I never want to read one more op-ed or hear one more TV pundit telling Democrats they need to "be the party of the working class." Republicans just passed a tax bill that hammers the working class and gives the nation's wealth to the already wealthy. Not one Democrat voted for it. Republicans spent an entire election cycle claiming to be the party of the working class but look at what they do, not what they say.
"republicans have an entire media complex to convince people that what they are doing is right and benefits everyday Americans."
yes yes yes yes yes
Fox News, Sinclair Group (owns a lot of local TV stations), red rant radio, etc., continuously stoke resentment and build up a mob base by lying about factual matters.
I confess I'm impressed at how Every Accusation Is A Confession, like claiming wind and solar farms are put in using eminent domain (they're private contracts with landowners), when it is in fact the fossil fuel companies that use the government to take land for oil and gas pipelines (and "forced pooling" for gas wells).
It’s the mainstream “liberal” media that has been driving the “Democrats are a bunch of coastal elites who don't care about and have nothing to offer “ordinary” Americans” narrative. For example they constantly accused Hillary of this idiotic claim — as if things like affordable health care, education and day care, good public schools, higher minimum wages, etc. are things that aren’t particularly beneficial t lower income people. Post election campaign analyses showed that Hillary had talked far more about how to create good paying jobs than Trump or even Bernie had done.
Worse, the media actually distorted their coverage to support of Hillary their preferred portrayal of her as elitist. For example not only did they bury the fact that she had a serious plan to help revive coal communities which included ensuring their pensions and healthcare coverage, cleaning up polluted mining sites, investing in green energy jobs — the media deliberately distorted her statements about that plan in order to portray her as not caring about “those people”:
“ Hillary Clinton’s “coal gaffe” is a microcosm of her twisted treatment by the media
The media also buried the fact that under old Joe Biden not only did we have the best job market in over 50 years, we had the lowest unemployment rate for African American men ever. Most aLao chose to ignore the fact that by the end of Biden’s term not only had wages outpaced inflation,the greatest gains were for those low income people he media claims Democrats don’t care about.
Many "working class" voters oppose Democrats for reasons other than the economy. In addition to the cultural issues that alienate "working class" voters, there is resentment over attempts to help the poor. Many people who get up and go to work every day see those grtting help as "shirkers" who do not deserve help, even though research shows that most people receiving assistance get it on a transitory basis. Cruelty to the poor sells among some "working class" voters.
I know plenty of working class Democrats, some in unions, some retired, some in school. They understand that “helping the working class” is not what the Republican Party is about. They dismiss the media’s parroting of rightwing talking points, they reject racism and misogyny as “values,” and they show up to knock doors and phone bank at election time. Let’s remember, too, that the majority of January 6th rioters were middle class and professional white people with a serious hatred of diversity, equity and inclusion, core values of melting pot America.
That is why I used the word "many", not "all". Democrats lose elections by thin margins. Republicans have picked up votes from "working class" voters over the years despite Democrats offering better economic policies. Republicans are masters of exploiting wedge issues and wrapping their terrible policies in "populist" rhetoric. Democrsts give them an opening by not focussing their rhetoric on the economic issues that affect all Americans and also poll well.
Democrats--most Democrats--fail to properly push back on the FOX News talking point of the month. Critical Race Theory was one example of this, an obscure Grad School course never taken by more than a few thousand students, that FOX magically transformed into endemic race-shaming of white kids at every public school in the country.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett has done a great job pushing back at the Trans Kids in Sports brouhaha that's FOX's current fave pseudo-issue, pointing out that you can literally count on one hand the number of trans kids in school sports. While the number of Americans the GOP removed from healthcare last night tops 20 million!
True. It is a challenge. There is no "center/left" equivalent to FOX News. When you are committed to evidence and truth, you are at a significant disadvantage. As Mark Twain famously said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world before tge truth can put on its shoes". Even more true today with social media.
MSNBC pushes back all the time but the people who need to be reached are not the ones watching.
Democrats can get out and talk to people all they want but if the media doesn’t cover that the message doesn’t break through. When Biden was still running I noticed that he was doing frequent events to tout the new projects that had been created by his programs such as a new battery factory but that those event were rarely covered by major media outlets. Then the media would accuse him of not getting his message out. In contrast they were always showing Trump’s campaign events.
The media did the same thing to Hillary. Her rallies and speeches were rarely covered but media outlets like CNN almost never missed one of Trump’s:
“That the networks found Trump entertaining was patently clear. They aired his rallies in full and unmediated, sometimes so eager to get him on the air that it led to the notorious “podium shot”—when cable news outlets would cut away from other candidates’ speeches to a live shot of an empty podium awaiting Trump’s arrival.”
Then to add insult to injury journalists accused Democrats of having offered nothing to average voters! Someone should explain how Democrats are supposed to compete with this kind of biased media coverage.
One of Reagan's flacks figured this out-if you appeal to values (and have half the media acting as propaganda organs) you can sway people who don't really pay attention (10% of voters who are biconceptuals and Pew describes as 'Stressed Sideliners'.)
I worry that a lot of folks get all their news and information from Fox or worse and therefore are completely unaware of how bad this budget will affect them. And when they start to feel the effects, such as reduced Medicaid coverage or increased deficits and consequently higher interest rates, they won’t connect these effects with the budget because Fox will supply a different explanation.
EU said" Two thirds of America's voters voted for the neofascist GOP in 2024." About half of those who vote voted GOP. I agree that the GOP has become fascist (Neo or not). Your 2/3 number probably originated at Fox or Sinclair.
2/3 may be right if all those who voted for their good buddy local facistl repub but maybe not trump. Repubs get by with everyone re e.lecting the jerks that trump would be a sad memory without
The DEMs, financed by about the same corporations that funnel money to the GOP, are simply unwilling to fight a class war against the GOP, one that they couldn't lose. The GOP almost literally advertises that they're planning on screwing over Joe Sixpack, and yet the DEMs somehow can't beat them in elections. The GOP is paid to win elections. The DEMs are paid to lose them.
I agree with your analysis in general. The "Amusing Ourselves to Death" problem is very serious. I'm not treating the political process as a horse between parties by any means. I'm noting that in the US political system it's absolutely critical to hold the presidency and majorities in at least one of the houses of congress. The DEMs have failed to do this, losing the presidency twice to one of the most vile snakes to have ever slithered across the American political scene. Elections in the US aren't horse races; it's worse than that. In horse races there's a prize for second place.
“Some” is putting it mildly. Government-perpetrated cruelty to people they don’t like is the most effective motivater of white voters that Republicans employ and has been since Nixon/Atwater put it front and center in 1968, having learned it from George Wallace. Without that strategy, it is doubtful that Republicans could have won the presidency in any election since that time.
I was attempting to not paint "all" working class voters with the same brush. I live in an area where most working class voters are solidly blue. Rural voters are where Democrats are weakest, even in states whose Senators back in the 60’s were solid supporters of civil rights bills. The drift in those areas I would attribute to reaction to environmental bills, (despite efforts to protect the environment are good for their areas in the long term), cultural issues, and the economic effects of globalization and automation. It just doesn’t take as many people to run farms or manufacture goods. And, many rural small cities were one industry towns that got hammered as jobs went overseas or factories were automated. Employment has fallen far faster than output in manufacturing. Democrats got blamed more than Republicans. Republicans do a good job of scapegoating. They point to regulations and environmental laws when those things are a minor part of what has driven economic angst in rural counties. Easy targets and a deflection from the real drivers. That being said, tariffs will not bring back a manufacturing "golden age".
Yes, there are millions of white working class voters who are first rate citizens and people. Exit polls put the number at about 30%, compared to 20% for white evangelical voters and 40% for the white demographic as a whole.
The problem you describe boils down to DNC strategy failure. Republicans' "woke" strategies were the strings that made Democrats dance as if they were puppets.
Oh, come on! Most of those "working class" voters are White males who are racist, misogynistic and homophobic religious fanatics. They'd rather cut off their own noses than see a dime go to all those "others" they've been thought to despise so long by their daddies, granddaddies, great-granddaddies and great-great-granddaddies - all the way back to the days before Jefferson Davis. Speaking about this euphemistically is a big part of our national problem, because it hides the ugly truth that needs to be addressed! You can't fix a problem if you're unwilling to look it square in the face.
You're undoubtedly correct in characterizing bigoted white voters, but the answer is to educate them, not antagonize them by blaming them for their ancestors' sins. That would have been the DNC's job.
Is it racist to point out the racism of others? How is that racist? Did you not look at what happened on January 6, 2024? Have you not seen the dozens of studies showing how correlated White racism is with Trump support? I literally just typed into my search bar "studies showing correlation between trump voters and racism" and got 1,060,000 results. Here's the first part of the abstract from one of the first studies that popped up...
"Growing racial, ideological, and cultural polarization within the American electorate contributed to the shocking victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Using data from American National Election Studies surveys, we show that Trump’s unusually explicit appeals to racial and ethnic resentment attracted strong support from white working-class voters while repelling many college-educated whites along with the overwhelming majority of nonwhite voters."
I get the same kinds of results when I search for misogynistic and evangelical religious preferences and their correlations with Trump support.
Do you really think those attitudes had changed by 2024? That all of a sudden working class White males (and surprising number of working class Blacks) didn't want to vote for a Black-Asian women for president based on anything other than her race and gender? So, as I asked before, how is it racist to point out the racism of others?
Thanks for admitting that you were wrong when you wrote that my post was racist. As I said before, pointing out the racism, misogyny et. al. of others doesn't make you racist or misogynistic. And there are studies that show that racism and other negative atavistic social attitudes are prime motivators behind Trump support in 2024 as well. You can find them doing a google search.
Lyndon Johnson said it well, Give a man someone to look down upon and he will give you his wallet. All of the media demonizing the egg head liberals does exactly that.
Trump is great at it and adds in the persecution complex. Look they are so stupid, and they take advantage of you. vote for me.
Part of the problem with the “working class” being against those receiving government help is the fact that the last 15 or so years, since the inception of the “tea party”, bias and eventually racism has become OK within the American society.
Well, it is true that the Democrats should be the party of the working class. But they are in the process of wringing their hands over focus grouping how to become just that, instead of just leveling with rank and file labor with the facts and letting them decide for themselves whether they want to stop getting fucked by Republicans. At least that way, Democrats can accept being a party that puts labor first and fights for people who keep their noses clean and puts them to the grindstone.
Can they, though? Can the democrat leadership do that? When I think of the Democratic party I see a party dedicated to keeping progressive voices silent.
The problem is that it's only now that Dems have finally been listening to the people and acting in our interests. For a long time, they ignored what we were telling them, and only listening to their Wall St. donors. It's good to see they're finally getting the hint.
