The Democrats' plan would tax higher income people more and cut the taxes of lower income people. See here. Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Sen. Joe Biden said: "It's time to be patriotic ... time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut." He added: "We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Um, but Senator, putting money "back" in the pockets of the middle-class assumes that the money was there in the first place. In fact, it wasn't. (Apologies to our Marxist readers, but it wasn't.) Biden's plan would take money from higher earners and put it into the pockets of the middle-class.
You may recall that Robin Hood used the same "patriotic" line to justify his -- ah -- redistribution of the wealth in Sherwood Forest.
Hey, it worked for Errol Flynn, with that rousing Erich Wolfgang Korngold score swelling in the background. All that Biden/Obama need is Olivia de Havilland.
Now it's also important to note that McCain/Palin are guilty of their own populist appeasement. Governor Palin was interviewed last night on Fox News and blamed the current Wall Street meltdown on greedy corporate executives. The reality is, if every "greedy" CEO of these failed and failing companies gave back every penny of their salaries, and also gave up their golden parachutes, it wouldn't put a dent in the bottom lines of these failing companies. The problems are much deeper, much more complicated, but Palin gave the answer she thought people wanted to hear.
Getting back to Obama/Biden: with all their tax cuts, how are they going to pay for all the new programs? Well, Obama answered that himself at the convention: "Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I've laid out how I'll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don't help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy." (Emphasis added.)
I don't think I'm reading too much into this by concluding that Obama is calling for the line-item veto -- which every president in recent history has wanted, and needs. Except it would likely require a Constitutional Amendment to get a line-item veto due to the Clinton v. New York decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1998. And such an amendment isn't going to happen.
The real solution, which no one would ever admit to: more deficits!
And more politics as usual. By both sides.
I do agree with what Biden said, though -- Clinton would have been the better choice for VP.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
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Two thoughts....
First, it is impossible to argue fiscal policy in a presidential election. I can claim all day that Obama's plans and cuts add up to a blanced budget and you can claim they don't. The fact is that even if Obama's (or McCain's) plan got passed through congress exactly as it's laid out (which would never happen) wether or not it balanced the budget would depend on how the economy did that year. Clinton (Bill) balanced the budget while spending a ton, but mainly because tax revenue soared.
Second, which Clinton did Biden say would have made a better VP? How enjoyable do you think it would be to watch Bill "tag along" at meetings with foreign dignataries?
First, with the line-item veto, a president could get to a balanced budget, just as most Governors are legally required to do each and every year. And by "balanced," we mean roughly balanced. Both parties have always played the same "I am going to balance the budget" game during campaigns, and very, very little of what they say on that subject can be taken seriously.
Second, Biden was referring to Hillary. If we want to talk about having an experienced VP, I am not sure it would be so ridiculous to have a former president serve in that office. Of course if he had served two terms as president, he would not be eligible to serve as president should something happen to the head of the ticket, and the job would fall to the Speaker of the House (unless General Haig was around -- you remember, "I am in charge here" after Reagan was shot).
The solution being more deficits: is this practicable as we approach the endgame of globalization? Especially considering how much better many countries are at educating their children and preparing them for the global economy? It seems as though the assumption of perpetually growing deficits is that the United States is "too big to fail". We've seen how untrue that is of some of our major institutions, and I wonder how much longer that will be true of the country.
I think Joe is a little impolitic in how he makes the point, but I fundamentally agree with him. Eat the rich. That's where all the money is. Money can collect through hard work and innovation, but eventually it reaches a point where vast sums of money exert its own gravity, and it's no longer justifiable or efficient for it to gravitate thusly. It's not redistribution if it's the very existence of a burgeoning middle class that enables the continued aggregation of wealth in this country possible.
That's my two-second take, anyway.
The solution being more deficits: is this practicable as we approach the endgame of globalization? Especially considering how much better many countries are at educating their children and preparing them for the global economy? It seems as though the assumption of perpetually growing deficits is that the United States is "too big to fail". We've seen how untrue that is of some of our major institutions, and I wonder how much longer that will be true of the country.
I think Joe is a little impolitic in how he makes the point, but I fundamentally agree with him. Eat the rich. That's where all the money is. Money can collect through hard work and innovation, but eventually it reaches a point where vast sums of money exert its own gravity, and it's no longer justifiable or efficient for it to gravitate thusly. It's not redistribution if it's the very existence of a burgeoning middle class that enables the continued aggregation of wealth in this country possible.
That's my two-second take, anyway.
Ha ha ha -- well TS, it's happening, and it won't be the first time. Somehow America always survives, even prospers, through its entirely too infrequent bouts of actually taxing wealth. Somehow the profit motive never diminishes one iota, either, so the sky resolutely refuses to fall. I'll say it again -- eat the rich. It's what they're there for.
Military personnel (who most people would agree are patriotic) get to choose to join the military, but don't get to choose very much after that. So does that mean that fighting in battle (which most military personnel are assigned to do) is not patriotic?
A patriotic military personnel willingly sacrifices control of their some of their time and well being for use by our elected leaders (and hope, pray, and vote that their sacrifice be well used - not that the sacrifice will be reduced).
A patriotic taxpayer (at any level) would be one who willingly sacrifices control of some of their money for the use of our elected leaders (and hope, pray, and vote that their sacrifice will be well used - not that it will be reduced so they can keep it all to themselves.)
