansion. It isn’t guaranteed that expansion will follow since no prudent business owner will expand beyond his/her customers’ willingness to buy.
But you are still off point: I am simply saying that administratively and practically, the quickest, easiest way to stimulate consumer demand is to give consumers an 8% across the board immediate increase in cash by cutting their FICA for two years and then phasing it back in over the next two to four years.
Change of subject to the labor/leisure thing: what a crock. Sorry, that’s what it is. Tax people at such punitive levels that they are forced to work extra hours just to make ends meet will make the Tea Party look like pacifists.
My anecdotal experience in a fee for service industry is considerable. Generally, the fee for service industry consists of specialized trades and professional services. Still generally, the business model tends toward small to middle sized operations with a base of “journeymen” and a limited number of more experienced, long time in service owners. The other model is the solo practitioner. Again, this is someone with an established client/customer base that typically comes with substantial time in service and an established level of quality attendant to the services rendered. Thus, it is the more seasoned, experienced, i.e. older, craft people and professionals who control the customer base. The marginal hours, those over 2000, take the most out of you, particularly as you get older. Further, as you get older, your needs decrease due to having put your children through school, saved a little money and generally cut back on your costs. Further still, nearly everything a trade or profession does carries with it potential liability, whether its failing to properly fix a leak and flooding a home or committing some form of professional malpractice. And then, for the non-solos, there is the administrative hassle of being in business. The paperwork required by local, state and federal entities is astonishing. Add to that the paperwork generated by insuring, banking etc. needs that any small business requires and you have at least one full time person who does nothing but track paper, all of which the owner has to oversee. Punitive taxation doesn’t inspire people to work harder, it infuriates them and causes them to seek other means of getting by, usually by significantly reigning in personal consumption and needs. Bottom line: the people this ridiculous concept targets are the least likely to be the compliant little minions the theory requires. They will do, as they’ve done all of their lives to achieve a degree of success and that is adapt. It is fantasy to think that the work aspect of successful professional and craft people is easy. It is the polar opposite of easy. This brilliant idea of taxing those with the most experience into submission would produce the opposite result and cause massive cutbacks in payroll and consumption. If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home. We’ll get by just fine on what I can make on my own.
McKinney: Change of subject to the labor/leisure thing: what a crock. Sorry, that’s what it is. Tax people at such punitive levels that they are forced to work extra hours just to make ends meet will make the Tea Party look like pacifists.
Yeah, how miserable you guys would be if you had to be taxed at the level of European countries… and work only European hours, and get only European holidays. Of course you’d also get a decent health care system and better education, if you were willing to pay for it.
If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home.
God forbid you should want to pay your share! Another conservative value: being a freeloader.
McKinney: Change of subject to the labor/leisure thing: what a crock. Sorry, that’s what it is. Tax people at such punitive levels that they are forced to work extra hours just to make ends meet will make the Tea Party look like pacifists.
Yeah, how miserable you guys would be if you had to be taxed at the level of European countries… and work only European hours, and get only European holidays. Of course you’d also get a decent health care system and better education, if you were willing to pay for it.
If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home.
God forbid you should want to pay your share! Another conservative value: being a freeloader.
If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home.
No, you won’t. You’re exaggerating for effect. The entire history of your country, plus the experience of other countries filled with people much like you, suggests that this is not what you will do.
If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home.
No, you won’t. You’re exaggerating for effect. The entire history of your country, plus the experience of other countries filled with people much like you, suggests that this is not what you will do.
The entire history of your country, plus the experience of other countries filled with people much like you, suggests that this is not what you will do.
True. But it neatly demonstrates that aspiring to be a freeloader is a conservative value, as so many conservatives instantly start talking about becoming one if it looks like they might have to pay a fair share in return for benefits received.
The entire history of your country, plus the experience of other countries filled with people much like you, suggests that this is not what you will do.
True. But it neatly demonstrates that aspiring to be a freeloader is a conservative value, as so many conservatives instantly start talking about becoming one if it looks like they might have to pay a fair share in return for benefits received.
McTx:(the trade off being that if I underpay my employees, they jump ship at the first opportunity and you can’t hire quality people by paying chump change)
Not when unemployment is at 10%, you don’t. That’s the point.
The paperwork required by local, state and federal entities is astonishing. Add to that the paperwork generated by insuring, banking etc. needs that any small business requires and you have at least one full time person who does nothing but track paper, all of which the owner has to oversee.
This is true, but has nothing whatever to do with taxes, or even with just government, because much of the paperwork, as you mention, is due to private industries like banking and insurance. Do you really think banks and insurance companies wouldn’t insist on paperwork if there were no government? (even assuming they’d exist in any form without government to set the rules of a market and provide a secure society) Would professional liability disappear with less government? And if we got rid of professional liability, do you think that would be a good thing?
Paperwork is, incidentally, one of the major attractive features of single-payer health insurance, especially for doctor’s offices that have to deal with upteen copies of nearly the same paperwork for different insurance companies.
They will do, as they’ve done all of their lives to achieve a degree of success and that is adapt. It is fantasy to think that the work aspect of successful professional and craft people is easy.
I think “successful professional and craft people” is overly broad. Most successful professionals aren’t the ones raking in the huge wads of dough at everyone else’s expense, that’s the financial skimmers. But I’m always struck by these claims of how businesspeople are adaptive, creative, tough, brilliant, brave, etc, etc, etc, and then how when there’s any chance they might have to adapt to new situations like any regulation or taxes, they start hysterically claiming how not polluting, or not charging 500% interest, or not being able to pretend their income isn’t really income, or whatever, will destroy them, drive them out of business, and kill kittens. Seriously? If they’re as tough and creative and adaptable as they always say they are, then STFU and figure out how to adapt to it.
If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home.
Marginal taxes are different than total taxes. Which one are you talking about here?
And seriously, most people wouldn’t walk away from their job and drastically drop their incomes just because they get taxed a little bit more the top portion of their incomes that are already several times more than most Americans will ever make.
John Galt was a coward, and society would have run along fine without him and his kindergarten “take our ball and go home!” crew.
McTx:(the trade off being that if I underpay my employees, they jump ship at the first opportunity and you can’t hire quality people by paying chump change)
Not when unemployment is at 10%, you don’t. That’s the point.
The paperwork required by local, state and federal entities is astonishing. Add to that the paperwork generated by insuring, banking etc. needs that any small business requires and you have at least one full time person who does nothing but track paper, all of which the owner has to oversee.
This is true, but has nothing whatever to do with taxes, or even with just government, because much of the paperwork, as you mention, is due to private industries like banking and insurance. Do you really think banks and insurance companies wouldn’t insist on paperwork if there were no government? (even assuming they’d exist in any form without government to set the rules of a market and provide a secure society) Would professional liability disappear with less government? And if we got rid of professional liability, do you think that would be a good thing?
Paperwork is, incidentally, one of the major attractive features of single-payer health insurance, especially for doctor’s offices that have to deal with upteen copies of nearly the same paperwork for different insurance companies.
They will do, as they’ve done all of their lives to achieve a degree of success and that is adapt. It is fantasy to think that the work aspect of successful professional and craft people is easy.
I think “successful professional and craft people” is overly broad. Most successful professionals aren’t the ones raking in the huge wads of dough at everyone else’s expense, that’s the financial skimmers. But I’m always struck by these claims of how businesspeople are adaptive, creative, tough, brilliant, brave, etc, etc, etc, and then how when there’s any chance they might have to adapt to new situations like any regulation or taxes, they start hysterically claiming how not polluting, or not charging 500% interest, or not being able to pretend their income isn’t really income, or whatever, will destroy them, drive them out of business, and kill kittens. Seriously? If they’re as tough and creative and adaptable as they always say they are, then STFU and figure out how to adapt to it.
If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home.
Marginal taxes are different than total taxes. Which one are you talking about here?
And seriously, most people wouldn’t walk away from their job and drastically drop their incomes just because they get taxed a little bit more the top portion of their incomes that are already several times more than most Americans will ever make.
John Galt was a coward, and society would have run along fine without him and his kindergarten “take our ball and go home!” crew.
Jes–name calling is unproductive. I’ll trade my US status for European levels of debt, unemployment and stagnation any day of the week. I free load on my own effort, no one else’s. I don’t just pay taxes, I employ and insure 10 other people. You call that freeloading?
Ajay–you are wrong. I can do very well on my own. I do better with a bigger operation, but the hassle/risk/tax factor makes it a balancing act. Tip the balance too far in favor of major cutbacks and that is what you will get.
Nate–you speak from experience? Not likely. I can work a lot less and make a more than adequate living. See my comment to Ajay above.
Jes–name calling is unproductive. I’ll trade my US status for European levels of debt, unemployment and stagnation any day of the week. I free load on my own effort, no one else’s. I don’t just pay taxes, I employ and insure 10 other people. You call that freeloading?
Ajay–you are wrong. I can do very well on my own. I do better with a bigger operation, but the hassle/risk/tax factor makes it a balancing act. Tip the balance too far in favor of major cutbacks and that is what you will get.
Nate–you speak from experience? Not likely. I can work a lot less and make a more than adequate living. See my comment to Ajay above.
The US had far higher income tax rates in the past without a revolt on the one hand, on the other the mere idea of an income tax drove people to (at least near) revolution at other times (a minority still considers a federal income tax an unconstitutional abomination, e.g. the authors of the Texas GOP party platform). People seem very able to adapt.
The US had far higher income tax rates in the past without a revolt on the one hand, on the other the mere idea of an income tax drove people to (at least near) revolution at other times (a minority still considers a federal income tax an unconstitutional abomination, e.g. the authors of the Texas GOP party platform). People seem very able to adapt.
McTex:
If what you say is true, you would be the exception to the rule, and your departure from the work force would be a statistical blip. Unfortunate for the handful of your employees let go, but with the vast benefits outweighing the negatives.
Though, let’s be certain, I’m not suggesting a 50% tax rate on anyone, and since they are marginal rates, it would have to be a 60% tax rate and you would have to be making a ton of money to bring it to 50%.
McTex:
If what you say is true, you would be the exception to the rule, and your departure from the work force would be a statistical blip. Unfortunate for the handful of your employees let go, but with the vast benefits outweighing the negatives.
