Same ol' Rubio plus "middle class"

By Frank Moraes

David Weigel posted an article at Slate yesterday, "Marco Rubio Mentions the Middle Class 35 Times in One Speech." But that's not really what it's about. But it does get to the heart of the matter. You see, Rubio mentioned the middle class, but never really engaged with the concept.

As I've noted before, this is par for the course when it comes to Republicans. Their idea of reaching out to groups that aren't already part of their coalition is to talk nice. There will be no changes to policy! I understand where they're coming from. Republicans have been very good over the past several decades at convincing people who have very contrary interests to vote for them anyway. Why wouldn't they think it will continue to work? And the sad thing is that they may well be right.

This is SOP: take traditional Republican positions and claim that they are good for the middle class. So Weigel notes that Rubio just reworks his standard speech except that "stuff that Republicans wanted to do already becomes stuff that will help 'the middle class.'" And just look at what that stuff is!

Rubio says, "Sound monetary policy would also encourage middle class job creation." This is just the old "job creator" canard dressed up. The Federal Reserve has a duel mandate: keep inflation low and employment high. But Republicans don't like this. They want the Fed to have a single mandate: keep inflation low. The claim is that this will help employment by helping the "job creators." This is supply-side economics: the money will tinkle down on the poor.


Read more »

The end of his story

By Carl 

Back in 1992, all-around idiot Francis Fukuyama posited the end of history. His rationale was, now that the Soviet Union was dead and the then-nascent Chinese economy was tooling up to be globally competitive, the ideology of liberal democracy married to capitalism would take hold and the world would enter a glorious era of unicorns and bunnies.

Twenty years on, it seems more a warped Peter Pan nightmarish scenario. Even America has lost the thread of that ridiculous ideology that Fukuyama posited after twelve years of Reagan/Bush.

Now, no one is disputing that more of the world has tended towards democracy in the past twenty years. One only need look back over the past decade, even just the past year, to see dictatorship after dictatorship topple and fall, either from internal forces such as the Arab Spring or external forces as the Gulf Wars.

But Fukuyama's point, that democracy is somehow the best political system for a nation's economics, has been thrown into disrepute, even just in America. The past twelve years have seen 99% of the nation fall far behind corporatist economic growth and since corporations control the democracy... well, would anyone posit that having the lowest possible tax rates on corporations has done anything to improve either the democracy or the economy?

Enter Josh Barro of Bloomberg. His dad is Robert Barro, one of the signal figures in macroeconomic policy, a man so adept at the field that it's his text book students read. A man who is now working on trying to codify how religion fits into the macroeconomic picture. So he has a deep background in economics.

Josh is a former fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank -- the board of directors includes Bill Kristol -- so he's hardly a socialist. He seems to get it:

Conservatives do not have economic ideas that are good for the middle class. Since the 1970s, wage gains have decoupled from productivity gains and the median family has therefore reaped a disproportionately small share of the benefits of growth. Conservatives are left without anything to say about this problem.

What can they say about it? I have a few ideas, though I don't think conservatives are likely to like any of them too much.

Read more »

Behind the Ad: President Obama's plan for the next four years

By Richard K. Barry 

(Another installment in our extensive " Behind the Ad" series.) 

Who: The Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: New Hampshire, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Colorado.

What's going on: The Obama campaign released a new upbeat ad yesterday -- "Determination" -- that draws attention to the president's plan to secure economic security for the middle class. He's beginning to make his closing argument that we've come too far to turn back now.

As the campaign argues:

Unlike Governor Romney, the President has been consistent and clear about his vision and values because he knows his plan will actually create jobs and strengthen the middle class – and that recent history teaches us the right way to grow the economy is from the middle out, not the top down.

And, as The Huffington Post notes:

In the spot, Obama speaks directly to the camera about his plans for a second term, including boosting manufacturing and spending on education. He also touts first-term accomplishments, including the bailout of the auto industry and the end of the Iraq war. 

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Biden misspeaks, Romney and Ryan -- desperate and dishonest -- pounce

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Vice President Biden clearly misspoke, or rather spoke with a lack of clarity, when he said yesterday that the middle class has been "buried the last four years."

As he said later in the day, with a bit more clarity, if with a lack of elegance, "[t]he middle class was buried by the polices of Romney and that Ryan supported. What they're proposing is Bush economic policies on steroids -- that's what this is. But folks, the middle class is coming back. It's coming back like Americans always do."

