Republicans have found some death panels they like- more depressing news about the overall health of the most important part of our country:
Nearly one in three Americans who grew up middle-class has slipped down the income ladder as an adult, according to a new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Downward mobility is most common among middle-class people who are divorced or separated from their spouses, did not attend college, scored poorly on standardized tests, or used hard drugs, the report says.
“A middle-class upbringing does not guarantee the same status over the course of a lifetime,” the report says.
The study focused on people who were middle-class teenagers in 1979 and who were between 39 and 44 years old in 2004 and 2006. It defines people as middle-class if they fall between the 30th and 70th percentiles in income distribution, which for a family of four is between $32,900 and $64,000 a year in 2010 dollars.
People were deemed downwardly mobile if they fell below the 30th percentile in income, if their income rank was 20 or more percentiles below their parents’ rank, or if they earn at least 20 percent less than their parents. The findings do not cover the difficult times that the nation has endured since 2007.
Pew researchers said the study’s structure did not permit an analysis of whether upward mobility has become more difficult through the years. Nonetheless, some economists point to growing income inequality and widely stagnating wages as evidence that the American Dream is slipping out of reach for many people.
That’s the reality. Here is the fantasy:
I’m not sure which is more breathtaking: Romney’s suggestion that someone earning $200,000 is “middle income,” or his implication that actual middle-income Americans have more than a minuscule amount of investment income in the first place.
For the record, in 2004 the Tax Policy Center estimated that a median earner would save a whopping $70 if taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains were eliminated completely. That’s right: $70. Seven zero.
The most amazing thing the Republican party has done is turn the people they are screwing the most into their most ardent supporters. Of course, the members in the money party who are Democrats (DLC) have had a good hand in helping them. Give people Republican policies enough, and they’ll vote for Republicans. All of this is compounded by the fact that the people who shape our news are all in the income bracket that Romney considers “middle income,” so they probably think he is speaking truth to power. In 99% of this country, 200k a year is rich as hell. Here in WV, the median income is $37 grand a year.
At any rate, more austerity and a capital gains tax cut should fix things.
Linnaeus
What’s even more breathtaking than $200,000/yr being portrayed as “middle income” is when the same people who say that turn around and make public-sector workers earning $60,000/yr out to be unfathomably wealthy.
BGinCHI
On top of all the other dumbass ideas Romney and the other GOP candidates have, just consider what will happen to the middle and lower classes, as well as the economy (bye-bye, demand), if one of them gets elected and gets ride of ACA.
If healthcare costs rise and hit this group it’s going to be carnage. Or, I suppose, even more carnage than there is now.
Chyron HR
Also known as years minus-5 through minus-3 of the Obama administration, in Romney Notation.
pragmatism
the ex-middle class can rely on private charity from their galtian overlords. that’ll work out great.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
A rising tide lifts all boats. But all that means is that the poor fuckers without boats have a harder time treading water.
No One of Consequence
Eventually, if you disenfranchise enough, won’t the poor just *take* what they want?
– NOoC
MikeJ
The republican argument is that if we lowered tax rates then people would stop wasting money on food and housing and instead put it in a nice IRA, or better yet, hire a bunch of those downwardly mobile people.
Violet
Class warfare. Call it what it is. If only the middle and lower classes would realize there are more of us than there are of them.
geg6
Here in PA, it’s $49,829. And these assholes voted for Pat “Club for Growth” Toomey.
Dicks.
Earl Butz
How disingenuous of Romney. To the former CEO of Bain, someone who earns 200k a year doesn’t earn enough money to even be permitted to wipe Romney’s shoes after he steps in dog shit.
FlipYrWhig
@Linnaeus: Well, that’s just because the public-sector worker is getting paid with hard-workin’ taxpayer money, whereas the middle-income $200K guy got there with his own pluck and ingenuity. The first guy is hard to fire, while the second guy determines his own success. It’s not the size of the pile of money, it’s how much you _deserve_ it. It’s grotesque, but it’s consistent.
Chris
They’re continuing the tradition of Joe the Plumber, when the McCain campaign tried to tell people that $250,000 was a working class salary.
dave
Oh god, the middle class, who cares. The middle class would gladly sell out anyone it could for $70 a year. For seventy bucks, a middle class white guy in West Virginia would agree to punch an anonymous immigrant in the face, if he could get away with it. I mean, come on.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@No One of Consequence:
That’s what private security and armies are for, duhhh.
Shinobi
The delusional argument that I’ve heard most a few times from actual middle class people who continue to support benefits for the rich is that someday they too will be rich, and then they will not want to pay all those taxes.
cleek
they also probably all have college degrees of some kind.
Aug 2011. Unemployment by education
No HS degree: 14.3%
HS graduate (no college) : 9.6%
Some college, or Ass. degree: 8.2%
Bachelor’s or higher: 4.3%
anonymoose
http://teapartyzombiesmustdie.com/
Linnaeus
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, sure, I get the whole “deserve” thing. Funny how often, however, the $200K guy/girl had help. It’s interesting how often people rationalize what they “deserve” even though they benefit from the same public resources that the “undeserving” do.
Cermet
Yet WV is solidly red! Makes you wonder how stupid these people (not just WV but all repugs who make under $40 K/yr and think they are so well off and still vote red.)
VOR
The 2010 Republican candidate for Governor of Minnesota claimed waiters/waitresses earned $100k per year.
Linnaeus
@No One of Consequence:
That’s actually not too far from Aristotle’s argument that extremes of wealth and poverty are harmful to democracy, although he thought the problem was that the poor would use their votes to take property, which he viewed as unjust.
Zifnab
@geg6:
The Arlen Specter swing-over was a total mess. They’d have been better off keeping him on the GOP side of the aisle and simply asking for his vote. Making him a Democrat was a strategic mistake.
Democrats could have backed Specter in ’10 like the GOP backed Lieberman in ’06 and let the winner of the Republican primary battle Sestak in the general.
