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 class warOn Election Day, The Boston Globe reported, Logan International Airport in Boston was running short of parking spaces. Not for cars — for private jets. Big donors were flooding into the city to attend Mitt Romney’s victory party. They were, it turned out, misinformed about political reality. But the disappointed plutocrats weren’t wrong about who was on their side. This was very much an election pitting the interests of the very rich against those of the middle class and the poor. And the Obama campaign won largely by disregarding the warnings of squeamish “centrists” and embracing that reality, stressing the class-war aspect of the confrontation. This ensured not only that President Obama won by huge margins among lower-income voters, but that those voters turned out in large numbers, sealing his victory. The important thing to understand now is that while the election is over, the class war isn’t. The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth — in the name of fiscal responsibility — the ground they failed to gain in an open election. Before I get there, a word about the actual vote. Obviously, narrow economic self-interest doesn’t explain everything about how individuals, or even broad demographic groups, cast their ballots. Asian-Americans are a relatively affluent group, yet they went for President Obama by 3 to 1. Whites in Mississippi, on the other hand, aren’t especially well off, yet Mr. Obama received only 10 percent of their votes. These anomalies, however, weren’t enough to change the overall pattern. Meanwhile, Democrats seem to have neutralized the traditional G.O.P. advantage on social issues, so that the election really was a referendum on economic policy. And what voters said, clearly, was no to tax cuts for the rich, no to benefit cuts for the middle class and the poor. So what’s a top-down class warrior to do? The answer, as I have already suggested, is to rely on stealth — to smuggle in plutocrat-friendly policies under the pretense that they’re just sensible responses to the budget deficit. Consider, as a prime example, the push to raise the retirement age, the age of eligibility for Medicare, or both. This is only reasonable, we’re told — after all, life expectancy has risen, so shouldn’t we all retire later? In reality, however, it would be a hugely regressive policy change, imposing severe burdens on lower- and middle-income Americans while barely affecting the wealthy. Why? First of all, the increase in life expectancy is concentrated among the affluent; why should janitors have to retire later because lawyers are living longer? Second, both Social Security and Medicare are much more important, relative to income, to less-affluent Americans, so delaying their availability would be a far more severe hit to ordinary families than to the top 1 percent. Or take a subtler example, the insistence that any revenue increases should come from limiting deductions rather than from higher tax rates. The key thing to realize here is that the math just doesn’t work; there is, in fact, no way limits on deductions can raise as much revenue from the wealthy as you can get simply by letting the relevant parts of the Bush-era tax cuts expire. So any proposal to avoid a rate increase is, whatever its proponents may say, a proposal that we let the 1 percent off the hook and shift the burden, one way or another, to the middle class or the poor. The point is that the class war is still on, this time with an added dose of deception. And this, in turn, means that you need to look very closely at any proposals coming from the usual suspects, even — or rather especially — if the proposal is being represented as a bipartisan, common-sense solution. In particular, whenever some deficit-scold group talks about “shared sacrifice,” you need to ask, sacrifice relative to what? As regular readers may know, I’m not a fan of the Bowles-Simpson report on deficit reduction that laid out a poorly designed plan that for some reason has achieved near-sacred status among the Beltway elite. Still, at least you can say this for Bowles-Simpson: When it talked about shared sacrifice, it started from a “baseline” that already assumed the end of the high-end Bush tax cuts. At this point, however, just about all the deficit scolds seem to want us to count the expiration of those cuts — which were sold on false pretenses, and were never affordable — as some kind of big giveback by the rich. It isn’t. So keep your eyes open as the fiscal game of chicken continues. It’s an uncomfortable but real truth that we are not all in this together; America’s top-down class warriors lost big in the election, but now they’re trying to use the pretense of concern about the deficit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Let’s not let them pull it off. www.nytimes.com |
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mrconservative64 11-Dec-12, 13:49 |
You are correct... |
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yes |
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hennybogan1953 11-Dec-12, 15:02 |
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dmaestro 11-Dec-12, 15:23 |