Obviously, what he meant to say initially was that the middle class has been buried during the Obama presidency, just as it was buried long before that, because of Republican policies.

But of course one thing we know is that Romney and Ryan, who prefer blatant dishonesty to talking about what they actually stand for and would do in office, never pass up an opportunity to take a line out of context in order to score some cheap political points, screaming bloody "Gotcha!" and preying on the presumed ignorance of voters.

Yes, Biden served this one up for them, but their response was typically shameless:  

A tweet from Romney's account read: "Agree with @JoeBiden, the middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November."

A spokesman for his campaign went further.

"Vice President Biden made a stunning admission today and we couldn't agree more: the middle class has been 'buried' under the last four years of this President's policies," wrote Curt Cashour, the Virginia Communications Director for the Romney campaign.

"Under President Obama, the middle class has suffered from crushing unemployment, rising prices and falling incomes. They can't afford to be 'buried' for four more years. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will take our nation in a new direction and are offering exactly what hardworking families need – real reforms for a real recovery."

At a campaign event in Iowa, Romney's running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, also pounced on his counterpart's comments.

"Of course the middle class has been buried. They are being buried by regulations, they are being buried by taxes... they are being buried by borrowing, they are being buried by the Obama administration's economic failures," Ryan said. "You see the Obama economic agenda failed not because it was stopped, it failed because it was passed."

Basically, just the usual propaganda, easily dismissed:

-- Biden never said that the middle class was buried because of Obama's policies. In fact, quite the reverse. (So, no, there was no "stunning admission." What a pile of shit.)

-- Obama inherited a disastrous economy and launched the road to recovery. Jobs have been created, net jobs, and while many are still struggling, the situation is not nearly as dire as it would have been had Republican policies prevailed.

-- The Romney-Ryan plan for "real recovery" involves massive tax cuts for the rich, tax increases for the middle class, taking access to affordable health care away from tens of millions of Americans, and slashing the programs upon which so many Americans, including the middle class, depend.

-- Tax rates are currently at historically low levels.

-- Under-regulation, not over-regulation, was one of the main causes of the economic crisis that the president inherited from Bush.

-- And if Ryan wants to talk about "economic failures," maybe he should actually answer some fucking questions for a change instead of doing everything possible to avoid having to get into the ugly details of his extremist right-wing budget plan.

The fact that Romney and Ryan pounce so quickly on any and every gaffe, and even on anything that can possibly be taken out of context, shows not just how desperate they are at this point but just how vapid their campaign is, how unwilling they are to engage Obama and Biden, not to mention the voters generally, on anything of substance.

They're just hoping their lies stick, that voters are too stupid to see through their transparently stupid campaign.

Needless to say, their opponents hold the American electorate in much higher regard.

Who actually is the Middle Class?

By LindaBeth

(See here for part 1.)

So who is the middle class?

McCain and Palin have a conception of who the middle class, "average" Americans are. Their statements struck me because their conception does not at all correspond to the reality of Americans' lives.

The Tax Foundation has an excellent paper on income distribution in the United States that sheds light on the "middle class" definition problem, and the income statistics might shock you. First, the paper very rightly points to the fact that "middle class" is an imprecise, political term, meant to appeal to those people who "feel" they are middle class, average Americans, not the statistical average or median income earners. As such, middle class becomes a political term that serves as shorthand for not-millionaires and the not-poor; indeed, those individuals are invisible in American politics. It indicates policies that are supposed to be for "regular" Americans, regular being defined as not uber-rich and not for "welfare dependents."

Almost 80% of people see themselves as middle class and only 2% of people see themselves as "upper class." So clearly, many Americans don't recognize their economic privilege in defining themselves as "average" when they are much better off than most. Yet these folks are feeling a financial strain in our tough economic times. I'm not denying their plight, but if so many Americans see themselves as financially burdened, average Americans, when they are in fact not at all average, then an awful lot of people have a warped conception of what the plight is of the actual middle class, working class and working poor!

To bring this point home, let's look at who actually is middle class, or more accurately put, middle income. There are two different ways that economists describe middle income: either the middle 20% (the 3rd quintile), with 40% higher (4th and 5th quintiles) and 40% lower (1st and 2nd quintiles), or as the middle 60%, with 20% higher and 20% lower.

