(Ted Rall via GoComics.com)
One can but hope. Professor Krugman, on “The Fear Economy”:
… When the economy is strong, workers are empowered. They can leave if they’re unhappy with the way they’re being treated and know that they can quickly find a new job if they are let go. When the economy is weak, however, workers have a very weak hand, and employers are in a position to work them harder, pay them less, or both.
Is there any evidence that this is happening? And how. The economic recovery has, as I said, been weak and inadequate, but all the burden of that weakness is being borne by workers. Corporate profits plunged during the financial crisis, but quickly bounced back, and they continued to soar. Indeed, at this point, after-tax profits are more than 60 percent higher than they were in 2007, before the recession began. We don’t know how much of this profit surge can be explained by the fear factor — the ability to squeeze workers who know that they have no place to go. But it must be at least part of the explanation. In fact, it’s possible (although by no means certain) that corporate interests are actually doing better in a somewhat depressed economy than they would if we had full employment.
What’s more, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that this reality helps explain why our political system has turned its backs on the unemployed. No, I don’t believe that there’s a secret cabal of C.E.O.’s plotting to keep the economy weak. But I do think that a major reason why reducing unemployment isn’t a political priority is that the economy may be lousy for workers, but corporate America is doing just fine.
And once you understand this, you also understand why it’s so important to change those priorities. …
Schlemizel
the economy is never going to be strong in the US again. 70-some percent of the GDP is consumer spending and the consumer is being eaten alive by the job market. Wages flat, benefits disappearing and there is no need for that to change as far as the master is concerned. There is nothing – nothing – that can’t be done in 3rd world countries for a hell of a lot less than in the US. The outsource lawyers to India and gradually they are doing it with medical diagnosis.
Why manufacture in the US even if the wages were the same when you have those pesky health, safety and environmental rules to deal with? There was a story about workers in Bangladesh getting a raise from $30-something a month to $57 A MONTH. One on the masters interviewed said “for that money we can get the work done in Cambodia, we’ll be reviewing our production next year.” As long as there is a place it can be done cheaper it will be a negative influence on all wages.
Krug is correct but there is no way the current set of masters will change the trajectory.
Mustang Bobby
In the depths of the recession the common refrain from the bosses was “Be glad you have a job.” That’s like telling the galley slaves, “Hey, you’re out in the fresh air and sunshine and on a sea cruise!”
Except now the captain wants to go water-skiing, so bend those oars.
raven
Heaven, Morning Joe with no Joe or Mika!
Baud
Disagree with Krugman here. Even if corporate America were doing lousy, reducing unemployment would not be a priority among those for whom it is not currently a priority.
Schlemizel
@raven:
What sort of man-beasts do they use as replacements?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: No Joe? No Mika?? Whatever will you do for your ritual morning self-flagellations?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go
Gretchen
@Mustang Bobby:”be glad you have a job” is shorthand for how all workers are treated in America today. I hate that phrase.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I beat it down to the bakery for my coffee and dog play!
Gretchen
@Mustang Bobby:”be glad you have a job” is shorthand for how all workers are treated in America today. I hate that phrase.
I’m working dayshift during the Christmas season, while I normally work nights. I’m trying to go to bed at the same time I normally get up, and wonder why I have trouble with it. But the boss is saving a few bucks on courier service, so it’s worth it. If the weather’s bad, they’ll call everyone in the middle of their sleeping time and tell them to come in two hours earlier, or two hours later. These are people who always work 9 to 5 sitting at a desk, and complain twice a year when daylight savings time throws off their body clocks. I hate them.
Lurking Canadian
@Schlemizel: the first time I saw the shape of things to come was reading an article about outsourcing in software sometime in the mid 90s. In the view of the managers being interviewed, Indian coders were preferable because North Americans were becoming “lazy”.
“Lazy” in that context meant that there was an ethos developing among coders that if they were expected to work 80 hours a week, they should be paid for more than 40. Indians apparently do not hold any silly notions about not working the equivalent of a second job for free, and are therefore preferable.
Villago Delenda Est
Can someone translate that Ted Rall cartoon into coherent English for me? I can’t parse what he’s trying to say. It’s like trying to make sense of the latest Sarah Palin ejaculation.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lurking Canadian:
Um…a coder who is lazy writes smarter, more efficient code.
Or perhaps that’s not what parasite management wants…smarter and more efficient. Because MBA analysis indicates that smarter and more efficient actually reduces short term profit and thus MBA bonuses.
OzarkHillbilly
Went to the STL Post Disgrace web site to check out how bad things are in the ole home town and one of the tabs on the scrolling head line was “NYE”. I immediately clicked on it thinking, “Cool! Bill Nye (the Science Guy) is coming to town.”
Wrong. New Years Eve. I live in the wrong world. They got their priorities all wrong up there.
Lurking Canadian
@Villago Delenda Est: there are jackasses who measure productivity in LOC/hr, ignorant of the fact that any idiot can churn out line after line of redundant spaghetti, where skill and forethought are required to design the solution that gets the job done efficiently.
However, these particular jackasses in the article I read weren’t talking about LOC or quality. Just raw hours on the job. Somebody who had worked from 8:00-8:00 and thought he ought to be allowed to see his family before the kids went to bed was “lazy”.
Villago Delenda Est
OK, I’ve got a click through ad with the enticing come on of “What Lindsey Graham really thinks about President Obama”.
The link is to a PAC called “West Main Street Values PAC” which apparently is in the business of getting Huckleberry Closetcase reelected. However, there’s a disclaimer on the page…”Paid for by West Main Street Values PAC and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. ”
So, they’re putting this stuff out there about Huckleberry Closetcase supposedly without any authorization from the candidate or his immediate minions.
Right. Sure. We believe you, dumbshits.
Oh, and no indication of what Huckleberry Closetcase really thinks about President Obama (most likely it’s “uppity darkie”);
ice weasel
“fear economy”? Let me use an older word for the same concept, “Feudalism”.
Villago Delenda Est
@Lurking Canadian:
Those particular jackasses are prime candidates for tumbrel rides.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes, but he writes fewer lines of code, MBA metrics ya know.
