The Gender Pay Gap

June 17th, 2012

Via The Center for American Progress

"In 2010 the median full-time working man took home $47,715 in earnings, while the median full-time working woman made only $36,931—77.4 percent of that amount, or $10,784 less."

Here's what an American woman could do with that money.

Just A Reminder

May 18th, 2012

Quote Of The Day

April 21st, 2012

"We have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economics."

-- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Social Darwinism Explained

April 21st, 2012

Thomas Sowell Jumps The Shark

April 10th, 2012

Sigh. This is what passes for great thinking in the post "Derb" NRO offices?

In his column today, Thomas Sowell first regurgitates long debunked smears about half of Americans not paying their "fair share" (that would be the poor half).

That this is mendacious propaganda is illustrated HERE, HERE and HERE.

About That Romney "Tax Plan", cont...

Feb 27th, 2012

We looked at the numbers yesterday HERE and HERE. It's not just a more radical approach to revenue than even the W tax cuts; One of the component's of his plan is a full scale gutting of the social "safety net" he said he would preserve just weeks ago.

Frum savages Romney's departure from the comparatively rational proposal he released only last September and sums up the weekend's developments as follows:

"Compassionate conservatism has been dead for a long time. Romney's Detroit speech cremated the remains. As a man, Romney remains far and away the most capable of the presidential candidates seeking the Republican nomination. But he has now finally eliminated the policy differences separating him from the radical congressional wing. If Romney should win the Republican nomination, moderate and independent voters nationwide will be forced to decide: If they vote for Romney, who is it they're truly voting for?"

Romney Watch - His New "Get Over It" Strategy

Feb 26th, 2012

Something tells me this is not the way for Mitt to handle reaction to his casual statement last week in Michigan that his wife drives "a couple of Cadillacs."

Pema Levy reports:

"When Romney and a surrogate were asked about Ann’s Cadillacs on the Sunday talk shows, their response was not to hide or apologize for Romney’s wealth. Instead, their message boiled down to: Yes he’s rich, get over it.

On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace played the clip of Romney’s comments and asked Romney if he can see why people may be “put off.” Romney replied indignantly: “If people think there’s something wrong with being successful in America then they better vote for the other guy.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a top Romney surrogate, sounded the same note on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday morning. Asked about the Ann Romney’s Cadillacs, Christie replied:

"So the cat’s out of the bag, Bob, on the fact that Governor Romney’s wealthy. So he has a number of cars. Many people who’ve made a lot of money over time do. I think this is just something where, to be candid, folks are looking for him to make trip-ups."

The ‘get over it’ approach to Romney’s wealth is one some Republican strategists and Romney supporters have been hoping Romney would adopt for a while. After Romney took a beating over comments about firing people, as well as flack over his tax returns, they wished Romney would use a less apologetic approach. As one Republican strategist told TPM’s Benjy Sarlin in January, Romney should channel the man who has since endorsed his candidacy: Donald Trump.

“Trump never goes on defense on his wealth and, if anything, is obnoxiously offensive,” said former George W. Bush adviser Brad Blakeman. “His popularity comes from the fact that he is successful. Romney needs to be positive about his wealth and how he earned it.” Though he did caution that Romney should not replicate Trump’s arrogance."

Too late.

About That Romney "Tax Plan", cont...

Feb 26th, 2012

Some instructive charts detailing the nonsense.
click images for clearer view

Roughly half of all cuts go to the top 5% with the largest reduction going to the top 0.01%.

Chart via the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution

Totally unrealistic and draconian measures to mitigate the deficit impact are central to the plan.

CBO analysis republished by White House Policy Director, James Kvall

About That Romney "Tax Plan"

Feb 26th, 2012

James Kwak calls it a "mathematical disaster:"

"There are several things about this plan that are either loony or deeply misleading. One is the claim that it would "address the debt crisis" because it will be paid for by $500 billion in spending cuts by 2016.