According to the 2006 U.S. Census, among all households (married, single, with and without children),

Median income among all U.S. households in 2006 was $48,201. The middle 20 percent ranged from about $38,000 to $60,000; and the middle 60 percent—the "Baucus middle class"—stretched from about $20,000 to $97,000 [...] The range of the middle 20 percent [of married households] was approximately $57,000 to $83,000, and the range of the "Baucus middle class"—the middle 60 percent—was about $35,500 to $122,000. This $122,000 figure, then, represents the highest possible income that a married household could accurately call middle income, or "middle class."

By contrast, for all single households, the middle 20 percent of incomes fell between $22,000 and $36,000 with a median of $29,000. That's less than half of the median for married households. The middle 60 percent stretched from about $12,000 to $60,000. (emphasis added)

Did you catch that? Half of married households earn less than $69,716; half of single people earn less than $29,000. The most you can earn as a married household and call yourself middle class is $122,000; the most you can earn as a middle class single person is $60,000. If you make over those incomes, you are earning more than 80% of those in your household type. And we had a presidential candidate suggesting that married households earning over $250,000 weren't rich? And that singles making over $200,000 weren't either? Say what?! Saying those incomes are not rich, and Palin suggesting she is middle class, makes a mockery of the actual middle class, not to mention makes the working class and the poor completely invisible, as if they don't exist.

Regarding Sarah Palin's middle-class-ness: clearly her income puts her outside of what qualifies as middle income. But from a sociological perspective, class isn't all about income; rather, it includes wealth (net worth), education, and prestige. And with her college education, job as governor with associated prestige and power, as well as her $1 million+ net worth, she is clearly and upper-middle class American.

Next parts: socialism, poverty, and the right's rhetoric on those who pay no income tax.

(Cross-posted to Speak Truth to Power.)

Income disparity and "Middle Class" assumptions

By LindaBeth

(Part one of several.)

I had wanted to write about the concept of the middle class and "who counts" back when McCain was criticizing Obama's tax plans and Palin was self-labeling as a middle class American to explain why those media elites are against her, you betcha. At the same time, I have been teaching Sociology 101 for the first time (after majoring in it in undergrad), which obviously involves a lot of discussion over class, economic inequality, the meritocracy myth, the race-class connection, among other things that are the elephant in the room when addressing income, poverty, and taxation in the United States.

But teaching kept me super busy at the time, so I missed the opportunity to write about the realities of American income back then, but I have been given another chance with a recent Factcheck.org update, raising the issue of taxes and the poor that I want to discuss. I also thought it would be the perfect lead-in for my new blog, "Speak Truth to Power," which will focus on social justice and issues of institutional inequality that I am interested in, but seem out of place on Don't Ya Wish Your Girlfriend Was Smart Like Me?, my gender-sexuality cultural analysis blog.

So without further ado, I want to delineate a few thoughts about income, the "middle class," average Americans, and economic disparity. This first part goes back to those campaign moments that bothered me so. The second part takes a look at who exactly are the middle class. And the next parts will touch on issues of taxation, poverty, entitlement, and socialism that came up in the campaign and will not die.

1. During the first presidential debate, McCain made the following comment:

I know that the worst thing we could possibly do is to raise taxes on anybody, and a lot of people might be interested in Senator Obama's definition of "rich." (you can simultaneously read the transcript and watch the video here; clip begins at 11: 25 and the exact comment is made at 18:55).

According to Factcheck.org:

• Obama's plan will cut the taxes for 95% of families with children and 81.3% of households overall. (citation)
• "Obama's plan would raise taxes only on individuals making more than $200,000 a year, or couples or families making more than $250,000." (citation)
• "Those reporting adjusted gross income of more than $250,000 to the IRS are projected to make up 2 percent of households next year [...] Joint returns with more than $250,000 adjusted gross income and single returns with more than $125,000 adjusted gross income together are estimated to make up 3.1 percent of households next year." (citation)

So when McCain says we'd be surprised who Obama considers rich, I wonder who he considers rich, if it's not the mere 3.1% of households making $125,000+ per capita (adult).

But the even bigger question in my mind is that if McCain thinks that singles/families with incomes of $125/$250k are not rich, then who does he think the poor or even the middle class are?