If Democrats don’t get real about returning to the rule of law, and declaring their opposition to deconstructing the civil service to favor big business. Democrats need to call Trump’s assault on DEI for what it is: the resegregation of America. And stand up for improvement of the faltering reading & math skills of America’s school children. Democrats must stand for people pay their fair share of taxes. Call the tax cuts a disaster for America’s standing as the safest haven for worldwide investment. Democrats need to oppose Trump’s tariffs as an existential threat to the stability of the world economy.
Deconstructing the civil service to favor big business.....someone I know said that her cousin's house was demolished in that most recent tornado that leveled several homes in St. Louis. His insurance company is giving him the run around, and FEMA's purpose is to be delegated to the states. They are wondering if this is so that private developers will come in and make a low ball offer to then redevelop as short term rentals, as this neighborhood is close to the downtown tourist district.
Most voters are economically comfortable enough that cultural values predominate for who they plan to vote for. As just one example of this, I'd include Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2014. I'm struck by the fact that I cannot imagine any contemporary Democrat(AOC, Harris, etc) speaking this way. "So each time we gather, it’s a chance to set aside the rush of our daily lives; to pause with humility before an Almighty God; to seek His grace; and, mindful of our own imperfections, to remember the admonition from the Book of Romans, which is especially fitting for those of us in Washington: “Do not claim to be wiser than you are.”
So here we put aside labels of party and ideology, and recall what we are first: all children of a loving God; brothers and sisters called to make His work our own. But in this work, as Lincoln said, our concern should not be whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God’s side.
And here we give thanks for His guidance in our own individual faith journeys. In my life, He directed my path to Chicago and my work with churches who were intent on breaking the cycle of poverty in hard-hit communities there. And I’m grateful not only because I was broke and the church fed me, but because it led to everything else. It led me to embrace Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. It led me to Michelle -- the love of my life -- and it blessed us with two extraordinary daughters. It led me to public service. And the longer I serve, especially in moments of trial or doubt, the more thankful I am of God’s guiding hand.
Now, here, as Americans, we affirm the freedoms endowed by our Creator, among them freedom of religion. And, yes, this freedom safeguards religion, allowing us to flourish as one of the most religious countries on Earth, but it works the other way, too -- because religion strengthens America. Brave men and women of faith have challenged our conscience and brought us closer to our founding ideals, from the abolition of slavery to civil rights, workers’ rights.
So many of you carry on this good work today -- for the child who deserves a school worthy of his dreams; for the parents working overtime to pull themselves out of poverty; for the immigrants who want to step out of the shadows and become a full member of our American family; for the young girl who prays for rescue from the modern slavery of human trafficking, an outrage that we must all join together to end."
This isn't a situation akin to the 1930s under FDR, where the TVA was providing running water and electricity to families in Appalachia, who were living in grinding poverty previously. Democrats becoming the party of college educated Americans is a huge problem, because the majority of Americans don't have a degree, and as race has become a less salient concern for African-Americans, and Hispanic Americans, they're voting more like White working class/non college educated voters. Harris lost ground with every single group except White college educated voters, and Asian Americans.
Voters don't live in graphs n data, that's not how you appeal to voters at all. Hilary tried that, completely bombed. Kamala, same thing. Democrats are seen as weird, unrelatable and elitist by voters who don't have degrees, and the states that are gaining population and Electoral College votes like Florida or North Carolina, or Arizona are more conservative n religious than than California or New York. In the next election in 2028, Democrats could win every state in the Blue Wall, and still lose the election. What's the plan then??
What the hell world are you living in?!? Race is being elevated to be all and end all, as long as your race is rich white man (or mutant, in the case of Musk and some of the other tech bros. Everybody else will get fucked. Wake up!
And don’t think being a rich white man will keep you safe. Trump and his administration are well on the way to creating a new level of homicidal lunacy that Pol Pot could only envy. This defective regime will turn on itself because it is batshit. There is no way to reason with it, even if you blindly devoted to it.
I sincerely believe that it's not that they didn't care, but a very large percentage of voters didn't KNOW. The media, almost to a source, hyped the 'Joe's old' schtick so hard that even the generally honest ones underplayed the improving economy, international respect, normalization of the government functions, so hard that any given day you might find one report saying "the fed reports excellent prospects ahead," and everybody else had "Joe stumbled over a word." Harris got the same treatment, while Turnip is/was constantly sanewashed.
That's not to say that we don't have way more than our share of people who just wouldn't vote for a brown person, or a woman, and especially not a brown woman, under any circumstances, including when the clear alternative was the promised destruction of the country by a tinpot fascist dictator.
But, it is true that the Democratic Party needs to be the party of the working class. It isn't enough that they oppose the crap MAGA does. They must be focused on what they can do for the working class. Think longer term than just the next election. Think about that too, but as a way to build a coalition that pointedly includes repairing the damage done to the working class over the last 4 decades.
I want to see more op-ed driving this point home. It clearly has not sunk in.
It was for a while, but I think this ended with Clinton’s jog to the right. He reasoned, if I jog to the right, I’ll capture some center-right voters and where else is the progressive working man going to go? Well, where indeed? Despite being the worst candidate possible, people voted for Trump for change. What does that say about the Democratic Party?
As a Democrat since the 1950s, though not yet old enough to vote, I wish I could endorse this. But it has been clear to me for years that their move toward the supposed center has taken the vigor and conscience from the party, and now from the nation.
Biden’s platform in 2020 did focus on things that would help the working class, and he got a lot of what was proposed enacted. Regardless, voters chose to give the House to MAGAs in the midterms. After 45 years of working class voters consistently voting against their own economic interests, it’s clear other factors are motivating their votes. Having once worked daily with blue collar tradesmen, bigotry and evangelical Christianity accounted for my coworkers voting habits far more than their own economic welfare.
Correct, we do not need more from these “pundits” but the truth is the Democrats do not have a message, a uniform message,one that every single Democrat will use. Notice how the GOP comes up with one and every single one of them uses it and repeats it, whether they agree with it or not. The Democrats come up with several of those and confuse the public. Let’s be honest many within the voting public are a bunch of simpletons, regardless of the politicians saying the voting public is smart/intelligent. If they were even a little smart they would not be voting against their best interests.
To quote the famous political philosopher George Carlin. "Consider how stupid the average person is. Now consider the fact that half the people are dumber than the average." The DEMs need a "bumper sticker" length message that clearly states that they're going to help out the average citizen, while the GOP is going to screw them over.
Goes to show you that human beings are most definitely not rational actors. Rationality stands beside (and maybe below) such concerns as 'fitting in' with a group, alleviating your fears (about your status as a person, a man, a woman, a parent, a wage earner) and your relationship to whatever notions of 'god' you hold most dear, especially if they resemble fear of authority and punishment over all.
I think your comment misses the mark. The Democrats need to become the party of a *system* that protects, nurtures and supports ordinary American. I think this is what PK is trying to say. The system is rotten, therefore ordinary people get screwed in endless ways that wealthy people are totally insulated from. It is perfectly possible to claim to be the party of the working class while still justifying the basic workings of modern capitalism, as the Democrats did in the 2024 election. That’s why over 50% of the electorate voted for the iconoclast who said he would change things. He certainly is changing things. He just lied through his teeth about who would benefit the most from those changes. This will continue until the Democrats put forward a candidate who is willing to try and break the system and able to communicate a credible vision for how they would do that. They had a chance with Sanders but ostracised him. I hope they don’t make the same mistake in 2028.
I used to think "late-stage capitalism" was just a buzzword, but I've come around to it. The vultures are circling. The rats are devouring the sinking ship.
But can't they see they are on the ship they are sinking? The dominoes they are setting into motion circle to their own demise along with the destruction of a once fruitful economy with citizens earning and spending to support the program.
They're in denial. They've convinced themselves that, after gorging on the carrion, they'll have enough wealth to be impervious to whatever disasters follow.
I'm not sure who it was who said it, some former plutocrat, but their plan is to "pay half the working class to kill the other half." IE, divide and conquer.
My understanding is that the extraterrestrial MAGA species plans to clear-cut the planet. With trees and green plants removed, the atmosphere will have a lowered percentage of oxygen, which they prefer. The present human civilization doesn't fit their plans.
Only about 22% of Americans voted for the orange stain. Almost 31% of eligible voters as you said. I was appalled by the number of normally liberal voters I talked with who said they did not vote this year because both choices were unacceptable.
Propaganda was skillfully deployed on social media to encourage safe liberal voters to sit this one out. Trump won by less than 2% I believe. They knew that those people would never vote for Trump, they just needed them to not vote at all to get him a win.
Yep. False equivalence. Does any one think that Kamala Harris would have asked Qatar for a flying palace? Would she have thrown 13m Americans off Medicaid and Medicare? Would she have appointed Hegseth and his clown car colleagues of faux entertainment talking heads to federal agencies? Would Kamala have tanked the Stock market and increased interest on treasury bonds or announced ridiculous tariffs? And does anyone think Kamala would have threatened Canada? Or Ukraine? Really? Nope. Liberals who decided not to vote for Kamala were just racist white folks looking for an excuse. They’ll enjoy their lives under Conold’s regime. They as much as voted for it.
Part of making them feel like the Democratic choice was acceptable would be to go through a primary process and let the voters anoint the candidate. This is Biden’s fault and the circle that coddled him. Sure, I voted for Harris, because the alternative is a monster, yet she would not have won the primary. She isn’t loved, not like Sanders or Yang by their supporters.
Otherwise known as end-stage capitalism. Carve us up between the theofascists, the white supremacy fascists, and the tech fascists -- vs those not in any of those camps and poor folks. I almost see the G-word peeking out from under covers. Gaza was a test case.
It was Keynes. Maybe Bush II repeated it. In the long run, the Peloponnesian Wars have been repeated over and over and over again for 2500 years, along with cycles of democracy and autocracy.
I do not think "politicians" decided on capitalism or the buying and selling of stuff as the way to run a system. When human began to cultivate the land and domesticate animals, often this created situations where one might trade with a neighbor for what you had and they did not and visa versa, and then people were able to engage in trades like maybe mass producing pottery and trading that, etc. Money was invented to make exchange easier. So the system grew naturally.
However, if one dominated large areas of land and conquered ones neighbors, one might end up with a feudal system or a dictatorship where the ruling class decides everything including the distribution of resources, etc.
Economic activity, how our system works, is just that "activity." Even the money one earns from a podcast is from consumer spending, it does not have to be physical "stuff" but is also services and entertainment, etc.
So even as this person complains about capitalism, they are actually engaging in the process of capitalism or consumerism by making money on a podcast.
This economic activity (buying and selling) even if one is concerned about excessive consumption of physical items, is far better than if a dictator were to decide how things are divided up in society among a group or a king, etc, and these are largely the alternatives.