Why are we so much more willing to trust soldier's lives to government, than we are to trust them with money?
eat the rich seems a better way than "go shopping" which was bush's answer to terrorism and this god awful war.
patriotic taxes, hummmm?
bet the war would be ending pretty fast.
have to get money for this bailout and all the other ills somewhere.
if not tax the rich, then end the war in iraq.
"Why are we so much more willing to trust soldier's lives to government, than we are to trust them with money?"
Bravo! Don't know about you, but I opposed the war in Iraq. I kind of believed Hans Blix since he didn't seem to have an interest in or a bias about the matter. Am I glad Saddam is gone? Sure. I just think we need to pick our spots better, that's all.
But you see, I don't trust government to do much of anything very well, especially with the things that aren't in the news every night and for which there is no accountability. You can start with the mess our enlightened bureaucrats made in the inner city going back to the mid-'60s when they chased fathers out of children's lives with the so-called "Man out of the house rule." We started paying women to throw their children's fathers out of the house. Crime surged; boys dropped out of school and turned to crime and drugs; and girls started having babies earlier and earlier. But, you see, we were too enlightened to listen to Daniel Patrick Moynihan. And now we have respectable people attributing the problems to a character flaw shared by black men -- they're not being "responsible." What nonsense! You want to talk about the biggest problem in America? The inner city's got my vote, and the mess there proves that just throwing money at a problem doesn't work. You need to be smart in how you tackle the problem.
But let's pretend governement legitimately needed more revenue (and I dare someone to look me in the eye and say, "You know what we need? A bigger Federal Government!"), I'd much prefer to give small business owners incentives to create more jobs -- that's where it's at. I can tell you from first-hand experience that taxing fictitious legal entities more, as the Obama plan would do -- they are the "wealthy" at issue -- translates into job cuts first and foremost, and in not hiring more people. And that means more working people out work, more families hurting, more people who can't afford the pay the mortgage much less health care -- AND fewer tax payers.
Just like the answer to high oil prices isn't taxing oil companies more -- they'll just pass it right on to us and the consumer will be the one to suffer -- it's insisting that every new vehicle sold in America within X number of years (and I don't mean ten -- how about three?) hit a certain mile per gallon average -- and it goes up every two years. Demand will go down and so will price, and big oil will start investing money in other kinds of fuel.
None of this is brain surgery.
"Man out of the house rule."
You mentioned this once before, and I've got to admit, I'm entirely ignorant about it. Entirely. It sounds like something that would be nonsense, but I haven't found you prone to posting nonsense, let alone repeating it. Can you elaborate or maybe provide a good link or two?
Thanks, Bram -- I try not to post nonsense on THIS Web site.
It's a very complicated thing and much has been written about it, especially in connection with Moynihan. Basically, what Moynihan was concerned about was something that had been going on for some time -- he blew the whistle on it in the mid-'60s -- but he was not listened to: the Aid to Families of Dependent Children program gave welfare money to indigent families -- but only when the father died, was disabled -- or had deserted his family. Because only a "broken" family was eligible, vast numbers of black men left or were kicked out or just understood they weren't going to be part of the
"family" from the outset because the "family" was economically often better off without him. (The idea of this is barbaric to me -- it actually sickens me. Imagine if you were one of those men who was basically told you can't be part of the "family" or your children's live? Or a wife who loved her husband but knew he had to go for the sake of the kids?)
As for the effect on children, Pat Moynihan correctly warned that when children grew up without the presence of fathers, the result is social chaos, including crime and promiscuity. He was dead on. Well, we now know that the father is very important to the child's well-being and may be more important to the child's well-being and development than the mother.
Bill Clinton actually reformed the program in question to limit the years of eligibility, but the damage had been done. There is a culture of fatherlessness in the inner city -- thanks to people who, admittedly, were trying to do the right thing.
And, Bram, I am sorry if it seems I make too much of the problems of the inner city, but I truly believe it is America's great shame. More than health care or any of the other issues. It's been our number one problem for decades but I suspect taht because it seems so hopeless, we don't talk about it as much as we should. And the dissolution of the family unit is a major part of what led to the problems in the inner city.
yes, you are right, but add to that the middle and upper class me, me , me, i can do it all, all at the same time lifestylethat has intact families living under the same roof but more like ships passing in the night. over scheduling, no family togetherness except for a frantic "vacation" that is over scheduled and no vacation at all. it's way more than just inner cities. it's attitudes across the board. many of the same lack of ethics and morals and familial bonds are rampant in the middle and upper middle and wealthy it is just dressed up better.
i saw in back in the late 60's in places like fox chapel and ohara and aspinwall.
What Sherry describes is true enough. Somewhere along the line it became fashionable that we shouldn't question anyone else's sense of what is right and wrong; that there is no such thing as truth because everything is subjective and just a matter of opinion; that classical virtues long regarded as the model for a good life -- prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude and charity -- were just words. All that matters is my gratification. Absolutely. And these problems are rampant in middle class America.
But the inner city poses unique challenges nowhere else presented. Study after study shows the importance of actually having a father physically present in the same house as the children. While there are many exceptions, in general the absence of a father leads to severe social pathologies not otherwise felt. It may seem peculiar but the studies show that when a father dies, children are generally not affected in the same long-term negative ways as when he leaves on his own or at the behest of the mother. The absense of a father in the majority of inner city homes is the primary reason the innner city suffers from far more severe social pathologies than suburbia.
And I, for one, have grown weary of hearing people blame black men for a condition that our own government policies fueled, and in fact, fostered and engendered.
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