2. Sarah Palin at an October rally (via The Washington Independent):

I know what Americans are going through,” she said after the stock markets took another dive last week. “Todd and I, heck, we’re going through that right now even as we speak — which may put me again kind of on the outs of those Washington elite who don’t like the idea of just an everyday, working-class American running for such an office. (emphasis added)

And Palin at the vice-presidential debate:

Now you said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that's not patriotic [...] We're going to fight for the middle-class, average, everyday American family like mine.

The Palins earned about $250,000 in 2007, according to The Washington Post. Their family net worth is over $1 million.

Is this what a "middle-class, average, everyday American family" looks like? Who a "working class" American is?

See Sunday, November 16th for part two: "Who is the Middle Class?"

(Cross-posted to Speak Truth to Power.)

The job ahead for Democrats -- A Primer

By Carol Gee

Voters and elected officials are being called upon to lead in making the changes needed by its citizens to the government of the United States. It will be essential in November to elect local and national Democrats in large numbers and, most importantly, to completely change out the current administration. That means no substitutes, namely Senator John McCain.

Because the nation has a huge cleanup ahead of itself next year, it will be useful to remember the basics. Things could be much worse than you think, according to "Facilitatrix" at the Lucidity Forum. To quote:

So take up metaphorical arms and do what we need done to save us all. Winning an election isn’t going to make things magically better. But it’s a necessary first step toward unraveling our knots and cutting the puppets’ strings. Just don’t expect the superclass to give anything back without a dirty, ugly, bloody fight.

What do we need to do "to save us all," as this fine writer suggests? Party unity will be important, and it will come, I believe well ahead of the August convention in Denver. Meanwhile there are a few things upon which we can work. Each person who understands the nature and depth of a problem needs to contribute to its solution.

First we need to prepare for the fight. The Republican party will fight to the end because they have a great deal to lose. Democrats, if they listen to constituents who matter most, will work to diminish the stranglehold of the oligarchy currently in charge of the U.S. government.

In order to be successful everyone needs to stick to what is most important, avoiding unnecessary distractions. Mainstream media's tendency toward reporting the "horse race" aspects of election campaigns leaves out much thoughtful analysis. Regularly ask the question about Republican claims or spin, "What is the real deal here?

Learning what is actually true is essential to the effort. Voters and Super Delegates alike must stay well informed from reliable sources. Reading from objective foreign sources, from trustworthy bloggers, or from the best of the nationally recognized newspapers, is absolutely essential. You will not get enough of the truth from television news.

We all need to maintain a good level of hopefulness. Having faith in the election process is important for Democrats to maintain the confidence necessary to win. And there is no logical reason why we would not be able to take back our country from the destructive forces of oligarchy. A majority of citizens believe we are on the wrong track. They will believe in the rightness of the cause, and a Democratic set of solutions.

(Cross-posted at South by Southwest.)

Watching the wheels spin

By Carl


This ain't rocket science, guys...

CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Every politician in the U.S. presidential race claimed to be fighting for the middle class, and it seemed a sound strategy -- until the Democratic front-runners tried to define who, exactly, was middle class.

While Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama couldn't agree during a recent debate whether someone earning $97,500 or more could be considered middle class, voters have little difficulty judging who isn't -- the presidential candidates themselves.

"None of them really represent the middle class," said Rick Fulmer, 52, who works at the YMCA as a fitness trainer. "Both parties are tied to big business. It takes millions to run for president."

This is both ridiculously easy and profoundly difficult.

The middle class is easily defined, economically. Since the average family of four earns $45,000 a year, the safest definition of the "middle class" is the 80% or so who range around that point. Let's say any family (of neaarly any size) that earns from $35,000 to $75,000, just to be on the safe side, because census data says that a third of American households earn in that range.

Simple, right? Here's where it gets tricky: people who earn more (and some who earn less) believe they are middle class, when in fact they are not.

It's the belief that matters, however. A family that earns around $200,000 (two wage earners, with two kids, say) that lives in New York City or its suburbs will assume it's middle class, because that $200,000 doesn't buy much, once you factor taxes, mortgage, heating, and health insurance into the mix. Perhaps their disposable income is more along the lines of someone earning $75,000 but lives in Texas or Florida.

See? Not middle class, yet very middle class. The family in New York can't afford private schools, even if their income says they should. So education initiatives are very important to them (indeed, they probably moved to a district with better schools because of that very fact).

Too, when firefighters and some teachers make $75,000 a year or more, the definition of middle class becomes even fuzzier. While technically these earners are upper-middle class, you'd have to agree that their jobs keep their values firmly planted in middle class terra firma.