As for Pennsylvanians as a whole – they went Tomney 51/49. I wouldn’t exactly call that a landslide. I’m more pissed at them for covering us in Santorum back in ’95.
Sloegin
Just had to check what percentage of people make ‘middle income’ or higher in the US, and it’s less than 5%.
Methinks those words don’t mean what he thinks they mean.
Jennifer
I’ll say it again: the club we need to use to persistently beat these assclowns over the head with is this “producer/parasite” bullshit. People need to be told, over and over and over again, that the Republicans have no respect for how hard they work and what they produce. It won’t be hard to illustrate – there’s any number of video and audio clips from Fox talking heads, Limbaugh, and GOP party leaders saying exactly this. Just stitch them together and play them in heavy rotation for the next 14 months. Or better yet, the next 3 years, or 5 years, or however long it takes for each one of these condescending assholes to be run out of office on a rail.
Back to the “producer/parasite” BS – it’s long been a fantasy of mine that, just for a few days or a week, all the “parasites” would just not show up for work. Call in claiming a parasitical infection, if you will. Let’s see how fucking “productive” the Galts are when no one shows up to answer the phone or run the cash register. Let’s see how goddamned much money they can make doing it all on their own. Shouldn’t be too difficult for them, seeing as how they’re the “producers” and all.
Chris
“In 99% of this country, 200k a year is rich as hell. Here in WV, the median income is $37 grand a year.”
Yeah, and if you’re running for president, you are going to spend as close to 100% of your time in that 1% of the country, where people can give you over two thousand dollars per election if they like you, and you and they each get to pretend they’re just middle-class folks who aren’t doing too badly.
You think we’ve got income inequality bad here in America? We’ve got campaign contribution inequality *worse*.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
All conservative ideology is built on the cornerstone of “I deserve this, these people don’t.” They reason backwards from that point to create the several gajillion excuses and rationalizations that constitute the rest of their belief system.
FlipYrWhig
@Linnaeus: Oh, yeah, don’t get me wrong, it’s obviously totally false.
Linnaeus
@Jennifer:
In a similar vein, when I hear businesses uncritically lauded as “job providers”, I refer to their workers as “profit providers”.
Linnaeus
@FlipYrWhig:
No worries; I understood what you meant!
Rex
You need to clarify that it’s Median _Household_ Income, John. Per capita income is a shade under $22k/year.
geg6
@Zifnab:
How, exactly, would that have changed the senate election outcome? I don’t see it. Do you really think Toomey would have been wounded, somehow, in a primary fight with Specter? And if you don’t know a lot of white lower-middle and middle-income people who voted for Toomey just to show “Obummer” what is what, then you must live in Philly.
Makewi
@Linnaeus:
It’s horrible how those poor workers are forced to work at those jobs. They should be given stuff.
FlipYrWhig
@Chris:
Yup. Or, “Someone out there is getting a free ride” (corollary: from the government, i.e., living it up on my hard-earned money).
Chris
@Jennifer:
I think that’s called a “strike.”
Yeah, I wish too…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can’t remember if anyone here blogged about the USA today week-ender “money pro” tip about turning down a raise if it bumps you into a higher bracket, because then it will cost you money? and remember Mitch Albom’s innumerate column about how much Obama’s tax increase would cost him? The ignorance and paranoia– a vicious downward spiral in a lot of people’s minds, I think– about taxes in this country is amazing. As I’ve said before, I suspect a lot of people hear “$250K/yr’ and think “My house is worth that much! He wants to raise my taxes!”
virag
@No One of Consequence:
every time. unfortunately, such wealth redistribution usually causes lots of discomfort for huge numbers of people. and in the modern world, the discomfort and uncertainty span the globe.
Jennifer
@Makewi: Fuck you, Makewi.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
How come no one ever uses a “cost of living” calculator when they make these arguments? 200k is sure as hell not the same all over.
Nevgu
Funny how Wrong Way Buffett Fudgepacker Cole doesn’t post any DOW charts to illustrate his point. Maybe because it doesn’t…..today.
http://www.google.com//finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1315425600000&chddm=1173.0000000000002&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=INDEXDJX:.DJI&ntsp=0
Go back to something you know more about Cole. Like fantasizing about chugging Greenwald cock.
quaker in a basement
It’s been more than 25 years since St. Reagan first presented the “young bucks” lie. How much longer until the Democrats come up with an answer for it?
zmulls
The fact that almost anyone in the media makes more than 95% of the country (or more) is the most salient one. Print journalists were working stiffs — TV journalists are upper upper upper income and either don’t like to admit or are too stupid to know it.
You had to learn to read and write to work in print media. On TV you have to have an engaging personality.
Jager
I know a guy who is always talking about how he “has made it on his own”…I also know his old man. The old guy, who did “make it on his own” gave all of his kids (4) one million in cash when they graduated from college. One of them told her Dad to “just put it to work for me”. She teaches handicapped kids for a living…her dad told me she’s got more money than the other three put together. Of course she lives in a one bedroom apartment, drives a shitty old car to work, but takes really nice vacations!
Corner Stone
Slightly OT but kind of germane.
Kash N Kari strikes again:
Pimco Names Kashkari Head of Global Equities
“Kashkari, 38, is a former Treasury Department official who headed the taxpayer-funded $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. “
rikryah
I hate to say this, but I will.
don’t put all working folks in this, it’s a certain kind of person: a working class White person. they have been convinced to vote against their own interests for generations, clinging to their WHITENESS above all else.
because, of course, the GOP, when it talks about ‘THOSE PEOPLE’ are talking about Black and Brown people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: Yup, kind of the economic corollary to the old saw about Puritanism being the uncomfortable knowledge that someone, somewhere, is having fun. From Reagan’s fantasies about the welfare queen living in the St Regis Hotel, to the more general belief that “if we just cut wastefraudandabuse”, it underscores most of our political discourse
Makewi
@Jennifer:
I understand. The world is a difficult place when you’re angry and clueless. But hey, at least you are obviously dedicated to only looking at things from one narrow idiotic viewpoint.
