🚨 MAGA Republicans like Rep. Kevin McCarthy want to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block.
Meanwhile under Democrats, Medicare premiums are going down, and Social Security checks are going up.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) October 18, 2022
A bad week for K-M’Carth is a good week for us decent people, so: MORE OF THIS, PLEASE…
I really hope that people of a certain age realize what Kevin McCarthy is talking about here.
To put it bluntly, the future of Medicare and Social Security hangs in the balance this November. https://t.co/vqhEb3YIBQ— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) October 18, 2022
But that’s not all, folks!
I guess now it’s “There’s three people I think Putin pays: me, Rohrabacher and Trump,” https://t.co/OYjtDuP5w8
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 18, 2022
Props to Cheryl Rofer for her choice of photo here:
The leader of the Republican Party in the House says that he is willing to support Russia's goals in Ukraine if his party wins the House in November.
If you believe that territorial conquest of other nations is bad, vote Democrat up and down the ticket.https://t.co/YXquELVz59
— Cheryl Rofer (@CherylRofer) October 18, 2022
Maybe sensing Repubs won’t win the House so tossing this out to the loons in his caucus so the let him continue being minority leader?
I don’t think McCarthy is particularly smart. But I don’t think he’s so dumb that he’d think it was a good decision to drop this 3 wks out https://t.co/7EprDf1HsQ
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 18, 2022
Punchbowl, which conducted the interview with McCarthy: "These kinds of comments could prompt the Biden administration to push for a full year of Ukraine aid during the lame duck, should Republicans win control of either chamber. McCarthy may privately welcome this, in fact"
— Josh Kraushaar (@JoshKraushaar) October 18, 2022
A vote for a House Republican candidate is a vote to make Kevin McCarthy speaker. Which is a vote to empower @RepMTG. "That's reality." https://t.co/FU42WuJMqB
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 17, 2022
Spare a thought for the Last of the Young… Gums:
I traveled with McCarthy last week and he concedes Aug was a bad month for the GOP — but now he says the election is being fought on issues where GOP is strong.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) October 17, 2022
He’s the sole survivor of a leadership squad that included John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Eric Cantor https://t.co/oHmlNG6HWj
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) October 17, 2022
German expat working in DC:
A debt default is also big fucking deal for the rest of the world, Paulhttps://t.co/SthGIUA6T4
— vocational politics stan account 🫳♨️ (@Convolutedname) October 18, 2022
Mike in NC
Bakersfield didn’t send their best…
gene108
Holy fuck, police body can footage of the arrests Florida’s election task force did a couple of months ago. It’s always worse than we thought.
https://mobile.twitter.com/TB_Times/status/1582395896615956480
Origuy
My earliest political memory is of the JFK assassination; my second one is the Johnson-Goldwater election. My parents almost always voted Republican, although my mother never trusted Nixon. However, I remember them telling me that if Goldwater won, my grandmother would lose her Social Security. So Goldwater was too extreme for them. Johnson of course crushed Goldwater, even in Indiana. If people in those pre-internet days could get the message about Social Security, you would think they would now.
sab
@Mike in NC: Unfortunately, they probably did send their best.
craigie
@Origuy:
Maybe. But the problem with now, as compared to then, is that we have a lot more noise and a lot less information.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Why did Schumer (or whoever writes his tweets) have to add this? They’re only going up because of high inflation
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC: Ever been to Bakersfield?
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That’s the point of COLAs. Shumer doesn’t want us olds to be scared by the inflation talk, because we are covered by COLA adjustments.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Out of curiosity, what would happen to the savings bonds I have through TreasuryDirect if there were a debt default?
Sister Golden Bear
They want to eradicate us from public life before eradicating us period.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Kid, you don’t know high inflation.
mvr
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Bakersfield gave us Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and while I only went through by the side of the highway with my thumb out, that isn’t nothing. (This is not a defense of Kevin McCarthy or anyone who ever voted for him.)
Darkrose
@Mike in NC: I’m concerned that they did.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
Highest inflation in over 40 years.
sab
@Sister Golden Bear: Ohio State Board of Education just came up with something similar, introduced by a homeschooler. ( Why do we have a homeschooler on our state board of education?) Fortunately one of the more rational Republicans got it sent back to committee because “this approach does nothing for these kids, who are out there in our schools and need our protection.” I was amazed.
Another Scott
As I said downstairs, I think people are basically misreading this:
He’s not saying he’s against Ukraine funding – he voted for the $40B for Ukraine after all. He wants Democrats to think that he suddenly is. But I think he’s actually saying that there will be a high price for his support and that price includes cuts to things that Democrats like and want. Like, I dunno, cuts to AMTRAK and public transit and climate change funding. Things that Biden and the Democrats won. The GQPers have never found a Democratic hostage that wasn’t worth threatening.