So, can we make our system work much better for everyone? Sure, but it is still the better system.
If one does not like the consumption of physical things model, promote the buying and selling of ideas like subscribing to a paid substack or maybe go to a museum or other entertainment and spend money there more often instead to keep the economy humming.
However, our consumer based model works better than other systems - so long as we regulate it and keep monopolies and cheats and fraudsters at bay.
> So even as this person complains about capitalism, they are actually engaging in the process of capitalism or consumerism by making money on a podcast.
It isn’t hypocrisy for a communist to earn a living in the US under capitalism. It is not in his power to live as he would prefer, but he does need to live.
My comment was not about hypocrisy, only that most are complaining about waste from consuming because they think of an economy and GDP growth as all about buying "stuff" or physical objects and may be unaware that the same economy also flourishes with services and entertainment, etc. We can have a consumer based economy with a lot less "stuff" if we tend to spend money and spend time on internet types of things or entertainment or leisure pursuits rather than ordering objects to sit in a closet. That is all I meant. One can make a living and an economy can thrive with fewer objects if that is one is concerned with.
Professor Krugman: weirdly, when i tried to move my entire savings account overseas (where i now live), the problems and stress (AND TAXES! on already taxed income, no less. can you say "double taxation"?) i dealt with almost did me in. so i wonder: how do rich people move massive amounts of money overseas to places they don't live, and may never have even visited, when i could barely move my savings account -- a pittance in comparison -- to a country where i now live?
and regarding your musical coda: WOW! what a voice!
They have personal lawyers and bankers who worry about all that shit for them.
When we say rich people don't actually do any work, they just benefit from the work other people do, we're not just talking about the honest work. It would no more occur to Elon Musk to personally worry about moving his finances overseas than it would have occurred to Pablo Escobar to personally get in a little Cessna and fly his narcotics shipments all the way from Medellin to Miami.
“Why, it’s almost as if cheats and grifters are their sort of people.” Yep, you can say this about (R) Congress, the administration, DOGE, and the rest of these terrible human beings.
They used to use horses, art, now they use crypto.
But ma inky they have personal bankers who are already set up in these places to work around shell corporations that money gets funneled through. The bakers in localities like the Vaymans, Swiss, Ireland have relationships with local authorities who aid for a fee them.
They’d rather pay 100 million to hide 200 million to avoid paying 50 million in taxes.m
At some point the wealthy in the US decided paying taxes was for loser and suckers. If you stepped on a golf course, you’d be able to say you drugged a 21 year old girl to have sex with and be less shunned than if you said you thought it was your patriotic duty to pay taxes to the country that afforded you so much. THAT would be considered more of a faux par than an actual deviant deed.
Maybe these days they buy Bitcoin with the funds in their savings, and then liquidate their Bitcoin holdings into a new savings account in their new country.
There is a through line from the GOP controlled Congress to Right Wing SCOTUS - neither group grasps how much government does to maintain civil society.
Take the absurd SCOTUS decision from last night which ring fences the Fed but allows Trump to turn all other government agencies into "at his will" operations.
No SCOTUS. The Fed alone will be blind if the other agencies aren't reporting accurately even if such news will anger Trump.
What a terrible way to learn all the good our government does.
Don’t leave out our wildly ungrateful electorate. Nobody seems the slightest bit grateful that every morning they wake up form a sleep not interrupted by bombings. They walk around their house, open the fridge that has electricity provided by grids keeping the food that was inspected by the FDA safe from spills after it was inspected for listeria, salmonella and other poisons. They brew their coffee with water that isn’t contaminated with E. coli or giving them cholera. They sit down and are pretty sure their door won’t be kicked in and they are dragged away with no evodence of a crime and held bevause the local sheriff is jealous of their new car. After they read some news, which is provided for them to be moderately truthful because the person reporting has the right to free speech, they jump in the shower (more water that isn’t going to kill them, brush their teeth with toothpaste they can assume is safe, take a stayin that was discovered at a university so they don’t drop dead, pick our clothes that won’t get them arrested for showing a calf (gasp!), jump in their car that most likely will not blow them up or choke them with dangerous air, drive on roads that have stop light s and are relatively safe and OAVED, thanks to tax money, go to a job where their boss is required not to treat them as slaves, ,amber Walmart near a beach that isn’t patrolled by armed soldiers and open to all citizens. Maybe ask a girl on a date without being murdered for not being I. The same caste.
The amount of things we take for granted and the very little America has asked us in return…pay attention, educate yourself, VOTE, take care of her as she falls ill. Her beauty alone that she provides from mountains to beaches to cliffs and parasites and her thanks from us? Non stop complaining and selfishness, greed, shitting on her reputation constantly .
The problem is one thought step up the pyramid. We have a part of the polity who believe that they and they alone are allowed to govern/rule in our society. They are always right and we are always wrong. And they are willing to burn the whole thing down and cause untold suffering to get to their right-wing utopia.
My point is about how flimsy an idea that is. We are a nation of 330M people. There's no way we go from where we are to their dream without losing a majority of the population.
It's as if they want to do a reverse rapture, kill all the others and the elect inherit the earth.
I think our size has become part of the problem. In the early days, the representatives were apportioned according to a formula, until at some point, they set the fixed number of representatives. So each one represents more and more people...thereby not representing them at all.
Regrettably to this worldview, it isn’t the government’s role to dictate and regulate culture, especially in a country with a bill of rights such as ours which goes a long way to proscribing that sort of regulation.
Regrettably, our Bill of Rights is not self-executing. It requires Congress at first and then the people at large, eventually, to enforce it or lose it.
Congress has failed. Our turn is coming.
Claims that such cannot happen are why we are at this place in history.
That's what many of them would like to change. For example, the Space Laser Lady holds town meetings in which she says she wants to turn the US into a Christian theocracy.
They have been that way since the national was founded on co-existence with the institution of slavery as somehow acceptable to any society worth a damn.
After Kennedy and Johnson pushed through the civil rights legislation, the Dixiecrats were forced to become Republicans to win re-election. Tennessee was roughly 2/3 Democratic in the mid 60s. It's solidly red now.
I would content that the stain of slavery (and the bigotry it generates) is still the underlying driver behind the Facist ideology this nation seems to racing toward.
A great paraphrase of the line, “It’s not that they don’t know right from wrong, it’s that they just don’t give a damn.” as the definition of a sociopath.
The utter lack of of compassion or empathy to the point of inflicting cruel actions on innocents whose only crime is largely not being in the top 10% of society, is literally the driving force behind today’s Republican (Facist) Party
Even more disturbing is that about 37% of the electorate in the Republican ranks are essentially downtrodden, sufferers who I can only gather get some sort of joy of having everyone suffer with them instead of rising to meet the oppression they too live under.
MuskRat said empathy is the "fundamental weakness of western civilization". In other words, MuskRat fits that sociopath definition perfectly.
That 37% of the electorate are clueless. They believe the Repubs, and especially TrumPox, will "own the libs" for them. They don't grasp that "owning the libs" will hurt them too. In other words, they're idiots.
I submit this image (for purely educational and artistic purposes) from the movie “Downfall” which I believe captures not only what the result of Facist ideology leads to, but is actually what serves as the core value system of ALL of today’s Republican Party:
"Cause ev'rybody's got to have somebody to look down on. Who they can feel better than any time they please. Someone doin' somethin' dirty decent folks can frown on. If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me." - Kris Kristofferson
A great quote I saw somewhere: You want to live in a country with a small government, low taxes, and strong family values? Move to Somalia.
The current SCOTUS is an embarrassment to the country. If the US survives this period, structural changes will be have to be made to the courts, and congress, to prevent anything like Trump and Citizen's United from ever happening again.
“A significant number will die prematurely due to lack of adequate medical care or nutrition”. Isn’t this the intention since at least Reagan? Life expectancy has been decreasing. Having premature deaths is a strategy to save on social security, Medicare and other benefits.
It’s hard to say out loud because it is so horrible, so I’ll whisper it, (lean in to hear me), “they want us to die.”
But isn't this what was said during the height of the Covid epidemic when old MAGA voters were dying like flies? "If we just let them kill themselves off, won't we have a voting majority?" But now they are offering Trump vouchers to replenish themselves.
Why gamble on a fetus for twelve years? If what you want is "the best" then allow great universities to vet the best of the best for you and invite them to say in America and keep us great?
They see people as just fodder, so if someone dies or moves there are always others. It’s “give me another one”, because we’re not considered to be human beings like they are. We’re considered to be objects and objects aren’t something they are concerned about, or value.
Ironic Story. Perhaps the last really progressive Congress person left in Florida, Allen Grayson was on the floor challenging one of the hundreds of Republican attempts to quash the ACA.
He described the Republican replacement plan as: Don’t get sick and if you do please die quickly.”
Why do you think Elon is working on humanoid robots? I mean, dumb idea (purpose build robots are much better), but automation means we have less need for human peons. I think even now a majority of our work is unnecessary makework. We don't need to have as many workers as we already have, and jobs then become a form of welfare for consumers.
Instead of cutting work hours, we stretch them thin. The only reason the aristocr... I mean oligarchs need human peons is to feel good about lording over them.
Is the only justification for being alive to work? Maybe that is the root of the problem. Wouldn’t it be great if people could be happy and healthy without needing to labor? Isn’t the aim of technology to free people from drudgery rather than to eliminate people.
To a capitalist, yes. The function of humanity is to work and to consume. Personally I'd love to do away with unnecessary labor, but the way our economy is set up, the benefits would all flow to the ones holding the capital to build the robots. Our only real leverage anymore is not our labor, but in our consumption (which is tied to our labor, because otherwise where will we get the bottlecaps to trade for stuff?). But that's why the boycotts have been so effective this year.
I think they are fine with young healthy workers continuing to work. You can’t be rich siphoning off the labor of others if there is no labor, after all! They just want to kill off the rest who are getting older, sicker and unemployed.
Imagine where this goes when most human labor is replaced by robots. Imagine the cadre of wealthy robot stock owners who are looking to receive their return on investment for putting the world out of work, to the tune of 100s of trillions. They are “owed”.
Robots could create a paradise on earth for humanity, but because we can’t share, it is going to be an extermination.
I mean this is exactly what one could expect from the previous gilded age robber barons. The child employing type. The $5k baby bonus is their solution (or the start of it). They kill off the useless ones and pump out new ones. Get the indoctrination machine into top gear so they are prepared to accept corporate slavery. Like a commenter said above, I’ve also started to see some reality in “late-stage capitalism” as a concept. The invisible hand has no sense of morality.
They don't want them to die while they're capable of working. Can Social Security and Medicare. Put retirees back to work or let them get out of the way.