GregB
Here in NH there was once an old lady named Granny D. who walked across the nation in advocacy of election reform.
She said she knew things were off the rails in the heartland when she talked with a long distance trucker who told her that the most important issue facing America was the the repeal of the inheritance tax.
The masses have been focusing on the shiny shit for decades…Drug wars, terrorism, gays, immigrants..yadda…yadda..yadda..while the policies of those they vote for make them more and more destitute.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have wondered how many people are so removed from what they pay in taxes — maybe because they use a tax preparer instead of doing it themselves? — that they fall prey to all the scaremongering about it.
FlipYrWhig
@Nevgu: Dude, seek help. There’s trolling, and then there’s just straight-up ugliness.
catclub
Of course, that choice of $200k comes straight from an authoritative source. “If you make less than $250k/yr, I will not raise your taxes.”
It would be interesteing to find out which is larger:
the taxes not paid by taxpayers in the $0-$200k bracket
with no interest dividends or cap gains, …
or: a 2% cut in the same for taxpayers in the $200k- INfinity
tax bracket.
Mitt is angling for that second one – or larger, as well.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
this calculator works
A salary of $100,000 in Athens-Clarke County, Georgia should increase to $165,453 in New York, New York
Jennifer
@Makewi: As opposed to your narrow idiotic viewpoint, which is that we should all vote ourselves into serfdom and celebrate our social betters who own us?
No thanks. When we live in a place and time where Apple computer can’t be satisfied with the 50% profit they’d earn making their shit here and opt instead to make it overseas where they can earn another 14% profit, via not paying the workers anything to make their stuff, you don’t get to lecture anyone about how people who get up and work hard every day are asking to have stuff “given” to them, rather than simply asking that their time and effort be given enough respect and value that they can afford to live and raise their families.
So…again: Fuck you.
FlipYrWhig
@rikryah:
And, now, public employees. To conservatives, they’re all basically “on welfare.”
Jennifer
@GregB: I walked with Granny D here in Arkansas. She was a really cool lady.
Bob
WV at 49 beating out Mississippi sucking the hind-tit at 50th.
Corner Stone
@Linnaeus:
I know lots of wingnuts that make over $200K a year, and up. All of them will tell you loudly how middle class they are.
TheMightyTrowel
My parents live in suburban new england, both have multiple degrees and good jobs and vote left left left (it’s a family tradition). Six months ago I had to explain to my mother that she’s rich.
People seriously have NO CLUE what the US median income is or how it relates to their own income. They look around them, see a lot of people who are generally in much the same place as themselves, a few doing better and a few doing worse (thank you income segregated suburbs) and they assume they’re at the centre of a normal distribution.
singfoom
@Jennifer: Don’t feed the trolls. It’s not worth it.
Chris
@Makewi:
… much like top-rung CEOs who get to “give” themselves golden parachutes whenever they run a company into the ground. And when they’re short of money, can just hit up their pet politicians for a government contract.
Silly ass workers, only your betters get to be “given” stuff.
JC
In the end, What Is The Matter With Kansas?
When the Galtian Overlords in Europe pull this type of crap – people are on the streets.
Here? “Thank you sir! I’m so pleased you can f**k me in the a*s! May I have another?”
That really is the difference.
People not only vote for these guys, NOT VOTING for the guys that are screwing you, is considered un-american.
cleek
@FlipYrWhig:
but not public employees who carry guns.
Cris (without an H)
But that’s overlooking the enormous trickle-down benefits.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
Jennifer: Yes, it’s called the General Strike, and it was the dream of the early Soc1alists. WWI, among other things, put paid to that.
joeyess
Reminds me of a Steinbeck quote that Bill Maher referenced a while back:
Makewi
@Jennifer:
Your attempts to describe my position are laughable and obviously the work product of a delusional mind. You fail because you cannot accurately describe the world, choosing instead to pretend to know what is “fair” and arrogant enough to demand that you get to choose what it is.
So flail away with your big gurl swear words, because it is the best you will ever be able to do. Pathetic.
singfoom
It’s all just a reflection of what rich is to you. I think it was an NPR story where they kept asking people of higher and higher incomes what rich was.
The guy at 15K thought 50K was rich, the guy at 50K thought 100K was right, the guy at 100K thought 300K was rich and on and on.
It’s very sad that our middle class is dying. These economic reports will mean nothing in the larger MSM universe though. Obviously the real problem is those damn unionized government workers who make 60K a year just killing state budgets.
joeyess
jesus h. christ. I forgot about the filter that doesn’t allow weenie drugs of the “s” word. Sorry.
Chris
@cleek:
Had a guy whining on my facebook wall a few weeks back about “bureaucrats paid for by my tax dollars.” Lo and behold, he’s ex-military, e.g. bitching about himself. But somehow, that doesn’t count…
PurpleGirl
@MikeJ: But IRAs, 401Ks and 403Bs aren’t taxable until you take the money out. If you can wait until you retire, and then if your tax rate is lower, you won’t pay the same in taxes as when you made the money. Every time a Republican talks about the investment holdings of people, they make it sound like you can sell the instrument tomorrow. Most of us can’t without tax repercussions and we don’t own enough stock/bonds, whatever to really make a difference. The example I use is what I did own in my 403B and a trustee of the non-profit I worked for who could call her stock broker to transfer $10,000 worth of Coke-Cola stock to cover her annual donation. It was just stock she had on hand.
ETA: If you were snarking, I often have a hard time telling snark.
Jennifer
@Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .: I understand perfectly well that we have a law prohibiting the unions from organizing general strikes.