Lurking Canadian
@Villago Delenda Est: if I were an economist, I’d try to construct a study of just how much free labour (salaried employees working more than 40, Walmart employees forced to punch out then go back to work, illegal immigrants paid way below minimum, etc) a modern economy absorbs in a year.
I’m not an economist, but my sense is that there’s not a lack of work being done; just a lack of willingness to pay for it. We don’t have a jobs problem. We have an ethics problem.
OzarkHillbilly
@Lurking Canadian: You mean slavery is making a come back?
Sherparick
In the political economy that existed in the United States from 1945 to about the mid-1980s, labor unions were a strong and feared voice for the unemployed. In this unions were self-interested because a strong economy with high employment made organizing easier and limited the pool of desperate workers available for strike breaking. And for most of these years, when foreign competition was highly unionized Western Europe, Japan, and later South Korea, out-sourcing was not an option. And the media elite of that generation, having matured during the Great Depression and either had been of working class origin or of “good” families often near poverty due that Depression was sympathetic to Labor and the Working Class. After the 1984 election (which was the last election where Labor’s candidate was selected as the nominee of the Democratic Party, the unions went into sharp decline. Although conservatives gloss over this when talking about the Reagan boom, the unemployment rate did not fall below 6% until 1987. This high unemployment rate and high immigration encourage strike breaking (the strike breakers being desperate and not seeing much community with the workers). The strong dollar in the 1980s also encouraged outsourcing to lower labor cost countries, which along with automation diminished employment in the great industrial unions such as the UAW, Steelworkers, and United Rubber Workers and very concerted, very strategic plan of breaking unions was undertaken, often with the support of New Democratic politicians who were as hostile to unions as conservative Republicans. http://www.savethesantacruzaquifer.info/PD%20History.htm Ironically, having destroy their base of support in the white working class, these New Democrats have been electorally destroyed over the last 20 years in the Mountain West (with the exception of Montana) – in 1978 Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, and Arizona all had at least one Democratic senator and Democratic Governors. I could include Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada as well, although those states populations and economies have shifted significantly out of the “resource extraction” being their primary business. The Lesser Depression has educated Professor Krugman and many of us on what we have lost with the decline of labor unions.
TR
Can someone translate Ted Rall for me? I left my decoder ring at the revolution.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: You still around? I unloaded a bunch of odds and ends of the lumber I kept from my renovation project but there is still a lot there. How long will the treated lumber be useable if I stack it the way you recommended? I have access to the pile that I may not have much longer so I’m still considering dumping more.
Marc
@Villago Delenda Est:
Easy. “Watch the Pope build a full-on cult of personality” = “Watch Ted Rall set him up for a heel turn the way he did Obama.” Controversy and contrarianism generate clicks, you know.
I doubt he’ll draw the Pope with a monkey face. But then again, Rall only has two faces.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Treated lumber should last just about forever stacked that way as long as there is no rot to begin with. If there is any rot, given a chance to dry out, it should not get any worse.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: thx
The Raven on the Hill
(Cross-posted from my own blog)
I live in Washington state, have been out of work for nearly ay year, and the unemployment extension will expire on my birthday. Thanks, Democrats.
I called both my Senators and my House Representative yesterday. Senator Murray’s office, lead Democratic negotiator on the budget deal, is on holiday vacation. My rep’s office expert on this subject has been furloughed. This leaves Senator Cantwell’s office. I got to talk to a staffer who told me that an unemployment extension is not in the current budget, and the next budget will be written in two years. It is possible that there will be an amendment early next year. It did not sound like the Senate Democrats have the heart for another government shutdown, though it works in favor of the Democratic party. It appears to me, based on these two contacts, that the Republican budget blackmail has been successful. I await a callback from my Representative’s office.
I may never vote for a Democrat in a national election again. If they’re not going to stand for us, if they’re going to cave—what’s the point? And I will support a primary challenge to Senator Murray from the left.
Aimai
@Villago Delenda Est: yes. Ive really come to hate Rall. He got in trouble, rightly, for ugly, racist, caricatures of Obama at kos. He was such an asshole about iit they had a huge fight over it and he pretended he was banned while writing several vituperative goodbye cruel world diaries.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@The Raven on the Hill:
Hmm. Neglect vs actively attempting to kill me. Yeah, I’m going to just lay down and not fight against the actual evil.
All choices are “least bad” choices in this world.
Baud
@The Raven on the Hill:
Good riddance. Every comment you’ve posted here has been anti-Democratic. Go ruin someone else’s political party.
weaselone
@The Raven on the Hill:
Sounds good. Odds of getting an extension on unemployment go up dramatically if the Democrats loose the Senate and/or more seats in the house.
fka AWS
@Lurking Canadian:
Productivity has increased over the last decades, while wages have stagnated, so you don’t really even need that study to be correct in your hypothesis.
Betty Cracker
@Aimai: Rall is a despicable piece of shit. I generally reject right-left analogues since our side’s kooks and extremists typically lack the power and influence of their counterparts on the right, but Rall is arguably our Ann Coulter. He’s an embarrassment who deserves to be ignored.
OzarkHillbilly
@The Raven on the Hill: Voting leftier in the primaries is fine, but not ever voting for a Dem again is a great way to get more Scott Walkers, and after what he has done for Wisconsin, just imagine what the likes of him could do for the great state of Washington…
Betty Cracker
@The Raven on the Hill: Primary challenges from the left make sense, but not voting for Dems in the general is self-defeating. Yes, the current situation is frustrating as hell, but do you really think handing Congress to the Republicans will make it better?
raven
@Betty Cracker: The dude is a schmuck, save your breath.
The Raven on the Hill
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: @Betty Cracker: The Democratic leadership is a pack of losers who have surrendered without a fight. Why should I support them?
If the Democrats as a party are just going to cave in the clinch—and they’ve been doing it for decades now—the only reason to vote Democratic is to drag out the process of turning the country into a neo-aristocratic empire. I suppose dragging out the process is worthwhile. But we will never win by endless retreat and preparation and it takes energy away from any winning strategies we can actually come up with, not that I see any, or any leaders to implement them.
And Senator Murray—remember she made the budget deal—is also a Democratic hawk, who supported a war in Iran. She disgusts me. She can find her voters among the conservatives. But—even Senator Warren, who is at least good on finance—was reluctant to support the Iran deal. She’s a more moderate hawk.