But the only proposals mentioned would (a) repeal the Affordable Care Act (increasing deficits, since the ACA has been scored as deficit-reducing); (b) convert Medicaid to a block grant (no deficit impact); (c) increase government efficiency (yawn); and (d) cut Social Security and Medicare benefits for "younger generations" (no impact until well after 2016). In other words, it's a complete fantasy."

Institutional Inequity

Feb 21st, 2012

On the heels of the latest Council of Economic Advisers Report to the President, Bruce Bartlett sums up what we already know pretty well today:

"...a tax system that lightly taxes capital and heavily taxes labor is necessarily going to benefit the wealthy. As this chart illustrates, federal tax rates on the wealthy have been falling since 1978, when Congress cut the maximum capital gains rate to 28 percent from 35 percent."

It is notable that Bartlett refers to capital gains in this piece as "unearned" income as opposed to the "earned" income of labor.

The current field of Republican Presidential hopefuls would never use such language. In spite of the fact that the realities of the last ten years have disproved the supposed benefits of so lopsided an approach to federal revenue, their plans, if elected, are to make the disparity more extreme.

Every one of them has proposed lowering taxes on dividends and capital gains further while actually raising them on the lowest quintile's labor.

Bartlett's takeaway:

"...the tax system in the United States violates the fundamental principles of income taxation. Those are "vertical equity," which says that those with upper incomes should pay a higher effective tax rate than those with modest incomes — as far back as Adam Smith, ability to pay has always been a core principle of taxation — and "horizontal equity," which says that those with roughly the same income ought to pay roughly the same taxes." EMPHASIS OURS

Of course, what the heck does Bartlett know? He's merely one of the Reagan Revolution's architects as well as one of the preeminent economists of our age. 

Reagan Revolution Architects Vs Today's GOP

Feb 10th, 2012

It has been a remarkable experience over the last year or so watching the economic team Ronald Reagan assembled three decades ago mount increasingly passionate attacks against contemporary GOP orthodoxy (examples HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE).

The two most prominent figures waging this battle are David Stockman and Bruce Bartlett. Both men recently sat down with Bill Moyers to continue their push for a return to reason.


David Stockman on Taxes from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.



Bruce Bartlett on Where the Right Went Wrong from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Mitt Romney's Version Of Capitalism, cont...

Jan 13th, 2012

Last week, Jonathan Weisman reported:

"More than three-quarters of Americans say the country’s economic structure is out of balance and "favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country," taking up the calls of Occupy Wall Street protesters to reduce the power of major banks and end tax breaks for the affluent and for corporations, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows."

People are waking up to the fact that we have an unsustainable system and the fix is in. Not so, says Mitt Romney. He says the problem with all of us little people is "envy."

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Truth About Effective Tax Rates, cont...

Jan 10th, 2012

As this is an election year, we can expect to hear a great deal from the GOP hopefuls regarding the 'crippling' tax rates on American businesses. Try and remember that this is straight up, one hundred percent bullshit.

HuffPo reports:

"The number of U.S. corporations structuring their businesses in such a way that they can avoid higher taxes has skyrocketed in the past quarter century,The Wall Street Journal reports.

I Told You So.. But...

Jan 9th, 2012
by F. Grey Parker

Generally, I am not happy when I can say, "I told you so."

After the failure of the Democratic base to turn out during the 2010 election, I opined that the Republicans had no plan for jobs and would, instead, spend the entirety of 2011 masquerading their attacks on the poor as "austerity."

I predicted that they would characterize any and all attempts to re-stabilize federal revenue as "class warfare."

I warned that there was likely to be a genuinely unprecedented assault on not just abortion, but, women's health programs and rights in general.

I also repeatedly stipulated that the House GOP leadership would call every anti-environmental bill they could throw at the Senate a "jobs bill."

Well... I told you so.

See what I mean? I take no pleasure from this. That's the point. Usually, when I have to say, "I told you so," it feels like I have arrived at the bottom of a great crevasse, battered and bloody, and am making the pronouncement from the passenger seat to a driver who I have warned repeatedly not to drive off of a cliff.