Whether such demands would work all depends on the numbers.
Our job is to make sure that the numbers work in our favor.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
Maybe, but it all it does is give an opening to people to say, “Yeah, because of high inflation that Dems caused!”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Another Scott:
Y’know what’s funny? I’m pretty sure McCarthy had been voting to fund the Afghanistan and Iraq wars for the past 15 years and I don’t think the Great Recession stopped him from doing so either
ETA: Something I don’t understand is why Republicans are making noises about ending Medicare/Social Security. Both programs have been regarded as the third rail of American politics. A lot of elderly Americans rely on both programs. Many elderly people are voters who vote regularly. Why would they think this would be a good idea right before an election?
Ohio Mom
This is an example of why I am ambivalent about early voting. John Doe goes out to vote on the first day of early voting. Two days later, Kevin MCarthy comes out with this nonsense and John Doe immediately regrets his vote.
The campaigns are still in process, information is still coming out.
Now (full disclosure) I have voted early in the past. And I will always vote a straight Democratic ticket so new information isn’t going to sway me. But those mushy-headed undecideds?
I wish there was some data that could shine some light on the question, “How early is too early for voting?” There may be but I haven’t heard about it.
On the topic of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, you are talking about my family’s current main means of support. This is personal. I used to discount Republican threats to these programs but since Roe’s overturning, I’m not so sure about how sturdy that third rail actually is.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): To which one might reply…
What did Biden do to cause this inflation? Did he cause the 10% inflation they have in Europe right now? Democrats didn’t cause the inflation, but they do want to help seniors on a fixed income afford to keep up with it.
NotMax
At long last, Mr. McCarthy, have you no sense of shame?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): True. Inflation is a big problem all over the world right now. What did Biden do that is supposed to have caused this worldwide inflation crisis?
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): When we had inflation in the 1970s it went on for years until it got well up into double digits because the Fed was unwilling to deal with it. You have just seen a few months, and the Fed is already stepping in.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: To add, energy prices are up 400-600 percent (!) in many parts of Europe right now.
Imagine $20-$30/gallon gasoline as a comparison.
NotMax
Understatement of the week?
“I just feel pretty stupid about the whole thing.”
HumboldtBlue
Also, the Philadelphia Phillies, who finished with 87 wins in the regular season and who have since gone on to punch the Cardinals, the Cobb County Crackers and now the Padres in the mouth of a postseason game one, are dancing by themselves.
Amir Khalid
@Sister Golden Bear:
Here’s something I don’t ever see getting brought up, even though it seems relevant. What is the incidence of inappropriate conduct/sexual abuse of kids among the general population of teachers in any given state? And what is the incidence among transgendered teachers? I suspect the difference, if any, would not justify discrimination against the latter. It might even suggest that kids are safer with trans teachers than with cis teachers.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think they live too much inside their own bubble.
Also too, their donors real want it. Business people hate medicare and social security taxes because they do really crank up payroll costs.
But being too much inside their own bubble they forget that out in the real world these days that is pretty much what people have to retire on.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
In this reply on the Bogleheads forum to the potential for liquidity problems in the treasury market:
The Fed’s actions (and inaction) is responsible for a lot, along with supply chain disruptions. There was a study put out by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that found that the ARP added a few points of CPI inflation through 2021
SectionH
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Well, you likely don’t either, nor me really. But Mr S and I drove from Amsterdam to Zagreb in 1989. When we cleared into Croatia, still part of Yugoslavia, we changed US$ 100 and got 3 MILLION Dinars. A lot of 100K Dinar notes… Our hotel of course charged us directly a very reasonable amount in US$, as did most restaurants, etc. But otherwise, it was Shit Comin’ Down mode. On the way back to the EC, we needed to stop for gas in Slovenia, and my husband freaked. The pump only had so many spaces for the price/litre. So they’d taped an extra 000 next to the price. And then another set of 000. Maybe a third set? Won’t swear to that, but it was intimidating. I finally just pumped the gas. Dumped several hundred thousand Dinars there, which was nema problema.
Oh, and then we got a 20,000 Dinar “speeding” ticket on the highway along the Drava to Austria. But that’s a better story told in full. Oh yeah – that was ~45 cents US. Guess they had to use up all the old tickets in the book before they could change those prices…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
As to the worldwide inflation, I recall many governments did the same things ours did. I think they also helped to create some of this inflation
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
It’s a delicate balancing act* and the Fed isn’t exactly renowned for (nor designed for) doing delicate as opposed to lurching back and forth dependent on exigencies and market reaction to future signaling.