Paul, this is a good menu of sensible tax reforms. I would do more on Medicare Advantage. Just get rid of it completely. These plans are fine if you don't get very sick but they are bad if you do. Restricted physician networks, aggressive payment denials, higher rather than lower costs (including a profit allowance) compared to regular Medicare A+B+ a good supplement plan (G) + D. In most states once you get sick if you want to switch back to regular Medicare the supplemental plans are subject to "underwriting" which typically means very high premiums or being rejected entirely. The advertising by Medicare Advantage plans is both annoying and misleading. This was just another gift to the insurance industry and should just be abandoned. PLJ
I read a most insightful book called Marketcrafters (Chris Hughes) about how the US government used funds to stimulate markets. One section was on our medical system. After WWII when European governments were going to a more socialized medicine approach, the AMA stood strongly against that in the US because it felt it would lower doctors wages and just make the government workers. It even threatened doctors that if they agreed with the European system moving here, they would take active steps to have their medical licenses revoked. That, plus the opposition from Southern Democrats like Wilbur Mills, put us on the insurance track we are suffering from today.
Came here to post some MedAdvantage thoughts - when insurer codes you sicker than you are, there’s more just the initial cost burden. Its now part of your record, so there may be future impacts - you may pay through additional testing, more cost, algorithms that if you are >x, then youre in a different risk category, etc.
This health insurance stuff really in the weeds. Not sure if PK has gone down this rabbit hole, but if he has, yes!, would encourage this as future topic.
If anyone has seen good writings on this, recommendations welcome. TIA.
I’ll put two here, theyre more practical than economic oriented, but still interesting:
- Arm and a Leg. Mostly a podcast of interesting stories, practical advice on wading through the mire of the US healthcare system. Entertaining and educational. Dan Weissmann
- First Aid Kit - (title may not be perfectly right) - related to arm and a leg, but aiming to organize the tools needed to fight crazy billing of the insurance system if/when you need it.
Both of these seem to have an emerging presence on substack, that i just found yesterday. There may be more presence on their website, etc.
Merrill Goozner, Gooznews on Substack, has a nice piece about Medicare Advantage and is generally very smart on healthcare. https://substack.com/home/post/p-157883387 One of his very valuable posts.
Insurance based care is always going to seek profit by denying care to those most in need. Universal coverage works well in 32’of 33’ comparable democracies. Guess which one is the odd man out? Tax the rich properly. Catch tax cheats. Use the gains for health care - and all the other life-enhancing stuff. Nationalise the health insurers. Seize their assets. Provide for states to operate their own health services funded in partnership with federal government. It’s possible. Trouble is the absence of courage coupled with grift and fraud is ingrained in the American way.
It is difficult to take Krugman seriously on healthcare until he actually embraces MFA. His “politically infeasible” defense is cynicism at its worst. We can t have nice things until we can at least talk about having nice things, even if they are nice things the rest of the western world already enjoys.
The bill he signed was hardly revolutionary. My guess is that at that point he was pretty much unaware of most anything he signed due to his dementia, which of course is never worthy of historic note in the eyes of Republican apologists for the nightmare before us today.
What we need is coordination, at the international level, of all left-of-center parties, to ensure that wealthy individuals and corporations pay their fair share of taxes. Otherwise, governments will end up playing wack-a-mole with tax evaders/avoiders moving now to Monaco, now to Dubai etc etc. It is too easy these days to move capital across borders.
Since this will require 100% conformance, you are really asking for world government here. It is hard to imagine anything other that interplanetary war bringing that into necessity. Until then we will bicker amongst ourselves and unity in the face of wealthy scofflaws impossible. They can always buy influence somewhere.
Unfortunately mass media is concentrated in the hands of a few elite right wing billionaire oligarchs. As long as the mass media and social media platforms are mostly controlled by rich elite oligarchs, who only see government as a threat to their wealth and power, we will never have proper debates about fiscal responsibility on what it would take to improve our economy with suggestions like these. At my gym Fox News runs 24/7 pushing lies, hate and division to cover for our bought-off Republican led Congress pushing through bills that will destroy the future of our democracy and enslave the 99%. That's the problem with America, the masses are becoming less educated and more sound bite oriented and will never get to understand or see serious debates on our economy to help them make the best choice for our future and economy when voting. Sad.
Do yourself a favor as well as one for the nation. Disengage from any business that supports Trumpism. The supposedly ineffective “boycott It’s tearing a new asshole for Musk (as it should).
I won’t set foot in Walmart, and dozens of corporate retailers that have supported Trump.
It’s always illuminating when the obvious choices are there for the taking to address systemic budget problems. We face similar issues here in Australia albeit not at the scale of fiscal deficit facing the US. Here for example , instead of having a proper resources rent tax on mining and gas extraction we are literally giving away national resources for almost nothing to foreign corporate entities and shareholder profit. So said our former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry whom Paul may well know. The common thread , being my point here, is vested interests corrupting the political process and the common good.
Representative democracy introduces “single points of failure” which are easily bribed, hijacking the state. It is an inherent weakness. For example, the entire political donorsphere in DC is about $2B, which then regulates a budget of Trillions. The leverage is insane and the temptations to tip the scales irresistible. Without rigorous prosecution, we are lost.
A comment I saw once about the Mexican government: One must understand that corruption is not a flaw in the system, it is the system. This apparently is universally applicable. It look like the only thing that keeps a government somewhat honest is having a gun pointed at its head, so to speak. In the case of the US, this was the CCCP during the cold War. The instant the cold war ended, it was back to a feeding frenzy at the government trough.
I found your blog at the New York Times almost twenty years ago because our prime minister at the time, Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party were pushing the low tax ideology, so familiar to Americans, on Canadians. They were also publishing handbooks for their mps to use to disrupt parliamentary committees, trying to kill our long form census, the CBC, research centers like our Experimental Lakes Area, so much more. They were preventing government scientists from speaking to the public. They were demonizing the bureaucracy, our Medicare system, basically anything except business (the private sector). I wanted to know if they were right about the economy. Was our country being ruined by high taxes and bureaucracy. I was looking for credentials, Nobel prize, author of respected economics text book, ivy league university professor, New York Times columnist. I read your book, Conscience of a Liberal. I was looking for something else
humanity, decency, a sense of justice because a lot of the things the Conservatives seemed to be attacking like Medicare, Old Age Security, Unemployment Insurance seemed to me to be rooted in these values. I have learned from you and others over the years (another of your good qualities is a willingness to engage with serious criticism) that not only are these programs realistic and affordable when managed responsibly, but they actually contribute to a robust economy by keeping the economy afloat during recessions, and contribute to democracy by promoting social cohesion. I want to plug Martin Wolf’s book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism because he doesn’t have a reputation as a lefty socialist. That label should be deep sixed. This Bilderburg attending Senior Finance Editor for the Financial Times makes a robust defence of the welfare state and democracy. Watching what is happening in the US leaves me breathless and near tears most days. I hope you will find your way through this. Thank you for giving me the tools to understand that the institutions of my country are solid and worth preserving.
This truism comes to mind: "Never argue with a man whose compensation depends on him not understanding" (not sure of the origin...it's not mine). The people in congress depend on the people they are enriching. Until this tie is broken, the system will not get fixed.
Upton Sinclair 1878–1968. American novelist and social reformer. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
It’s a great quote, but the strained construction blunts its impact. As you get older, it becomes depressingly clear just how commonly conviction is bought and sold, and for how little. We do not celebrate the miracle that was the enlightenment enough.
To base your opinions on measurement and fact?! Unheard of!
The tax gap problem was addressed by President Biden in the Inflation Reduction Act but Trump and DOGE eliminated those new hires and gutted the enforcement division so the tax gap will likely increase by as much or more than DOGE's savings target of $150 billion for next year. From Yale Budget Lab summary:
"If the lack of IRS resources leads to a substantial increase in noncompliance, net forgone revenue could rise by $2.4 trillion over 10-years."
Negotiating prescription drug prices for all Americans would save around $1000 a person per year and would only hurt big pharmaceutical profits while cutting a big branch off the tree of greed in our healthcare system.
Your proposals are too straightforward and easy to implement. Our politicians prefer convolution and obfuscation because it makes look busy. One important issue you didn’t cover is Citizens United, the root cause of our present problems in government.
The question that is more root cause arises: How do you get a government that passes a decent budget? That is a matter of convictions in the population. Such convictions aren't just the logical outcomes of observations and reasoning, if anything, the relation between observations and reasoning and convictions is mostly the other way around: our existing convictions work as speedy, efficient mental automation and thus influence reasoning and observation more than the other way around, as in "no observation or reasoning has much of a chance to make a flat-earther accept that the earth is round".
How do these convictions arise? Mostly from what we hear often and what we get from people we consider close, which includes operators like influencers, prime time talk radio/TV hosts, etc. which act like (and our brains experiences as) 'friend' and thus automatically trust.
In the end, we need to have a serious (and extremely complicated and risky) discussion about human limitations (in our intelligence) and how getting decent results will have to include taking those limitations account. One seriously bad idea is 'free speech absolutism' and the idealistic idea of a 'marketplace of ideas', with the naive background assumption of very intelligent, completely informed humans. In economics, we already know those ideas are naive. We just haven't made the step yet to accept they are naive in politics as well.
The question is not what people should do, but how do you get them to do that given how human psychology works and what thus the limitations of our human intelligence is. For instance: Most if not all people 'require fact'. It is the issue however what makes them accept something as fact. And they may not accept the scientific method, for instance, because they are convinced it is biased. They ignore certain lies by their own sources as 'small unimportant lies' (seemingly for one just to be able to keep their convictions, or m ore precisely, because having stable convictions has several evolutionary advantages). We all do that, it is fundamental to human psychology. Even scientists will not immediately drop their paradigm when confronted with a problematic measurement.
So we need to have a difficult discussion about freedom of speech. How does protecting a nation against too many lies not turn onto massive loss of free speech? There are ideas. For instance, you could increase the threshold of being allowed to say untruth depending on your reach. Say, as soon as your channel/message/etc, has more than a million views, you have to fulfil stronger requirements as regard to trustworthiness, where trustworthiness than relies on concrete proof. And maybe you should drop the long-standing precedent that lying about the government is always OK (created by SCOTUS as an exception to "lies are not protected under the 1st amendment" to protect the population against a too powerful government, but government has for a while now not always been the strong party). There really is much that needs to change if wel want to be able to create rule-of-law democracies in an age of mass-to-mass communication.
One way or another, you need to rebuild the idea of shared facts and shared values, because that is exactly what the foundation of a society relies on.
Fact is just a four letter word to him. I don't think he cares about or thinks about fact at all. He just says stuff because it sounds good to him and he'd like to mold our thinking.
But he's just an example. Ian says "Require fact." Who decides what's fact? That question is why the 1st amendment exists. As one of Terry Pratchett's characters says when someone accuses him of abusing his power - "and what would be the other uses of power?"