Where do we find some liberal leadership? Heck, where do we find any liberals under the age of 50?
Poopyman
@raven: DNFTT, people.
rikyrah
No one likes a bully
12/26/13 11:00 AM—Updated 12/26/13 11:32 AM
By Steve Benen
Late Monday, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) top two appointees to the Port Authority, both of whom have since resigned, complied with subpoenas related to the ongoing bridge scandal. Soon after, state Assemblyman John Wisnieswki (D), chairman of the committee investigating the incident, acknowledged soon after that the probe will continue into 2014.
But while we wait for the process to continue and for the new materials to be scrutinized, one of the overarching questions is whether Christie could possibly be so petty as to cripple a community with paralyzing traffic, just to punish the local mayor for having refused to endorse him.
The evidence on the bridge controversy is still coming together, but Kate Zernike reported yesterday that Christie’s track record of bullying New Jersey officials for even minor slights is extraordinary.
In 2010, John F. McKeon, a New Jersey assemblyman, made what he thought was a mild comment on a radio program: Some of the public employees that Gov. Chris Christie was then vilifying had been some of the governor’s biggest supporters.
The whole article is worth reading to appreciate just how thin-skinned the governor really is. The piece points to example after example of Christie using the power of his office to punish rivals – even other Republicans – who’ve offended him in minor and inconsequential ways
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/no-one-likes-bully
amk
With so much brilliant toonists out there (Bennett, Luckovich, Sack, Zyglis … ), you chose the troll?
Gin & Tonic
@The Raven on the Hill: Nader/Stein 2016!!
Aji
@Betty Cracker: Thank. You.
Can’t believe people are still promoting that loathesome, attention-whoring bigot.
The Raven on the Hill
@weaselone: we aren’t going to get it, either way, as far as I can tell. The Democrats have been worn down.
@OzarkHillbilly: I said national election, guy. At the state and local level, where the issues are usually clearer, I will probably continue to vote Democratic, though if effective opposition emerges on the left I may support that. But Senator Murray—it doesn’t matter if she calls herself a Democrat. She might as well be a Republican. I like Cantwell a bit more than Murray, but her own staffer was clear that she wasn’t fighting on this issue. Maybe she’ll change her mind. I don’t see how Murray can—she has made deals that tie her so strongly to the “centrist” coalition that I don’t think she can change without losing most of her power.
@Baud: I’d love to ruin the Republicans, if I could figure out how. I don’t need to ruin the Democrats—they’ve done it to themselves, by abandoning everyone who makes less than $50,000 a year. “If the salt shall lose its savor, from where will you resalt it?” Ask yourself who you are supporting and why. If you are on board with this deal you are part of the problem.
amk
@The Raven on the Hill: gop: If you make less than 500 K, talk to my hand.
The Raven on the Hill
@Poopyman: that’s rich, from someone who calls themselves “Poopyman.”
It’s not trolling—it’s disgust. And I hope you listen to me. Because when a “hold your nose and vote” bird like me decides to stop, it’s because the stench has become too much for everyone. Liberals need to find some winning strategies, and uncritical support of a party that does not even to fight ain’t one of them.
Brian R.
Oh, hey, Ted Rall is still a thing?
Good to see his cartoons are still indecipherable pieces of assholery.
Yeah, no thanks.
TR
@Aji:
Agreed. Fuck Ted Rall.
Davis X. Machina
@Brian R.: Rall’s pitching to a fairly particular audience where being .edgy’ and ‘transgressive’ excuses everything else.
maya
@The Raven on the Hill: If life is handing you lemons, grow pot. It’s the next thing. All the cool kids are doing it and many of them drive $40k Tundras. You don’t need to have any particular party affiliation either. In fact, many pot growers don’t vote. That way you don’t ever get jury duty summonses which pays shit and is harder to do if you’re unemployed and have to drive to the courthouse.
There’s nothing like being a self employed, unaffiliated, entrepreneur.
Glad I can help.
P.S. Did I mention – tax free!
OzarkHillbilly
@The Raven on the Hill:
Yes, I am quite conversant in English. Analogy seems to be quite beyond your comprehension however. So, to remove any possibility for misunderstanding I will say it thus:
Name me a Democrat, any Democrat, and I can probably name a dozen Republicans that are worse for us. A dozen Republicans who would just love it if you were to remove yourself from the voting pool. You are just one less GOP vote they have to come up with.
The Raven on the Hill
@Gin & Tonic: Nader/Stein 2016!
Sigh. What will you-all do if Murray is the Democratic Presidential candidate in 2016? I think that’s possible, unfortunately. She made the budget deal, which gives her national recognition and praise from the Very Serious People, she’s a liberal hawk, supporting a war with Iran, and she hasn’t been smeared in the national media the way Hilary Clinton has been.
How would people here vote if Murray were the top-liner?
WereBear
I realize corporate has gone All MBA, Alla Time, but I don’t got no money, and neither does any one else, and so where is the money going to come from?
They have a fine “steal from the poor and give to the rich” program running, but they are not generating any wealth at all. There’s only so many items the 1% can buy, even at wildly inflated prices. What I’ve seen the last decade or so is the relentless driving down of value, so some good ol’ boy can feel rich by affording it.
Henry Ford was a hard-bitten, anti-Semitic, tin god with plenty of delusions of grandeur, but I’d take him over the current crop, in a heartbeat. He at least understood economics, as in paying his workers enough to buy his products.
The Raven on the Hill
@OzarkHillbilly: But I was not speaking analogically. I said “national election” because that was what I meant. And, yes, I know the right of the Republicans is awful. Who does not know that? But while individual Republicans may be worse than individual Democrats, while the Republicans are successfully blackmailing the Democrats, the country will continue its slide to the Republican side.
Where do we find some liberal Democrats with guts? How can they win?
