The Rich Live Larger And Longer Than You And Me

I read an interesting article at the Atlantic and it got me thinking...

The core philosophy of the Republican Party these days is that a problem only exists if you spend money on it, meaning tax dollars, meaning THEIR tax dollars.

If you stop spending money trying to solve poverty (or the healthcare crisis) the problem ceases to exist.

In the mind of the Republican Party, poverty is only a problem because solving it costs rich people money they’d rather spend on another home in another tropical tax haven or on another corporate takeover.

If you stop spending money to alleviate poverty or the ill health of poor people the poor will go away and die and solve the problem more cheaply and therefore more efficiently.

As Scrooge said “Let them die then and decrease the surplus population.”

Why the American public doesn’t find this repugnant is a mystery until you realize that vast wealth also buys a lot of PR, a lot of network time, or, in the case of FoxNews, a whole network. (The Koch Brothers now hold a partial veto power over programming on PBS because they help fund it.) The .1% own most of the media.

The rich are not necessarily fascists, but they benefit from fascist policies so they often aren’t inclined to oppose them. It takes time out of their leisurely existence. Those who donate to liberal and progressive causes are to be applauded. They are acting against their own financial interests, just as the rural poor are voting against theirs, but what use are so few in the face of so many?

There is a meme going around that suggests that poverty is caused by the poor. You hear this on right wing talk radio.

Oddly enough, it’s true. In a way not quite captured by the right wing meme.

The poor who listen to right wing radio and watch FoxNews and nod obediently are helping deepen their own poverty and ignorance and ill health, by cooperating with the rejection of ObamaCare and by disbelieving science, by obeying their masters, by voting for Republican candidates who perpetuate their powerlessness. They are not stupid people, even though they are behaving stupidly. They are ignorant, not stupid. They may not even be ignorant, just ignorant of their predicament. They have been conned and are now invested in that con game, too embarrassed to admit it, because admitting you were tricked is harder than losing what was stolen from you in the process.

You have to reach a very low point before you admit you did something dumb, and, luckily for the Republican Party, most of the poor people who vote for them would rather die first.

Vast Income Inequality Has Its Fans

When each new economics report comes out telling us that the extremely rich have again taken more of the pie and more of the people who do the work are falling into poverty, Wall Street's paid apologists go on TV and lend pithy quotes to columns for the Wall Street Journal.

These apologists are wrong but they manage to hide behind a lot of manipulated data. It isn't unfair to compare their song and dance to one of those three card monte tricksters on street corners, the guys who always win your money. The very rich always win because they use the same kinds of tricks. The money gets manipulated out of working people's pockets into the pockets of the people who win the game. Is it still theft when it's billions of dollars instead of tens and twenties? Let's just say it's complicated enough that it's harder to prosecute. The New Republic's Timothy Noah and Jonathan Chait and economist Brad Delong explain it much better than I do.

MarketWatch: The rich continue to get much richer while everyone else is poorer.

Business Insider: The middle class was losing ground even when the economy was good.

Business Week: the social contract is unraveling in developed countries because of extreme income inequality.

From the Guardian: looking at the data. It isn't pretty, unless you are one of the handful of lucky winners. Imagine a lottery that rewarded winners with money stolen from you...

Think conservatives are pro family? This Guardian writer says "think again".

If you think poverty is all right as long as you have your health, consider that the poorer you are the shorter your lifespan. This BBC report shows this is even true in the UK where access to healthcare isn't restricted to people of means as it is in the US. Is this pro-life? No, it's only pro-life for the wealthy.

The Atlantic has the charts and graphs. Having had personal experience with their rigorous fact checking department I know they are reliable.

Want to see where the big money is? Look here, at the website of the Paris School of Economics.

Deficit Hype is Overblown

The deficit talk is hyped though. In recessions deficits are inevitable. And, anyway, deficits are a corporate norm.

When did the Republicans change from the party that created big deficits to the one that makes them an issue? When they dumped them on the next president. Democrats are always left with the messes Republicans create, and are always cleaning them up. Clinton took Reagan and Bush's enormous deficits and turned them into a surplus. The deficit from Bush Jr. though is much bigger and the financial catastrophe he created much worse.

The fact is America's rich are undertaxed at the national level, and it's worse at the state level.

The threat from the Rich Taxpayers' League is that rich taxpayers would move out of the state if the legislature asked them to pay the same rate as regular people. Thing is, this doesn't tend to happen.

I continue to be surprised that a major party can make rich people its only priority and get away with it. Putting rich people above everyone else seems like bad politics; putting rich people's convenience above the lives of the vulnerable is un-American.

If you haven't read it yet, you should read David Cay Johnston's great piece telling what the rich don't want you to know about taxes. This is the kind of reporting that won him his Pulitzer. Getting the rich to pay the same rate the rest of us do would help close the deficit.

Warren Buffett has said he thinks it's wrong that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. And he's right.

Where did the deficit come from? Here's a chart from the Center of Budget & Policy Priorities, with information from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office

Do you ever wonder why the deficit is an issue now? It didn't used to be. The raising of funds to pay for the things only government can do has gotten more difficult because the very rich have switched from helping pay for new roads, new schools and the like with their taxes to loaning the government money instead. Instead of contributing they are profiting.

Republicans Are Not Their Brothers' Keepers

When a respected insurance man supports Obama's Affordable Care Act it's worth listening. The question he leaves us with is this: Why is the national Chamber of Commerce working so hard to screw over small businesses across the country?

Obama's healthcare reform would help small businesses keep their employees healthy at an affordable cost. It would also help the people who they do business with, the people who buy their goods. Their average customer would have fewer financial worries, fewer health worries, and would be a better consumer with more dollars to spend. Why do Republicans oppose something that would boost the Main Street economy?

There's a moral dimension to this too. Society is responsible for its most vulnerable members. It isn't an optional responsibility, but the Republican position gives the richest Minnesotans an opt-out clause. They pay lower tax rates than the rest of us now. Rather than put their taxes back where they were under former Republican governors, the Republicans in the legislator would rather cut the poor and the sick off entirely. An extreme position opposed by most Minnesotans, and rightly so. But they are standing firm on it. Better to lose thousands of poor people than inconvenience the wealthiest members of our society.

I'm reminded of a famous quote: "Let them die then and reduce the surplus population." It was Scrooge who said that, but it might just as well be a modern Republican.

These new Republicans (so different from the old moderate Republicans) manage to put a smile on their faces and dress nicely, so the unsuspecting, inattentive voters don't imagine what their policies really mean. They go to church on Sunday and worship Jesus, but the rest of the week they forget the Sermon on the Mount and their Christian responsibility to the poor.

What's more sacred is their solemn promise to very very rich people to keep their tax rates lower than everybody else's, even yours and mine. How is this good politics? How is it good business? How is it consistent with Minnesota values?