*‘Bad situation’: Soaring US dollar spreads pain worldwide
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
Exactly!! What do they think will happen to the economy if all senior citizens are forced eat fucking cat food to survive? Where’s the money to buy their fucking products going to come from?
And what are the GOP going to tell people who paid payroll taxes to SS and Medicare their entire lives who expect to get something out of it?
Sister Golden Bear
@sab: Yes, I was pleasantly
surprisedshocked.sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I don’t think they think things through all that much.
frosty
Nominated (with a change from they to Republicans)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
The thing is though, I don’t see anyone else aside from the central banks stepping up to the plate to rein in inflation. And now, there’s evidence that inflation is spreading throughout the economy, becoming entrenched
Eolirin
@Sister Golden Bear: Didn’t the governor of what, was it, Utah or something? Do something similar with a veto?
I don’t think this is quite as winning of an issue for them as they think, as anyone that isn’t ginned up on hatred is just going to see struggling tormented kids.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Also, too from the article:
Hahaha! Too bad, so sad! Cry harder, traitorous Trump trash!
Sister Golden Bear
@Amir Khalid: I don’t know specifically about teachers, but there’s been exactly one actual case in the States over the last decades involving a trans woman causing problems in a
bathroomchanging room. (She was arrested and charged, as she should’ve been.) So it’s a no-brainer children are safer with trans teachers.But they’re inciting a moral panic, so facts and logic have nothing to do with.
Sister Golden Bear
@Eolirin: Governor of Utah.
And I hope to Maude that it isn’t as popular as Republicans think — I post about only a fraction of the scary shit us trans people are facing. Best case scenario there will be blue states were we’re safe, and a whole lotta states where we’re not.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
To take a page from the military, national economic entities and major banks are best poised to fight the last war.
COVID, a volatile and unpredictable oil marketplace, and all too real supply chain constraints are just a few of all but unique factors newly acting in concert which are at least temporarily resistant to more traditional remedies.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
Granted for the elected Rs, but I’m also talking about Corporate America. They have to realize such a thing would be disastrous to the social and economic fabric of this country, not to mention their bottom lines. They ought to know better and reign these freaks in
Doc Sardonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You can use them in place of Charmin
sab
@Sister Golden Bear: Same with athletes. All this hoopla, and Ohio has maybe two trans athletes who are good enough that anyone cares about them competeing. Everyone else just wants to participate in team sports.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Corporate America is run by individual men who are optomizing their own careers quarter to quarter. They really do not care about anything bigger than that except as to how it impacts their own careers.
And the small business owners are too busy keeping their businesses going to think stuff out. Not stupid, just really busy. So they just follow the big businesses.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Doc Sardonic:
You’re joking, right? Because I really don’t want to redeem all of them before any possible default and have to pay taxes on them in a single year (plus the 3 months of interest early withdrawal penalty). I was planning on them being a part of my emergency fund and being held for many years
Plus the retirement savings in my Target Date Fund held in my Roth IRA…
They can’t fucking do this to all of us
cain
@Sister Golden Bear: They will be coming for all of LBGTQ+ – if they can do that for transgender, they’ll do it for gay couples as well. I mean they are already objecting to kids reading in books about having parents of the same gender.
Basically, if they get in charge they’ll do nothing but revert everything as fast as they can. They’ll also tank the economy. The only good thing is that they’ll be stuck trying to fix it all as it comes crashing down since they’ve also decided to rig elections in their favor if they get into any of the state apparatus.
Citizen Alan
@NotMax: I genuinely don’t consider creatures like him to be functionally human. You’re just a dumb animal that somehow learned to talk.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Hang on to them. Things will sort themselves out in the economy. The pandemic really screwed things up as far as supply chains, and Russia is screwing stuff up even more with gas and food. As my late mother used to say “This too shall pass.” It isn’t going to happen, but if the US economy was so broken that we start defaulting on our debt then your treasuries are the least of your problems. Why do you think Venezuelans are fleeing their country. That’s severe economic stress, not a war.
cain
@sab:
Yes because their executives aren’t getting paid enough – my employer’s CEO is getting like a 400 million dollar compensation package. I’m just like wtf – maybe stop paying these people so much money. 400 million dollars pays a lot of people for quite a number of years.
eclare
@sab: John Oliver’s long segment this past Sunday was about this. Very good piece.
cain
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
They will likely be saying that we’ve been cashing checks we could never pay for and that you have to live within your budget and also go find a job.