Gin & Tonic
@The Raven on the Hill: And the R candidate is whom? Scott Walker? Chris Christie? Jeb Bush? Rih Santorum? List me one, just one way in which any of those candidates is preferable to Murray (who will not be the D nominee, you can take that to the bank.)
aimai
@The Raven on the Hill: Well, for sure we don’t find them without looking for them. And, of course, if your only definition of what is important to you is what affects your pocketbook you are part of the problem. I don’t remember your previous posts but the others seem to remember you as basically trolling the blog from the left. What are your actual bonafides as a political actor. Who do you vote for and support? You do grasp that the budget deal was probably the best we could have gotten through this house which is wholly controled by the republicans, don’t you? And you do realize that a UI extension can be done as a stand alone bill and doesn’t have to wait for another two years, don’t you?
Betty Cracker
@The Raven on the Hill: We’d support the Fluffy Bunny Bund, of course.
The Raven on the Hill
@WereBear: Yeah. At least the robber barons actually built things—created capital. This lot ought to be called anti-capitalists. Capital is productive property, not personal wealth, and we don’t have a lot of wealthy who actually want to create productive things.
Joe Bauers
Ted Rall. Screw that guy. Whenever I find myself in agreement with him about anything, it’s an excellent reminder to check my work.
FlipYrWhig
@The Raven on the Hill: For Murray, with no reservations. Don’t like that? Well, guess it’s up to you to fix the problem of insufficient numbers of people who agree with you on all things. Good luck with that.
Aji
@aimai: ROTFL. Fucking facts, how do they work?
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: I think he or she is the poster who used to end all posts with the word “Croak!” Unless that was a different person doing a raven shtick.
Redshift
@aimai: Yeah, those dastardly Democrats; we’d be much better off without them, right?
FlipYrWhig
@Villago Delenda Est: I think he’s trying to say that no one is allowed to criticize capitalism openly, but they can do it in a coded way by praising the Pope. So the Pope is going to be more and more popular because all the secret capitalism-haters are flocking to his side. Which is… good? That part isn’t clear.
I’m not sure how a guy with no artistic ability and no sense of humor decided to go into the field of cartooning and became successful, but I guess that’s capitalism for you.
Davis X. Machina
@WereBear:
In a flood, the tall guys drown last. If they drown at all. And if they don’t drown — and they’ve never drown before — the get to go through the pockets of the victims.
New wealth is nice, but it’s not essential for the grift to work.
Corner Stone
There is no reason Democrats *had to* agree to this deal. Any effective leverage or ability to allow the R party to further damage itself is gone.
The top line number is bullshit and real people get hurt.
FlipYrWhig
@Redshift: I suspect that a fair number of the Democrats want to use some of this year doing the economic populist thang on unemployment and the minimum wage. It’s a bit cynical to create an opportunity for doing that by allowing UI to get cut in the budget deal, which hurts real people, but my hunch is that that’s the plan.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: for what it’s worth, my “real people…hurt” line was not a direct reference to yours — we must have been writing at the same time.
LuigiDaMan
As someone who has worked for a large company for many years, I can verify Professor Krugman’s thesis. Corporate America is doing damn fine and for all of you that are lucky enough to have a job, the corporate mantra maybe implied, but it is clear: shut your mouth and keep on working. Those that are lost to unemployment and being poor, well, in a word “Tough”. Stock prices are higher than ever and fat cats reign supreme. Obama and his boys seem to have no inclination to do anything about it (other than provide impassioned speeches). Unless some politician grows a spine, this downward spiral for all classes will continue.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: I just don’t see it as being a useful tactic.
The R’s simply can’t be shamed by public opinion. Now the D’s have given them all the room available to take a deep breath on legislative issues.
The D’s are complicit in giving the R’s their out.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@The Raven on the Hill:
From your blog:
You are the most full of shit concern trolling fuck around. Fuck off.
Corner Stone
The D’s have muddied the waters and in the process given real people a sense of “who the fuck do I have?”
They could have easily turned this into a clear, sharp contrast.
LuigiDaMan
@Schlemizel: Wow. Thanks for the pep talk.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: *spooky mind control voice*
“I’m in your head! In yooouuurrr heeeaaaddd!!”
/end SMCV
Ruckus
@The Raven on the Hill:
Now where have I seen this before?
Oh Yes!
A young child. I believe it’s known as petulant child. The 3 yr old who is going to hold his breath till he turns blue.
WereBear
From my experience, I believe such things do not occur from the no-accounting-for-taste school so much as he was a flotation device at one time and bobbed to the top. A lot of people got famous at Kos for President-bashing when that President was Bush… and then it turns out they just like bashing, even when the President is the polar opposite, like Obama.
I’ve always loved the saying that goes:
Cynics and snobs can never like anything, because of the fear that someone else will come along and say, “Oh, so that’s the sort of thing you like.”
Such is the career choice.
satby
@Lurking Canadian: I was in India in September visiting (meeting in person for the first time) my soon to be ex-coworkers. The Indians know they’re getting screwed too, because the off-shoring companies want their wages to stay depressed, and will go to China, Viet Nam, or even explore Africa as an alternative to India if the workers in India start getting ideas about better wages and working conditions. They also resent knowing that companies are saving mega-millions by offshoring to India but are not willing to offer even slightly better wages.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: To be cynical on top of cynical, it could be another one of those things like card-check, where some Democrats are happier saying they’d love to do something if not for those terrible Republicans preventing them… than actually doing something. So there could be two camps with different tactics in mind: one that doesn’t want to do something (because growth and balancing the budget are the path to national prosperity and a booming job market, they think), and another that wants to do much more. I think we’ll hear a lot from the latter group, but I fear the former group is rather large.
Amir Khalid
I don’t see a four-panel cartoon up there in the post. I see four separate one-panel cartoons, none of which has anything particularly interesting (or convincing) to say. Also too, Ted Rall is a horrible draughtsman.
Ash Can
@WereBear:
QFT. I had my own revelation regarding Glen Greenwald some time ago, well before the Snowden caper. I admit that I didn’t realize Rall was such a schmuck until his recent blow-up, though. Sorry to see him still getting front-page exposure here, but we do have FP trolls, so shit happens.
schrodingers's cat
Reserve Army of the Unemployed, that’s what Corporate America wants.
Corner Stone
IMO, we can conclude some variant of a) the D’s didn’t actually want to do anything about UI in legislation or b) the D’s did want to do something but believed they couldn’t.