But…most workers aren’t unionized, and I don’t know of any law against say, random individuals using social media to convince people to sit things out for a few days. WTF, is the government going to come and arrest me if I call in sick? And if they did, that would probably be a very helpful thing in terms of showing the have-nots once and for all who the system is set up to benefit, and who it’s set up to screw.
joeyess
will someone please release my Steinbeck quote from limbo?
joes527
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): And $187,721 in Mountain View, California (home of Google!)
Jennifer
@Makewi: Just because sucking Galt dick is something you find pleasurable doesn’t mean that the rest of us are deluded for finding it repulsive.
Slurp slurp, my friend.
Zifnab
@geg6:
Had Specter stayed on the GOP side of the aisle, the Republican Party would have had to make a big show of casting him out of the party or simply let him stand. Letting the Tea Party duke it out with Arlene would have cast him as another Mike Castle, and split the Tea Party from the moderates in the GOP.
Instead, he got to run against Sestak with the endorsement of Obama in a Democratic Primary. That made Obama look conservative in the eyes of liberal Pennsylvanians and Specter look liberal in the eyes of his former-Republican cohorts. A lose-lose if ever I saw one.
I think it would have cost Toomey something to battle Specter in a primary. He’d have run negative ads. He’d have ruffled feathers among Republican moderates. And he’d have been pushed even farther to the right in his rhetoric to distinguish himself from his opponent.
Instead, we got the exact opposite. Sestak taking shots at Specter and Specter shots at Sestak. Obama siding with Specter and casting Sestak as unelectable or overly liberal. An opportunity for the RSCC to publicly break from Arlene (never pleasant) or continue feeding him money while he votes for Obama’s policies. An opportunity for Arlene to be “The Last Moderate Republican” rather than “A Turncoat in the GOP”.
I mean, maybe I’m totally wrong, but I don’t see why we needed Specter in ’08 when we already had 58 votes in the leadership fight. I’m not sure why we needed to give him seniority at our conferences when we could save those plums for our own Senators. It seemed like a general waste of resources to me.
joeyess
@Jennifer: heh heh…..
Zifnab
@Jennifer: Don’t feed the trolls, plz.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
So President Obama in 2012!
.
.
Makewi
@Chris:
These issues are mutually exclusive?
Makewi
@Jennifer:
Delusions of mattering. Is that a gay slur?
Jennifer
@Makewi: Are you gay? If so, yes.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@joes527: I’ll be stayin put!
lacp
Just you wait ’til they repatriate all those overseas profits! You’ll see some job growth then, yessir, you betcha!
catclub
@Zifnab: “It seemed like a general waste of resources to me.” Sounds like the senate.
Of course, the problem is that Arlen Specter is an actor in all this. Once he KNOWS that he will lose if he stays in the GOP, he will jump in order to improve HIS chances. So although it might be best for the Democrats for Arlen to stay as GOP and generate mud that spatters Toomey. It does not pay the only guy that Arlen is looking out for.
… The gol-durned US constitution!
It does not matter what he fucks up on the way.
srv
$200K is middle-class, everyone below that just hasn’t realized they’re poor yet.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
It scares me, but I can already fill in the conservative response to each of these:
Downward mobility is most common among middle-class people who are divorced or separated from their spouses (immoral), did not attend college(made poor choices), scored poorly on standardized tests(stupid), or used hard drugs(immoral, made poor choices, AND stupid), the report says.
PurpleGirl
@Nevgu: New name? Weren’t you also using Fred and Derf? Your comment is soooooooooo close in style and substance to Fred and Derf, it can’t be a coincidence.
drkrick
@No One of Consequence:
Probably not, but they’ll die trying in large numbers. See the history of Central America in the ’80’s.
catclub
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I have essentially those same responses.
But so what, it takes all kinds. The important point is that those same people did NOT slide down in the previous generations – they kept up.
Svensker
What you’re not getting is that if the producers get their tax cut, they’ll trickle down lotsa lucre all over the rest of us, making that $70 seem like total chump change. Total. This is how you grow an economy and create jobs.
Or at least I think that’s what they believe.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
Jennifer: You misunderstand, THE General Strike, a soc1alist revolutionary tactic involving a widespread and internationalized strike of the proletariat which would bring down the capitalist order.
WWI (esp. the German Soc1alist perty’s vote for war and the assassination of Jean Jaures in France) demonstrated that nationalist fervorhad a stronger than proletarian class struggle, thus demonstrating that workers could be divided through the fomenting of disputes. See also Nixon or Reagan Democrats.
PurpleGirl
@Nevgu: Hi Fred. Or is it Derf? It’s got to be you… same content and same style whatever name you use.
NR
@BGinCHI:
Well since the ACA does absolutely nothing to control health care costs, this is going to happen whether it goes or stays.
Makewi
@Jennifer:
So angry at those who have AND a bigot. You must be so proud.
gnomedad
Just searched for “Republican war on the middle class” and got surprisingly few (quality) hits. Maybe it’s a meme we need to spread.
trollhattan
@Chris:
Or my favorite–a golden parachute in reward for killing twenty-nine miners.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/golden-parachute-don-blankenship-massey-energy/story?id=12333677
ant
@Nevgu:
lol. you doin ok there, big shooter?
lol
trollhattan
@Makewi:
It’s okay to ignore the voices in your head.
You’re welcome.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@catclub:
The difference is that you think the slide is a bad thing. The conservative would view the slide as warranted, that these people were not ‘worthy’ of being middle-class.
srv
Look, no snark, we’ve had this debate before.
I can tell you that if I made $200K/yr I would still not feel secure in this economic environment. The people I know who make that much have a mortgage payment, medical bills, kids going to college worry just as much about what happens if the job disappears. They may have the luxury of not being 1 paycheck from the street, but their lifestyle would drastically change in a couple of months and they could be on the street in a year.
So the answer is not have a mini-class war between those making $40K and $200K, it’s trying to find a way to play on those insecurities and peel those ‘rich’ away from the Galtian overlords who stroke their fears and portray the lower classes (where many of them came from) as their enemy.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
I’ll also throw in Lysistrata as an example, as well, although some MOTU’s surely love money more.