Though, let’s be certain, I’m not suggesting a 50% tax rate on anyone, and since they are marginal rates, it would have to be a 60% tax rate and you would have to be making a ton of money to bring it to 50%.
I employ and insure 10 other people. You call that freeloading?
So you benefit not merely by the services provided to you by your country, but by the services provided by your country to ten other people whose labour you benefit from.
Yet you’re unwilling to pay for those benefits. Yes, I do call that freeloading.
I’ll trade my US status for European levels of debt, unemployment and stagnation any day of the week.
Good plan. E-mail me for advice on how to emigrate to an EU country: I may be able to help. Wait a minute… I bet that was a typo, and you meant you WOULDN’T trade your US status, not even if it meant swopping US levels of debt, unemployment, and stagnation for European ones…
I employ and insure 10 other people. You call that freeloading?
So you benefit not merely by the services provided to you by your country, but by the services provided by your country to ten other people whose labour you benefit from.
Yet you’re unwilling to pay for those benefits. Yes, I do call that freeloading.
I’ll trade my US status for European levels of debt, unemployment and stagnation any day of the week.
Good plan. E-mail me for advice on how to emigrate to an EU country: I may be able to help. Wait a minute… I bet that was a typo, and you meant you WOULDN’T trade your US status, not even if it meant swopping US levels of debt, unemployment, and stagnation for European ones…
McKinneyTexas: suspend the employee side of FICA for people earning less than 150K a year and do so for two years. And, cut the s**t out of spending. Start with the Dept of Agriculture and end fricking crop subsidies.
So you want to cut payroll taxes (~$940 Billion) roughly in half and also cut roughly $20 billion in expenditures, making the deficit worse by approximately $450 Billion dollars.
Obviously you’ve put a lot of thought into this.
McKinneyTexas: suspend the employee side of FICA for people earning less than 150K a year and do so for two years. And, cut the s**t out of spending. Start with the Dept of Agriculture and end fricking crop subsidies.
So you want to cut payroll taxes (~$940 Billion) roughly in half and also cut roughly $20 billion in expenditures, making the deficit worse by approximately $450 Billion dollars.
Obviously you’ve put a lot of thought into this.
@McKinneyTexas:
If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home.
At which point the clients that would have gone to your firm will still be seeking legal representation, and will take their business elsewhere.
The firms to which they take their business will then see an increase in revenues, which will probably cause them to need to hire people. It’s not free to do so, of course; some of the fee income that would otherwise have gone into their salaries will have to go into the costs of advertising the positions, interviewing candidates, and the inevitable administration involved in taking on staff. It would be easier for all concerned if you didn’t throw your toys out of the pram, but it’s not quite the ruin you portray.
That’s the bad news for the owners of non-geographically mobile businesses (the service sector, for instance) who try to use their staff’s jobs as blackmail against any regulation. The same subtext that keeps people in bad jobs applies to them: you are replaceable.
@McKinneyTexas:
If my taxes begin to approach 50%, I simply shut down my firm, put 10 people on the street, sell our primary residence and practice law out of my satellite office at what will hopefully, someday be our retirement home.
At which point the clients that would have gone to your firm will still be seeking legal representation, and will take their business elsewhere.
The firms to which they take their business will then see an increase in revenues, which will probably cause them to need to hire people. It’s not free to do so, of course; some of the fee income that would otherwise have gone into their salaries will have to go into the costs of advertising the positions, interviewing candidates, and the inevitable administration involved in taking on staff. It would be easier for all concerned if you didn’t throw your toys out of the pram, but it’s not quite the ruin you portray.
That’s the bad news for the owners of non-geographically mobile businesses (the service sector, for instance) who try to use their staff’s jobs as blackmail against any regulation. The same subtext that keeps people in bad jobs applies to them: you are replaceable.
It seems to me that McK is telling the truth when he says a top marginal rate of 50% would be enough for him to fold up his tent and fall back to a simpler, less renumerative but still more than adequate solo practice.
It sounds like he’s paid his dues, and is now in a position where those choices are available to him.
Further, my guess is that he isn’t really that unique. There are, I think, lots of folks like him in professional small business and trades.
To me it makes sense to distinguish between people like McK, who is a hands-on participant in addition to being a capital investor, and folks who are not hands-on, and who have no real role or responsibility in the actual creation of value.
The distinction is probably less obvious in, frex, the financial sector, but it still exists there.
Whatever we do (if anything) in terms of tax policy, it doesn’t make sense to discourage the activities of people who are active participants in the productive economy.
Another topic: back in the day when we had very high top marginal rates, they generally applied to high-to-very-high income levels.
The 91% top rate that prevailed through the 50’s into the very early 60’s kicked in at 400K, which at that time was a lot of money.
To be concrete: $400K in 1960 is almost $3 million today. I don’t know McK’s specific circumstances, but *in general* the kinds of folks we are talking about — hands-on proprietors of small local businesses — are not going to pack it in if the marginal rate on incomes above something like $3M a year goes up to numbers like 40 or 50%.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. Most folks like that would be overjoyed to make $3 million a year, and would be unlikely to fold up their tent if their three-million-and-first dollar was taxed at, frex, 45 or 50% rather than 35%.
And for the record, I’m not looking to “soak the rich”, what I’m looking for is for the cost of putting the nation on a sound financial footing to be shared across all sectors in something like a fair way.
It seems to me that McK is telling the truth when he says a top marginal rate of 50% would be enough for him to fold up his tent and fall back to a simpler, less renumerative but still more than adequate solo practice.
It sounds like he’s paid his dues, and is now in a position where those choices are available to him.
Further, my guess is that he isn’t really that unique. There are, I think, lots of folks like him in professional small business and trades.
To me it makes sense to distinguish between people like McK, who is a hands-on participant in addition to being a capital investor, and folks who are not hands-on, and who have no real role or responsibility in the actual creation of value.
The distinction is probably less obvious in, frex, the financial sector, but it still exists there.
Whatever we do (if anything) in terms of tax policy, it doesn’t make sense to discourage the activities of people who are active participants in the productive economy.
Another topic: back in the day when we had very high top marginal rates, they generally applied to high-to-very-high income levels.
The 91% top rate that prevailed through the 50’s into the very early 60’s kicked in at 400K, which at that time was a lot of money.
To be concrete: $400K in 1960 is almost $3 million today. I don’t know McK’s specific circumstances, but *in general* the kinds of folks we are talking about — hands-on proprietors of small local businesses — are not going to pack it in if the marginal rate on incomes above something like $3M a year goes up to numbers like 40 or 50%.
I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. Most folks like that would be overjoyed to make $3 million a year, and would be unlikely to fold up their tent if their three-million-and-first dollar was taxed at, frex, 45 or 50% rather than 35%.
And for the record, I’m not looking to “soak the rich”, what I’m looking for is for the cost of putting the nation on a sound financial footing to be shared across all sectors in something like a fair way.
Eric,
Raising marginal tax rates to 50% at say 1M dollars would impact something, but it would probably not cause a tidal wave of exiting professionals. At 250k that is aa different story. There are, in fact, many in that range working 70-90 hour weeks that would have to completely reassess the value of that last 20k in take home pay.
That said, it also wouldn’t solve our problems. At a high level(rounding), with impending retrenchment of the economy and the threat of financial collapse on the horizon, Americans spent over a trillion dollars less in 2008 than in 2007. They had a negative net borrowing and did not spend much more in 2009. I suspect the impact of a similar trend is impacting markets currently in 2010. The government spending that tax money won’t put that trillion dollars back in motion in our economy, and paying down the debt with it would be a long term fix while potentially exacerbating the current problem.
There is a fundamental change in the spending habits of America. From the late 90’s through 2007 we spent every penny we made and borrowed even more. In the late 90’s the savings rate had ddroppedd from the 10% plus in the late fifties (and close to tthata in the 60’s) to less than 3% of personal income. We didn’t spend our childrens money, we spent our parents savings and then some. Now we have to pay our own way.
All of that was supported by long term, stable employment over a thirty year period, where people became complacent about the need to save or manage debt now. The fear of being unemployed simply was not real for most people. Rainy days were when your second car had to go in the shop.
Even very lower middle class people had been employed consistently for long periods, although rarely for the same employer for long periods. Middle class and up people began to leverage their income with the expectation that it would minimally remain consistent in a slowly expanding economy.
That wasn’t the bankers or the skimmers or the hedge fund bettors, that was the social impact of thirty years of continuous slow growth with minor setbacks. 2008 scared the bejesus out of us, so we killed the economy by stopping spending.
It is not clear to me that a slow return to an economy that is sustainable without all of that leverage is a bad thing. Government should ease the burden on the incapable, encourage the discouraged, foster investment in long term investments in infrastructure…..
But it can’t reduce unemployment in a sustainable way by taxing massively (note the massively, a few points on any marginal rate disappears in the maze of a paycheck after the first few) and spending because it is practically impossible to target spending to match the skills of the unemployed outside direct government jobs (Firefighters, police, etc.)
BTW all statistics refernced here are here where I seem to find myself going back and trying to assess the impacts of varying policies over time on the behavior of Americans. The above are some of my tentative conclusions, mostly strong opinions weakly held and waiting hsh response to the validity of the statistics.
Eric,
Raising marginal tax rates to 50% at say 1M dollars would impact something, but it would probably not cause a tidal wave of exiting professionals. At 250k that is aa different story. There are, in fact, many in that range working 70-90 hour weeks that would have to completely reassess the value of that last 20k in take home pay.
That said, it also wouldn’t solve our problems. At a high level(rounding), with impending retrenchment of the economy and the threat of financial collapse on the horizon, Americans spent over a trillion dollars less in 2008 than in 2007. They had a negative net borrowing and did not spend much more in 2009. I suspect the impact of a similar trend is impacting markets currently in 2010. The government spending that tax money won’t put that trillion dollars back in motion in our economy, and paying down the debt with it would be a long term fix while potentially exacerbating the current problem.
There is a fundamental change in the spending habits of America. From the late 90’s through 2007 we spent every penny we made and borrowed even more. In the late 90’s the savings rate had ddroppedd from the 10% plus in the late fifties (and close to tthata in the 60’s) to less than 3% of personal income. We didn’t spend our childrens money, we spent our parents savings and then some. Now we have to pay our own way.