Because in case a, this after the fact PR nonsense is not going to produce any positive results. And in case b then the D party has basically ceded the field to the R’s, and can only hope the end run PR campaign has some small effect.
WereBear
@Davis X. Machina: Yes, it’s short-term thinking, which is the only kind they have. But it’s bad for everyone, including them, and they will never see it.
Sense will have to be forced on them.
Against all odds, myself and my disabled partner are continuing to pursue my small business, buying tech as needed and forgoing vacations, clothes, and anything but the most minimal lodging and transport. We know many young people who are trending the same way: they have very little except their smart phone, which is everything.
This bodes well for tech, which can create a kind of virtual world to make up for the fact that no one is allowed a real one any more.
But what of whole industries like vacations and clothes and cars and architecture? These middle class stalwarts are going to die along with the middle class if the 1% have their way.
Mike in NC
@LuigiDaMan:
Why is it that a lot of people consider this to be some new phenomenon? I graduated from college in the late 1970s and since that time our boom-or-bust economic system has led to a series of what economists call “jobless recoveries” where corporate profits bounce back but the business community accepts the “we have to do more with less” point of view.
ruemara
Because if you say what a bunch of people always want to hear, regardless of reality, you’ll be successful. That being said, at least when I wrote a comic, it was clear what it was about. Perils of being too highly regarded. And as a very liberal person under 50, thanks to all the purity people who think the problem is Democrats. You’re right, but not the way you think. If you guys were running for office and encouraging the super liberals to stop copping out because both sides are the same, we’d have better Democrats. If you’d get off your asses and stop whining that your local party is doing a terrible job fielding candidates, and simply step into the void they’re leaving, we’d have better candidates. If the party isn’t doing it for you, you have every right and all the good ideas, to get out there and change the party. Go for it.
Corner Stone
@Mike in NC:
I agree. We’ve had at least two loosely defined boom and bust cycles just since 1999. I remember being at one place in 2004 where they called an all hands meeting and HR said, “If you’re in this room, you still have a job.”
Talk about morale lifting!
Every time I heard someone say, “Well, I’m just thankful I still have a job.” I would cringe mentally.
It’s been that kind of mentality for at least the last 15 years. In 1997 it seemed people had finally taken back self ownership but that turned out to be the peak of the dotcom cliff.
Amir Khalid
Since this is an open thread …
I just finished watching this comedy sketch on YouTube. It’s become a New Year’s Eve tradition on German TV, even though it’s in English and has nothing to do with the New Year. Except maybe for the catchphrase, “Same procedure as every year, James.”
Corner Stone
$25B for a one year extension of UI.
Hmmm, $25 billion…where have I heard that number before?
J R in WV
I don’t understand who the wealthy business owner/managers think will be their customers once the middle class is no longer able to buy a Chevy or Toyota, for one example.
Henry Ford was a malicious asswipe, but even he had enough common sense to know that if his employees could buy his product, that was good for him.
But these new masters of industry seem to think that a shrinking market of able purchasers is no big deal. They evidently plan to sell their mutual funds to each other in a continuous circle of profit, somehow.
But that’s like a town prosperous company town where the industry has moved away, and everyone left is making a living with:
1) rummage stores reselling used junk people sold in a futile attempt to stay in their home without a regular income.
2) barber shops cutting each other’s hair. Tanning salons fit here.
3) some kind of locally popular handicraft, around here little coal miners made of coal, honey, dolls, etc. In NC there’s a large area with good clay, so there’s the Pottery Road. etc.
4) pet grooming, selling locally popular critters, we visited Maine and every third little house had a Maine Coon Cats sale sign.
etc, etc,
There’s no way for a community to make a living selling each other junk and personal services. No way.
We did a short driving trip summer of 2012, into Indiana, and visited Columbus, IN for a few days. Wife was there on business years ago, and was struck with the city’s success. Cummins engines is HQ’ed there, and it’s a company town.
Cummins is hiring (lots of) engineers, who make big money, and spend it locally. They’re building apartment complexes for the new hires to live in. When we drove in Tuesday evening, there was only one hotel with available rooms, the others, mostly new and cutting edge style, were full of business travelers with appointments at Cummins.
The town is full of creative places, because the Cummins family foundation pays for design costs if community groups agree to use a design team from their list. This lowers the cost of building cutting edge facilities. Even the engine plants are creative and vibrant. So too is the city jail!
But the family members (who are fabulously wealthy now, masters of industry that they are) don’t live in town any more, moslty. So their need to create a vibrant and lively home town has vanished.
If they decide that Chinese design facilities (or Indian, or Malay, etc) would be cost effective, Columbus, Indiana will be as vibrant and full of life as Muncie IN is right now.
These people are so short sighted they don’t even get it that living in a place with no community is dismal. You can pretend that your rich friends are a community, but it isn’t, really.
Who is going to be usher at your concerts and parties? Some guy with a mohawk and tats on his face and a record for violent behavior? maybe… not so good, huh?
schrodingers's cat
@Corner Stone: Milton Friedman and his Chicago boys must be so happy, that the finally broke the back of Keynesian econ that had held sway after the Depression and WWII.
Lurking Canadian
@J R in WV: this is why companies are increasingly going after the luxury market. First class seats on planes, luxury boxes at the ball park, luxury cars, high end salons…the whole notion of a “plutonomy”. It is believed that we now have enough filthy rich people, here and abroad, that they can sustain themselves in style selling luxury, bespoke goods to one another, and disposable trash to everybody else. So far, it’s working.
Air travel continues to be more and more unpleasant for the proles in steerage, because the airlines don’t give a flying fuck about the proles in steerage. They want to sell the $2000 ticket to the people up front, not the $300 ticket to you and me.
aimai
@Corner Stone: Why wouldn’t the Democrats have wanted the UI extension? Whether you think the Democrats are the party of giveaways or the party of temporizing and taxing in any event the Dems would have preferred an UI extension to no UI extension. It is obvious that the Republicans have opposed all UI extensions since coming into power. So you have a two party system in which one party is opposed to UI and the other party isn’t. Thats been true for years.
The other thing which is clear is that in order to get previous UI extensions the Democrats had to horse trade away stuff which was also important to the base–and they got hammered for it. Because it costs something to gt something in this two party system.