I never want to read one more op-ed or hear one more TV pundit telling Democrats they need to "be the party of the working class." Republicans just passed a tax bill that hammers the working class and gives the nation's wealth to the already wealthy. Not one Democrat voted for it. Republicans spent an entire election cycle claiming to be the party of the working class but look at what they do, not what they say.
republicans have an entire media complex to convince people that what they are doing is right and benefits everyday Americans.
"republicans have an entire media complex to convince people that what they are doing is right and benefits everyday Americans."
yes yes yes yes yes
Fox News, Sinclair Group (owns a lot of local TV stations), red rant radio, etc., continuously stoke resentment and build up a mob base by lying about factual matters.
I confess I'm impressed at how Every Accusation Is A Confession, like claiming wind and solar farms are put in using eminent domain (they're private contracts with landowners), when it is in fact the fossil fuel companies that use the government to take land for oil and gas pipelines (and "forced pooling" for gas wells).
Get lost spammer! Someone report this, it doesn’t work on my iPhone.
And the MAGA talking heads use simple vocabulary and short sentences.
It’s the mainstream “liberal” media that has been driving the “Democrats are a bunch of coastal elites who don't care about and have nothing to offer “ordinary” Americans” narrative. For example they constantly accused Hillary of this idiotic claim — as if things like affordable health care, education and day care, good public schools, higher minimum wages, etc. are things that aren’t particularly beneficial t lower income people. Post election campaign analyses showed that Hillary had talked far more about how to create good paying jobs than Trump or even Bernie had done.
Worse, the media actually distorted their coverage to support of Hillary their preferred portrayal of her as elitist. For example not only did they bury the fact that she had a serious plan to help revive coal communities which included ensuring their pensions and healthcare coverage, cleaning up polluted mining sites, investing in green energy jobs — the media deliberately distorted her statements about that plan in order to portray her as not caring about “those people”:
“ Hillary Clinton’s “coal gaffe” is a microcosm of her twisted treatment by the media
She navigated a hall of mirrors.”
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/9/15/16306158/hillary-clinton-hall-of-mirrors
The media also buried the fact that under old Joe Biden not only did we have the best job market in over 50 years, we had the lowest unemployment rate for African American men ever. Most aLao chose to ignore the fact that by the end of Biden’s term not only had wages outpaced inflation,the greatest gains were for those low income people he media claims Democrats don’t care about.
To the billionaires, universal health care, quality education, and social programs for the poor are not a priority.
They already have the first 2, and aren't poor.
Creative lying often disguises Democrat programs as "wasteful spending".
Of course it is "wasteful" to billionaires, who don't lack those services. They would rather have a tax cut.
I call it a "propaganda organ."
There’s another one more recent. I can’t report them. Due to a bug the report button does nothing on my iPhone.
Many "working class" voters oppose Democrats for reasons other than the economy. In addition to the cultural issues that alienate "working class" voters, there is resentment over attempts to help the poor. Many people who get up and go to work every day see those grtting help as "shirkers" who do not deserve help, even though research shows that most people receiving assistance get it on a transitory basis. Cruelty to the poor sells among some "working class" voters.
I know plenty of working class Democrats, some in unions, some retired, some in school. They understand that “helping the working class” is not what the Republican Party is about. They dismiss the media’s parroting of rightwing talking points, they reject racism and misogyny as “values,” and they show up to knock doors and phone bank at election time. Let’s remember, too, that the majority of January 6th rioters were middle class and professional white people with a serious hatred of diversity, equity and inclusion, core values of melting pot America.
That is why I used the word "many", not "all". Democrats lose elections by thin margins. Republicans have picked up votes from "working class" voters over the years despite Democrats offering better economic policies. Republicans are masters of exploiting wedge issues and wrapping their terrible policies in "populist" rhetoric. Democrsts give them an opening by not focussing their rhetoric on the economic issues that affect all Americans and also poll well.
Democrats--most Democrats--fail to properly push back on the FOX News talking point of the month. Critical Race Theory was one example of this, an obscure Grad School course never taken by more than a few thousand students, that FOX magically transformed into endemic race-shaming of white kids at every public school in the country.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett has done a great job pushing back at the Trans Kids in Sports brouhaha that's FOX's current fave pseudo-issue, pointing out that you can literally count on one hand the number of trans kids in school sports. While the number of Americans the GOP removed from healthcare last night tops 20 million!
True. It is a challenge. There is no "center/left" equivalent to FOX News. When you are committed to evidence and truth, you are at a significant disadvantage. As Mark Twain famously said, "A lie can travel halfway around the world before tge truth can put on its shoes". Even more true today with social media.
MSNBC pushes back all the time but the people who need to be reached are not the ones watching.
Democrats can get out and talk to people all they want but if the media doesn’t cover that the message doesn’t break through. When Biden was still running I noticed that he was doing frequent events to tout the new projects that had been created by his programs such as a new battery factory but that those event were rarely covered by major media outlets. Then the media would accuse him of not getting his message out. In contrast they were always showing Trump’s campaign events.
The media did the same thing to Hillary. Her rallies and speeches were rarely covered but media outlets like CNN almost never missed one of Trump’s:
“That the networks found Trump entertaining was patently clear. They aired his rallies in full and unmediated, sometimes so eager to get him on the air that it led to the notorious “podium shot”—when cable news outlets would cut away from other candidates’ speeches to a live shot of an empty podium awaiting Trump’s arrival.”
https://www.cjr.org/covering_the_election/bad-tv-banikarim-trump-networks-mistakes.php
Then to add insult to injury journalists accused Democrats of having offered nothing to average voters! Someone should explain how Democrats are supposed to compete with this kind of biased media coverage.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/stressed-sideliners/pp_2021-11-09_political-typology_07-05-png/
Case & Deaton, in graphs
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/06/opinion/working-class-death-rate.html
FREE link tinyurl.com/NYT2020DeathsOfDespair
Too many links gets flagged as spam.
George Lakoff: 'Conservatives don't follow the polls, they want to change them … Liberals do everything wrong'
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/01/george-lakoff-interview
One of Reagan's flacks figured this out-if you appeal to values (and have half the media acting as propaganda organs) you can sway people who don't really pay attention (10% of voters who are biconceptuals and Pew describes as 'Stressed Sideliners'.)
https://www.salon.com/2017/01/15/dont-think-of-a-rampaging-elephant-linguist-george-lakoff-explains-how-the-democrats-helped-elect-trump/
I worry that a lot of folks get all their news and information from Fox or worse and therefore are completely unaware of how bad this budget will affect them. And when they start to feel the effects, such as reduced Medicaid coverage or increased deficits and consequently higher interest rates, they won’t connect these effects with the budget because Fox will supply a different explanation.
EU said" Two thirds of America's voters voted for the neofascist GOP in 2024." About half of those who vote voted GOP. I agree that the GOP has become fascist (Neo or not). Your 2/3 number probably originated at Fox or Sinclair.
2/3 may be right if all those who voted for their good buddy local facistl repub but maybe not trump. Repubs get by with everyone re e.lecting the jerks that trump would be a sad memory without
The DEMs, financed by about the same corporations that funnel money to the GOP, are simply unwilling to fight a class war against the GOP, one that they couldn't lose. The GOP almost literally advertises that they're planning on screwing over Joe Sixpack, and yet the DEMs somehow can't beat them in elections. The GOP is paid to win elections. The DEMs are paid to lose them.
I agree with your analysis in general. The "Amusing Ourselves to Death" problem is very serious. I'm not treating the political process as a horse between parties by any means. I'm noting that in the US political system it's absolutely critical to hold the presidency and majorities in at least one of the houses of congress. The DEMs have failed to do this, losing the presidency twice to one of the most vile snakes to have ever slithered across the American political scene. Elections in the US aren't horse races; it's worse than that. In horse races there's a prize for second place.
Fundamental Attribution Error rears its ugly head.
Hyper individualism and the bootstrap mythology are incompatible with human decency.
“Some” is putting it mildly. Government-perpetrated cruelty to people they don’t like is the most effective motivater of white voters that Republicans employ and has been since Nixon/Atwater put it front and center in 1968, having learned it from George Wallace. Without that strategy, it is doubtful that Republicans could have won the presidency in any election since that time.
I was attempting to not paint "all" working class voters with the same brush. I live in an area where most working class voters are solidly blue. Rural voters are where Democrats are weakest, even in states whose Senators back in the 60’s were solid supporters of civil rights bills. The drift in those areas I would attribute to reaction to environmental bills, (despite efforts to protect the environment are good for their areas in the long term), cultural issues, and the economic effects of globalization and automation. It just doesn’t take as many people to run farms or manufacture goods. And, many rural small cities were one industry towns that got hammered as jobs went overseas or factories were automated. Employment has fallen far faster than output in manufacturing. Democrats got blamed more than Republicans. Republicans do a good job of scapegoating. They point to regulations and environmental laws when those things are a minor part of what has driven economic angst in rural counties. Easy targets and a deflection from the real drivers. That being said, tariffs will not bring back a manufacturing "golden age".
Yes, there are millions of white working class voters who are first rate citizens and people. Exit polls put the number at about 30%, compared to 20% for white evangelical voters and 40% for the white demographic as a whole.
The problem you describe boils down to DNC strategy failure. Republicans' "woke" strategies were the strings that made Democrats dance as if they were puppets.
The Democratic party never once got out ahead of any of the issues, and were left stumbling around reacting a day late and a dollar short.
Oh, come on! Most of those "working class" voters are White males who are racist, misogynistic and homophobic religious fanatics. They'd rather cut off their own noses than see a dime go to all those "others" they've been thought to despise so long by their daddies, granddaddies, great-granddaddies and great-great-granddaddies - all the way back to the days before Jefferson Davis. Speaking about this euphemistically is a big part of our national problem, because it hides the ugly truth that needs to be addressed! You can't fix a problem if you're unwilling to look it square in the face.
You're undoubtedly correct in characterizing bigoted white voters, but the answer is to educate them, not antagonize them by blaming them for their ancestors' sins. That would have been the DNC's job.
Is it racist to point out the racism of others? How is that racist? Did you not look at what happened on January 6, 2024? Have you not seen the dozens of studies showing how correlated White racism is with Trump support? I literally just typed into my search bar "studies showing correlation between trump voters and racism" and got 1,060,000 results. Here's the first part of the abstract from one of the first studies that popped up...
"Growing racial, ideological, and cultural polarization within the American electorate contributed to the shocking victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Using data from American National Election Studies surveys, we show that Trump’s unusually explicit appeals to racial and ethnic resentment attracted strong support from white working-class voters while repelling many college-educated whites along with the overwhelming majority of nonwhite voters."
I get the same kinds of results when I search for misogynistic and evangelical religious preferences and their correlations with Trump support.