Of the rock mosque in Jerusalem while making history by being the first President to do so, and the force Christians and Jews to convert or die. Why is that so difficult for vile leftists like dm to admit? Dhenny, please explain... |
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hennybogan1953 11-Dec-12, 16:03 |
youtu.be |
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dmaestro 11-Dec-12, 17:30 |
Shame on dhenny! Doesn't he realize making god angry dooms him to hell? He must be an atheist. |
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jonheck 12-Dec-12, 10:20 |
new member What am I supposed to put in "subject"? I think this goes auto. to "class war" doesn't it something about last Nov 6th, USA? I was quick to thank the American female voter after Nov 6th. They are over 50% of the voters, so a couple of points +/- go a long way. Romney should have won easily, economy/non-incumbent, but in the end it wasn't enough. GOP far out clowns and their frequently expressed positions won the day for the Democrat's. Who can forget last years weekly "GOP Primary Debates Comedy Hour". What a cast! Romney hung in there and ended up with the nod, his mistake was approving of too many of the jokes. jon |
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Jon ... ... "class war" is a frequently-used term for what's happening in a down economy. If we have a "satisfied Middle Class" [like in the 1990s], this term doesn't come up. This was Romney's election, yes; it's too bad he misread the demographics so poorly. |
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jonheck |
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obama voters Many obama voters had absolutely no idea what dodd frank is, the ACA, the meaning of the word "deficit"........anyone who believes the conventional thought on obamacare would be scared of Romney due to his statement that he would repeal the ACA. There are many people who think free health insurance is going to fall from the sky in the same way that obama was going to pay mortgages in 2008. This is not to say that there are not completely ignorant romney supporters. But, I've been annoyed ever since election night at the acknowledgement given to minorities for supporting Obama. There's this idea that it's a bad thing that Romney didn't appeal to minorities (and women). Why isn't anyone questioning how informed minority voters are? It's no secret that Obama is trendy and being a liberal is more socially acceptable than being a conservative in many places. So basically, is Obama's win indicative of anything other than current pop culture in the United States? |
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tat3225 |
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changeling |
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Why is there all this chatter about health care when we mis-spend trillions on minding other peoples' business? |
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chaz |
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tat ... ... invested in Russia and China? Please explain. |
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misunderstood |
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chaz New Dodd Frank regulation mandates that US energy companies that do business abroad (this is like, all of them I believe) must make absolutely all of their business dealings outside of the United States public information. In detail. Leaving Russian energy giants like Gazprom (owned by the russian government) and Chinese energy companies...etc....absolutely thrilled. among other things. |
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changeling |
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jonheck 13-Dec-12, 03:06 |
Tat/Obamacare It's obvious that US health care needs some work and I'm a "try something" kind of guy. Romney's promise was to trash the initiative then later say that he would use some of it's good points in his "new" plan. When? If Congress had been allowed out of that political bombshell we wouldn't have seen anything helpful in the foreseeable future. Romney is an accomplished business person and is surely knowledgeable of the numerous successful problem solving processes out there. None of them include blindly "trashing", but rather endorse moving on and correcting aspects of solutions that are not achieving desired and expected results. Our government would best function in the same manner when legislation doesn't completely work out as planned, but I see no evidence that they our capable. Change: political rhetoric, U-turn proceeding perpendicular too the road to progress. Peace Jon |
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Jon My biggest problem with Obamacare is that it's not really healthcare reform. It's a pile of tax hikes dressed up as healthcare reform and most of the new tax revenue isn't even going towards healthcare. It's a package of a few useful regulations and extraordinary tax increases disguised as healthcare reform. |
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jonheck 13-Dec-12, 06:19 |
Tat/Obamacare Peace Jon |
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jonheck 13-Dec-12, 06:29 |
Obamacare Jon |
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jonheck 13-Dec-12, 06:50 |
Obamacare Jon |
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