This moronic Raven poster is insisting that there was some cost free way that the Dems could have forced the Republicans to give them the UI extension and that not destroying the fragile budget compromise was worth it even if, presumably, no budget compromise also meant no UI extension.
This is politics and policy by brinksmanship and showmanship. If it works, great, but if it doesn’t work other people are also hurt.
I also don’t understand your complaint that the obvious things the Democrats are planning to do to leverage Republican intransigence are, somehow, useless or manipulative or somehow transparently cheesy. You and FlipyrWhig are arguing for a strong push to separate Democratic policies from Republican, for the Dems to show whose side they are one, and yet when they do so by introducing bills to expand UI or running ad campaigns attacking the Republicans for failing to extend UI they are, somehow, faulted for not doing it fast enough or with enough sincerity or something?
Its like you want the Dems to wage politics as though it were a war, and then you fault them when, like any general, they occasionally have to sacrifice present advantage for future advantage, or when they have to resort to propaganda to purchase a future advantage. Even when you are fighting to win you sometimes lose some skirmishes. That doesn’t mean you don’t want to win or that your fallback plans are evidence of future failure.
Cacti
“Progressive” hero and patron saint of Libertarian Juice, Glenn Greenwald, lets his mask slip during an MSNBC interview:
Corner Stone
@aimai: What’s transparently obvious is there is no UI extension in this budget deal. If Democrats wanted it, it would have been in there. There was no reason to agree to this budget deal. All the leverage left was just given away to remain at current austerity numbers.
The $25B number I quoted above for a one year extension of UI is the exact amount it is estimated to have cost for the govt shutdown. How about someone say that out loud instead of going along with this ridiculous notion for PAYFOR. Here’s an idea, we could have extended UI for a whole year if Republicans hadn’t been determined to destroy our govt. Maybe they could have said that instead of having Sen Murray oversell this BS “fragile compromise” that hurts real people.
The tactic of having third party TV ads is a great sop to people who are political junkies, but they don’t have the cash to run the ad extensively in useful markets. Their whole campaign has been constructed with the specific intent that these ads go viral online.
IMO, making the argument before the deal went behind closed doors would have much more forcefully contrasted who wanted what.
Now the R’s get to say they made a “good faith” negotiation, and each side got something / gave something when that just isn’t the case.
aimai
@Corner Stone:
You are like a biblical literalist. The Senator announced a compromise budget that holds for two years. It obviously didn’t contain everything the Democrats wanted because Boehner had to bring it to the floor and get it passed and he wasn’t willing to do it with primarily dem votes. This has been going on for years. You are asserting that the 25 billion in UI extension benefits was somehow identical to the 25 billion “cost” by the government shut down but those are different pots of money and bear no relationship to each other. The “cost” was to the economy generally. It wasn’t money appropriated or borrowed by the government, even to cover the costs of the shutdown.
You don’t have any reason to assert that the Dems could have gotten UI just by clapping harder–and in fact last time they got a UI extension, as I pointed out, they had to trade some shit for it that really upset the true believers on the left side of the aisle because, apparently, magic happens and people get exactly what they want in every negotiation.
Your are arguing that somehow the Dems could have volunteered to let the Republicans go home without a budget deal and continue to crash the economy through the sequester and that the Dems wouldn’t have suffered politically from the fallout and/or the Republicans would have been so afraid of the fallout that they would have given us the UI. But both your assertions depend on 1) the public seeing things your way, which they don’t and 2) the Republicans fearing public reprisals, which they don’t.
You just aren’t paying attention to the reality of modern politics for this current incarnation of the Republican party and its voters if you think that there was anything the Dems could have done to shame or threatent the Republicans into a UI extension. The Republican tea party reps are so intransigent and so divorced from the normal fears of losing their seats that they are simply immovable by the means you think exist.
aimai
@Corner Stone: I’d like to point out that your argument boils down to “I don’t agree with the tactics or the timing of the propaganda.” Thats not a serious criticism–its just a question of fringe issues like timing, marketing, etc… Tactical advantage. Loudly trumpeting that we did want a UI extension didn’t change the Republican position which was that someone has to get hurt before they will pass a budget. Now comes a slow roll out, in various markets, of the informaiton that most people aside from political junkies were not paying attention to during the budget negotiations. I can assure you that no one gives a fuck what Patty Murray said when she came out of that room or, if they do, the torrent of stupid, hateful, things the Republicans say while defending their vote against UI benefits in the new year will overwhelm their memories.
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: Do you think that means Greenwald accidentally admitted his support for the Republican agenda?
horatius
@Gretchen: don’t hate them. They are not your enemies.
Corner Stone
@aimai:
Excuse me, but you’re contradicting at least some part of your contention. If the D’s could not find a way to legislatively get UI, then how exactly will some outside group find a way to “shame or threaten” the R’s into a UI extension?
Who suffered when the govt shut down? Every indication I saw was that the R’s were held as the most accountable cause. Why would the D’s have been afraid to let Republicans bang their head against the wall again? All while making the populist argument that a lot of people are responding to?
What about the budget deal do you think makes it more likely we will have a stand alone UI extension? Or do you think something else positive is going to happen?
My argument is about tactics. I’ve used the word at least three times in this thread. So your criticism of my criticism being about “tactics and timing” is very curious.
Corner Stone
I am making a consistent argument and have been for some time now. It doesn’t bear much relevance to the stilted characterization you are going to great pains to attempt to paint it as.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Lurking Canadian:
This is just projection on their part. The reason why they went so big into offshoring wasn’t price – having the factory over in China and run by another company meant less work for upper management. They just place and order and it’s back to websurfing at their work computer
Of course that plan has fallen apart since it’s been noted the Chines are worth every penny the American companies pay them. Speaking from personal experience manufacturing is coming back to the US in a big way – the problem is it’s all high skilled stuff so that doesn’t help with the 20 somethings and unskilled labor.
FlipYrWhig
@aimai: My argument was more that I think a number of Democrats were willing to let the party sacrifice UI in the budget deal because they’re hoping they can get it, or something like it, back again in another fight — for instance, by folding it into a fight over increasing the minimum wage. Will it work? I dunno. If it does work, it will be hailed as brilliant and progressive. If not, not. And then on top of that there’s the (cynical) possibility that some Democrats would be happy using it as a rallying cry that they know is doomed to fail, because then they can get some cred without having to expend any actual energy doing anything.