Do you really think those attitudes had changed by 2024? That all of a sudden working class White males (and surprising number of working class Blacks) didn't want to vote for a Black-Asian women for president based on anything other than her race and gender? So, as I asked before, how is it racist to point out the racism of others?
"Obviously, racism IS a factor."
Thanks for admitting that you were wrong when you wrote that my post was racist. As I said before, pointing out the racism, misogyny et. al. of others doesn't make you racist or misogynistic. And there are studies that show that racism and other negative atavistic social attitudes are prime motivators behind Trump support in 2024 as well. You can find them doing a google search.
Lyndon Johnson said it well, Give a man someone to look down upon and he will give you his wallet. All of the media demonizing the egg head liberals does exactly that.
Trump is great at it and adds in the persecution complex. Look they are so stupid, and they take advantage of you. vote for me.
Part of the problem with the “working class” being against those receiving government help is the fact that the last 15 or so years, since the inception of the “tea party”, bias and eventually racism has become OK within the American society.
Well, it is true that the Democrats should be the party of the working class. But they are in the process of wringing their hands over focus grouping how to become just that, instead of just leveling with rank and file labor with the facts and letting them decide for themselves whether they want to stop getting fucked by Republicans. At least that way, Democrats can accept being a party that puts labor first and fights for people who keep their noses clean and puts them to the grindstone.
We should be the party of the individual person, the party that is identified with safety, prosperity, and each human’s right to be who they are.
Can they, though? Can the democrat leadership do that? When I think of the Democratic party I see a party dedicated to keeping progressive voices silent.
The problem is that it's only now that Dems have finally been listening to the people and acting in our interests. For a long time, they ignored what we were telling them, and only listening to their Wall St. donors. It's good to see they're finally getting the hint.
Joe Biden did more for the working class than any President since FDR.
Kamala Harris would have continued on that path. Voters didn't care.
If Democrats don’t get real about returning to the rule of law, and declaring their opposition to deconstructing the civil service to favor big business. Democrats need to call Trump’s assault on DEI for what it is: the resegregation of America. And stand up for improvement of the faltering reading & math skills of America’s school children. Democrats must stand for people pay their fair share of taxes. Call the tax cuts a disaster for America’s standing as the safest haven for worldwide investment. Democrats need to oppose Trump’s tariffs as an existential threat to the stability of the world economy.
Stand up for edu
Deconstructing the civil service to favor big business.....someone I know said that her cousin's house was demolished in that most recent tornado that leveled several homes in St. Louis. His insurance company is giving him the run around, and FEMA's purpose is to be delegated to the states. They are wondering if this is so that private developers will come in and make a low ball offer to then redevelop as short term rentals, as this neighborhood is close to the downtown tourist district.
This reeks of turn-about conspiracies, like the repub's claim that NC floods were allowed so the lands could become a lithium mine.
Harris would have continued down that path, but not because voters didn't care. Voters were baffled with bullshit, treading water in a sea of lies.
Most voters are economically comfortable enough that cultural values predominate for who they plan to vote for. As just one example of this, I'd include Obama's remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2014. I'm struck by the fact that I cannot imagine any contemporary Democrat(AOC, Harris, etc) speaking this way. "So each time we gather, it’s a chance to set aside the rush of our daily lives; to pause with humility before an Almighty God; to seek His grace; and, mindful of our own imperfections, to remember the admonition from the Book of Romans, which is especially fitting for those of us in Washington: “Do not claim to be wiser than you are.”
So here we put aside labels of party and ideology, and recall what we are first: all children of a loving God; brothers and sisters called to make His work our own. But in this work, as Lincoln said, our concern should not be whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God’s side.
And here we give thanks for His guidance in our own individual faith journeys. In my life, He directed my path to Chicago and my work with churches who were intent on breaking the cycle of poverty in hard-hit communities there. And I’m grateful not only because I was broke and the church fed me, but because it led to everything else. It led me to embrace Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. It led me to Michelle -- the love of my life -- and it blessed us with two extraordinary daughters. It led me to public service. And the longer I serve, especially in moments of trial or doubt, the more thankful I am of God’s guiding hand.
Now, here, as Americans, we affirm the freedoms endowed by our Creator, among them freedom of religion. And, yes, this freedom safeguards religion, allowing us to flourish as one of the most religious countries on Earth, but it works the other way, too -- because religion strengthens America. Brave men and women of faith have challenged our conscience and brought us closer to our founding ideals, from the abolition of slavery to civil rights, workers’ rights.
So many of you carry on this good work today -- for the child who deserves a school worthy of his dreams; for the parents working overtime to pull themselves out of poverty; for the immigrants who want to step out of the shadows and become a full member of our American family; for the young girl who prays for rescue from the modern slavery of human trafficking, an outrage that we must all join together to end."
This isn't a situation akin to the 1930s under FDR, where the TVA was providing running water and electricity to families in Appalachia, who were living in grinding poverty previously. Democrats becoming the party of college educated Americans is a huge problem, because the majority of Americans don't have a degree, and as race has become a less salient concern for African-Americans, and Hispanic Americans, they're voting more like White working class/non college educated voters. Harris lost ground with every single group except White college educated voters, and Asian Americans.
I wouldn’t speak that way. We move forward with facts and evidence based policy, not appeal to superstition.
Thank you, fundamental religion is a huge part of the problem!
Voters don't live in graphs n data, that's not how you appeal to voters at all. Hilary tried that, completely bombed. Kamala, same thing. Democrats are seen as weird, unrelatable and elitist by voters who don't have degrees, and the states that are gaining population and Electoral College votes like Florida or North Carolina, or Arizona are more conservative n religious than than California or New York. In the next election in 2028, Democrats could win every state in the Blue Wall, and still lose the election. What's the plan then??
Definitely not one where the answer is creating a bigger Cult to fight the Cult problem we have.
What the hell world are you living in?!? Race is being elevated to be all and end all, as long as your race is rich white man (or mutant, in the case of Musk and some of the other tech bros. Everybody else will get fucked. Wake up!
And don’t think being a rich white man will keep you safe. Trump and his administration are well on the way to creating a new level of homicidal lunacy that Pol Pot could only envy. This defective regime will turn on itself because it is batshit. There is no way to reason with it, even if you blindly devoted to it.
Wake up!
I sincerely believe that it's not that they didn't care, but a very large percentage of voters didn't KNOW. The media, almost to a source, hyped the 'Joe's old' schtick so hard that even the generally honest ones underplayed the improving economy, international respect, normalization of the government functions, so hard that any given day you might find one report saying "the fed reports excellent prospects ahead," and everybody else had "Joe stumbled over a word." Harris got the same treatment, while Turnip is/was constantly sanewashed.
That's not to say that we don't have way more than our share of people who just wouldn't vote for a brown person, or a woman, and especially not a brown woman, under any circumstances, including when the clear alternative was the promised destruction of the country by a tinpot fascist dictator.
Those last three words…”Voters didn’t care”.
That’s why we are in the shit we are in. I suppose they will care…
When their asses are on fire…
When their children are slain…
When they are unjustly separated from property…
When Connard a l’Orange just cares less about them than he does for himself…
That’s America, in a nutshell.
Your use of the terms "we" and "they" are confusing. We are they.
By "they" I was referring to the politicians. By "we" I was referring to voters.
The op-ed writers and the pundits, many of them, seem to have odd blind spots in their vision, when it comes to the GOP and $trump. Wonder why.
$$$$$$
I never understood the claim that republicans are the party for the working class.
It's part of the big lie.
But, it is true that the Democratic Party needs to be the party of the working class. It isn't enough that they oppose the crap MAGA does. They must be focused on what they can do for the working class. Think longer term than just the next election. Think about that too, but as a way to build a coalition that pointedly includes repairing the damage done to the working class over the last 4 decades.
I want to see more op-ed driving this point home. It clearly has not sunk in.
The Democratic Party HAS ALWAYS BEEN the party of the working class. They just suffer from chronically poor messaging.
It was for a while, but I think this ended with Clinton’s jog to the right. He reasoned, if I jog to the right, I’ll capture some center-right voters and where else is the progressive working man going to go? Well, where indeed? Despite being the worst candidate possible, people voted for Trump for change. What does that say about the Democratic Party?
As a Democrat since the 1950s, though not yet old enough to vote, I wish I could endorse this. But it has been clear to me for years that their move toward the supposed center has taken the vigor and conscience from the party, and now from the nation.
^^^This who gave us the ACA? Without whom many of us would be dead.
Biden’s platform in 2020 did focus on things that would help the working class, and he got a lot of what was proposed enacted. Regardless, voters chose to give the House to MAGAs in the midterms. After 45 years of working class voters consistently voting against their own economic interests, it’s clear other factors are motivating their votes. Having once worked daily with blue collar tradesmen, bigotry and evangelical Christianity accounted for my coworkers voting habits far more than their own economic welfare.
Correct, we do not need more from these “pundits” but the truth is the Democrats do not have a message, a uniform message,one that every single Democrat will use. Notice how the GOP comes up with one and every single one of them uses it and repeats it, whether they agree with it or not. The Democrats come up with several of those and confuse the public. Let’s be honest many within the voting public are a bunch of simpletons, regardless of the politicians saying the voting public is smart/intelligent. If they were even a little smart they would not be voting against their best interests.
To quote the famous political philosopher George Carlin. "Consider how stupid the average person is. Now consider the fact that half the people are dumber than the average." The DEMs need a "bumper sticker" length message that clearly states that they're going to help out the average citizen, while the GOP is going to screw them over.
Goes to show you that human beings are most definitely not rational actors. Rationality stands beside (and maybe below) such concerns as 'fitting in' with a group, alleviating your fears (about your status as a person, a man, a woman, a parent, a wage earner) and your relationship to whatever notions of 'god' you hold most dear, especially if they resemble fear of authority and punishment over all.
I think your comment misses the mark. The Democrats need to become the party of a *system* that protects, nurtures and supports ordinary American. I think this is what PK is trying to say. The system is rotten, therefore ordinary people get screwed in endless ways that wealthy people are totally insulated from. It is perfectly possible to claim to be the party of the working class while still justifying the basic workings of modern capitalism, as the Democrats did in the 2024 election. That’s why over 50% of the electorate voted for the iconoclast who said he would change things. He certainly is changing things. He just lied through his teeth about who would benefit the most from those changes. This will continue until the Democrats put forward a candidate who is willing to try and break the system and able to communicate a credible vision for how they would do that. They had a chance with Sanders but ostracised him. I hope they don’t make the same mistake in 2028.
I used to think "late-stage capitalism" was just a buzzword, but I've come around to it. The vultures are circling. The rats are devouring the sinking ship.