All of that was supported by long term, stable employment over a thirty year period, where people became complacent about the need to save or manage debt now. The fear of being unemployed simply was not real for most people. Rainy days were when your second car had to go in the shop.
Even very lower middle class people had been employed consistently for long periods, although rarely for the same employer for long periods. Middle class and up people began to leverage their income with the expectation that it would minimally remain consistent in a slowly expanding economy.
That wasn’t the bankers or the skimmers or the hedge fund bettors, that was the social impact of thirty years of continuous slow growth with minor setbacks. 2008 scared the bejesus out of us, so we killed the economy by stopping spending.
It is not clear to me that a slow return to an economy that is sustainable without all of that leverage is a bad thing. Government should ease the burden on the incapable, encourage the discouraged, foster investment in long term investments in infrastructure…..
But it can’t reduce unemployment in a sustainable way by taxing massively (note the massively, a few points on any marginal rate disappears in the maze of a paycheck after the first few) and spending because it is practically impossible to target spending to match the skills of the unemployed outside direct government jobs (Firefighters, police, etc.)
BTW all statistics refernced here are here where I seem to find myself going back and trying to assess the impacts of varying policies over time on the behavior of Americans. The above are some of my tentative conclusions, mostly strong opinions weakly held and waiting hsh response to the validity of the statistics.
At which point the clients that would have gone to your firm will still be seeking legal representation, and will take their business elsewhere.
True, but given the onerous tax load, remaining employers will require more work out of less employees to make what they would have made previously. The result will be that some but not all of my former employees will find work, but it is also likely they will find it at a lower wage. As businesses downsize, the need for satellite professional services will shrink. There will be less demand from my client base and I will keep the best of my base for my own, somewhat reduced income. So, how much remainder there is to be absorbed by others is probably a lot less than you think. The ripple effect of punitive taxation across the private sector will generally produce pressure on employers to reduce costs to maintain earnings. The easiest cost cutting measures is to trim labor with all of its increasingly attendant costs (matching FICA, insurance, paid leave, etc).
The US had far higher income tax rates in the past . . . People seem very able to adapt.
Productivity, lifestyle and GDP were significantly more modest in the long gone high tax days. Recall then that the high taxes supported primarily a defense budget and minimal social spending. And even then, government ran a deficit more often than not.
Though, let’s be certain, I’m not suggesting a 50% tax rate on anyone
Then I’d likely remain in business. But you are mistaken if you think tax rates don’t drive human behavior. Actually, you do recognize this fact even if many others here do not–at the margins, there is a real cost/benefit analysis. At the small business/professional/craft margins, the trade-offs include administrative/tax/liability/risk load. Push these out of balance, and people who worked to earn a surplus will scale back to a more modest surplus or break even.
At which point the clients that would have gone to your firm will still be seeking legal representation, and will take their business elsewhere.
True, but given the onerous tax load, remaining employers will require more work out of less employees to make what they would have made previously. The result will be that some but not all of my former employees will find work, but it is also likely they will find it at a lower wage. As businesses downsize, the need for satellite professional services will shrink. There will be less demand from my client base and I will keep the best of my base for my own, somewhat reduced income. So, how much remainder there is to be absorbed by others is probably a lot less than you think. The ripple effect of punitive taxation across the private sector will generally produce pressure on employers to reduce costs to maintain earnings. The easiest cost cutting measures is to trim labor with all of its increasingly attendant costs (matching FICA, insurance, paid leave, etc).
The US had far higher income tax rates in the past . . . People seem very able to adapt.
Productivity, lifestyle and GDP were significantly more modest in the long gone high tax days. Recall then that the high taxes supported primarily a defense budget and minimal social spending. And even then, government ran a deficit more often than not.
Though, let’s be certain, I’m not suggesting a 50% tax rate on anyone
Then I’d likely remain in business. But you are mistaken if you think tax rates don’t drive human behavior. Actually, you do recognize this fact even if many others here do not–at the margins, there is a real cost/benefit analysis. At the small business/professional/craft margins, the trade-offs include administrative/tax/liability/risk load. Push these out of balance, and people who worked to earn a surplus will scale back to a more modest surplus or break even.
It seems to me that McK is telling the truth when he says a top marginal rate of 50% would be enough for him to fold up his tent and fall back to a simpler, less renumerative but still more than adequate solo practice.
It doesn’t seem so for me. In 1993, for example, the top tax bracket in the US went from paying 31% to paying 39.6%. Was there a wave of people “folding up their tents” in response?
It seems to me that McK is telling the truth when he says a top marginal rate of 50% would be enough for him to fold up his tent and fall back to a simpler, less renumerative but still more than adequate solo practice.
It doesn’t seem so for me. In 1993, for example, the top tax bracket in the US went from paying 31% to paying 39.6%. Was there a wave of people “folding up their tents” in response?
At 250k that is aa different story. There are, in fact, many in that range working 70-90 hour weeks that would have to completely reassess the value of that last 20k in take home pay.
Really? How many people are on an hourly salary that puts them at 270K? Such that they will cut out the hours associated with that last 20K?
I just don’t think hours equate to income in such a way at that high a tax bracket.
And, again, I’m not proposing a 50% marginal rate on income over 250K. We don’t even need to go that high, at that low a threshold.
At 250k that is aa different story. There are, in fact, many in that range working 70-90 hour weeks that would have to completely reassess the value of that last 20k in take home pay.
Really? How many people are on an hourly salary that puts them at 270K? Such that they will cut out the hours associated with that last 20K?
I just don’t think hours equate to income in such a way at that high a tax bracket.
And, again, I’m not proposing a 50% marginal rate on income over 250K. We don’t even need to go that high, at that low a threshold.
I bet that was a typo, and you meant you WOULDN’T trade your US status
Jes, correct. I would stay here. I would be a lot more European. I wouldn’t work much, but I wouldn’t spend much either. I’d probably travel more, maybe even come over to England and harass you in person.
I bet that was a typo, and you meant you WOULDN’T trade your US status
Jes, correct. I would stay here. I would be a lot more European. I wouldn’t work much, but I wouldn’t spend much either. I’d probably travel more, maybe even come over to England and harass you in person.
“Really? How many people are on an hourly salary that puts them at 270K? Such that they will cut out the hours associated with that last 20K?”
I would think that many people in that salary range have management responsibilities that drive the need to work those kinds of hours, and many could take jobs or work by the hour, where their work/life balance would be significantly improved. You were just kidding about hourly right? You are a lawyer right?
“Really? How many people are on an hourly salary that puts them at 270K? Such that they will cut out the hours associated with that last 20K?”
I would think that many people in that salary range have management responsibilities that drive the need to work those kinds of hours, and many could take jobs or work by the hour, where their work/life balance would be significantly improved. You were just kidding about hourly right? You are a lawyer right?
To be concrete: $400K in 1960 is almost $3 million today. I don’t know McK’s specific circumstances, but *in general* the kinds of folks we are talking about — hands-on proprietors of small local businesses — are not going to pack it in if the marginal rate on incomes above something like $3M a year goes up to numbers like 40 or 50%.
Russ, thanks for getting back to the substance. As an aside, comparing the early 60’s with present times is problematical. Different economy, different federal, state and local roles, a much higher marginal rate with a much smaller government. Today we see just the opposite. Much smaller rates, a comparatively huge economy, nearly double the population and much more government across the board. My point is that 400K today really isn’t 3mm. A homeowner making 400K and paying state and local taxes plus income tax pays nearly 50% of his/her income in taxes one way or the other. Plus, we fund our own retirements. No one helps or matches. Not a pity party, but when you are on your own, that’s the way it is.
You are correct that most people not earning and who never expect to earn 400k a year would be overjoyed if they could do so. Generally, though, there is a reason why some people make that kind of money and others don’t. It’s not some kind of economic Darwinism thing, rather, it’s risk tolerance.
My overall point is simply this: a tax burden of X + 1 = the point at which some people begin scaling back. Increase the 1 to 3 or 5 or 7, and more and more people at the higher margins will scale back somewhere, whether its reducing hours or cutting payroll. When X is reached–i’d say given current circumstances, the Clinton rates are probably close to X with no added FICA penalty on higher earners–spending has to be reduced.
So you want to cut payroll taxes (~$940 Billion) roughly in half and also cut roughly $20 billion in expenditures, making the deficit worse by approximately $450 Billion dollars.
Yes, you are correct. The 450 billion hit is slightly more than half of the stimulus package passed last year, much of which remains unspent. But, your math is correct.
To be concrete: $400K in 1960 is almost $3 million today. I don’t know McK’s specific circumstances, but *in general* the kinds of folks we are talking about — hands-on proprietors of small local businesses — are not going to pack it in if the marginal rate on incomes above something like $3M a year goes up to numbers like 40 or 50%.
Russ, thanks for getting back to the substance. As an aside, comparing the early 60’s with present times is problematical. Different economy, different federal, state and local roles, a much higher marginal rate with a much smaller government. Today we see just the opposite. Much smaller rates, a comparatively huge economy, nearly double the population and much more government across the board. My point is that 400K today really isn’t 3mm. A homeowner making 400K and paying state and local taxes plus income tax pays nearly 50% of his/her income in taxes one way or the other. Plus, we fund our own retirements. No one helps or matches. Not a pity party, but when you are on your own, that’s the way it is.
You are correct that most people not earning and who never expect to earn 400k a year would be overjoyed if they could do so. Generally, though, there is a reason why some people make that kind of money and others don’t. It’s not some kind of economic Darwinism thing, rather, it’s risk tolerance.
My overall point is simply this: a tax burden of X + 1 = the point at which some people begin scaling back. Increase the 1 to 3 or 5 or 7, and more and more people at the higher margins will scale back somewhere, whether its reducing hours or cutting payroll. When X is reached–i’d say given current circumstances, the Clinton rates are probably close to X with no added FICA penalty on higher earners–spending has to be reduced.
So you want to cut payroll taxes (~$940 Billion) roughly in half and also cut roughly $20 billion in expenditures, making the deficit worse by approximately $450 Billion dollars.