Jennifer
@Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .: I would have never gotten that reading from it, since I was just talking about this country. General strikes HAVE happened in other countries – France being the most notable example. Of course France is a lot more heavily unionized than we are, but as I said, there’s no rule that says it has to be a union who calls for a strike. What you really need are enough pissed off people who aren’t cowed by bullshit threats of job loss if they tell the boss to piss off for a week.
As I said in my first post, yeah, it’s a fantasy of mine. I know it’s not likely to ever happen. If only it could – what a great message that would be to the Galtian “producers.” They like to think of their employees as “parasites” but let them go through a week of not earning ANY profit, and the tune might start to change.
burritoboy
“That’s actually not too far from Aristotle’s argument that extremes of wealth and poverty are harmful to democracy, although he thought the problem was that the poor would use their votes to take property, which he viewed as unjust.”
Aristotle thought there would be (at least) two problems stemming from extremes of wealth and poverty: the thing you said about the poor AND that the wealthy would monopolize the political offices and what Aristotle calls the “honors”. Aristotle is no fool – he’s quite well aware of what oligarchies and kleptocracies look like. Aristotle advocates significant state intervention when wealth disparity gets too high (including distributions of free land to the poor and so on). Aristotle doesn’t argue against taxes as we conceive them but against the sort of 100% wealth taxes that Greek cities imposed against the losers of internal civic political disagreements.
drkrick
No one is arguing that at $200K you’re fixed for life. But unless you’re willing to define 90% of the country as part of the middle class, $200K isn’t part of it. The point is that this is Romney’s version of McCain not being able to keep track of how many houses he owned or Bush Sr appearing not to know what a checkout scanner was – it shows how completely out of touch he is with what the life of a typical American looks like.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@srv:
I agree with you. Folks making $200,000 a year are definitely affluent, but they aren’t protected from economic shocks and disasters the way the multimillionaires are. They have been lured into supporting a constituency that would be just as happy to undermine their security and economic interests.
srv
@Jager: She looking for a husband?
Argive
@Shinobi:
I tried to post this a few days ago, but then FYWP. Here goes again. My dad worked for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. He’s fond of talking about the time that he went to do a town hall meeting in rural Ohio where the crowd was mainly lower-working class. Practically all they wanted to talk about (besides Vietnam) was eliminating all these taxes that only benefited hugely rich people. At one point the following dialogue occurred:
My dad: Look, I don’t mean to offend anybody, but these taxes you’re talking about only apply to people making a million dollars a year. Is anyone here making that much money?
Random guy in crowd: No, but I plan on it!
Rest of crowd: YEAH!
Things really haven’t changed so much since then. It can be kind of depressing when you meet someone who honestly believes that our Galtian Overlords are perfectly OK with the idea of lots of hoi polloi joining the Wealthy People Club.
Southern Beale
So killing unions and suppressing wages is killing the middle class? Whocoodanode?
Corner Stone
@srv: IMO, I don’t think it’s about going after people who make $200K, or more generally do well for themselves and family. I think it’s about language creep and having an honest discussion about what we as a nation want.
And when you (in general) let people who make top 5% earnings set the terms we all agree to pivot around then you’re not having an honest discussion. IMO.
Like I said, I know people just like you described who are ardently “middle class”. And they are worlds apart from the people I know making $60K or less.
rlrr
@Southern Beale:
For Republicans, it’s a feature, not a bug.
Mino
@lacp: I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that in the Speech, along with free trade deals. But then, I am feeling sour today.
srv
@drkrick: Well, he’s out of touch or he’s trying to appeal to 5% of the population and not just 0.01% o the population.
Seems like smart politics to me.
@Corner Stone:
See above. It may not be honest, but it works.
terraformer
@Shinobi:
I can’t recall who said it but it fits:
“The problem is, we are a nation of pre-millionaires who vote accordingly.”
Makewi
@srv:
You could start by not using “enemy” language. Is the idea to figure out a way to lift those without up, or to punish those with?
Martin
I live in the 7th richest city in the US, and $200K is pretty damn cushy even here. It’s over 50% above than the median household income, and it’ll qualify you to buy more than the median priced home. I make a third that much, live in a house that’s worth 2/3 the median, and the guy across the street from me in his below-median home has a fucking brand new Lambo Gallardo in his garage. The guy around the corner has 2 Hummers, there’s a Bentley the next block over and another a block or so past that, some Merc G-series around, and the occasional Ferrari. And all of these are below-median homes.
Even here the $200Kers know that they’re loaded, even though they can’t swing the $15M homes in the ‘nice’ neighborhood.
Sam Houston
The study focused on people who were middle-class teenagers in 1979 me and who were between 39 and 44 years old in 2004 and 2006 me. It defines people as middle-class if they fall between the 30th and 70th percentiles in income distribution my father, 1960, 60th percentile.
I’m in the 25% percentile. My Dad and I had the same level of education. Dad even changed jobs a few times.
cleek
@srv:
i wonder if a graph of the distribution of political donations across income levels could tell us why Romney would want to stroke the egos of the $200K crowd.
Joe Bauers
@Makewi:
Fuck you, Makewi.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
Jennifer: Understood, but at one time, in a land far away, there were people who thought of class in a way that transcended national boundaries, arguing that workers had common ills that would unite them against the economic elite.
Strangely enough, global capital seems to have internalized that message more effectively than anyone else, and as a result’ it drinks your (and our) milkshake.
Cris (without an H)
@Nevgu: Hi Derf!
pseudonymous in nc
It’s a fucking good con trick from a bunch of hedge funders to convince the people who are lured into buying a handful of stocks with their four-figure IRAs that capital gains and dividend tax are a threat to their prosperity. It’s like getting sports fans to vote themselves a big sales tax so that the billionaire team owner gets a shiny new stadium.
