This is what it looks like:
The Ryan plan that the GOP just passed in the House has a problem with the number on the right. They think they should receive more tax cuts while ending Medicare.
Very serious.
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demkat620
My wingnut friend told me today that defense spending only increases when we are in a hot war.
Right. He thinks his boss is a great guy who deserves every tax cut he gets.
Tax Analyst
The Ryan “plan” uses the assumption that seniors will be more “selective” and “cost conscious” if they have to foot the bill. Sure, that’s just what folks need to deal with as they get older; wonking their way thru private insurance company fine print to see if anything is covered by a plan they might barely be able to afford.
BGinCHI
Until the left successfully debunks the myth that rich people getting richer results in more jobs and a better economy for the middle class, we are never going to get anywhere.
People who are easily fooled fall for this right-wing bullshit every time.
gnomedad
Clearly, they have become 4 times as productive in the last 15 years.
Low On Prozac
When’s Obama gonna tax his buddies Jeffery Immelt and Warren Buffet?
cyntax
Holy Jeebus: how do the SOB’s keep getting elected?
SFAW
I think that’s only part of the equation. The other part (or one of the other parts) is more-or-less like “Mr. Lower-Middle-Class Murrikan! You, too, can be rich someday! But if you prevent the currently-rich from getting whatever they can, then it’ll get done to YOU when you become rich!”
Or, in a less wordy manner: preventing people from getting whatever they can is counter to the American Dream.
However, the response to that is similar to the commercial from 10+ years ago:
“Someone’s going to win the lottery.
Just not you.”
Roger Moore
@Tax Analyst:
We know that Seniors can be very cost conscious. They know the cheap way of getting some protein in your diet is to eat cat food. Now Rep. Ryan wants them to apply that same bold thinking to the world of health care.
fasteddie9318
@Tax Analyst:
This is totally true. I mean, sure, the geezers would all love a casket that smells of rich mahogany or offers a deep cherry look, but thanks to the Ryan plan, not only will they be dying sooner, but many more of them are going to come to understand the value of the sturdy old pine box.
SFAW
Actually five.
But wingnuts will say 500 times more productive.
BGinCHI
@SFAW: American Capitalism:
You Can’t Lose If You Don’t Play.
Karmakin
@SFAW: I used to think that. I don’t anymore. I think it’s less that they think that they’re going to be rich someday and more that they think that the rich people deserve it and the poor people deserve to be punished, and they think accordingly.
cyntax
@fasteddie9318:
The kind with the hinged door at one end for easy dumping into the lime pit.
MattR
@Tax Analyst: Luckily, we all know that senior citizens are very good at paying attention to those details and have a history of being the least likely to be sucked into scams.
Oh. Right. Nevermind.
fasteddie9318
@cyntax: Thereby hastening their decomposition into some kind of useful fossil fuel that can then be extracted by tomorrow’s Titans of Capitalism. It’s all part of the Great Wingnut Circle of Life.
jl
I’ve heard the following from my teaGOPper relatives and their circles:
‘You gotta let the winners win and losers lose.’
I’ve noted a few times that I can’t figure out what this means precisely, and in response that that softball, I’ve gotten vague remarks about ‘people getting soft’, ‘seems like people don’t want to work anymore’, and ‘DemocRATs trying to destroy the country, is what it’s about.’ And, ‘my ship never came in and you don’t see me complaining’. And for that guy, I wanted to helpfully add that the ample beer consumption probably explains the lack of complaint, but I have resisted.
Mark D
WHY DO YOU HATE THE WEALTH PRODUCERS?!?!?! WE COULD ALL HAVE PERPETUAL MOTION MACHINES!111!!
Sorry — I’ve read too many posts about Atlas Shrugged today.
Oh, and BGinCHI — I agree 100%. Which is why I’ve posted stuff like this all over the place (e.g., Facebook, friends blogs, etc.), with varying degrees of success.
For example, my in-laws have gone from apathetic to radical leftists (which is fun to see, quite frankly); my dad voted for every Republican until 2008, when he didn’t vote at all, but now thinks personal wealth should be limited to $50 million (!); and a few high school and college friends are starting to get more involved, and are even blaming the right people!