Yes, you are correct. The 450 billion hit is slightly more than half of the stimulus package passed last year, much of which remains unspent. But, your math is correct.
Would it really be a bad thing if instead of lawyers etc working 70-90 hour weeks in pursuit of an extra 20K, when they’re already making five times the median income for average Americans? Ohnoes! They…work a few less hours, have time with their families. And so then to cover the work, there’s room for more lawyers at those firms, or room for young lawyers to make new firms, or whatever. And if it keeps the banksters from working 70-90 hours inventing new ways to rip off their clients since they’ll only make an extra 500K instead of an extra million, so what?
McTx: Maybe you would quit. Sounds like you’ve got enough resources to be ready to at least semi-retire anyway. Most of us other professionals (engineer here) wouldn’t, what with still having student debt to pay off, or getting into our professions for reasons other than money, or so on. Maybe we wouldn’t put in 70-90 hours for that extra $20K, but like I said, that wouldn’t be so bad. Also, if we raised the MARGINAL tax rates on incomes over $250K, and added higher MARGINAL tax breaks at like $1M, $5M, etc, then it wouldn’t affect most small business owners (many of whom I’ve known don’t make that much from their businesses as income), and it’d give our country the ability to say, fix infrastructure, cut the scary deficit so people would have to find another reason to freak, and maybe get people back to work so they’d be able to afford houses, and lawyers, and all the other things that used to be the American Dream before the American Dream became “not losing your second job so you can pay the mortgage.”
Seriously, if you’re making enough in society to be taking home five times what the median American makes, then you can bloody help pay for the society that let you succeed like that. The schools, roads, defense, markets, legal enforcement, and all the rest.
Would it really be a bad thing if instead of lawyers etc working 70-90 hour weeks in pursuit of an extra 20K, when they’re already making five times the median income for average Americans? Ohnoes! They…work a few less hours, have time with their families. And so then to cover the work, there’s room for more lawyers at those firms, or room for young lawyers to make new firms, or whatever. And if it keeps the banksters from working 70-90 hours inventing new ways to rip off their clients since they’ll only make an extra 500K instead of an extra million, so what?
McTx: Maybe you would quit. Sounds like you’ve got enough resources to be ready to at least semi-retire anyway. Most of us other professionals (engineer here) wouldn’t, what with still having student debt to pay off, or getting into our professions for reasons other than money, or so on. Maybe we wouldn’t put in 70-90 hours for that extra $20K, but like I said, that wouldn’t be so bad. Also, if we raised the MARGINAL tax rates on incomes over $250K, and added higher MARGINAL tax breaks at like $1M, $5M, etc, then it wouldn’t affect most small business owners (many of whom I’ve known don’t make that much from their businesses as income), and it’d give our country the ability to say, fix infrastructure, cut the scary deficit so people would have to find another reason to freak, and maybe get people back to work so they’d be able to afford houses, and lawyers, and all the other things that used to be the American Dream before the American Dream became “not losing your second job so you can pay the mortgage.”
Seriously, if you’re making enough in society to be taking home five times what the median American makes, then you can bloody help pay for the society that let you succeed like that. The schools, roads, defense, markets, legal enforcement, and all the rest.
I would think that many people in that salary range have management responsibilities that drive the need to work those kinds of hours, and many could take jobs or work by the hour, where their work/life balance would be significantly improved.
Explain. I don’t think so at all.
You were just kidding about hourly right? You are a lawyer right?
Huh? Is that some kind of cruel joke? I work in a law firm, so I work as many hours a week as necessary to get the work done. Just about every single lawyer in every single law firm does the same. Lawyers get paid a salary, not an hourly wage. The billable hours go into a collective fund that pays salaries/expenses.
I have absolutely ZERO ability to tell my boss that I’m cutting back on my hours, and that he can pay me less. He would end up paying me ZERO dollars and handing me a pink slip. That is the same for just about every lawyer in a firm.
If I were a solo practitioner, I suppose I could try to cut back on hours, but if I did, my clients would begin using other lawyers/law firms, and that would seriously jeopardize the longevity and viability of my practice. Lawyers have to be fiercely territorial and protective of clients. That is their lifeblood (that we suck like vampires 😉
More likely, I would either continue to do the work myself and curse the slightly higher marginal tax rate on the money above the 250K threshold, or hire more young associates to do it for me, and keep my own income lower than 250K.
I would not, however, alienate and turn away clients in a curious effort to massage my hours worked into some chimeric sweet spot for tax purposes.
I mean, even if I tried that, and a big case/matter came in, I could undue those hours-management efforts in a month of hard work necessitated by the case/matter.
And if I did turn away work, someone else would do it, and the net damage to the economy would be ZERO.
That is fantasy stuff, not the real world.
I would think that many people in that salary range have management responsibilities that drive the need to work those kinds of hours, and many could take jobs or work by the hour, where their work/life balance would be significantly improved.
Explain. I don’t think so at all.
You were just kidding about hourly right? You are a lawyer right?
Huh? Is that some kind of cruel joke? I work in a law firm, so I work as many hours a week as necessary to get the work done. Just about every single lawyer in every single law firm does the same. Lawyers get paid a salary, not an hourly wage. The billable hours go into a collective fund that pays salaries/expenses.
I have absolutely ZERO ability to tell my boss that I’m cutting back on my hours, and that he can pay me less. He would end up paying me ZERO dollars and handing me a pink slip. That is the same for just about every lawyer in a firm.
If I were a solo practitioner, I suppose I could try to cut back on hours, but if I did, my clients would begin using other lawyers/law firms, and that would seriously jeopardize the longevity and viability of my practice. Lawyers have to be fiercely territorial and protective of clients. That is their lifeblood (that we suck like vampires 😉
More likely, I would either continue to do the work myself and curse the slightly higher marginal tax rate on the money above the 250K threshold, or hire more young associates to do it for me, and keep my own income lower than 250K.
I would not, however, alienate and turn away clients in a curious effort to massage my hours worked into some chimeric sweet spot for tax purposes.
I mean, even if I tried that, and a big case/matter came in, I could undue those hours-management efforts in a month of hard work necessitated by the case/matter.
And if I did turn away work, someone else would do it, and the net damage to the economy would be ZERO.
That is fantasy stuff, not the real world.
McKinney: Generally, though, there is a reason why some people make that kind of money and others don’t.
Yes. If your parents were well-off, so are you likely to be: if your parents were not well-off, you won’t be. The US has, compared to most European countries, incredibly low levels of social mobility.
You identify this as “risk tolerance”, and it’s true: someone with family money behind them is much better able to take the kind of business chances that someone who’s constantly struggling to pay the rent and keep food on the table.
McKinney: Generally, though, there is a reason why some people make that kind of money and others don’t.
Yes. If your parents were well-off, so are you likely to be: if your parents were not well-off, you won’t be. The US has, compared to most European countries, incredibly low levels of social mobility.
You identify this as “risk tolerance”, and it’s true: someone with family money behind them is much better able to take the kind of business chances that someone who’s constantly struggling to pay the rent and keep food on the table.
It doesn’t seem so for me. In 1993, for example, the top tax bracket in the US went from paying 31% to paying 39.6%. Was there a wave of people “folding up their tents” in response?
In 1993, I had one kid at an expensive private university and the other in an expensive private school. Not the way I grew up, but the plan was to do more for our kids than I had coming up. I didn’t have a choice, I had to work to do for my children what seemed right at the time. I also had a boat load of other commitments. All of those are gone, as Russell correctly inferred. What necessity required of me then and what is required today are completely different. Finally, 39% is not 50%.
Really? How many people are on an hourly salary that puts them at 270K? Such that they will cut out the hours associated with that last 20K?
Eric, I am pretty sure Marty was referring to fee for service professional-type taxpayers, whose income is tied to the hours they work. I suspect this is a measurable percentage of the 250K-900K range of earners.
It doesn’t seem so for me. In 1993, for example, the top tax bracket in the US went from paying 31% to paying 39.6%. Was there a wave of people “folding up their tents” in response?
In 1993, I had one kid at an expensive private university and the other in an expensive private school. Not the way I grew up, but the plan was to do more for our kids than I had coming up. I didn’t have a choice, I had to work to do for my children what seemed right at the time. I also had a boat load of other commitments. All of those are gone, as Russell correctly inferred. What necessity required of me then and what is required today are completely different. Finally, 39% is not 50%.
Really? How many people are on an hourly salary that puts them at 270K? Such that they will cut out the hours associated with that last 20K?
Eric, I am pretty sure Marty was referring to fee for service professional-type taxpayers, whose income is tied to the hours they work. I suspect this is a measurable percentage of the 250K-900K range of earners.
“I have absolutely ZERO ability to tell my boss that I’m cutting back on my hours, and that he can pay me less. He would end up paying me ZERO dollars and handing me a pink slip. That is the same for just about every lawyer in a firm”
And just about every successful professional I know. However, there are, as you note with “being on my own”, alternatives for even those successful professionals that would require less hours. For people “on their own” they might even choose to have a few less clients. I am not sure why this concept is hard unless for you, perhaps, like me, a 70 hour work week just seems the way people should work?
“I have absolutely ZERO ability to tell my boss that I’m cutting back on my hours, and that he can pay me less. He would end up paying me ZERO dollars and handing me a pink slip. That is the same for just about every lawyer in a firm”
And just about every successful professional I know. However, there are, as you note with “being on my own”, alternatives for even those successful professionals that would require less hours. For people “on their own” they might even choose to have a few less clients. I am not sure why this concept is hard unless for you, perhaps, like me, a 70 hour work week just seems the way people should work?
Yes. If your parents were well-off, so are you likely to be: if your parents were not well-off, you won’t be. The US has, compared to most European countries, incredibly low levels of social mobility.
Que? Seriously? My dad retired from the navy and taught high school. When he was 61 he went to law school (he was actually 2 years behind me at the same school). My mom never worked more than part time. As for upward mobility, i’ll let someone else do the research, but you are in serious fantasy land. Serious.
Eric, need drives effort unless you just like making money for the hell of it. I need X amount to shut it down and when I get there, I’ll retire. It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is not a fantasy that a lawyer might scale back from say, 2400 a year billable, to 1800, giving the work to a partner or a colleague, if the last 600 hours was only half for the lawyer’s benefit.