Also, I just wanted to note the rarity of the statement that CS and I were teaming up in agreement on something.
Corner Stone
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: They *thought* it was less work and less management. And for the top tiers it probably was. But every layer underneath them had to work 25% to 33% (est) harder to build in management of the other company’s management. And basically just fix all the inherent clusters that happen dealing with another culture, language and time zone.
The offshore fanatics have been chasing it around the globe for 15 or more years. Searching diligently for that lowest cost jurisdiction they can sell to their boss and get their big bonus.
Some of it will come back, but when it does it will be in South Carolina or Alabama and we’ll see some truly brutal workplace BS.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: IMO, either we take the opening to draw sharp contrasts or we continue to offer the “less evil” marketing choice.
The reality is that UI was not in the budget deal and we didn’t hear a damn word about it until after the deal was done.
Now we get to hurt a lot of people and potentially further weaken the economy so we can try out an after action PR campaign.
I’ll be interested to see what has to be offered to get UI extension in the future, and for how long.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: If I had to guess, it’d be that we’ll see an effort to do something like higher minimum wage + long-term UI, paid for by some kind of upper-class tax hike, so that the battle lines are easily drawn, and Republicans won’t agree, and none of it will happen, but it shifts the playing field modestly towards populism, which has been connecting with people lately (as it should). But, again, that makes the whole thing into electoral strategy rather than tangible economic policy, and out of work people can’t eat electoral strategy.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@The Raven on the Hill:
Your GBCW would be a lot more effective if you hadn’t been saying the exact same thing since at least 2007. My reaction is, “Wait, since when have you been voting for Democrats?”
You can only threaten to jump so many times before the crowd starts cheering for you to do it.
The Raven on the Hill
@Ruckus: “…a petulant child…” as opposed to the tears of an abused child?
@Gin & Tonic: “And the R candidate is whom?” Regardless of the R candidate, I don’t want to find that I voted for the person who finally took us to war in Iran and signed the bill ending SNAP. I hated finding that I had voted for the candidate who took no action against the banks, allowed millions to lose their home due to banking abuses and mortgage fraud, and sold the US health insurance system to the insurance companies.
In 2016, If it comes down to Murray versus some right-wing extremist like Paul, and I lived in a battleground state, I honestly don’t know what I would do.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
If I thought they would actually make that argument then I could understand some of the decision to hurt people short term (assuming they actually do get the 3 month deal actually done in Jan 2014).
But my issue is that I don’t believe they will make that sharp a contrast. This PAYFOR or PAYGO nonsense has to end. It’s killing us.
The D’s will probably offer some tweaking or “cuts” to some programs, with no new revenue and the R’s will fight for a cut in a further program. We’ll end up middle ground cutting a couple programs, get no new revenue and then get to fight about it again in a few months.
This rear guard action of trying to slow down the losses in New Deal programs is pathetic.
The Raven on the Hill
@aimai: “you do realize that a UI extension can be done as a stand alone bill and doesn’t have to wait for another two years, don’t you?”
I wrote that in my original post—go take a look.
“If your only definition of what is important to you is what affects your pocketbook you are part of the problem.”
If you think caring about my life and home is part of the problem—if you think that caring about millions of voters is part of the problem—you have lost those people in the next election.
“Who do you vote for and support?”
I’ve been a liberal Democrat for decades. This compromise might just have cost the Democrats the next election—if they lose voters like me, they’re going to be losing a lot of other voters. It’s hard to say. Voters respond largely to events of the six months before the election. We aren’t there yet.
“You do grasp that the budget deal was probably the best we could have gotten through this house which is wholly controled by the republicans, don’t you?”
Every time the Republicans shut down the government, they lose votes. The Murray-Paul budget is smaller than Paul’s original proposed budget. Was this deal worth it? Was it necessary to sweeten the deal with more cuts? Ironically, one of the hopes (!) in the current situation is the Republican radicals will do it again, even though this deal was made.
Politics, as the Republicans know and the Democrats do not, is not just making deals in Congress. It is also about showing the voters who you stand for. In their failure to fight, the Democrats have thrown the fight for the hearts and minds of the public. The party leadership will compromise, no matter how awful the deal. The Democrats don’t fight, they won’t fight. It doesn’t matter what they say they’ll do; in the clinch, they give in. How can the Democrats hope to win any election, having done as they have?
The Raven on the Hill
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): “Wait, since when have you been voting for Democrats?”
Since 1974.
What do the Democrats have to offer someone who started voting in 2008?
The Raven on the Hill
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: “Neglect vs actively attempting to kill me.”
In abusive families, a complicit parent is often as much hated as the direct abuser. This is often so even when the child later learns when this was the best the complicit parent could do.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@The Raven on the Hill:
And yet you’ve claimed here multiple times that such-and-such action by the Democrats was the last straw. So were you lying when you said in 2010 that you would never vote for a Democrat again over PPACA, or are you lying now?
Marc
@Betty Cracker:
Tell that to your fellow front pager.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@The Raven on the Hill:
So, just to be clear, you have been posting here since at least 2008 claiming with every post that THIS TIME is the last straw and you’re never voting for Democrats again, but you’ve been continuing to vote for them anyway?
Tell you what, get back to us when you finally have the courage of your convictions. You can only threaten to run away from home so many times before Mommy starts keeping a bag packed for you to take onto the front porch, because she knows that’s as far as you ever get.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@The Raven on the Hill:
Also, to correct something you said earlier (and I know I’m not responding to the right comment), the people you can’t trust are the ones between 30 and 50 — that’s Generation X, and they/we are the most conservative generation in decades. The under-30s are just fine and are probably more liberal than you are, but they need encouragement to get out and vote, not defeatism.
The Raven on the Hill
@Redshift: “Sen. Jack Reed, Rhode Island Democrat, announced Thursday that he will introduce a 3-month extension to long-term federal unemployment insurance with a Republican co-sponsor and hopes for a procedural vote as soon as Jan. 6.”