Argive
@terraformer:
I think it was Steinbeck.
Also, my comment above should read “…eliminating all these taxes that only applied to hugely rich people.”
Mike G
Repuke response:
You’re evil, so Jesus hates you, and you deserve everything bad.
Jennifer
@Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .: Yeah but…it’s hard enough to get the folks in one country on the same page and besides, you’re a commie pinko.
Now, sing a few rounds of the Internationale!!!!
Woodrowfan
@srv:
What SRV said. My wife is a civil servant and I’m a college teacher. We don’t make near $200,000 but we do make more than the national average. What we do make would make us upper middle class in her little NH hometown, and the same back in my hometown in rustbelt Ohio. Here in DC it gets us a small home built for a GI coming home from the war in 1946, two cars (one with 100,000 + on it), and a short vacation to someplace inexpensive for a long weekend twice a year. FYI, We live in a working class neighborhood no Hummers or BMWs here, but lots of Saturns and beat-up pickups.
Compared to the rest of the world, we’re rich. Compared to most of the US we’re well off. But we’re not RICH. Sure, our taxes need to go up, but IMHO it’s those making a million plus a year that are the ones milking the middle class and the poor.
Brachiator
@John Cole:
Thanks for this. From WaPo you can link to the actual report. One of the NPR programs did a Labor Day special on the tough job market. One program specifically looked at people who had been unemployed for a while and reported on their efforts to get back into the job market.
The KPCC program AirTalk did a good program on The Jobs of the Future.
The PEW report is good, but there are other indices that might be more useful, although I don’t know if anyone has mined the data.
In Southern California, since about 1980, I have noted that middle class jobs have contracted as the defense and auto industries slowed, consolidated or relocated, and also as technological change required fewer workers. For example, a little thing like spreadsheets greatly reduced the number of accounting clerks you needed to do work.
Bottom line, I have seen more people lose jobs and even when they got new jobs, they had to take a lesser salary or shift to a different industry. And for younger workers there have been fewer entry level jobs, and fewer rungs on which to build careers. And I know a lot of people with all kinds of skills, but nowhere they can go to apply these skills.
All of this contributes to wage stagnation and to people falling lower down the middle class rung over their working lives. By contrast, I knew people in my parents’ generation who worked for the same company all their lives, who had jobs with the opportunity of steady wage increases, and who were near retirement age with some savings in addition to their pension. I also knew more people who could change jobs and find something comparable to the position they left.
And I knew a number of older workers (some who were great mentors) who had retired, but were able to re-enter the workforce and use their skills in new job environments.
I just don’t see this same kind of employment ecology anymore.
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I agree with you that this section of the study not only leads to easy bashing, but is a whole lot less meaningful than some people might think.
Jennifer
@Woodrowfan: Good point.
All this “is $200K middle class?” is a distraction from the fact that the tax brackets are a joke. The folks making $250K should pay at the same rate as the guy making $10 million? $50 million? $100 million? That’s the most jacked-up part of the tax code – the lack of ANY progressivity above a level that would these days qualify as no more than upper middle-class.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
Jennifer: Don’t get me started on ‘country’.
Zifnab
@Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .:
Well, that was back in the ’30s when nationalism was on the rise. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen a distressing lack of nationalism coming from our Tea Party brothers-in-arms.
Sure, they say “America” a lot, wave flags and Constitutions, and run around in Revolutionary cosplay. But then they all start screaming about secession and revolution and killing ranking political leaders. So it seems like that whole nationalist facade has cracked a bit.
Culture of Truth
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said the payroll tax cut provided the average worker with an extra $934 a year.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Argive: I hate to deform the quote, but…
“SOshulism NEVER TOOK ROOT IN AMERICA BECAUSE THE POOR SEE THEMSELVES NOT AS AN EXPLOITED PROLETARIAT BUT AS TEMPORARILY EMBARRASSED MILLIONAIRES”
far truer now than it was then, I’d say, when at least large numbers of people could be persuaded that the government was a tool they owned rather than an enemy to be fought.
Meredith
@VOR: Then it was probably picked by Fox News and now it’s gospel.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
Zif: WWI wasin the 1930s?
gene108
Stumbled across this on Yahoo Finance. It’s a CNBC blurb entitled:
3 of 4 the CEO’s aren’t talking about Obama getting out of the way or aren’t saying he’s anti-business.
Two favorite quotes:
It’s interesting that despite the hype, I think people in the business community try to deal in the reality-fact based world.
Even the Wall Streeter’s who turned on Obama and the Democrats in 2010, don’t really care, if we build high speed rail or put more solar panels on existing buildings. Some of them probably wish there was better rail service to NYC, so they’d have shorter commutes.
There really isn’t a coherent opposition to massive government spending in the short-term to boost the economy. I think a lot of business types would welcome the boost to their sales.
I hope Democrats drive this point relentlessly between now and Nov 2012, “Democrats want to put people back work [insert pictures of construction workers, teachers, firefighters, etc.], but Republicans are refusing to increase spending to accomplish this.” Verbiage should be cleaned up by the pro’s, but the Democrats have something to run on in 2012 that no one other than Republicans really objects to and those guys are in the minority regarding infrastructure spending.
dead existentialist
@trollhattan: What about the ones coming out of his ass (since that is where he has his head firmly placed)?
AA+ Bonds
Here’s something I’d like to hear more Democrats have the guts to say:
If the wrong part of the economy recovers, it’ll be worse than it is now.
That is, if real income among middle-class households continues in steady decline, “recovery” will give us a national system where the grand majority of Americans see little to no benefit from increased investment and credit. This, in turn, threatens the political stability of our country, and the country itself.
In other words, “economic growth” measured in financial instruments and high-level greed alone will make the situation worse, not better, unless the government adopts policies to ensure that wealth is used in a pro-American way, to create a wealthier America.
Stiglitz is a good place to find support for this notion.