Sadly, however, quite a few I hoped would get are getting the OPPOSITE message, deciding that doubling down on trickle-down will produce a waterfall.
The fact that waterfall will just be the rich pissing on us seems to escape them.
**sigh**
I’m gonna keep tryin’, though …
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
It’s as if the Knights who say Ni! ran a financial planning service. As soon as the
Ryan planshrubbery is enacted into law, then we can work oncurbing Medicare costsgoing and getting another shrubbery, and then cutting down the tallest tree in the forest with a herring!A red herring, to be specific.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Thanks for the numbers, I’ve been clubbing local wingnuts with them like the baby seals they are.
It’s working.
Brachiator
“We got the shares. You make the sacrifice.”
Sincerely, the Makers, aka Your Real American(tm)elites.
BGinCHI
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
SFAW
I agree that it’s partly that, but I also think that meme is relatively recent re: gaining traction, seems like it’s less than 5 years. (Not the idea itself, but that it has gained a relatively prominent position.) For example, I don’t recall it being a big thing before W was installed. But once he got in, and tried to pull the “tax cuts for everyone (already making a shitload)”, coupled with the downturn in ’08 – well, people are always looking to find a group to hate on when times get tough.
jl
@SFAW:
It should be a useful and productive counter argument what Bush II was factually wrong about everything on his income tax cut plan, from its effect on revenues and the deficit, to its effect on provision of government services, to its effect on the GDP growth rate.
But that might be considered sissy intellectual butthurt, and unmanly. The manly never whine and complain, or get their feelings hurt, right?
Karmakin
It’s really started to grow since the early/mid-80’s or so. But the last decade it’s really become part of the mass consciousness.
it’s what jl said. You gotta let the winners win and the losers lose.
What’s happened is that evangelicals have double downed on the idea of an interventionist deity in the face of an increasingly secular/non-theistic world. The natural way to see an interventionist deity is that he approves of things in the world, otherwise he wouldn’t let them happen. Oh and the things he disproves of are done by the devil of course.
So he approves of poverty and unemployment and struggle. It’s the idea of the “noble poor” redone in a protestant fashion. So governments should act in a way that reinforces the ability of the poor to be “noble”. It’s why it’s a positive thing when someone is working multiple jobs just to keep their head afloat.
Brachiator
@jl:
Hey, it’s in the Bible, Paul’s Epistle to the Galts.
More seriously, it amazes me how some of these people claim to be Christian and yet they manage to fuse their religion with the vilest form of laissez faire and see no contradiction.
Tax Analyst
@MattR:
Yes, the increased gullibility of the elderly is a very useful and functional “Feature” for the Vulturite set.
cyntax
@fasteddie9318:
Worst. Ride. Ever.
Maybe I can find some Teatards to throw up on.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
Americans will make for a great serfs. Always quick to glorify the master who beats and starves them, while pointing their rage and hatred from that treatment towards a minority scapegoat group that has it even worse.
Sure, a few heretics will have to be purged, but any successful herd needs to be culled from time to time.
When right-wingers talk about the good old days, they’re talking about 13th century France.
tomvox1
Well let’s not be so cavalier about this, John. I mean, we’ve got to think of the S&P ratings on America’s future, right? They were positive when Bush ran up the bill and let the rich run amok, so best to go stick to his policies so they’ll give us the Thumbs Up again. Just like they did for Enron, Lehman & Bear Stearns. Credibility!
jl
@Karmakin:
Interesting point, letting the winners win and losers lose being connected somehow to the rise of Xtianism.
As other commmenters and yours very truly have pointed out in this blog right here, most Xtianist though believes in some sort of Dispensationalism, which is a childish, autistic, version of the series of OT Jewish Covenants, or Christian idea of progressive revelation.
Since the Ascension in Acts, the teachings of Jesus on earth, and in the Gospels, is not longer operative on earth. The Jews rejected that deal that God was offering with the earthly Jesus. That is dangerous no longer true stuff. That is stuff from a previous Dispensation. Taking it too seriously, could lead to HELLFIRE.
In this new Dispensation that is the last one, and under which we operate until the end of the world, we are supposed to passively wait for, or somehow help prepare the way for the coming of the Kick Ass Christ, who will come after Armageddon, to separate the sheep from the goats, and let the Winners Win and the Losers Lose, bigtime forever.