Everything the GOP doing is unpopular. We fight our assess off to save the very people who vote GOP from eating cat food.
Chetan Murthy
@Sister Golden Bear: I’m sure there’s been a shit-ton more cases of (hot) youth pastors deflowering their flock. And yet somehow we don’t forbid clergy from interacting with children …..
Chetan Murthy
Does anybody remember those times when the GrOPers decide to put Medicaid on the block? Including the part of Medicaid that pays for destitute old people in nursing homes? Many people pointed out that the minute that happens, every middle-class family with elderly parents in nursing homes will be bringing them home to live in the basement or extra room. Kiss that second job goodbye, Mom’s gonna be staying home to care of the ‘rents.
Recipe for revolution, that.
sab
@cain: Fancy Feast is actually opening human restaurants. I can’t even think of what they are thinking except they must think they have a good product. But all the old people eating catfood jokes.
ETA Not so bad as it seems. Pop up restaurants in NYC.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@cain:
It’s very difficult to save up a lot of money for many people. How exactly are disabled people going to work a job? People with Alzheimer’s? You shouldn’t work until you literally keel over and die. Every country on Earth that isn’t a total failed state has a national old age pension scheme of some kind
Doc Sardonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): In all honesty, I don’t know. The reality of the situation is that the United States of America has defaulted 4 times over it’s history, 1862 due to the Civil War,1933 on gold bonds, 1968 on silver certificates, and 1971 when Nixon undid the Bretton Woods agreement. So there have been defaults but never a complete one.
cain
That’s the problem with people who subscribe to these ideologies – they all sound great on paper until you actually do something. Just look at that abortion ban – do you think we’d be talking about women whose baby dies in their wound them having to carry it the entire time? The fact that these people don’t see a problem with that means that a) they’ve never directly experienced it b) they can’t seem to imagine that such a thing could happen or disbelieve it because it’s fake news and thus gives them an excuse not to use their empathy.
Ultimately, if the GOP got whatever they wanted they’ll run this country directly into a ditch. If there is one thing that we can count on – it is the fact that Americans are really entitled especially the upper middle class white ones and if they are forced to struggle for everything and it’s not the libertarian paradise they are sold – there will be hell to pay.
🐾BillinGlendaleCA
@sab: Remember Jerry Ford and the WIN* buttons?
*Whip Inflation Now!
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think this every time they move the Social Security age up. My dad was a doctor and he and Mom were in pretty good shape into their eighties.
My husband and his friends are mostly blue collar. They have worked factory jobs with hard manual work and exposure to all sorts of toxic chemicals. He is only 71, and his back is shot, and a lot of his high school friends have long since died of various cancers, often job-related.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
I sincerely hope you’re right
eclare
@Chetan Murthy: Is that part of what Bill Clinton explained in his speech at whatever year convention that was? I remember after Bill gave that speech people said he should be the Secretary of Explaining Stuff.
sab
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: Yes I remember. But it took Jimmy Carter appointing Paul Volcker to actually WIP it, and that brought us Reagan.
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): My mother uses to say “we just can’t save until your dad’s income goes over the Social Security max in the second half of the year” and I would just shake my head and say “Mom, for most people it never goes over that limit.” But they still needed their Social Security to live on, even with all that saving.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA:
How have you been lately btw? How’s the Orange Apron been?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
It’s nice with SS to have a portion of your income to be inflation-adjusted year to year
@sab:
@cain:
Yes, GrOpers have no idea the shit they would be in for if they really try it
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): In the olden days even wages were sort of inflation adjusted. Not an actual COLA, but everyone (workers and managers) expected annual raises to at least reflect inflation.
That all went out the window in the last thirty or so years and I don’t know why.
Chetan Murthy
@sab:
If we’re gonna WIN (Whip Inflation Now), somebody’s gotta take it in the neck, and it sure ain’t gonna be the stockholders.
Mike E
@HumboldtBlue: Reg’s ditty just happens to be “the moment” in Almost Famous.
That SchwarBomba nearly broke twitter, heh!
sab
One of my stepsons is a machinist. His wages have been pretty stagnant for the last ten years or so. This last year he could honestly say (and he did, at his annual review) ” You know, I like this job, but for the last six months or so I have been getting unsolicited offers for the same job for a whole lot more money.” So he finally got a nice raise.
That’s where a lot of workers have been.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): To reduce inflation, we need to reduce the money supply. There has always been an obvious way of doig that: raise taxes on the wealthy. As for “stockholders”, I just checked and 58% of Americans hold stocks. The median investment is $51k. If you do the math on that, it’s negligible compared to any sort of actual requirement to fund one’s retirement.