Southern Beale
This seems like as good a time as any for me to re-blogwhore my post from last night, on the behavioral study explaining why Republicans vote against their own economic self-interest.
Until Democrats can come out and say “giving billionaires tax cuts helps THEM not YOU” and basically reveal the GOP charade for what it is, nothing is going to change.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
Zif: I think you need to go reread the history of Nationaist parties. The Teabaggers fit right in with that lot, if a bit less mobile and ambitious.
Martin
@Jennifer: Nobody makes $10 million except Yankees and movie stars. Everything shifts over to cap gains well before that point. Why cap gains aren’t treated as income is the real question.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
Fortunately, the middle class has nothing to worry about, because President Obama is willing to make the bad choices. He will be speechifying about them as soon as he receives permission.
.
.
Jennifer
@Martin: There are some really big salaries. But yes, cap. gains is a big issue too.
Southern Beale
See! BOTH SIDES DO IT!!!
New video game lets you slaughter “Tea Party Zombies.” Cue right-wing hissy fit over liberal’s violent rhetoric in 5… 4… 3…
Hoodie
I’d say this is aimed at old folks and the 80-150k wannabe demographic, which isn’t an insignificant demographic and could be the decider in a swing election. In particular, if someone is an undecided and can be swayed to vote Republican by economic issues, then a bunch of them will be in this demographic. The top 10% is around 150k and up. A bigger chunk of people know someone (e.g, their immediate boss, their brother in law), that’s in the top 10%. In other words, there are a bunch at 80-150K who, although they know they’re not going to be Warren Buffet, do see 200k as being in their class and something attainable if only they work harder, get a few breaks, etc. Add to that a relatively small number of retirees that have significant income from dividends, interest and cap gains. More carving up of the electorate to feed the fat cats, as only a Republican can do.
AA+ Bonds
@Zifnab:
I count myself as one of the few nationalists I know. True nationalism is a good way to piss off economists, Marxists, liberals . . . I am a masochist.
The real shitter is that to be a nationalist right now, you have to be critical of the path the country is taking, which is somewhere just below “civilization” and headed south. That we’ve fallen behind a bunch of Europeans who think it’s awesome to tell people what religious garb to wear and where is pretty nauseating to me. We need to do what America USED to do best: “innovate” by stealing good ideas from elsewhere and doing them a hell of a lot better.
We used to have liberal nationalists, people like FDR and Truman. I don’t know how you get that back into the uneasy and unwieldy identity coalition the left has now, but probably it has something to do with getting behind organized labor.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
Did anyone else know that The Guardian actually allows naughty words in its articles and will show pics of dead people, where warranted. The lack of infantilization is confusing and strange.
Niques
The top 1% will never allow a top 2%.
trollhattan
@dead existentialist:
Our team of medical experts is struggling to identify the difference. The machine that goes “ping” is completely baffled.
singfoom
What amazes me the most about this is that this is a result of 30 years of deregulation and worship at the free-market altar in terms of ideas.
But then, in terms of policy, it’s 30 years of deregulation and worship at the crony-market altar.
It’s sad that over 30 years, even though it hasn’t worked, people are still hoodwinked by the “Just cut taxes and let our job creators create jobs.”
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, isn’t that one definition of insanity? So we as a nation are insane.
Which fits, given our prominent conservative politicians and grifters.
I weep for our Republic.
singfoom
What amazes me the most about this is that this is a result of 30 years of deregulation and worship at the free-market altar in terms of ideas.
But then, in terms of policy, it’s 30 years of deregulation and worship at the crony-market altar.
It’s sad that over 30 years, even though it hasn’t worked, people are still hoodwinked by the “Just cut taxes and let our job creators create jobs.”
Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, isn’t that one definition of insanity? So we as a nation are insane.
Which fits, given our prominent conservative politicians and grifters.
I weep for our Republic.
PurpleGirl
@Jennifer: Good point about tax brackets. There should be more brackets and they should be more narrowed as to what income level is in each bracket.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
AA+ Bonds: Nationalism has always been a poison, strange that you would identify as a ‘true’ nationalist.
Sounds more like sloganeering to me.
AA+ Bonds
@Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .:
I don’t give a fuck, though. I really am for this country. Among other things I think an American life should be worth more to America than an Iraqi life. As in, at the heart of it, I do not really care that much how many Iraqis die if we get the hell out of Iraq. I care how many more Americans are going to die before we get out of Iraq.
Like I said, I piss off Marxists and the various pseudos tromping around claiming to be something else.
In the long run, I think we need a strong world state. Right now it is time to circle the fucking wagons.
Ruckus
At any rate, more austerity and a capital gains tax cut should fix things.
It will fix me for sure. As in financially neutered.
Chris
@Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .:
They fit in mostly with the antisemetic parties of the early twentieth century, methinks. The guys who were focused most of all not on foreign countries but on “the enemy within,” the secret hidden infiltrators manipulating society to destroy all things good and righteous, stab the army in the back… etc, etc, etc. For them it was the Jews. Today, it’s Muslims, black people, immigrants, the secret communist conspiracies running them… you know the drill.
ppcli
@Southern Beale: Given that they have hissy fits about union leaders urging people to vote against Republicans, I’m sure that they’ll go batshit about this.
But this time they would be right. I hate it when that happens.
Chris
@Niques:
That could be good news, considering that radical social change is often precipitated by the top 1% not wanting to let the next 1% in , and the next 1% wanting its cut. (See also nobility vs bourgeoisie in late XVIII century France).
Southern Beale
@Martin:
And venture capitalists and other Wall Street types.
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
AA+ Bonds: Oh, well then, that’s just tribalism. That would be fine if you could keep the nationalists from getting the country into Iraq in the first place.
Chris
@singfoom:
It’s a big reason for the furious, foaming rage you’ve seen from the teabaggers for the last two/three years, methinks.