But can't they see they are on the ship they are sinking? The dominoes they are setting into motion circle to their own demise along with the destruction of a once fruitful economy with citizens earning and spending to support the program.
They're in denial. They've convinced themselves that, after gorging on the carrion, they'll have enough wealth to be impervious to whatever disasters follow.
Damned "brain fog" spam bot strikes again.
They have all drunk the Kool-Aid. They see what they want to do as necessary and inevitable.
The billionaire class believe their wealth will keep them safe. And it might for a time.
Till they have to do something, like pick vegetables or slaughter cattle.
Safe from the hungry, homeless, unemployed, uninsured…. Good luck with that! Do they not understand We the People greatly outnumber them?
I'm not sure who it was who said it, some former plutocrat, but their plan is to "pay half the working class to kill the other half." IE, divide and conquer.
Seems to be working so far.
My understanding is that the extraterrestrial MAGA species plans to clear-cut the planet. With trees and green plants removed, the atmosphere will have a lowered percentage of oxygen, which they prefer. The present human civilization doesn't fit their plans.
The rats are 30% of us who voted for Mango Mugabe
Only about 22% of Americans voted for the orange stain. Almost 31% of eligible voters as you said. I was appalled by the number of normally liberal voters I talked with who said they did not vote this year because both choices were unacceptable.
Propaganda was skillfully deployed on social media to encourage safe liberal voters to sit this one out. Trump won by less than 2% I believe. They knew that those people would never vote for Trump, they just needed them to not vote at all to get him a win.
This right here. The wedge issue was Palestine. I'm so happy it worked out on that front, Killer Kamala would have been much worse /s
1.5 % You are correct, hardly a mandate.
Yep. False equivalence. Does any one think that Kamala Harris would have asked Qatar for a flying palace? Would she have thrown 13m Americans off Medicaid and Medicare? Would she have appointed Hegseth and his clown car colleagues of faux entertainment talking heads to federal agencies? Would Kamala have tanked the Stock market and increased interest on treasury bonds or announced ridiculous tariffs? And does anyone think Kamala would have threatened Canada? Or Ukraine? Really? Nope. Liberals who decided not to vote for Kamala were just racist white folks looking for an excuse. They’ll enjoy their lives under Conold’s regime. They as much as voted for it.
It hurts to think about what "if's." Everything could be so normal right now.
Part of making them feel like the Democratic choice was acceptable would be to go through a primary process and let the voters anoint the candidate. This is Biden’s fault and the circle that coddled him. Sure, I voted for Harris, because the alternative is a monster, yet she would not have won the primary. She isn’t loved, not like Sanders or Yang by their supporters.
Nah, in this analogy, most of Trump's voters will be among the shivering passengers looking in vain for a lifeboat.
That's an insult to rats.
Not to mention the cockroaches they emulate with such pride.
Most of us who interpret Marx are in fact stuck because we are not actually in anything that can be described as “late stage capitalism.”
It is my firm contention that we are in fact speeding onward to a Feudal society which will embrace Facist ideology.
This is made possible largely by the power of the new tech bro’ Lords and their final tech heroin AI.
I wish like hell I was kidding with this.
in the meantime here’s where the Big Beautiful Bill leads us:
https://open.substack.com/pub/olflawriduhcracker/p/because-billionaires-need-trillions?r=38b45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
It seems clear to me too that the Republicans didn’t vote to save capitalism. They voted for monarchy.
Otherwise known as end-stage capitalism. Carve us up between the theofascists, the white supremacy fascists, and the tech fascists -- vs those not in any of those camps and poor folks. I almost see the G-word peeking out from under covers. Gaza was a test case.
Exactly. Masters and Serfs.
As W famously said: "in the long run, we're all dead". This is the GOP governing model: grab as much as you can now and screw the future.
Wasn't that a John Maynard Keynes expression? IIRC, he said it to counteract the false idea that unregulated economies thrive "in the long run."
It was Keynes. Maybe Bush II repeated it. In the long run, the Peloponnesian Wars have been repeated over and over and over again for 2500 years, along with cycles of democracy and autocracy.
There's an interesting interview about this, from PoliticsGirl :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TghRBlwbgQo
I do not think "politicians" decided on capitalism or the buying and selling of stuff as the way to run a system. When human began to cultivate the land and domesticate animals, often this created situations where one might trade with a neighbor for what you had and they did not and visa versa, and then people were able to engage in trades like maybe mass producing pottery and trading that, etc. Money was invented to make exchange easier. So the system grew naturally.
However, if one dominated large areas of land and conquered ones neighbors, one might end up with a feudal system or a dictatorship where the ruling class decides everything including the distribution of resources, etc.
Economic activity, how our system works, is just that "activity." Even the money one earns from a podcast is from consumer spending, it does not have to be physical "stuff" but is also services and entertainment, etc.
So even as this person complains about capitalism, they are actually engaging in the process of capitalism or consumerism by making money on a podcast.
This economic activity (buying and selling) even if one is concerned about excessive consumption of physical items, is far better than if a dictator were to decide how things are divided up in society among a group or a king, etc, and these are largely the alternatives.
So, can we make our system work much better for everyone? Sure, but it is still the better system.
If one does not like the consumption of physical things model, promote the buying and selling of ideas like subscribing to a paid substack or maybe go to a museum or other entertainment and spend money there more often instead to keep the economy humming.
However, our consumer based model works better than other systems - so long as we regulate it and keep monopolies and cheats and fraudsters at bay.
Hence the importance of consumer protection laws, which Republicans hate because they hinder the fraudsters.
Yes, they seem to be "all in" on corruption. It is disgusting.
> So even as this person complains about capitalism, they are actually engaging in the process of capitalism or consumerism by making money on a podcast.
It isn’t hypocrisy for a communist to earn a living in the US under capitalism. It is not in his power to live as he would prefer, but he does need to live.
My comment was not about hypocrisy, only that most are complaining about waste from consuming because they think of an economy and GDP growth as all about buying "stuff" or physical objects and may be unaware that the same economy also flourishes with services and entertainment, etc. We can have a consumer based economy with a lot less "stuff" if we tend to spend money and spend time on internet types of things or entertainment or leisure pursuits rather than ordering objects to sit in a closet. That is all I meant. One can make a living and an economy can thrive with fewer objects if that is one is concerned with.
My comment is above.
Professor Krugman: weirdly, when i tried to move my entire savings account overseas (where i now live), the problems and stress (AND TAXES! on already taxed income, no less. can you say "double taxation"?) i dealt with almost did me in. so i wonder: how do rich people move massive amounts of money overseas to places they don't live, and may never have even visited, when i could barely move my savings account -- a pittance in comparison -- to a country where i now live?
and regarding your musical coda: WOW! what a voice!
They have personal lawyers and bankers who worry about all that shit for them.
When we say rich people don't actually do any work, they just benefit from the work other people do, we're not just talking about the honest work. It would no more occur to Elon Musk to personally worry about moving his finances overseas than it would have occurred to Pablo Escobar to personally get in a little Cessna and fly his narcotics shipments all the way from Medellin to Miami.
The rich have "methods" available to them for money laundering that are beyond reach for most.
Including cryptocurrency.
The latest weapon to add to their arsenal.
“Why, it’s almost as if cheats and grifters are their sort of people.” Yep, you can say this about (R) Congress, the administration, DOGE, and the rest of these terrible human beings.
And don't forget the SCOTUS "gang of six", especially the two senior [strikeout] grifters [/strikeout] members.
What problems did you have moving your money overseas? Asking for “a friend.”
They used to use horses, art, now they use crypto.
But ma inky they have personal bankers who are already set up in these places to work around shell corporations that money gets funneled through. The bakers in localities like the Vaymans, Swiss, Ireland have relationships with local authorities who aid for a fee them.
They’d rather pay 100 million to hide 200 million to avoid paying 50 million in taxes.m
At some point the wealthy in the US decided paying taxes was for loser and suckers. If you stepped on a golf course, you’d be able to say you drugged a 21 year old girl to have sex with and be less shunned than if you said you thought it was your patriotic duty to pay taxes to the country that afforded you so much. THAT would be considered more of a faux par than an actual deviant deed.
Maybe these days they buy Bitcoin with the funds in their savings, and then liquidate their Bitcoin holdings into a new savings account in their new country.
Is there a reason you can’t also do this with an index fund?
There is a through line from the GOP controlled Congress to Right Wing SCOTUS - neither group grasps how much government does to maintain civil society.
Take the absurd SCOTUS decision from last night which ring fences the Fed but allows Trump to turn all other government agencies into "at his will" operations.
No SCOTUS. The Fed alone will be blind if the other agencies aren't reporting accurately even if such news will anger Trump.
What a terrible way to learn all the good our government does.
Don’t leave out our wildly ungrateful electorate. Nobody seems the slightest bit grateful that every morning they wake up form a sleep not interrupted by bombings. They walk around their house, open the fridge that has electricity provided by grids keeping the food that was inspected by the FDA safe from spills after it was inspected for listeria, salmonella and other poisons. They brew their coffee with water that isn’t contaminated with E. coli or giving them cholera. They sit down and are pretty sure their door won’t be kicked in and they are dragged away with no evodence of a crime and held bevause the local sheriff is jealous of their new car. After they read some news, which is provided for them to be moderately truthful because the person reporting has the right to free speech, they jump in the shower (more water that isn’t going to kill them, brush their teeth with toothpaste they can assume is safe, take a stayin that was discovered at a university so they don’t drop dead, pick our clothes that won’t get them arrested for showing a calf (gasp!), jump in their car that most likely will not blow them up or choke them with dangerous air, drive on roads that have stop light s and are relatively safe and OAVED, thanks to tax money, go to a job where their boss is required not to treat them as slaves, ,amber Walmart near a beach that isn’t patrolled by armed soldiers and open to all citizens. Maybe ask a girl on a date without being murdered for not being I. The same caste.
The amount of things we take for granted and the very little America has asked us in return…pay attention, educate yourself, VOTE, take care of her as she falls ill. Her beauty alone that she provides from mountains to beaches to cliffs and parasites and her thanks from us? Non stop complaining and selfishness, greed, shitting on her reputation constantly .
The problem is one thought step up the pyramid. We have a part of the polity who believe that they and they alone are allowed to govern/rule in our society. They are always right and we are always wrong. And they are willing to burn the whole thing down and cause untold suffering to get to their right-wing utopia.
I don’t think they know at all what is right.
They agree that American culture at the moment is decadent and needs to be replaced but their views about “with what” are flimsy at best.
They are, as Brad DeLong and others note, “chaos monkeys” united in opposition to the current order in the world.
Ironically, it's their wealthiest patrons/donors who are the decadent ones.
Agreed.
Children in adult bodies with very limited understanding of the benefits of civil society - the veneer over our animal nature.