Yes. If your parents were well-off, so are you likely to be: if your parents were not well-off, you won’t be. The US has, compared to most European countries, incredibly low levels of social mobility.
Que? Seriously? My dad retired from the navy and taught high school. When he was 61 he went to law school (he was actually 2 years behind me at the same school). My mom never worked more than part time. As for upward mobility, i’ll let someone else do the research, but you are in serious fantasy land. Serious.
Eric, need drives effort unless you just like making money for the hell of it. I need X amount to shut it down and when I get there, I’ll retire. It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is not a fantasy that a lawyer might scale back from say, 2400 a year billable, to 1800, giving the work to a partner or a colleague, if the last 600 hours was only half for the lawyer’s benefit.
You identify this as “risk tolerance”, and it’s true: someone with family money behind them is much better able to take the kind of business chances that someone who’s constantly struggling to pay the rent and keep food on the table.
I missed this one. Are you totally clueless or what?
You identify this as “risk tolerance”, and it’s true: someone with family money behind them is much better able to take the kind of business chances that someone who’s constantly struggling to pay the rent and keep food on the table.
I missed this one. Are you totally clueless or what?
However, there are, as you note with “being on my own”, alternatives for even those successful professionals that would require less hours.
Going on your own is an extremely, extremely risky endeavor. Doing so with the intention of working fewer hours makes the endeavor even riskier – as you normally would have to work harder in the beginning to build up your practice.
The vast, vast, vast majority of people would not undertake such a risky gamble because they hope to find a sweet spot in which they are earning less than 250K because the marginal rate on amounts over 250K were raised.
For people “on their own” they might even choose to have a few less clients.
I suppose, but then those clients would find and pay other lawyers, and the effect on the economy, and overall tax revenue would be: nothing.
Finally, 39% is not 50%.
True, but no one is proposing 50%, so that is kind of a straw figure. Also, people are proposing additional brackets above 250K, so that threshold is a bit strawish too.
However, there are, as you note with “being on my own”, alternatives for even those successful professionals that would require less hours.
Going on your own is an extremely, extremely risky endeavor. Doing so with the intention of working fewer hours makes the endeavor even riskier – as you normally would have to work harder in the beginning to build up your practice.
The vast, vast, vast majority of people would not undertake such a risky gamble because they hope to find a sweet spot in which they are earning less than 250K because the marginal rate on amounts over 250K were raised.
For people “on their own” they might even choose to have a few less clients.
I suppose, but then those clients would find and pay other lawyers, and the effect on the economy, and overall tax revenue would be: nothing.
Finally, 39% is not 50%.
True, but no one is proposing 50%, so that is kind of a straw figure. Also, people are proposing additional brackets above 250K, so that threshold is a bit strawish too.
McTx: My dad retired from the navy and taught high school. When he was 61 he went to law school (he was actually 2 years behind me at the same school). My mom never worked more than part time.
If you’re running your own legal business and close to retirement, odds are when your parents worked and you went to school was before the past 30 years of stagnation.
McTx: My dad retired from the navy and taught high school. When he was 61 he went to law school (he was actually 2 years behind me at the same school). My mom never worked more than part time.
If you’re running your own legal business and close to retirement, odds are when your parents worked and you went to school was before the past 30 years of stagnation.
The highest marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%.
No one worked.
Hewlett fired Packard and sold shoes out of the back of a second-hand Rambler, every other week.
Warren Buffet didn’t get out of bed until 2001.
Bill Gates emerged from the womb, took one look around, and told his mother that his goal was to be the next Maynard G. Krebs.
Bonzo threw his career over and laid off his entire crew, including Ronald Reagan, and became an effing astronaut where the money was, except that Federal employees pay taxes too, so by choice Bonzo is still in orbit on leave without pay.
The Real McCoys let their truck farm lie fallow and moved into bunk with Pepino, which was fine with him because he had a little tax-deductible crush on Hassie.
Texas seceded from the Union and when John F. Kennedy visited to offer, as incentive for returning, a lower marginal tax rate (79%, I believe), they shot him in the head.
Texas attorneys, who Shakespeare suggested WE put out of their misery, shot THEMSELVES.
The highest marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%.
No one worked.
Hewlett fired Packard and sold shoes out of the back of a second-hand Rambler, every other week.
Warren Buffet didn’t get out of bed until 2001.
Bill Gates emerged from the womb, took one look around, and told his mother that his goal was to be the next Maynard G. Krebs.
Bonzo threw his career over and laid off his entire crew, including Ronald Reagan, and became an effing astronaut where the money was, except that Federal employees pay taxes too, so by choice Bonzo is still in orbit on leave without pay.
The Real McCoys let their truck farm lie fallow and moved into bunk with Pepino, which was fine with him because he had a little tax-deductible crush on Hassie.
Texas seceded from the Union and when John F. Kennedy visited to offer, as incentive for returning, a lower marginal tax rate (79%, I believe), they shot him in the head.
Texas attorneys, who Shakespeare suggested WE put out of their misery, shot THEMSELVES.
Eric, need drives effort unless you just like making money for the hell of it.
I live in NYC near Wall St. That is the environment there, and on LI where I grew up.
I need X amount to shut it down and when I get there, I’ll retire. It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself.
There’s a reason I like you.
It is not a fantasy that a lawyer might scale back from say, 2400 a year billable, to 1800, giving the work to a partner or a colleague, if the last 600 hours was only half for the lawyer’s benefit.
Keep in mind, that it’s not “half” for the lawyer’s benefit. We’re talking about “half” vs. 35-40%. Currently, the lawyer doesn’t keep everything of those last 600 hours. We’re talking about raising the marginal rate for those hours from 35-40% to 50% (although I’m not sure, again, how we got the 50% number).
Also, in a firm, the lawyer is not compensated by the hour, and can’t give those hours away, unless there is a unique model.
Even if they could just give the hours to a colleague, and that hourly loss was reflected directly in pay, so what?
The colleague would get paid for those hours, and there would be zero impact on the economy or tax revenue.
So, really, why should we care?
Eric, need drives effort unless you just like making money for the hell of it.
I live in NYC near Wall St. That is the environment there, and on LI where I grew up.
I need X amount to shut it down and when I get there, I’ll retire. It’s a means to an end, not an end in itself.
There’s a reason I like you.
It is not a fantasy that a lawyer might scale back from say, 2400 a year billable, to 1800, giving the work to a partner or a colleague, if the last 600 hours was only half for the lawyer’s benefit.
Keep in mind, that it’s not “half” for the lawyer’s benefit. We’re talking about “half” vs. 35-40%. Currently, the lawyer doesn’t keep everything of those last 600 hours. We’re talking about raising the marginal rate for those hours from 35-40% to 50% (although I’m not sure, again, how we got the 50% number).
Also, in a firm, the lawyer is not compensated by the hour, and can’t give those hours away, unless there is a unique model.
Even if they could just give the hours to a colleague, and that hourly loss was reflected directly in pay, so what?
The colleague would get paid for those hours, and there would be zero impact on the economy or tax revenue.
So, really, why should we care?
The highest marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%.
This point should be reiterated.
People worked, got wealthy and the economy boomed during this period.
The highest marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%.
This point should be reiterated.
People worked, got wealthy and the economy boomed during this period.
The highest marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%.
This point should be reiterated.
People worked, got wealthy and the economy boomed during this period.
Correct. And the highest marginal rates kicked in at very high levels of income.
For middle class people, the rates haven’t changed that dramatically since then. Mostly, the upper brackets just went away.
This is a damned good country to be rich in.
The highest marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%.
This point should be reiterated.
People worked, got wealthy and the economy boomed during this period.
Correct. And the highest marginal rates kicked in at very high levels of income.
For middle class people, the rates haven’t changed that dramatically since then. Mostly, the upper brackets just went away.
This is a damned good country to be rich in.
“People worked, got wealthy and the economy boomed during this period.”
And, as less people worked and the economy boomed less, pretty much all economists agreed that part of the problem was….the top marginal tax rates. That’s called addressing a trailing effect.
“People worked, got wealthy and the economy boomed during this period.”
And, as less people worked and the economy boomed less, pretty much all economists agreed that part of the problem was….the top marginal tax rates. That’s called addressing a trailing effect.
Where is the evidence that less people worked? Or rather, that the trend towards working fewer hours that has been ongoing for at least a century increased its rate during the high-tax period?
Where is the evidence that less people worked? Or rather, that the trend towards working fewer hours that has been ongoing for at least a century increased its rate during the high-tax period?
Marty,
Consensus was that the rates needed to be cut. However, the cuts have gone too deep. After JFK hacked them down big time, they were cut further until Bush brought them far too low.
Marty,
Consensus was that the rates needed to be cut. However, the cuts have gone too deep. After JFK hacked them down big time, they were cut further until Bush brought them far too low.
As for upward mobility, i’ll let someone else do the research, but you are in serious fantasy land. Serious.
Actually, no, she’s correct, and luckily the research has already been done. Here is a good starting point:
But I’m sure you have a touching anecdote that completely disproves this research and and lets you accuse the authors of being in “serious fantasy land.”
As for upward mobility, i’ll let someone else do the research, but you are in serious fantasy land. Serious.
Actually, no, she’s correct, and luckily the research has already been done. Here is a good starting point:
But I’m sure you have a touching anecdote that completely disproves this research and and lets you accuse the authors of being in “serious fantasy land.”
That’s called addressing a trailing effect.
Yes, a twelve-year-long trailing effect.
And then Kennedy “hacked them down big time” to 77%, then to 70%.
And they stayed at 70% (50% for earned income) through 1980.
Then Reagan, that crazy reactionary b@stard, hacked them all down to 50%.
Bush I was my favorite, imposing a higher marginal rate (33%) on the *second* highest bracket, with the highest bracket taxed at 5% less.
With the exception of crazy man Bush I, the top marginal rate hasn’t been as low as it is now since 1931.
That’s a damned long trail.
My druthers, we’d quit worrying about all of the 11th dimensional triple bank shot side effects of the top marginal rates. I don’t see, and no-one has ever been able to show me, a reliable correlation between the top marginal rate and the overall health of the economy.