There’s a story about de Tocqueville: he laments that the French Revolution, which had instituted land reforms, giving many landless peasants their own land, had had the opposite effect from what was expected. Instead of making the peasants appreciate the government’s efforts at redistribution, it caused the peasants to take the side of the nobility and *oppose* redistribution, b/c now the peasants had a stake (howsoever tiny in comparison with the nobles) in property, too.
eclare
@sab: Good for him!
sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Stockholders used to expect a dividend, regular as clockwork. Now, invested through IRAs and 401Ks they dont. They expect ” growth”. So the guys making out are upper management of companies and the guys investing those pension/IRAs/401Ks. Nobody else is really tracking what they are up to.
sab
@eclare: Yeah! Go guy! It’s hard to change jobs because every company has its own quirky outdated machinery different from the old outdated machinery you are used to.
Like me with accounting software.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
Some stocks pay dividends, others don’t. But I’ve read that dividends don’t actually matter, it’s the total return. It all comes from the same place in the end. Stock index funds pay dividends at the end of the year and the fund’s NAV reduces in response
HumboldtBlue
@Mike E:
It almost broke the sound barrier.
That crack of the bat…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
But that’s not likely going to happen, so the Fed has to step in. And might I add that Europe is also experiencing high inflation and they have relatively high tax rates
As for that 58% statistic holding 51k or less, it all depends on what’s being counted and how. Does it only include things like IRAs when the bulk of one’s savings could be in 401ks?
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
stockholderswealthy.As has been said many times, for most Americans, their primary investment (if any) is in their house.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
stockholderswealthy.As has been said many times, for most Americans, their primary investment (if any) is in their house.
cain
@Chetan Murthy: not any more given the soaring prices – and most Gen Zs are going to be stuck with renting.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
And as I’ve said, there’s other parts of the world with high tax rates still experiencing high inflation, so that’s not a panacea
sab
@Chetan Murthy: Good point.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Brad Delong pointed out once that the 1970s is one of the few periods in American history, with soaring inflation. That it really is an outlier.
Re: Europe: is it relevant? Don’t they have a massive energy-price shock that we don’t suffer from ? [and of course, the UK is discountable b/c “Brexit” and “shot myself in the groin, dad”]
And sure, the lesson is “you *must* reduce the money supply”. What I’m trying to point out, is that the only acceptable solution, is to do so on the backs of the poor. And it has *always* been the only acceptable solution.
There’s a problem there, and it’s about who has power, who doesn’t, and therefore, who gets shafted. And none of that is forced by the actual “economics” of the situation. It’s all about power.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
It isn’t just Europe
Also, wasn’t DeLong one of those who thought inflation was going to be “transitory”?
Chetan Murthy
Here’s an example of what I’m taking about: in 2020 (per Census bureau) 46% of Americans spent >30% of their income on housing (and 23% spent >50% on housing). Or as someone might say “the rent is too damn high”. And yet, nothing is done about it.
cain is right, that more and more Americans must rent [I have always rented, never owned]. And the owners of those properties are the ones who are privileged and cossetted, not the renters.
Another little tidbit: someone pointed out that when we lower taxes, the rich get the lion’s share, and turn around and invest those savings back into instruments … like Federal debt. Which the government then pays interest on …. to those same rich people. If, instead, the government were to raise taxes on the rich, it would reap the double benefit of first not having to borrow the money, and second not having to pay interest to those rich people later on.
sab
@Chetan Murthy: America in the 1970s was a real outlier, but every member of the Boomers was affected and there are a lot of us.
On the side, I want to point out that I think that Gen X got us off track, all of you voting for Reagan like you did. My generation (Boomers) were so disheartened by then that many of us simply didn’t vote.
eclare
@sab: Hey, late Gen X here, always voted D. Don’t lump us all together.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
You make good points
Chetan Murthy
@sab: You’re right about my generation, and I don’t understand how so many of us got hoodwinked by RaYgUn. Got no explanation except maybe gas was still leaded, wasn’t it?
sab
@eclare: I won’t if y’all stop lumping us. I always voted D also, and most everyone I know who voted did too. But lots of us didn’t vote.
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Kevin Drum has pointed out that a lot of recent inflation is in housing costs. Adam Smith once wrote that everywhere and always, the rent of land is determined only by the ability to pay. Combine that with the fact that prices are set by the willingness of the richest buyers to pay (aka “life on the margin”) and it becomes clear how to lower rents:
Steeply progressive confiscatory taxation.