Well, not today. Today, I am enjoying a 'told ya' so moment.' Immensely.

Last Fall, a conservative colleague and I were sparring, in a friendly manner, with regard to the upcoming Presidential election. He was stunned at my position on Obama's chances against the presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney.

The text of our online exchange 10/27/2011
SP: You're not worried at all?
Me: Nope
SP: Really? That's nuts. Our base hates BO. Econ can't bounce enough to save him. Indys not on his side. Libs totaly (sic) disaffected
Me: Obama's gonna win. No question.
Sp: What? How can MR possibly lose???
Me: Bain

SP: Huh?

And here we are.

Reid J. Epstein and Jim Vandehei write today in Politico:

"Forget his specific rivals. The biggest threat to Mitt Romney is hitting now and set to fully detonate in South Carolina: it’s the Bain bomb.

While conservatives look unlikely to unite around one alternative to Romney, the campaigns themselves are uniting around this one theme, that the former head of Bain looted companies, tossed people out of jobs and is now exaggerating his success at the venture capital firm."

I told you so.

As I said, my expectation was that this would be the heaviest artillery in the Obama re-election arsenal. What I never foresaw was the possibility that it would be Romney's own party that would make so effective a use of it first. This serves to illustrate just how unusual a period this is; The Democrats are having their work done for them by their opposition. 

Literally.

One DNC strategist I have spoken to is openly giddy. Quite some time was being expended on framing this with great caution. Hundreds of hours have been devoted to making the Bain attack later this year without rendering the Obama campaign more vulnerable to smears that they are "anti-business." This contact quipped this morning, "Maybe I should donate to Newt. He's doing us a real service."

This is the truth. It is Newt Gingrich who has framed the discussion. 

I had wondered whether, in the post-Tea Party political process, we might not see a practical abandonment of Reagan's "11th Commandment." But, I never saw Newt coming. 

Until a few weeks ago, Newt Gingrich seemed to be even more absurdly ridiculous than he had been as a water-boy for D'Souza. Romney might be called a flip-flopper. But, Newt is the petty, little pip-squeak who sat next the GOP's favorite she-devil, Nancy Pelosi, and endorsed not only the concept of man-made climate change, but, argued for federally mandated solutions to the problem. He's the only GOP contender who took over a million dollars from Fannie and Freddie for lobbying being "an historian." And, as his litany of vulgar peccadilloes testifies, he is NOT the "values candidate" for any party in this country unless its mission is to establish Hugh Hefner's 1963 world-view as the norm.

And yet, here we are. Somehow, Newt Gingrich has managed to capture enough wealthy hearts and minds to wage an all-out war on Romney.

Trip Gabriel and Nicholas Confessore wrote yesterday for NY Times:

"Thanks to a $5 million donation from a wealthy casino owner, a group supporting Newt Gingrich plans to place advertisements in South Carolina this week attacking Mitt Romney as a predatory capitalist who destroyed jobs and communities, a full-scale Republican assault on Mr. Romney’s business background.

The advertisements, a counterpunch to a campaign waged against Mr. Gingrich by a group backing Mr. Romney, will be built on excerpts from a scathing movie about Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney once ran. The movie, financed by a Republican operative opposed to Mr. Romney, includes emotional interviews with people who lost jobs at companies that Bain bought and later sold."

Romney's tenure and practices at Bain Capital make the fictional economic predations of Oliver Stone's 'Gordon Gekko' look not merely tame; they make them look elegant.

Romney wasn't just a job-killer, he was a community-killer. Whole towns perished so that he might live larger. Families suffered. Mothers wept over the choice between food and rent. Grown men watched as their hungry families were unable to heat their homes, afford their food, pay their rent or have new shoes.

All this so that Mitt Romney could go to multiply-Michelen-starred restaurants where his backwards-ass can't even pronounce the name of an appetizer.