Taxes are for raising revenue, not micro-engineering the macro-economic environment. Figure out how much money we need, construct a tax regime that causes the least overall pain, and be done with it.
My two cents.
That’s called addressing a trailing effect.
Yes, a twelve-year-long trailing effect.
And then Kennedy “hacked them down big time” to 77%, then to 70%.
And they stayed at 70% (50% for earned income) through 1980.
Then Reagan, that crazy reactionary b@stard, hacked them all down to 50%.
Bush I was my favorite, imposing a higher marginal rate (33%) on the *second* highest bracket, with the highest bracket taxed at 5% less.
With the exception of crazy man Bush I, the top marginal rate hasn’t been as low as it is now since 1931.
That’s a damned long trail.
My druthers, we’d quit worrying about all of the 11th dimensional triple bank shot side effects of the top marginal rates. I don’t see, and no-one has ever been able to show me, a reliable correlation between the top marginal rate and the overall health of the economy.
Taxes are for raising revenue, not micro-engineering the macro-economic environment. Figure out how much money we need, construct a tax regime that causes the least overall pain, and be done with it.
My two cents.
Eric,
I have an intuitive bias to agree that at some income level they are too low. What I can’t find is a fact driven proof of what “too low” means, outside of the “we (the government, that is us) need more money right now” discussion.
Eric,
I have an intuitive bias to agree that at some income level they are too low. What I can’t find is a fact driven proof of what “too low” means, outside of the “we (the government, that is us) need more money right now” discussion.
For people “on their own” they might even choose to have a few less clients. I am not sure why this concept is hard unless for you, perhaps, like me, a 70 hour work week just seems the way people should work?
It’s not that the concept is hard. It’s just not of sufficient magnitute to matter.
For people “on their own” they might even choose to have a few less clients. I am not sure why this concept is hard unless for you, perhaps, like me, a 70 hour work week just seems the way people should work?
It’s not that the concept is hard. It’s just not of sufficient magnitute to matter.
Whatever “magnitute” is. That might be a hard concept.
I should add that I can’t say as a matter of fact that lots and lots of people who are on their own won’t cut back on productive work. I just don’t think that will happen. I think some number will, but that the number won’t be large enough to affect aggregate output to an appreciable degree. I could be wrong, but that’s my position, not that no one would decide to cut back on their work because of some reduced marginal return. So, the concept = not hard, but also = doesn’t really matter.
Whatever “magnitute” is. That might be a hard concept.
I should add that I can’t say as a matter of fact that lots and lots of people who are on their own won’t cut back on productive work. I just don’t think that will happen. I think some number will, but that the number won’t be large enough to affect aggregate output to an appreciable degree. I could be wrong, but that’s my position, not that no one would decide to cut back on their work because of some reduced marginal return. So, the concept = not hard, but also = doesn’t really matter.
McKinney: but you are in serious fantasy land. Serious.
Phil has already cited the refutation, but I’ll add that “serious fantasy land” is inhabited by the people who believe that someone whose parents are using food banks and food stamps to keep their kids from going hungry, working three minimum-wage jobs to pay the rent, has exactly the same chance of going to college and ending up in a $200K a year job as a kid who has at least one parent in a $200K a year job, is living in cloud cuckoo land. As Phil noted: the US has seriously low social mobility. As Nate noted: social mobility in the US has been declining for many years, and I seriously doubt you are speaking from the point of view of someone whose childhood included going to soup kitchens between parental pay checks, living in a trailer park, and getting used clothes from Goodwill.
McKinney: but you are in serious fantasy land. Serious.
Phil has already cited the refutation, but I’ll add that “serious fantasy land” is inhabited by the people who believe that someone whose parents are using food banks and food stamps to keep their kids from going hungry, working three minimum-wage jobs to pay the rent, has exactly the same chance of going to college and ending up in a $200K a year job as a kid who has at least one parent in a $200K a year job, is living in cloud cuckoo land. As Phil noted: the US has seriously low social mobility. As Nate noted: social mobility in the US has been declining for many years, and I seriously doubt you are speaking from the point of view of someone whose childhood included going to soup kitchens between parental pay checks, living in a trailer park, and getting used clothes from Goodwill.
I have an intuitive bias to agree that at some income level they are too low. What I can’t find is a fact driven proof of what “too low” means, outside of the “we (the government, that is us) need more money right now” discussion.
Marty, do you have fact driven proof of what “too high” means? If so, there’s your answer. If not, then why should we trust intuition either way?
I have an intuitive bias to agree that at some income level they are too low. What I can’t find is a fact driven proof of what “too low” means, outside of the “we (the government, that is us) need more money right now” discussion.
Marty, do you have fact driven proof of what “too high” means? If so, there’s your answer. If not, then why should we trust intuition either way?
Change of subject to the labor/leisure thing: what a crock. Sorry, that’s what it is. Tax people at such punitive levels that they are forced to work extra hours just to make ends meet will make the Tea Party look like pacifists.
No it’s not a crock. And no one’s talking about taxing plumbers and electricians at punitive levels. In fact, no one’s talking about taxing anyone at punitive levels, unless you have an awfully low definition of “punitive.”
People making half a million plus a year are not generally struggling to make ends meet. Those who are could probably usefully rethink their spending habits.
And it’s really hard to see why you think the idea is a crock. You yourself say that the only reason you put up with all the hassle is for the money. Surely that’s true of lots of others also. So, regardless of how you individually would react, isn’t it reasonable to think that some people would take a tax cut as an opportunity to rid themsleves of some of that hassle without losing income, and that some would react to a tax increase by being willing to put up with more of it because they want the extra income, as indeed you do.
Sure, there would be a limit, and individuals will react differently, but that doesn’t make the whole thing nonsense. There really are only 24 hours in a day.
Change of subject to the labor/leisure thing: what a crock. Sorry, that’s what it is. Tax people at such punitive levels that they are forced to work extra hours just to make ends meet will make the Tea Party look like pacifists.
No it’s not a crock. And no one’s talking about taxing plumbers and electricians at punitive levels. In fact, no one’s talking about taxing anyone at punitive levels, unless you have an awfully low definition of “punitive.”
People making half a million plus a year are not generally struggling to make ends meet. Those who are could probably usefully rethink their spending habits.
And it’s really hard to see why you think the idea is a crock. You yourself say that the only reason you put up with all the hassle is for the money. Surely that’s true of lots of others also. So, regardless of how you individually would react, isn’t it reasonable to think that some people would take a tax cut as an opportunity to rid themsleves of some of that hassle without losing income, and that some would react to a tax increase by being willing to put up with more of it because they want the extra income, as indeed you do.
Sure, there would be a limit, and individuals will react differently, but that doesn’t make the whole thing nonsense. There really are only 24 hours in a day.
Albanaeon, a commenter at slacktivist’s, has a fascinating suggestion:
Albanaeon, a commenter at slacktivist’s, has a fascinating suggestion:
Albaneon, a commenter at slacktivist’s, recently wondered about:
Albaneon, a commenter at slacktivist’s, recently wondered about:
Sorry about the double post. Something hates me.
Sorry about the double post. Something hates me.
Actually Phil hasn’t validated Jesurgislac’s statement which was “The US has, compared to most European countries, incredibly low levels of social mobility.”
Like almost all such questions (including a huge number of the ones where the US ends up on top) the rank ordering disguises the fact that most of the rich countries are well clustered together. And since the UK does even worse, but follows more of Jes’s ideas about the proper policies we are discussing, it isn’t at all clear that those policies have much to do with it.
Actually Phil hasn’t validated Jesurgislac’s statement which was “The US has, compared to most European countries, incredibly low levels of social mobility.”
Like almost all such questions (including a huge number of the ones where the US ends up on top) the rank ordering disguises the fact that most of the rich countries are well clustered together. And since the UK does even worse, but follows more of Jes’s ideas about the proper policies we are discussing, it isn’t at all clear that those policies have much to do with it.
And since the UK does even worse, but follows more of Jes’s ideas about the proper policies we are discussing
I wish! True, the UK has the NHS, which is a boon to entrepreneurs and small businesses. And the NHS is so popular as to be untouchable, despite all the British conservative doomsayers looking enviously at the way US conservatives can kill people off and mouthing crap about how we can’t afford it.
But for years and decades, the UK has been gripped by either Conservative or New Labour government, which has all too frequently looked at the shiny failures of the US and gone “Hey, we should do that TOO!” We used to have one of the most successful and humane programmes for drug addicts in the world – until we copied the US and drug addiction and crime-related drug addiction just soared as a direct result. The last Prime Minister who went to a state school and didn’t attend Oxford or Cambridge was John Major.
One of the things I most resented about the past UK elections is that the party I was most in political agreement with, the Greens, looked likely to get one MP, not one PM.
And since the UK does even worse, but follows more of Jes’s ideas about the proper policies we are discussing
I wish! True, the UK has the NHS, which is a boon to entrepreneurs and small businesses. And the NHS is so popular as to be untouchable, despite all the British conservative doomsayers looking enviously at the way US conservatives can kill people off and mouthing crap about how we can’t afford it.
But for years and decades, the UK has been gripped by either Conservative or New Labour government, which has all too frequently looked at the shiny failures of the US and gone “Hey, we should do that TOO!” We used to have one of the most successful and humane programmes for drug addicts in the world – until we copied the US and drug addiction and crime-related drug addiction just soared as a direct result. The last Prime Minister who went to a state school and didn’t attend Oxford or Cambridge was John Major.
One of the things I most resented about the past UK elections is that the party I was most in political agreement with, the Greens, looked likely to get one MP, not one PM.
You’re free to link to data that disputes that study I linked to, Sebastian. Or that shows that the countries named in the excerpt I posted, or rich countries generally, are more alike than they are different when it comes to mobility. Or you can argue by assertion. I’m fine either way.
You’re free to link to data that disputes that study I linked to, Sebastian. Or that shows that the countries named in the excerpt I posted, or rich countries generally, are more alike than they are different when it comes to mobility. Or you can argue by assertion. I’m fine either way.
Also, too, just wanted to say great post, Jacob. Hope you get to do this again.
Also, too, just wanted to say great post, Jacob. Hope you get to do this again.
