Reply #35: "These people". . . .

[Tansy_Gold]

Are the economic elites. They can be dems or pukes, it doesn't matter. Their objective is to amass and then protect their own wealth, and with it their own political power. Many of them hold elective office or have been appointed to positions of power and/or influence. Virtually all of them have their own -- and their class's -- best interests at heart, and couldn't care less if they tried about the rest of us. Judge them not on their words or their campaign promises but on WHAT THEY DO AFTER THEY ARE IN POWER.

Look, the 'founding fathers' of the American republic were not working class folks, and even they had little interest in protecting the welfare of the working classes. They were liberals in the sense that they weren't monarchists, but their intent was to maintain THEIR control in THEIR colonies/states. Their class consciousness was built into the constitution as they wrote it -- slaves were 3/5 of a person but not really even a human being with "inalienable rights." Neither were women, and Abigail Adams knew that much full well.

And they have maintained their control of the government pretty much throughout the subsequent 234 years or whatever it is.

Unlike the European nation-states which evolved an effective working class politics (aka "socialism" :sarcasm:), the US never had that kind of revolution. Our "revolution" was one of elites vs. other elites. We had to fight a dreadful bloody war just to get rid of chattel slavery, which in many European countries had long been abolished by legislative (parliamentary) action. And after we got "rid" of chattel slavery, we -- "we" meaning the national government -- "compromised" with the former slaveholders to such an extent that it took another century -- 1865 end of Civil War to 1964 Civil Rights Act (which itsself was a full decade after "separate but equal" was abolished in Brown) -- to completely legislate much of the discriminatory residue of chattel slavery. And yet almost another half century has passed and we are still battling not just individual racism but institutionalized racism, and sexism, and agism, and half a dozen others.

Why is that? Because it is to the lasting economic benefit of the elites to do so.

I mean, seriously, there are people here on DU who will DEFEND the complete abolition of the estate tax because they believe dead people shouldn't be taxed and their heirs should be able to inherit unearned fortunes without hindrance. That is the extent to which the worship of individual wealth over the commonwealth -- words do have meaning, you know -- has taken us. "What's the Matter with Kansas?" is really what's the matter with far too many of us.

In terms of economics, Krugman is as much a protector of the elites as anyone. He advocates increasing the stimulus, deficits be damned, but the stimulus he advocates does almost NOTHING beyond funneling government funds into the hands of the already wealthy. Yes, if there were public works projects, infrastructure spending, that would provide "jobs" for a certain portion of the unemployed, and that would keep the "stimulus" money circulating in the US economy, but only for a very limited time. As long as the consumer goods are produced elsewhere, and under conditions little different from ante-bellum chattel slavery, and in a corporate structure that provides vast profits to the wealthy, THE STIMULUS WON'T WORK.

People here on DU were carrying on about a year ago about how wonderful the stimulus was and all the jobs it had created. I pointed out then that many of the jobs weren't created at all -- they were state and local jobs, usually in law enforcement, public works, and education, that had been SAVED by the stimulus. But what, I asked, would happen in another year when the stimulus funds had been used up, the wages had been spent on cheap crap from China, and no new jobs were created?

I was routinely crucified for being an Obama hater.

But here we are now 18 months or so into the Dem administration, and what's happening? Cities in California are laying off their entire police forces and contracting with private security companies. Teachers are being laid off just about everywhere. AND NO SUBSTANTIVE NUMBER OF NEW JOBS IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR HAS BEEN CREATED WITH THE STIMULUS FUNDS, WHICH HAVE NOW JUST ABOUT RUN OUT.

And the "leading economist" keep saying the increasing jobless numbers are "unexpected" and the rise in foreclosures is "unexpected" and the decline in net wages if "unexpected." Bullshit.

The home buyer tax credits only worked for a little while. The cash for clunkers allowed Bill the cat-killer Frist to buy a new car. People who couldn't afford the payments on a new car didn't buy one; the program benefited those who already could afford new cars -- or in the case of the home buyer credit, those who could afford mortgage payments -- but neither program did much for the overall economy.