That’s all it takes. And so, when San Francisco grants tax exemptions for options from these startups, it doesn’t help: it hurts. And sure, if they didn’t those startups would base themselves in San Jose. But FFS, they wouldn’t base themselves in *Texas* — there’s a reason they’re in the Bay Area. The entire state of CA needs to have higher tax brackets: people live in CA for a reason, and the evidence is clear that taxation isn’t why people move.
And meanwhile, housing prices skyrocket and the number of homeless people increases seemingly without bound. The few times I take BART out of the city, the roads alongside the tracks are *lined* with camper-vans. Grrr. Just raise the damn top tax rate. Grrr.
sab
@Chetan Murthy: Also another thing that has happened in renting is REITS.Real Estate Investment Trusts. Used to be a building had a landlord who took care of it and tended it and looked at it as a long term imvestments. REITS are basicslly mutual funds that swoop in, buy rental properties, milk them for all the rent they can for a few years and then dump them, having seriously damaged the property by neglecting basic maintenance. Almost every mutual fund and 401 K owns REITS.
This is happening all over the country. So your rental apartment is not safe. Your landlord could purposely destroy it. And nobody cares because the REITs in your 401K are probably destroying the building you live in and making a lot of money doing it
ETA Basically destroying America’s housing stock, and tax advantaged to do it.
Chetan Murthy
@sab: Apropos of: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/29/blackstone-rebellion-how-one-country-worlds-biggest-commercial-landlord-denmark
TL;DR Blackstone came in, bought a bunch of properties, and tried to push out long-time tenants thru a combination of neglect and nuisance. So they could upgrade the properties and rent them out at much higher rates. The renters and city fought back, and Blackstone. exited.
These vultures are everywhere. Eveyrwhere. Again, the laws are all set up to privilege and cosset them, and give it to renters and poor people in the neck.
eclare
@sab: I don’t think I’ve ever lumped all boomers together. Like most things that large, it’s a meaningless generalization. It’s a granfalloon.
sab
@eclare: I know you haven’t . I’ve been reading your comments for years. But you know BJ. We have these periodic anti- Boomer outbreaks, so I reflexively attack the next generation.
eclare
@sab: Gotcha, I understand. I live in a very blue city in a very red state, and it pisses me off when people talk about abandoning us, lumping us all together.
Ruckus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You always, always, always have to ask WHY has inflation risen. It’s easy to see that it has but the WHY is far more important. One of the reasons is the Ukraine war. But the biggest reason is the pandemic. Healthcare costs, vaccine costs (did you pay a dime to get one? I didn’t pay a dime for any of my 5 shots and neither did you). The war in Ukraine hurts for a number of reasons, one is that food had to be grown, sown, killed, packaged, transported and sold and all of that took people who should have been staying home working. Fire, police, military all had to work. That has cost this country, because of SFB, a lot of money in dealing with, recovering from. Without as much income to pay for it all. Food costs more, gasoline is still nearly twice as much here in CA. So blaming Joe Biden is easy but it started before that and SFB sure had no way of understanding inflation, let alone sunlight. He doesn’t understand autonomic breathing either but then he is a fucking hateful idiot. This is not the only country have inflation problems because the current problems of inflation are not just a rethuglican issue.
Be thankful that we have at least a marginal operating government and a damn fine leader or it could be far worse. Just think how/what the rethuglican’s favorite presidential imposter would be doing now if he’d been reelected
I left out one important issue that others have covered and that’s the investment concept in this and other countries. Billionaires have been made fucking over huge swaths of this (and other) countries by investing in things that cause all of us to pay more to often get less, and their bank accounts grow. And that is a huge factor in inflation. It’s out of hand and needs to be reigned in. I’m not holding my breath. But rethuglicans will always make it worse.
Chetan Murthy
@Ruckus: @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Katie Porter FTW: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/18/2129869/-Rep-Katie-Porter-destroys-inflation-myth-Watch-her-prove-that-corporate-greed-s-driving-inflation
Watch the video. Corporate profits are wildly higher in this recovery, as compared to previous ones.
Ruckus
@Chetan Murthy:
I just added to my comment, saying the same thing in a different way. But absolutely the rich can fuck up a wet dream, along with a shit ton of every thing else. Greed almost always does that. And it’s a very, very rare billionaire who isn’t, or at least wasn’t greedy at one point in time. I can think of one, and he was for a very long time.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I was told there would be no math on this blog
Tony Jay
Just about the only thing in the FTF Guardian that I approve of, John Squires’ weekly Football-based comic strip. Occasionally, however, he’ll turn his penmanship and cruel, cruel wit on the political world and, well, here’s his latest.