In 1993, I had one kid at an expensive private university and the other in an expensive private school. Not the way I grew up, but the plan was to do more for our kids than I had coming up. I didn’t have a choice, I had to work to do for my children what seemed right at the time. I also had a boat load of other commitments. All of those are gone, as Russell correctly inferred. What necessity required of me then and what is required today are completely different. Finally, 39% is not 50%.
McK, I’m not talking about you here. Here, allow me to speak more clearly.
IN THE POPULATION AS A WHOLE, IN 1993, DID SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF PEOPLE REACT TO HIGHER TAX RATES BY GIVING UP WORK OR BY SIGNIFICANTLY CUTTING BACK ON THE AMOUNT OF WORK THEY DID?
If “yes”, you’ll need to supply some sort of evidence.
If “no”, then I conclude that you’re either wrong about what you’ll do or at best a statistical outlier, like those people who threatened to move to Canada when Bush won.
In 1993, I had one kid at an expensive private university and the other in an expensive private school. Not the way I grew up, but the plan was to do more for our kids than I had coming up. I didn’t have a choice, I had to work to do for my children what seemed right at the time. I also had a boat load of other commitments. All of those are gone, as Russell correctly inferred. What necessity required of me then and what is required today are completely different. Finally, 39% is not 50%.
McK, I’m not talking about you here. Here, allow me to speak more clearly.
IN THE POPULATION AS A WHOLE, IN 1993, DID SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF PEOPLE REACT TO HIGHER TAX RATES BY GIVING UP WORK OR BY SIGNIFICANTLY CUTTING BACK ON THE AMOUNT OF WORK THEY DID?
If “yes”, you’ll need to supply some sort of evidence.
If “no”, then I conclude that you’re either wrong about what you’ll do or at best a statistical outlier, like those people who threatened to move to Canada when Bush won.
IN THE POPULATION AS A WHOLE, IN 1993, DID SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF PEOPLE REACT TO HIGHER TAX RATES BY GIVING UP WORK OR BY SIGNIFICANTLY CUTTING BACK ON THE AMOUNT OF WORK THEY DID?
No, and my initial premise was for tax rates approaching 50%. I stated somewhere that I would favor going back to the Clinton rates if (a) the portion collected under the higher rates went to debt reduction and (b) we capped spending at current levels across the board.
As for upward mobility–citing to the Center for American Progress is as useful as me citing to the American Enterprise Institute–both have their agenda and both cook the stats to get where they want to go. Pre-WWII, a significant majority of Americans were rural poor to modest. With the GI Bill and near universal (for white people) access to college education, upward mobility skyrocketed. There simply were not enough “rich” in America to account for the numbers of people who, today, are homeowners with secure six figure incomes. For anyone to say that Europe, with it chronic double digit unemployment, has greater upward mobility is just crap.
The grain of truth in the CAP study is that offspring of specific demographics tend to remain or advance. But these are not affluent people who start a new business with daddy’s money. Upward mobility is a visible fact in Texas, particularly among Hispanics and Asians.
A couple of final notes–I have repeatedly said that service providers will do one of two things: cut back if tax rates are too high, or adjust payroll and other benefits to expand the bottom line. Either one produces a reduction in tax revenue, one directly and the other by taking tax payers out of the system and putting them either on the streets or in lower paying jobs. The WSJ routinely refers to macro studies that show that overall taxable income declines as tax rates go up–are these valid studies, generally accepted among economists? I have no clue. I know the WSJ has its own agenda, so I discount their studies just as I do any advocacy-driven “study”.
My beliefs are based on 30 years of observation and experience. I represent small business, have many friends and acquaintances who own small businesses and I have one as well. This base is representative (I don’t think Texas business people think markedly different that business owners generally) and by extension, I think it is plausible if not highly likely that 50% rates will materially effect how small businesses operate. And by 50%, I mean kicking at at 250K or thereabouts.
To close–work calls and calls loudly at this point–many thanks to Jacob for a thought provoking and well presented post. Please do another soon.
IN THE POPULATION AS A WHOLE, IN 1993, DID SIGNIFICANT NUMBERS OF PEOPLE REACT TO HIGHER TAX RATES BY GIVING UP WORK OR BY SIGNIFICANTLY CUTTING BACK ON THE AMOUNT OF WORK THEY DID?
No, and my initial premise was for tax rates approaching 50%. I stated somewhere that I would favor going back to the Clinton rates if (a) the portion collected under the higher rates went to debt reduction and (b) we capped spending at current levels across the board.
As for upward mobility–citing to the Center for American Progress is as useful as me citing to the American Enterprise Institute–both have their agenda and both cook the stats to get where they want to go. Pre-WWII, a significant majority of Americans were rural poor to modest. With the GI Bill and near universal (for white people) access to college education, upward mobility skyrocketed. There simply were not enough “rich” in America to account for the numbers of people who, today, are homeowners with secure six figure incomes. For anyone to say that Europe, with it chronic double digit unemployment, has greater upward mobility is just crap.
The grain of truth in the CAP study is that offspring of specific demographics tend to remain or advance. But these are not affluent people who start a new business with daddy’s money. Upward mobility is a visible fact in Texas, particularly among Hispanics and Asians.
A couple of final notes–I have repeatedly said that service providers will do one of two things: cut back if tax rates are too high, or adjust payroll and other benefits to expand the bottom line. Either one produces a reduction in tax revenue, one directly and the other by taking tax payers out of the system and putting them either on the streets or in lower paying jobs. The WSJ routinely refers to macro studies that show that overall taxable income declines as tax rates go up–are these valid studies, generally accepted among economists? I have no clue. I know the WSJ has its own agenda, so I discount their studies just as I do any advocacy-driven “study”.
My beliefs are based on 30 years of observation and experience. I represent small business, have many friends and acquaintances who own small businesses and I have one as well. This base is representative (I don’t think Texas business people think markedly different that business owners generally) and by extension, I think it is plausible if not highly likely that 50% rates will materially effect how small businesses operate. And by 50%, I mean kicking at at 250K or thereabouts.
To close–work calls and calls loudly at this point–many thanks to Jacob for a thought provoking and well presented post. Please do another soon.
Upward mobility is a visible fact in Texas,
The claim wasn’t that there is no upward mobility in the US; it’s that there isn’t as much as many of us like to think, and less than there is in many other developed economies.
Upward mobility is a visible fact in Texas,
The claim wasn’t that there is no upward mobility in the US; it’s that there isn’t as much as many of us like to think, and less than there is in many other developed economies.
But these are not affluent people who start a new business with daddy’s money.
Nor are they people who start from a background of trailer parks and soup kitchens.
“Affluence” is relative.
I never thought of my family as rich, when I was growing up: but wider social experience as an adult says that we never had to worry about new clothes, enough food, whether the bills would be paid, whether we kids would get to go on school trips, if we could afford after-school classes or sports clubs. And I, as an adult, have benefited by that background.
To put it in concrete terms you may find it easier to understand, McKinney, someone who is choosing between start-up costs and a new car is always going to be able to be more entrepreneurial than someone who is choosing between start-up costs and the next week’s food. Your claim that I am “clueless” for making this distinction just says that you, like many conservatives, really have no notion what it’s like to be really poor.
But these are not affluent people who start a new business with daddy’s money.
Nor are they people who start from a background of trailer parks and soup kitchens.
“Affluence” is relative.
I never thought of my family as rich, when I was growing up: but wider social experience as an adult says that we never had to worry about new clothes, enough food, whether the bills would be paid, whether we kids would get to go on school trips, if we could afford after-school classes or sports clubs. And I, as an adult, have benefited by that background.
To put it in concrete terms you may find it easier to understand, McKinney, someone who is choosing between start-up costs and a new car is always going to be able to be more entrepreneurial than someone who is choosing between start-up costs and the next week’s food. Your claim that I am “clueless” for making this distinction just says that you, like many conservatives, really have no notion what it’s like to be really poor.
As for upward mobility–citing to the Center for American Progress is as useful as me citing to the American Enterprise Institute–both have their agenda and both cook the stats to get where they want to go.
I’m afraid I don’t find ad hominem, false equivalence and argument by assertion to be a particularly convincing rebuttal. If you have a link to a source with contradicts the data in the report (which you certainly didn’t read) or shows it to be faulty, you, like Sebastian, are welcome to provide it.
As for upward mobility–citing to the Center for American Progress is as useful as me citing to the American Enterprise Institute–both have their agenda and both cook the stats to get where they want to go.
I’m afraid I don’t find ad hominem, false equivalence and argument by assertion to be a particularly convincing rebuttal. If you have a link to a source with contradicts the data in the report (which you certainly didn’t read) or shows it to be faulty, you, like Sebastian, are welcome to provide it.
It seems to me that McK is arguing from his own experience. There may be studies etc. that demonstrate that, statistically, his experience isn’t that typical, but it is (IMVVHO) kind of a fool’s errand to try to convince folks that their own personal experience is other than what they have observed it to be.
For the record, I would also say that the kind of thing McKinney is talking about — people from, if not dirt poor backgrounds, at least not particularly wealthy ones achieving a significant level of success — is actually quite common in this country (the US).
Maybe more so in other places, maybe not. But it’s not that unusual here.
Particularly in the context of people of what I take to be approximately McKinney’s age (and my own), people whose parents came up in the early-to-middle of the 20th C when there were actually a hell of a lot of really, really poor people, it’s an extremely common narrative.
So, just saying.
It seems to me that McK is arguing from his own experience. There may be studies etc. that demonstrate that, statistically, his experience isn’t that typical, but it is (IMVVHO) kind of a fool’s errand to try to convince folks that their own personal experience is other than what they have observed it to be.
For the record, I would also say that the kind of thing McKinney is talking about — people from, if not dirt poor backgrounds, at least not particularly wealthy ones achieving a significant level of success — is actually quite common in this country (the US).
Maybe more so in other places, maybe not. But it’s not that unusual here.
Particularly in the context of people of what I take to be approximately McKinney’s age (and my own), people whose parents came up in the early-to-middle of the 20th C when there were actually a hell of a lot of really, really poor people, it’s an extremely common narrative.
So, just saying.
“You’re free to link to data that disputes that study I linked to, Sebastian. Or that shows that the countries named in the excerpt I posted, or rich countries generally, are more alike than they are different when it comes to mobility. Or you can argue by assertion.”