Health care reform will help a few people who didn't have health care at all before HCR. It will not help everyone and it will not help right away even those it's going to help eventually. It will, however, provide great windfalls for the elites who either work for insurance companies or hold stock in them. Those are the people who will benefit most and first.

Financial reform is probably going to be the same kind of operation. The banks and investment houses and hedge funds and private equity firms will be protected from losses or costs, but the retirees and the homeowners and the student borrowers will get little if anything in terms of benefits. And the taxpayers will foot the bill for the defaults, the markdowns, the losses.

Social security is already a bit of a joke. In some ways, it's been improved over the years, but in other ways it hasn't, and the ways in which it hasn't been improved are ways that benefit and protect the elites.

1. Benefits are calculated on what an individual has paid into the system. Those who have never made very much will not get much out of social security when they retire. Many low-wage workers are therefore not able to "retire" in the sense that most of us think of retirement. They will often continue to work well past the normal retirement age of 65 or 67 or 70, because they cannot live on what social security pays them. That means they will continue to PAY INTO the system longer than they will benefit from it.

2. Those who continue to work after starting to collect social security still have to pay FICA taxes on their earnings, and if they make above a certain level, they also have to pay taxes on their social security benefits. This impacts the low-wage, low-SS beneficiaries much more than the upper earners.

3. The cap on FICA-applicable earnings means that lower-income people pay taxes into the system on virtually all of their earnings. The high-income people only pay on (roughly) the first $100,000. That means the percentage of their income that they pay into social security can be markedly lower than what a $30,000 administrative assistant pays.

4. There are two blocks of workers who have been moved out of the traditional payroll tax format. As more people are laid off traditional wage- or salary-earning jobs and re-enter the workforce either as truly self-employed individuals -OR- are hired by existing companies on an "independent contractor" basis, they are hit up for double the standard FICA tax. In other words, if you are laid off your job and take up selling Mary Kay cosmetics, you will pay the standard employee share of FICA taxes on your net earnings AND you will pay the standard employer's share as well. More and more companies, to cut down on their tax liability and boost their profits, and looking to make what used to be "employees" into "independent contractors." Now, do you think this arrangement benefits the companies/corporations more, or the employees/contractors? (The self-employed used to pay only 75% of the employee/employer contribution; they now pay 100%.)

Do you begin to see where this is all going? Maybe, maybe not. There are those who honestly and sincerely believe that with a president, house, and senate all in the hands of the Democratic party that progressive legislation is virtually guaranteed. In fact, with a Democratic president and both houses of congress, virtually NO progressive legislation has been passed. The health care reform package is NOT progressive. It isn't even remotely socialistic. The financial reforms under discussion are not progressive. They are not working-/middle-class friendly. The bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have not resulted in massive reversal of the trend in home foreclosures. Virtually no new private sector jobs are being created.

Unless and until the Obama administration is willing to stand up to the financial elites -- the banksters and the investors, the private equity firms, the for-profit charter school operators, the outsourcing manufactruing corporations, etc., etc., etc. -- there will be no economic turn around. Unless and until the JOBS are brought back to this country, the economy will continue to slide, and the money will continue to consolidate in the hands of fewer and fewer and fewer elites.

I wore red white and blue yesterday to get a discount on my coffee at my favorite coffee shop, but not in celebration of July 4, 1776. Mine was far more in solidarity with the sans-culottes of 14 Juillet 1789. The US still has something of a middle class. We do not have a monarchy quite as out of touch as the ancien regime of France. But the current administration, which seems far more concerned with appeasing the whims and ideology of the elites of the opposition than with taking care of the needs of its own constituency, is moving much closer to the disparity -- and the callous indifference to that disparity -- that led from the Bastille to the Guillotine.

Do not think that it cannot happen here. Remember that they do not care. They do not care.

THEY
DO
NOT
CARE.




TG, NTY