Panel 6 is so good I want to buy it dinner and take it dancing.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
In becoming clear Liz Truss is a secret agent working for the Labour Party
This comes on the chilling news that England faces daily blackouts this … [checks notes] …winter.
eclare
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Massive own-goal since Breakshit.
Tony Jay
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
Liz Truss works for the people who work for the people who really decide whether or not the Labour Party is NuNew enough to take over the public-facing side of the racket while the Tories enjoy a short vacation at the Spa of Reputational Cleansing.
I’ve been told it’s how ‘grown-ups’ operate. Bend the knee, maybe you get to toss some fish heads to the starving, make yourself feel better about keeping the money flowing onwards and upwards.
Starmer is doing his level best to make that deal, but there’s still a way to go and a LOT of ground to cover before anyone gets to cast a vote.
satby
@Ruckus: That’s Goku’s bit, and it’s repetitive beyond tedious. You might almost say troll-like.
Now, as to the original subject, long derailed, the question is why the Republicans would float such a stupid and unpopular threat just before an election. Possibly to distract from some bad news coming down the pike? Or to appear to self sabotage because their internal polling is calamitous?
Tony Jay
It actually gets worse for the Tories today.
Briefly – in their 2019 manifesto one of the very few things that wasn’t GET BREXIT DONE scrawled in blue felt-tip across every page was a promise not to introduce fracking.
Truss and Co have put forward plans to introduce fracking, citing the need for
massive corporate profitsenergy independence.Labour are using a motion to try and seize control of today’s Parliamentary business and make MPs vote on blocking fracking, which is smart because a LOT of Tory MPs are dead set against it, mainly because they represent the rural areas where it would actually be happening and their voters are NIMBYs.
The Tories have decided to impose a 3-line whip on their MPs and insist they vote against debating the motion, claiming that they are simply adverse to letting the Opposition control Parliament’s business.
But quite stupidly, they’ve let it be known that they intend to treat votes on the motion as a Confidence measure – meaning that if it passes and debate is allowed, it will be seen as a Vote of No Confidence in the Government.
They could have just let it go, or allowed a free vote, but Fracking Rulez is apparently the hill they want to live or die on. Tory MPs won’t enjoy having to cast a vote that can easily be presented as one in favour of fracking, and I’m sure furious discussions are taking place right now on whether or not to use the vote as a boot to Truss’ bony rear-end, which is why I’m not entirely convinced that this over-reaction by the Tories hasn’t been deliberately orchestrated by one or more of the factions to make her position (more) untenable and force her to resign.
Incidentally, it’s nice to see the usual suspects in the News Media portraying this as smart politics by NuNew Labour, when if the exact same vote had been forced by the previous leadership it would have been presented by the entire News Media and half of the Parliamentary Labour Party as immature virtue-signalling that was bound to force the Tories to circle the wagons and hand Downing St a propaganda victory as the only Party with a policy to solve the energy crisis.
It’s all about who’s Kewl and who’s Unkewl with this lot.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: The problem is, confiscatory taxation wouldn’t fix these problems on a time scale that would let currently elected politicians see the benefits. There would be short-term pain that would hurt them–or at least that is the calculation they’re making.
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Induced earthquakes do have a way of diverting attention away from other political rumblings.
//
Darkrose
@Tony Jay: Am I right in guessing that “Is your dog woke?” is a plausible Daily Mail headline?
Matt McIrvin
@sab: Most of Gen X, by the conventional measures, wasn’t old enough to vote during the Reagan administration. A lot of my peers might have supported Reagan but got to vote for President for the first time in 1988 or 1992. The youngest Reagan landslide voters were largely tail-end Boomers.
(Wikipedia says “Gen X” is born 1965-1980, so I guess for some it was 1996 or 2000.)
Baud
@Tony Jay:
At this rate, Truss will probably propose fracking pensioners.
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
It’s a plan. Not a great plan, or even a feasible one, but unless we have any other options on the table…….? No? Then Operation: Orodruin it is.
@Darkrose:
It very much is. That rag is Fox News for people who can more or less read.
@Baud:
It’s pencilled into your 2024 Platform speech, isn’t it?