Let the Winners Win and Losers Lose is the the new way to follow Christ! Yippee!
demz taters
@Brachiator:
They do it by congratulating themselves for not being like those wishy-washy lukewarm Christians who are “too soft on sin.”
OzoneR
@Brachiator:
ah, I see you’ve never been to one of those churches where the pastor drives up in a Mercedes and tells his congregation the rich are God’s chosen people and he wants you to give your money to them because it’s Christian to be rich.
Tax Analyst
@OzoneR:
I caught some of this on late night TV a week or two ago. It was late and I was reading but had left the telly on after the last show I had watched, although I can’t remember why. Anyway, this sucker stood up there with a straight face and preached a Gospel of Prosperity to the attending flock and couch sitting parishioners. Yeah, Jesus wanted us to be rich, and it was especially important to the J Man that we give to pricks like that oily, pious preacherman.
Every once in a while I looked up to see if maybe this was a parody, but it was a for real thing.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Brachiator:
This is a gross oversimplification of a lot of complex history, but as a first-order approximation here’s how I see it:
Since its inception Xtianity has had a dual character, as both a system of social ethics (see The Sermon on the Mount, etc.) and as a more traditional devotional religion and mystery cult. Devotional religions tend to attract donations which over time translate into patronage from the wealthy, which over time translates into capture by the social, cultural, economic and political interests of the wealthy. This is in rather glaring contrast with the ethos of Xtianity as a system of social ethics, at least if you believe all that stuff said by the Original Hippy Himself.
These two aspects of the religion have been squabbling and fighting with each other for control of western European society for a very long time, but when the Enlightenment came along they finally got a divorce and parted company more or less for good. Xtianity as a system of social ethics gradually shed its religious flavor and turned into the secular Left, while Xtianity as a devotional religion, no longer shackled by its annoying twin, turned increasingly to the Right.
Personally I think this divorce was a bad bargin for both sides and more so for all of us, as both of these twin aspects of Xtianity need their other side to restrain their worst impulses. On the Left, if you no longer believe in a higher power passing judgment on your actions by some sort of enduring standard of morality not bound by political expediency, then the greatest good of the greatest number can be used to justify any number of earthly horrors. On the Right, what used to be Xtianity has devolved into a Social Darwinist carnival of cruelty and a bonfire of the heretics, unrestrained by any sense of charity or mercy.
I think our culture would benefit if we made efforts to heal this split.
Church Lady
Two observations:
Using the top 400 taxpayers doesn’t tell us much of anything, because it’s such a small, select circle. It’s like some small percentage of 1/2 of 1%. I’d be more interested in how the bottom rung of the top 5% (Obama’s so-called “rich”) fared. My guess would be pretty much close to the same rate as the middle class.
Since the figure covers from 1992 forward, I wonder how much of those gains were from the tech bubble?
emperor of ice cream
@#34 Thatleftturn
You examine the conundrum of christianity in way I hadn’t thought of before. I have to think more about it …. It’s why I read the comments on this (and very few others) blog. I often learn new facts and even sometimes (like with your post) new ways of “seeing.”. Just wanted to say well done.
Brachiator
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Very interesting conjectures.
Obviously, at various times, the religion appealed to the (relatively speaking) upper classes and ultimately became the official state religion. But historically, the upper classes were as much in need for a devotional religion as anyone else. People sometimes confuse the sayings attributed to Jesus about the poor to the actual rise of the religion.
This gets interesting since I think that a lot of the view of the Original Hippy, like Renaissance paintings, is a projection of our time, not a historically honest reading of the Bible. Also, I think anybody who can untangle what are supposedly the actual sayings from later glosses is a hell of a person.
Yep.
I see some of what you mean here. Of course, the Right also has transformed their vision into a social ethics based on punishment, rigidity and social coercion, but some of this has been recent.
Kinda like that episode of Star Trek where Kirk splits into cruel and weak halves.
The problem for me is that neither vision of religion is particularly meaningful. And Social Darwinism is just selfishness with a false veneer of science.
Or move beyond it entirely.
Appreciate the response. Sorry that I did not have time to reply more, but I wanted to note some impressions about what you had written.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@emperor of ice cream:
Thanks. That’s the best compliment I could ask for.