It’s easy to be for something in the Senate when you know it won’t pass the House. The Democrats just negotiated away their leverage on this issue, and I suppose on every budgetary issue, for the next two years.
The Raven on the Hill
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): “So, just to be clear, you have been posting here since at least 2008 claiming with every post that THIS TIME is the last straw and you’re never voting for Democrats again, but you’ve been continuing to vote for them anyway?”
You’ve got me confused with someone else.
The mother of the muses has a poor memory. “O, the embarassment!”
The Raven on the Hill
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): “The under-30s are just fine and are probably more liberal than you are, but they need encouragement to get out and vote, not defeatism.”
And they should vote for the likes of Murray? They’re going to have build their whole faction from the ground up. The under-30 liberals I know mostly don’t believe that voting will do any good. And why not? It hasn’t in their memory. This is another consequence of the Democrats not fighting for liberal causes; younger voters don’t believe they can or will fight.
The Raven on the Hill
@schrodingers’s cat: “Milton Friedman and his Chicago boys must be so happy, that the finally broke the back of Keynesian econ that had held sway after the Depression and WWII.”
I don’t think Friedman would be happy with the current outcome at all.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@The Raven on the Hill:
Ah, denying your own postings, I see. Funny how the only person in this thread who doesn’t remember what you’ve posted in the past is you. Take a look at the other responses — we all recognize you and remember what you’ve posted before. Perhaps you need to be examined for memory loss?
Also, I’m not surprised that the under-30s you talk to don’t vote since you spend all of your time telling them it’s stupid and useless. I wonder what could happen if instead you encouraged them to vote? Oh, but then the Democrats might actually win and you can’t have that when your entire political identity is tied up in being a beleaguered minority. Better to make sure the Democrats are always blocked by Republicans so your self-image never has to change.
Corner Stone
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
I’m not sure it’s even possible to untwist how deeply disturbed you are.
The Raven on the Hill
@Corner Stone: Thank you for the support. Thank you very much for the support.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): You’re still wrong. I have before never in my life written anything like, “I may never vote for a Democrat in a national election again.”
If you want to make your point, show where I did. Out of context quotes and readings that make me out to say what I never did don’t count.
“Also, I’m not surprised that the under-30s you talk to don’t vote since you spend all of your time telling them it’s stupid and useless.”
I have in the past encouraged them to vote. I still will do so. But I cannot, in good conscience, encourage them to support the likes of Senator Murray, and I am not sure I can even say that about Senator Cantwell, who I much prefer. I would perhaps encourage them to vote for my reliable liberal Democratic Representative, who I like very much, but he is 76 years old, and I believe he will retire at the end of his term.
Corner Stone
@The Raven on the Hill: People like aimai don’t like it when someone contravenes the “lesser of two evils” reasoning they have sold themselves into. It’s the last “pragmatic” rationale they have to hold on to their apologia bullshit.
Making the affirmative case that other decisions/actions were open but blatantly disregarded does not fit into their view of “political reality”. Even when the literal reality is right there, staring back at them.
But for people like Capt Mnemo…that’s a whole other kettle of deeply disturbed fish. I hope you enjoyed a small taste of her blatant lying and willful distortions of your comments. She has no other track to run down. And she will keep lying, and distorting and just flat out making shit up and attributing it to you, for as long as there is breath within her.
I’ll be surprised if she does not post a “quote” from you that you never said. That’s a standard tactic for her.
FlipYrWhig
@The Raven on the Hill:
Fine, do it in bad conscience, then. If Patty Murray is your idea of an illiberal quisling, imagine what it’s like to live in an area where the local Democrats aren’t even sure if they can go along with Nancy Pelosi. The villain of your story would be the hero of the story of tens of millions of Democrats in red and purplish states. Ideologically, that sucks. Fixing it takes generations. But there’s nothing to plague a liberal’s conscience in voting for someone you don’t like much _while also_ trying to move things in a direction you like better. If the choice is between McAuliffe and Cuccinelli, you vote McAuliffe gladly, and then you do what you can to make sure the next guy is a lot better than McAuliffe. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Corner Stone
Longer lines at New York food banks
But yet, here we are, debating what a bold move it was for the Democratic Party to not force UI inclusion into the budget deal.
Makes a lot of sense.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Did anyone say it was a bold move? Seems kind of lousy to me, unless they really are trying to set up a bank-shot for economic populism in 2014, which, as I was saying earlier, is still cynical until and unless it works.
The Raven on the Hill
My House representative’s office called me back today. The staffer said that the issue will be raised, and that Pelosi and Obama will join in, though he’s not sure how much of a press Obama will mount. He says the outcome is far from certain. Myself, I think he underestimates Republican intransigence on this issue, and indeed on anything that ameliorates poverty, but I am not going to say anything to discourage him.
So that’s the news, and it doesn’t look good.
Sigh…wish we could keep that rep.
The Raven on the Hill
@FlipYrWhig: like I said above, regardless of conditions elsewhere in the USA, I don’t want to find that I voted for the person who finally took us to war in Iran and signed the bill ending SNAP.
A Humble Lurker
@The Raven on the Hill:
So you’ll be voting Democrat, then?
Paul
Wow. This whole thread….
Just wow.
At various points we have “progressives” saying Elizabeth Warren isn’t progressive enough, invoking the Green Lantern of “If Senate Democrat’s wanted it, they would have got it”, and being undecided between Rand Paul and Patty Murray.
Wow.
Paul
How are these guys not the mirror image of Tea Partiers?
Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, John Boehner, John Cornyn, Mike Enzi aren’t conservative enough…
Republicans could have won the shutdown if only they wanted it enough…
The only difference is, even the Teahadis aren’t willing to cut off their nose to spite their face and vote for a Democrat.
You wanna know how conservatives have moved the country so far right? They pick the most conservative candidate in the primary AND the general.
Somehow “progressives” have got it into their head that not supporting the most progressive candidate in any one election will better accomplish progressive goals.
I guess I was wrong at the start of my post. These “progressives” are dumber than TPers.
Ruckus
@Paul:
You keep talking sense like this and the purity police are going to come back and annoy us some more.
Corner Stone
@Paul: Really useful commentary “Paul”.
Thanks for chiming in!