NotMax
@Baud
Brexit is a hernia on the body politic for which no Truss can provide relief.
evodevo
@Amir Khalid: If you count religious “academies” in the survey, there would be a LOT of child sexual abuse by teachers…dozens every year, if my FFRF religious crime pages and the SBC sex abuse scandals are any indication
Tony G
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): True. But this fact also illustrates how, in many cases, lower unemployment and, in this case, COLA increases in Social Security, have the effect of offsetting inflation to a degree. I was young during the high inflation years of the seventies. Inflation was a major annoyance to everybody, but because my father (and later I) had a relatively decent job, it was not a catastrophe. Losing one’s job and having no income is a catastrophe.
SFAW
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I don’t think the Fed/Yellen buying Treasuries (or whatever) led to the significant supply chain disruptions which pushed product prices higher (due to lack of supply and high demand).
But then again, I guess it’s completely Biden (and company’s) fault that Yellen disrupted the supply chain, starting in 2020.
In other words, the money-supply argument only goes so far. You may also remember that, starting in early 2020 — i.e., COVID lockdowns, etc. — personal/consumer spending dropped, which resulted in more available cash for consumers, etc.
Or am I just having a fever dream, and none of that happened?
I imagine there is some actual contribution to inflation from the actions you posted, but considering how (for example) computer chip shortages affected almost every consumer product’s supply, and how people have been talking about future food-supply-chain disruption since mid-2020, I guess I’m less convinced vis-a-vis the money supply argument.
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
Maybe Truss will say she’s trying to introduce (Blighty-based) fracking in West Virginia, “so where’s the problem?”
You may roll your eyes, but given the stupidity of the general electorate …
Tony Jay
@SFAW:
I’ve met the electorate. How they manage to blow their noses without plugging their ears is a mystery to me.
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Perhaps the British can come up with their own acronym: NUMBY.
Not Under My Back Yard.
(Yeah, y’all call them gardens, but NUMG doesn’t readily roll off the tongue.)
Tony Jay
@NotMax:
NOT GOME
Not On The Grounds Of My Estate
Jackie
I was amazed a late night post had over 100 comments. Then I started reading… Yup another hijacked post.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: This Tory fracking initiative is ludcrous. I laughed when I read that they project the UK to be an energy exporter by 2040!
I think fracking has its place. American heating costs woul be much higher without fracked natural gas. But it’s used for relatively mediocre deposits. If there was a patch in the Persian Gulf with only the potential of the UK’s, no one would even bother drilling it.
sab
@Jackie: So a late night totally dead thread is somehow better?
Tony Jay
@Geminid:
Don’t forget, a few weeks ago they were touting energy independence by cracking the secret of nuclear fusion in 20 years.
Madness.
kalakal
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: It’s come to something when the Prime Minister is out polled by inflation
NotMax
@Tony Jay
Runs the risk of creating schisms among those who insist it is pronounced “not gohm” versus those who are resolutely adamant about it being “not go me” and the small coterie of stuffed shirts saying “not go-may.”
:)
kalakal
@Darkrose: This is the UK’s current Home Secretary* doing her bit raise the standard of debate in the Commons.
https://youtu.be/uvWQ-8_K6jo
*either that or Alex Jones has skipped across the pond to escape his court judgements and spent a lot of money on cosmetic surgery
kalakal
A few days ago that well known bunch of Lefties at the Economist published this ( read the first paragraph to the end)
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2022/10/11/liz-truss-has-made-britain-a-riskier-bet-for-bond-investors
This led to The Daily Star putting up a live feed of a lettuce and a picture of Truss ( Which will last longer?)
After her debacle of a non appearance/ appearance at PMQs the other day The Daily Star then produced this, possibly the best front page ever
https://twitter.com/dailystar/status/1582122948395401216?s=20&t=ZrocTZ0i_UZmJSgeFz1Lxw
Bill Arnold
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Those with children can move into their childrens’ homes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws
Seriously. Young people who are meh about Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid need to understand this reality; that they may have Mom and Pop moving in, with Pop regularly cleaning his guns in the kitchen just to make sure his kids treat him respectfully. That’s when they’re in good health; there comes the time, if they’re lucky, when parents are no longer self-sufficient, need help with frequent doctor visits, getting dressed, washing, cooking, etc.
Dupe1970
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
So you’re saying inflation has been higher and it has happened in my lifetime.
Uncle Cosmo
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Shorter you: WAAAH WAAAH WAAAH. “American Baku” is about right.
Are you ever going to grow up?
red4751
@🐾BillinGlendaleCA: And they say it will peak in late 2023. So I guess it’s just getting started.
red4751
@Bill Arnold: They tried to do that under Carter’s presidency. It turns out cat food was more expensive that human food.
WaterGirl
I see that Goku is at it again. Comment #9 “just out of curiosity” and then 50 (literally) comments are about his “concern.”