From here on in, every mention of Bain will injure the GOP. However, for the next several months, at least, most mentions of Bain will come from the GOP.

So. I told ya so... but I never saw this coming.

Quote Of The Day

Jan 2nd, 2012

Image via

‎"For all men being originally equals, no one by birth could have a right to set up his own family in perpetual preference to all others forever."
-- Thomas Paine

It's The Inequality, Stupid, cont...

Dec 27th, 2011

Eric Byler offers a theory after reading Peter Whoriskey's article on the growing wealth gap between our country's elected and its governed:

"Establishing the causal connection between income inequality and political polarization will require further study, the article says. And, I want you to read the entire piece, which includes evocative profiles that humanize eye-popping statistics — i.e., the average wealth of Members of Congress has increased 250% since 1984 while that of the average American family has gone down slightly. But allow me to offer a brief hypothesis:

The disastrous fiscal policies of the past 30 years — which have lavished America’s ruling class with unprecedented riches while hammering our middle class to a degree not seen since the days leading up to the Great Depression — simply would not have been possible without massive doses of political entertainment that have distracted and divided us into either failing to notice or failing to respond.

I've chosen the term "1% Media" for this indescribably vast body of news/entertainment content because it tends to reflect the perspective and, arguably, the agenda of the fortunate few who possess the immense wealth required to produce and disseminate it. During the past three decades, as constant streams of increasingly incendiary soap opera disguised as political commentary, or, worse, "news," have flooded the minds of 1% Media consumers, we have seen our culture, and perhaps the American electorate, transform. Consumers of 1% Media have become reliable voters, and, the most vocal and most malleable advocates for the policies and candidates presented to them on TV and radio. And, we have seen seen Members of Congress openly pander to this audience, not only in their rhetoric but also in their policy positions. They do this, despite their abysmal poll numbers, either because they actually believe in the political soap operas in which they star, or because they fear the entrenched apparatus that writes the script."

I am inclined to agree.

It's The Inequality, Stupid

Dec 27th, 2011

Everyone is talking about Peter Whoriskey's WaPo piece examining the growing divide between the increasingly wealth of elected officials in D.C. and the relative declines experienced by most of  this country's citizens:

"Between 1984 and 2009, the median net worth of a member of the House rose by more than 2 1 / 2 times, according to the analysis of financial disclosures, from $280,000 to $725,000 in inflation-adjusted 2009 dollars, excluding home ­equity.

Over the same period, the wealth of an American family has declined slightly, with the comparable median figure sliding from $20,600 to $20,500, according to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from the University of Michigan."

Here's what it looks like in chart form. Click the image for a better view.

Image via WaPo

The War On The Poor, cont...

Dec 9th, 2011

Earlier this week, the NYTimes noted another way the government might just stick it to the most vulnerable next year:

"The draft version of the Section 8 Savings Act released earlier this year by the majority staff of the House Financial Services Committeeincludes several excellent proposals that would cut administrative costs for public housing authorities, allowing them to more efficiently manage the programs that subsidize rents for more than three million of the country’s poorest families. But one damaging provision that crept into the draft would undo all of that good.

The provision would allow housing programs to raise rents on nearly 700,000 of the households that receive federal rent assistance, most by a minimum of $300 a year, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington. This would be a severe and unjustifiable burden for these extremely poor families, the majority of whom subsist on less than $3,000 per year. The report argues that higher rents would force some poor families to divert resources from basic needs like food, clothing and medicine. Others would be unable to cover the new costs forcing them to double up with relatives, move into shelters or into the streets."

Add this to the increasingly likely expiration of current payroll tax rates and a probable failure to extend UI benefits and what we have is the makings of something much worse than a mere double dip recession.

CEO Pay - A Comparison By Country

Dec 5th, 2011

If you are talking with someone who refuses to concede that this is evidence of a systemic move towards plutocracy, you might want to move along to the next adversary.

The REAL Class War In A Chart

Dec 1st, 2011

Ahem...