Here’s another semi-related thought on the topic of the relationship between the Left and traditional religion: In the decade between 1910 and 1919 there were three violent revolutions overthrowing their own Ancien Regimes, revolutions which eventually culminated in the seizure of power by a vanguardist Left, each taking place in large, economically under-developed, mostly agrarian states which were at the time going through modernization and industrialization in some parts of their society.
Mexico was first, followed by Russia and eventually China. Both of the latter two revolutions resulted in the construction of Gulags and other organs of state terror, and in the expropriation and partial extermination of their peasantry thru the mechanisms of state organized famines (or in the case of Mao’s China at least state sanctioned famines, as just how deliberate the Hungry Ghosts Famine actually was is a matter of controversy).
But not in Mexico.
Why were there no Gulags and killing fields in Mexico? What was different about the Mexican Revolution, which led to a more moderate course? It wasn’t that they had the benefit of learning the lessons of the other two revolutions.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
ETA: Thanks also to Brachiator for a thoughtful response as well, one of the things I consistently enjoy about the commentariat here. Unfortunately I’m about to go offline for the evening, so my responses to this train of thought will have to wait until tomorrow. Keep up the good work!
TG Chicago
OT: Just saw this poll.
I thought it was awfully interesting that the last time deficit worries spiked was also right around the last time a Democratic president was trying to be re-elected. Kinda funny how the media/Village all gets up in arms about the deficit at juuuuust the right moment.
Just a coincidence, I’m sure.
John - A Motley Moose
@Church Lady: Not so surprisingly, you are wrong – http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
Mike M
@The Church Lady
Whether you look at the top 400, the top 1%, or the top 20%, the wealthy have done very well over the past several decades. Inequality.org has some more detailed charts here, but the data is widely available for just about any particular demographic you’d like to consider.
In brief, the poor and middle classes have seen their income stagnate, while they have accumulated debt in an effort to maintain their lifestyle. Meanwhile, the upper classes have seen both a surge in income and in accumulated wealth. The rich get richer and well, you know the rest.
ksmiami
I keep trying to tell people unless you pull in 600k or more you have no business voting Republican – they laugh at me, but inside I just think they are dupes and suckers and I pity their ignorance… as someone more fortunate than 99% of people on this planet I am shocked by their servile, delusional attitude that keeps them down
piratedan
okay, is this the place for someone to shout “the math demands it!” or not?
mclaren
So on the one hand, Cole hammers away about this shit.
And on the other hand, Cole keeps telling us “You can’t primary Obama, we have to support him!”
So you tell us, John Cole, how things get better when the liberals all support Barack Obama after he cuts taxes on the rich and increases military spending beyond the levels under George W. Bush.
See, this is where you don’t get it, Cole. You just…do…not…get it.
You tell us “Obama is better than the alternative” when Obama talks about “compromise” and “meeting the Republicans in the middle.” And Republicans propose cutting social programs by 50% and Obama says, No, let’s cut social programs by 25%. And all the liberals cheer.
And then you tell us the next Democratic president “is better than the Republican alternative” he will talk about “compromise” and “meeting the Republicans in the middle,” just like Obama did. And Republicans will propose cutting social programs by 50% down to 12.5% and the next Democratic president will say, No, let’s cut social programs by 25%, down to 18.75% of what they used to be. And all the liberals cheer again.
And then you’ll tell us the next Democratic president after that “is still better than the Republican alternative” and he will talk about “compromise” and “meeting the Republicans in the middle.” And Republicans will propose cutting social programs by 50% down to 9.875%% and the next Democratic president will say, No, let’s cut social programs by 25%, down to 14.0625% of what they used to be. And all the liberals cheer again.
And after another 5 or 6 more Democratic presidents, all the social programs have been cut down to 1% of what they used to be, and the Democratic party will boast and strut about how they “met the Republicans in the middle” and how they “didn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” and how “they’re all about governing, not ideology.”
And John Cole will still be telling us how we’ve got to support this shit.
That doesn’t work, Cole.
OzoneR
@mclaren:
Who was the one who spent the better part of last Fall arguing we should raise taxes on the rich and then said it again in his speech last week?