You already linked to the data. I was using the study you linked. It shows that the large countries are pretty close in outcomes to each other in terms of mobility (by large I mean the UK, France, Germany, and US as opposed to say Finland). The major outlier is Canada. And the best of the first four is Germany, but they don’t count the multi-generational guest workers. The percentage of income ‘transmitted’ in the UK is 25%, in the US it is 22%, in France it is 17%, in Germany without guest workers it is 10%. It isn’t until we get to Canada that we get to dramatically different numbers (4%).
But hey, don’t let your own facts get in the way of snarking against me. 🙂
Now the really interesting thing that this does show is that nearly all of the problem 1942-1972 is found in black children in the US. If I’m reading the data properly (though they are a little bit muddled on this point) the intergenerational stickiness was twice as high. Suggesting that the mix of institutional racism and internal cultural issues (which percentages belong to which mix are highly contested and not part of the point right now) were even more damaging than we thought.
And also suggesting that for non-blacks, intergenerational transmission of income is much closer to that of Canada, than to say the UK. Which may be why, especially if you are from the US coasts, you feel like there is plenty of mobility, because in your locale there is.
And Jesurgislac, you can’t blame Thatcher/Blair/Tory/New Labour. Most of the years at the beginning and the middle of this were firmly under old Labour control. And there wasn’t a significant retrenchment later, so that suggests that something else is going on in the UK. (I wouldn’t even begin to speculate what, I certainly don’t know enough about the UK to have any idea).
“You’re free to link to data that disputes that study I linked to, Sebastian. Or that shows that the countries named in the excerpt I posted, or rich countries generally, are more alike than they are different when it comes to mobility. Or you can argue by assertion.”
You already linked to the data. I was using the study you linked. It shows that the large countries are pretty close in outcomes to each other in terms of mobility (by large I mean the UK, France, Germany, and US as opposed to say Finland). The major outlier is Canada. And the best of the first four is Germany, but they don’t count the multi-generational guest workers. The percentage of income ‘transmitted’ in the UK is 25%, in the US it is 22%, in France it is 17%, in Germany without guest workers it is 10%. It isn’t until we get to Canada that we get to dramatically different numbers (4%).
But hey, don’t let your own facts get in the way of snarking against me. 🙂
Now the really interesting thing that this does show is that nearly all of the problem 1942-1972 is found in black children in the US. If I’m reading the data properly (though they are a little bit muddled on this point) the intergenerational stickiness was twice as high. Suggesting that the mix of institutional racism and internal cultural issues (which percentages belong to which mix are highly contested and not part of the point right now) were even more damaging than we thought.
And also suggesting that for non-blacks, intergenerational transmission of income is much closer to that of Canada, than to say the UK. Which may be why, especially if you are from the US coasts, you feel like there is plenty of mobility, because in your locale there is.
And Jesurgislac, you can’t blame Thatcher/Blair/Tory/New Labour. Most of the years at the beginning and the middle of this were firmly under old Labour control. And there wasn’t a significant retrenchment later, so that suggests that something else is going on in the UK. (I wouldn’t even begin to speculate what, I certainly don’t know enough about the UK to have any idea).
The greatest difficulty with arguing with conservatives–their inability to see beyond their own experiences.
The greatest difficulty with arguing with conservatives–their inability to see beyond their own experiences.
The greatest difficulty with arguing with conservatives–their inability to see beyond their own experiences.
For the record, that isn’t where I was going with the comment of mine that you’re responding to.
I think most folks gut-check statements other people make against their own experience. I know that I do. It’s a basic way to see if something someone is saying makes sense at a ground-truth level. IMHO, nothing wrong with that.
Everyone’s experience is, of course, limited, so you have to keep your mind open. But most folks views of things — liberal, conservative, or whatever — are formed to some non-trivial degree by their own life story.
The greatest difficulty with arguing with conservatives–their inability to see beyond their own experiences.
For the record, that isn’t where I was going with the comment of mine that you’re responding to.
I think most folks gut-check statements other people make against their own experience. I know that I do. It’s a basic way to see if something someone is saying makes sense at a ground-truth level. IMHO, nothing wrong with that.
Everyone’s experience is, of course, limited, so you have to keep your mind open. But most folks views of things — liberal, conservative, or whatever — are formed to some non-trivial degree by their own life story.
Can I point out, again, that many of the supports that McKinneyTexas and his parents benefited from are basically gone now? The GI Bill allowed a broad swathe of Americans from all income levels to attend college and graduate without any debt. Now, most students graduate with $20K+ in debt.
In the 50s/60s/70s, you could graduate high school, and get a good job at a union manufacturing plant, or an office job, where one worker could support a family at a relatively decent level. Now the unions and the manufacturing jobs are decimated, most office jobs require college degrees (see above) and none of the jobs offer either the security or the benefits those jobs did.
Those, and many of the other steps that created a broad middle class have been destroyed, by means testing in the name of saving money and bashing the programs as “welfare” for “undeserving” people. Companies like finance have been deregulated, and companies in general have been legally required to put short term profit ahead of their workers, the long-term good of the company, or their communities. Unions have been destroyed so the workers don’t have a say in how the companies are run, or have any influence, and as a result, wages in all sectors have stagnated for average workers, while the increase in production has gone completely to stock profits and executive salaries. Defined retirement has been tossed aside for 401Ks, and other ways that have funneled people’s money into the stock market, where the financial guys can skim a few percentage of commission off for themselves. Companies are routinely bought out by “investment” companies interested only in chopping them up and selling off the pieces. Government’s been demonized and held hostage and used to transfer money from regular people to the same folks at the top, through tax giveaways, things like the Social Security “reform” of the 80s, etc. The generation before them learned skills in the Depression through evil socialist plots like the WPA.
McKinneyTexas’s experiences aren’t typical any more. The ladder that used to exist to help people move to the middle class, or beyond, has been weakened and broken in many places. The companies, communities, and society that were the engine of our prosperity have been gutted by the people who were supposed to be guiding it, to line their pockets with short-term profits, at the expense of hollowing out our economy and our country.
So yes, I am not surprised at all that social mobility is down. And that income inequality is up. And the people predicting the end of the world if we ask the guys at the top to stop gutting the country before it’s destroyed are helping make sure the idyllic 50s world they romanticize can’t ever return.
Can I point out, again, that many of the supports that McKinneyTexas and his parents benefited from are basically gone now? The GI Bill allowed a broad swathe of Americans from all income levels to attend college and graduate without any debt. Now, most students graduate with $20K+ in debt.
In the 50s/60s/70s, you could graduate high school, and get a good job at a union manufacturing plant, or an office job, where one worker could support a family at a relatively decent level. Now the unions and the manufacturing jobs are decimated, most office jobs require college degrees (see above) and none of the jobs offer either the security or the benefits those jobs did.
Those, and many of the other steps that created a broad middle class have been destroyed, by means testing in the name of saving money and bashing the programs as “welfare” for “undeserving” people. Companies like finance have been deregulated, and companies in general have been legally required to put short term profit ahead of their workers, the long-term good of the company, or their communities. Unions have been destroyed so the workers don’t have a say in how the companies are run, or have any influence, and as a result, wages in all sectors have stagnated for average workers, while the increase in production has gone completely to stock profits and executive salaries. Defined retirement has been tossed aside for 401Ks, and other ways that have funneled people’s money into the stock market, where the financial guys can skim a few percentage of commission off for themselves. Companies are routinely bought out by “investment” companies interested only in chopping them up and selling off the pieces. Government’s been demonized and held hostage and used to transfer money from regular people to the same folks at the top, through tax giveaways, things like the Social Security “reform” of the 80s, etc. The generation before them learned skills in the Depression through evil socialist plots like the WPA.
McKinneyTexas’s experiences aren’t typical any more. The ladder that used to exist to help people move to the middle class, or beyond, has been weakened and broken in many places. The companies, communities, and society that were the engine of our prosperity have been gutted by the people who were supposed to be guiding it, to line their pockets with short-term profits, at the expense of hollowing out our economy and our country.
So yes, I am not surprised at all that social mobility is down. And that income inequality is up. And the people predicting the end of the world if we ask the guys at the top to stop gutting the country before it’s destroyed are helping make sure the idyllic 50s world they romanticize can’t ever return.
Fixed & amusified that for you.
Fixed & amusified that for you.
Welcome, Jacob! Good first post.
Welcome, Jacob! Good first post.
Can I point out, again, that many of the supports that McKinneyTexas and his parents benefited from are basically gone now?
This is a very, very good point.
Anecdota: from 1978 to 1981 I attended SUNY @ Stony Brook, a NY state university on Long Island. It was an excellent, excellent school, and I got an excellent education.
Full time tuition, up to 18 credit hours a semester, cost me $900 a year. That’s about $2400 in today’s dollars.
I got a Pell grant and some state money, so I basically went to school for free. I had to work for spending money.
The country wasn’t dramatically richer then than it is now, we just had different priorities about where the money should go.
Can I point out, again, that many of the supports that McKinneyTexas and his parents benefited from are basically gone now?
This is a very, very good point.
Anecdota: from 1978 to 1981 I attended SUNY @ Stony Brook, a NY state university on Long Island. It was an excellent, excellent school, and I got an excellent education.
Full time tuition, up to 18 credit hours a semester, cost me $900 a year. That’s about $2400 in today’s dollars.
I got a Pell grant and some state money, so I basically went to school for free. I had to work for spending money.
The country wasn’t dramatically richer then than it is now, we just had different priorities about where the money should go.
Labor-leisure tradeoffs? Marginal tax rates? And I missed all this? Well, that won’t happen again. For your amusement, and for those who like to get deep into the weeds of economic theory, use the Google for “sandwichman + Work Less Institute of Technology”.
I remain, irredeemably committed to exposing you folks to insightful crackpot economic theory,
bobbyp
Labor-leisure tradeoffs? Marginal tax rates? And I missed all this? Well, that won’t happen again. For your amusement, and for those who like to get deep into the weeds of economic theory, use the Google for “sandwichman + Work Less Institute of Technology”.
I remain, irredeemably committed to exposing you folks to insightful crackpot economic theory,
bobbyp