I know this won’t come as a surprise to anyone reading this blog, but the Republicans are up to their same old tricks. They say they’re concerned for “small business” but in fact they are only interested in enriching the wealthy. Democratic Rapid Response calls them out on their “Pledge to America” in this short video.
Continue reading →Annie Lowrey at the Washington Independent points us to a report on income inequality from the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee. She highlights several graphs and conclusions that show the remarkable way that the wealthy have become even more so over the past decade, while middle class and working incomes have stagnated or declined. The charts are interesting in part because they break out income and tax rates according to the various modern-day Presidential administrations. Here is one example: Even under Clinton you can see that the wealthy increased their share of total income. And in fact, Lowrey notes that according … Continue reading →
After all the constant hand-wringing about the deficit from many feckless politicians, you might be surprised to learn that the deficit declined 13% over the past year. We face a lot of economic problems, but I remain unconvinced that the deficit is, at this moment, one of them. Edit to add: That said, it seems perfectly legitimate to me to use the deficit as a cudgel against Republicans who demagogue about the deficit when it comes to spending, only to ignore it completely when it comes to tax cuts. Pointing out that kind of hypocrisy is always good.
Continue reading →And it is irresponsible to insist that those who do the hardest labor should be forced to retire later, just to make sure we don’t ask rich people to pay more taxes.
Continue reading →AFSCME is right. The Democrats have better (though imperfect) economic policies. Edit to add: Krugman today explains exactly how disastrous Republican economic policies would be. Edit to add: Also see today’s post in Timothy Noah’s Slate series on Income Inequality. He shows that inequality consistently rises under Republicans and falls under Democrats, and in addition the economy grows more slowly under Republican control.
Continue reading →Must read: this post on the economy by Karl Smith at Modeled Behavior. …This is a failure of our basic institutions of production. The job of the market is to bring together willing buyers with willing sellers in order to produce value. This is not happening and as a result literally trillions of dollars in value are not being produced. He goes on to emphasize that it’s not misallocation, it’s not government misconduct, it’s trillions of dollars of potential wealth that is simply not being created. Period. What he doesn’t, perhaps can’t, fully add is the solution to this disconnect. … Continue reading →
I don’t really understand how and why it happened that working people began to fight with each other, and look at others with such disdain. Those who encourage that behavior are usually those quite free from worry about their own comfortable lives and wealth. But it is we the people who listen and allow ourselves to be pitted one again the other. It doesn’t have to be that way. It was better once. We stood together and fought for our own fair share of the wealth of this nation, for the right to work in safety and peace. It can … Continue reading →
I simply don’t believe we’ll ever see her as the head of the Consumer Protection Agency. Which is too bad, because she has a singular understanding of the importance of that post, and of the ways in which our economy as it is currently structured works against ordinary middle-class people and those who aspire to the middle class. But the owners, the super-rich for whom our economy really works, and their compliant enablers in the Congress, will never allow a real progressive in that post. It might cost them too much money. I’d be delighted to be wrong, but I … Continue reading →