They spent the last thirty years getting everything they wanted, and yet it didn’t deliver what it promised, instead, it left us off worse than ever. I’d be mad too, it means everything they believed for the last thirty years was wrong. But it can’t be wrong. Conservatism can’t fail, only be failed. So reload, purge all the counterrevolutionary traitors who sabotaged the Glorious Reagan Revolution, and try it again, only more so. This time, it’ll work.
Argive
@Niques:
All in the game, yo. All in the game.
AA+ Bonds
@Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .:
They’re not nationalists. They’re internationalists, the financial class. They want to take as much money as they can and get it out of the country where they don’t have to be responsible to America and Americans. Iraq was a net loss for us, financially and otherwise, and a net gain for the internationalists who know no loyalty to America. Are they good at manipulating the language of patriotism? Yes, because the left has been frightened to use the language of guilt and criminality to describe the anti-American wealth class.
What’s more, we operate in an international paradigm where a truly profitable (that is, barbaric) venture into Iraq would have weakened our clout immensely – and we did enough damage to ourselves as it is by playing faux-incompetent nicey-nice about it. We designed that paradigm for a reason and it was not so a bunch of yacht owners could fuck it up. That’s why the Nuremberg trials were a good idea in establishing that system, and they happened because Truman was smarter than every European leader. A patriot would never have gone to war in Iraq.
Chris
@AA+ Bonds:
In my humble opinion, there won’t be a one world state until there are other worlds for this one to be contrasted to (whether through colonization, meeting aliens, God knows what).
People are tribal. For them to accept a one-world state, they’d have to feel a common identity as members of this world… as opposed to another, I think.
(Needless to point out, this hypothetical is about as far removed from us as the Apollo program was from the ancient Romans).
Duckest Fuckingway: Ask not for whom the Duck Fucks. . .
AA+ Bonds: I disagree strongly, but I am about to lose connectivity, so I will bid you good day, sir.
celticragonchick
@Zifnab:
If there is one thing that really annoys Rev War re-enactors, it is farby polyesther patriots.
singfoom
Well, hmm. How could we stop this horrible trend? What policy prescriptions would serve to help this problem? (Please understand that the following list ignores the ability to pass these policies, that’s another nut entirely)
1)Implement single payer healthcare, keeping the private insurance carriers as facilitators, but using the government.
2)Increase the upper limit on the SS tax to $200K at the very least (200K is middle class, right?)
3)Increase rates on the 1% to Eisenhower levels.
4)Stop the drug war.
Ah, rational policies for rational outcomes. I made myself laugh. The Senate and the House certainly wouldn’t want that, would they?
Chris
@AA+ Bonds:
You know, dude, if Democrats started talking like you, I have a suspicion that would resonate with a lot of people, actually. It would certainly help make inroads with the low-information “moderates” who don’t really know shit about policy, but are drawn to Republican flag-waving eye candy.
(Not belittling your ideas, just saying it would play well with these guys).
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Argive:
So change the conversation.
Talk about how we used to have a ladder that with hard work and a little luck you could climb to the top, but that ladder is gone now. Completely gone. It was melted down and sold off for scrap by the Republicans, and they gave the money to their billionaire friends.
We can build a new ladder, one that offers that hope again to anybody who is willing to work hard, but ladders don’t grow on trees, they cost money. The super-rich aren’t going to build a new one for us, or offer to pay for a new one simply out of the goodness of their hearts. Why should they? Would you do that if you were super-rich? Would you go out of your way to make it easier for other people to join your exclusive club? Of course not. Who would?
But this isn’t a question for them alone to decide. Our country and our economy belongs to all Americans and we all have to decide this together, not just the top 0.1% of us who can afford to buy radio stations and newspapers and TV personalities by the truckload.
To rebuild our ladder of success one of the things we need to do is to change the tax rates on the super-rich. Not by a huge amount, but enough to get this country working again. After all, isn’t fair that the very people who benefited the most from the old ladder, and who benefited yet again when the old ladder was melted down, shouldn’t they be the first ones in line to help pay for replacing it? But they aren’t going to vote to do that. Who would? That’s your job [points finger at working class/middle class voter]. We can do this, but it won’t happen unless you work to make it happen.
singfoom
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I agree with what you’ve written here, but the Senate is made up of millionaires and I can’t imagine the electorate overturning a huge amount of the Senate, so how exactly do you get said Senatorial millionaires to raise taxes on themselves?
Brachiator
@Martin:
You have mentioned this before, and it is not true. Are you assuming that every dollar over $10 million comes from stock options and other items? If so, got proof?
How does “everything” shift to capital gains?
You mean why aren’t capital gains treated as ordinary income. Do you want to treat all capital assets this way, for example income from the sale of a home, income from the sale of collectibles? Apart from notions of just wanting everything to be the same for everybody because, well, just because, what tax benefit do you think would result from this?
Sideshow Bill
@Raven (formerly stuckinred): The don’t use the cost of living calculator because the median doesn’t change that much from place to place.
A Humble Lurker
@Makewi:
It is tough being a Republican.
smintheus
@Linnaeus:
As recently as last month Republicans were complaining that top White House officials under Obama were earning too much money. The top salary now stands at $172,200.
For the GOP it’s about having it both ways.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@singfoom:
I dunno. That was an attempt at a rhetorical pitch to voters, not Senators. Short of the voters threatening to toss them out of office, I don’t think you can do much of anything to move the Senators. So the onus is really on the voters here.
Elie
@Jennifer:
amen…
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
Like wages? Or are even those too much for you to stand now and workers should be happy to work for free because simply having a job is a reward in itself that shouldn’t be sullied by payment exchanging hands?
I knew you guys were upset that slavery ended, but I didn’t realize you were advocating its return quite so directly.
Barry
@No One of Consequence:
“Eventually, if you disenfranchise enough, won’t the poor just take what they want?”
The right is betting on ‘not enough to matter’, and they’ve been right so far.