When politicians talk about "middle class," they're talking about the values of hard work, saving a buck, trying to live the American ideal of 2.6 kids, a house, two cars in the garage and providing for the family.

The proverbial "chicken in every pot" of a few generations ago has morphed into a Nintendo in every living room (or a PC, if you buy Microsoft's mission statement), but that's the spirit of the middle class.

Which is what makes the election of George Bush all the more unlikely, since he was born on third base thinking he'd hit a triple. He shares NO middle class values. He's never worked a hard day in his life that wasn't for a photo opportunity.

Sure, he can talk a good "middle class" game, but how can someone truly understand the middle class unless he (or she) has either lived it, or gone out of his way to understand it, like the Kennedy clan has?

What makes this discussion even fuzzier when it comes to Democrats, who traditionally have been and rightly should be the party of the middle class, is this interesting tidbit from the Heritage Foundation: 2005 tax data showed Democrats represent nearly 60 percent of the wealthiest one-third of congressional districts -- those with a high number of people earning more than $100,000 per year.

Admittedly, most of those are on the coasts, which means much higher costs of living, which means, yes, these "rich people" are the very essence of the middle class. Unfortunately, the tax code is skewed towards viewing them as rich, which means they get hammered by things like the alternative minimum tax, even if like you and I, they send their kids to public schools and ride the subways.

(OK, full disclosure...I'm not middle class. I make much more money, so extract the "me" and "we" bits out, even if I do ride the subways and sent my daughter to public school.)

This might be part of the disagreement that Obama and Clinton are having over the increased Social Security tax that Obama proposes. It would hit New Yorkers hard, "middle class" New Yorkers.

Personally, I have no problem with Obama's proposal. While there is no current Social Security crisis, I've always believed that Social Security taxes should not have a ceiling and in fact, should be applied to ALL income (with the possible exclusion of bank interest earned in a savings account, but that's a different part of my NotPresident platform), and that this revenue really should be locked away and not used in return for IOUs from the general spending fund.

So what are "middle class values," anyway?

Well, here's what I believe and if I was counseling a candidate, what I would tell him or her:

1) Hard work is its own best reward, but is also a path to the American Dream. I'm aware of the naivete it takes to swallow that, but enough people do that you have to account for it. The American Dream was never about being wealthy. The Horatio Alger stories saw the hero only achieve a decent living, never wealth. He became comfortable. The "chicken in every pot" ideal. To that extent, this is an attainable value. To the extent that this value gets warped by the economic royalists into "the American Dream is a million bucks," and the concommitant tax cuts they espouse and manipulate the average American into supporting...well, that's a con game. People don't get rich through hard work for someone else, and studies show that most people who work hard for themselves can't even promise a comfortable lifestyle.

2) Since Christ championed the poor, we should help them too. This will piss off an awful lot of hard left readers, but the simple fact is, America is a Christian nation, and while that has negative connotations in some circles, it shouldn't be perceived as evil. Hell, I'm Christian, and what goes on in the Religious Right offends me, too. But Christ's teachings about "Do unto others" and the other rules he set forth for living in a state of grace hold deeper meaning to most Christians, the ones you meet everyday in stores and at the PTA. They really Do believe that the poor need our help. This message gets warped by the economic royalists as "the poor are all about handouts," which distracts attention from the real reasons middle class families can't get ahead: the profiteers and pirates of the corporate classes.

3) If you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone. True dat. I think most families, apart from the gossip aspect, are happy not to know what their neighbors are up to, because it makes them fair game for intrusion themselves. This gets corrupted by the economic royalists into the pro-life logical fallacies and the pro-gun "from my cold dead hands" trope. I'm not sure why. I think it has to do with another distraction, possibly as government and the rich explore how to exploit the new technologies available for intrusion into control and economic devastation. But that's just a guess.

4) Finally, I'll have what he's having. Pretty simple, this is about not just fairness, but comparative greed. We all know this as "Keeping up with the Joneses." Naturally, as any TV watcher will tell you, this gets exploited by the economic royalists to create a need where none exists (really, if a Prius can get you from point A to point B, why would you need a Hummer?), which is the linchpin mechanism that feeds all the other exploitations I've listed above.

So this really is simple. And hard. And confusing. But once you grasp it, you can go with it.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)