I’ve seen that veneer peeled off multiple times in person, most recently in Jakarta when Suharto fell.
It’s ugly.
Pride goeth before a fall.
Not summer?
Quite a groaner :-) But yes, the administration of President Evil might collapse before summer, inshallah.
They want our society to be run by rich white “Christian” men and for everyone else to serve them and not expect anything but the most meager rewards.
Agreed.
My point is about how flimsy an idea that is. We are a nation of 330M people. There's no way we go from where we are to their dream without losing a majority of the population.
It's as if they want to do a reverse rapture, kill all the others and the elect inherit the earth.
I think our size has become part of the problem. In the early days, the representatives were apportioned according to a formula, until at some point, they set the fixed number of representatives. So each one represents more and more people...thereby not representing them at all.
That's definitely one problem.
That sounds about right. What they're doing is mass murder. That's what psychopaths do.
Regrettably to this worldview, it isn’t the government’s role to dictate and regulate culture, especially in a country with a bill of rights such as ours which goes a long way to proscribing that sort of regulation.
Regrettably, our Bill of Rights is not self-executing. It requires Congress at first and then the people at large, eventually, to enforce it or lose it.
Congress has failed. Our turn is coming.
Claims that such cannot happen are why we are at this place in history.
That's what many of them would like to change. For example, the Space Laser Lady holds town meetings in which she says she wants to turn the US into a Christian theocracy.
They've always been that way. At least since the McCarthy era.
They have been that way since the national was founded on co-existence with the institution of slavery as somehow acceptable to any society worth a damn.
Well, yes, that's true, albeit under different names: Dixiecrats, Whigs, etc.
After Kennedy and Johnson pushed through the civil rights legislation, the Dixiecrats were forced to become Republicans to win re-election. Tennessee was roughly 2/3 Democratic in the mid 60s. It's solidly red now.
Yes, and process was completed with Tricky Dickies "Southern Strategy".
I would content that the stain of slavery (and the bigotry it generates) is still the underlying driver behind the Facist ideology this nation seems to racing toward.
Actually, I believe it's the reverse - Fascist ideology and bigotry is what drove the stain of slavery.
It's not that they don't grasp it. It's that they don't give a s**t. That's the problem.
A great paraphrase of the line, “It’s not that they don’t know right from wrong, it’s that they just don’t give a damn.” as the definition of a sociopath.
The utter lack of of compassion or empathy to the point of inflicting cruel actions on innocents whose only crime is largely not being in the top 10% of society, is literally the driving force behind today’s Republican (Facist) Party
Even more disturbing is that about 37% of the electorate in the Republican ranks are essentially downtrodden, sufferers who I can only gather get some sort of joy of having everyone suffer with them instead of rising to meet the oppression they too live under.
MuskRat said empathy is the "fundamental weakness of western civilization". In other words, MuskRat fits that sociopath definition perfectly.
That 37% of the electorate are clueless. They believe the Repubs, and especially TrumPox, will "own the libs" for them. They don't grasp that "owning the libs" will hurt them too. In other words, they're idiots.
I submit this image (for purely educational and artistic purposes) from the movie “Downfall” which I believe captures not only what the result of Facist ideology leads to, but is actually what serves as the core value system of ALL of today’s Republican Party:
https://open.substack.com/pub/olflawriduhcracker/p/because-billionaires-need-trillions?r=38b45&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
"Cause ev'rybody's got to have somebody to look down on. Who they can feel better than any time they please. Someone doin' somethin' dirty decent folks can frown on. If you can't find nobody else, then help yourself to me." - Kris Kristofferson
A great quote I saw somewhere: You want to live in a country with a small government, low taxes, and strong family values? Move to Somalia.
The current SCOTUS is an embarrassment to the country. If the US survives this period, structural changes will be have to be made to the courts, and congress, to prevent anything like Trump and Citizen's United from ever happening again.
“A significant number will die prematurely due to lack of adequate medical care or nutrition”. Isn’t this the intention since at least Reagan? Life expectancy has been decreasing. Having premature deaths is a strategy to save on social security, Medicare and other benefits.
It’s hard to say out loud because it is so horrible, so I’ll whisper it, (lean in to hear me), “they want us to die.”
Soft eugenics. Nothing obvious like a T4 euthanasia program. Just engineer the circumstances that cause more people to die.
You’re right no messy camps and gas chambers, just let ‘em suffer and die.
But isn't this what was said during the height of the Covid epidemic when old MAGA voters were dying like flies? "If we just let them kill themselves off, won't we have a voting majority?" But now they are offering Trump vouchers to replenish themselves.
Why gamble on a fetus for twelve years? If what you want is "the best" then allow great universities to vet the best of the best for you and invite them to say in America and keep us great?
Easy Peasy,
They see people as just fodder, so if someone dies or moves there are always others. It’s “give me another one”, because we’re not considered to be human beings like they are. We’re considered to be objects and objects aren’t something they are concerned about, or value.
They want us to die prematurely.
Ironic Story. Perhaps the last really progressive Congress person left in Florida, Allen Grayson was on the floor challenging one of the hundreds of Republican attempts to quash the ACA.
He described the Republican replacement plan as: Don’t get sick and if you do please die quickly.”
We need about 300 of his ilk in Congress today
Why do you think Elon is working on humanoid robots? I mean, dumb idea (purpose build robots are much better), but automation means we have less need for human peons. I think even now a majority of our work is unnecessary makework. We don't need to have as many workers as we already have, and jobs then become a form of welfare for consumers.
Instead of cutting work hours, we stretch them thin. The only reason the aristocr... I mean oligarchs need human peons is to feel good about lording over them.
Is the only justification for being alive to work? Maybe that is the root of the problem. Wouldn’t it be great if people could be happy and healthy without needing to labor? Isn’t the aim of technology to free people from drudgery rather than to eliminate people.
To a capitalist, yes. The function of humanity is to work and to consume. Personally I'd love to do away with unnecessary labor, but the way our economy is set up, the benefits would all flow to the ones holding the capital to build the robots. Our only real leverage anymore is not our labor, but in our consumption (which is tied to our labor, because otherwise where will we get the bottlecaps to trade for stuff?). But that's why the boycotts have been so effective this year.
"By the sweat of your brow shall ye earn your bread."
Robots
I think they are fine with young healthy workers continuing to work. You can’t be rich siphoning off the labor of others if there is no labor, after all! They just want to kill off the rest who are getting older, sicker and unemployed.
Imagine where this goes when most human labor is replaced by robots. Imagine the cadre of wealthy robot stock owners who are looking to receive their return on investment for putting the world out of work, to the tune of 100s of trillions. They are “owed”.
Robots could create a paradise on earth for humanity, but because we can’t share, it is going to be an extermination.
I mean this is exactly what one could expect from the previous gilded age robber barons. The child employing type. The $5k baby bonus is their solution (or the start of it). They kill off the useless ones and pump out new ones. Get the indoctrination machine into top gear so they are prepared to accept corporate slavery. Like a commenter said above, I’ve also started to see some reality in “late-stage capitalism” as a concept. The invisible hand has no sense of morality.
Heritage foundation slave factory plans: https://thefederalist.com/2024/12/02/heres-how-to-actually-reverse-the-baby-bust/
They don't want them to die while they're capable of working. Can Social Security and Medicare. Put retirees back to work or let them get out of the way.
Paul, this is a good menu of sensible tax reforms. I would do more on Medicare Advantage. Just get rid of it completely. These plans are fine if you don't get very sick but they are bad if you do. Restricted physician networks, aggressive payment denials, higher rather than lower costs (including a profit allowance) compared to regular Medicare A+B+ a good supplement plan (G) + D. In most states once you get sick if you want to switch back to regular Medicare the supplemental plans are subject to "underwriting" which typically means very high premiums or being rejected entirely. The advertising by Medicare Advantage plans is both annoying and misleading. This was just another gift to the insurance industry and should just be abandoned. PLJ
I read a most insightful book called Marketcrafters (Chris Hughes) about how the US government used funds to stimulate markets. One section was on our medical system. After WWII when European governments were going to a more socialized medicine approach, the AMA stood strongly against that in the US because it felt it would lower doctors wages and just make the government workers. It even threatened doctors that if they agreed with the European system moving here, they would take active steps to have their medical licenses revoked. That, plus the opposition from Southern Democrats like Wilbur Mills, put us on the insurance track we are suffering from today.
Came here to post some MedAdvantage thoughts - when insurer codes you sicker than you are, there’s more just the initial cost burden. Its now part of your record, so there may be future impacts - you may pay through additional testing, more cost, algorithms that if you are >x, then youre in a different risk category, etc.
This health insurance stuff really in the weeds. Not sure if PK has gone down this rabbit hole, but if he has, yes!, would encourage this as future topic.
If anyone has seen good writings on this, recommendations welcome. TIA.
I’ll put two here, theyre more practical than economic oriented, but still interesting:
- Arm and a Leg. Mostly a podcast of interesting stories, practical advice on wading through the mire of the US healthcare system. Entertaining and educational. Dan Weissmann
- First Aid Kit - (title may not be perfectly right) - related to arm and a leg, but aiming to organize the tools needed to fight crazy billing of the insurance system if/when you need it.
Both of these seem to have an emerging presence on substack, that i just found yesterday. There may be more presence on their website, etc.
Merrill Goozner, Gooznews on Substack, has a nice piece about Medicare Advantage and is generally very smart on healthcare. https://substack.com/home/post/p-157883387 One of his very valuable posts.
Insurance based care is always going to seek profit by denying care to those most in need. Universal coverage works well in 32’of 33’ comparable democracies. Guess which one is the odd man out? Tax the rich properly. Catch tax cheats. Use the gains for health care - and all the other life-enhancing stuff. Nationalise the health insurers. Seize their assets. Provide for states to operate their own health services funded in partnership with federal government. It’s possible. Trouble is the absence of courage coupled with grift and fraud is ingrained in the American way.
It is difficult to take Krugman seriously on healthcare until he actually embraces MFA. His “politically infeasible” defense is cynicism at its worst. We can t have nice things until we can at least talk about having nice things, even if they are nice things the rest of the western world already enjoys.
Also, raise the cap on Social Security withholding to make the program solvent.
Exactly what that socialist Reagan did.
The bill he signed was hardly revolutionary. My guess is that at that point he was pretty much unaware of most anything he signed due to his dementia, which of course is never worthy of historic note in the eyes of Republican apologists for the nightmare before us today.
What we need is coordination, at the international level, of all left-of-center parties, to ensure that wealthy individuals and corporations pay their fair share of taxes. Otherwise, governments will end up playing wack-a-mole with tax evaders/avoiders moving now to Monaco, now to Dubai etc etc. It is too easy these days to move capital across borders.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen got many other nations to join in formally regulating international tax evasion.
Trump regime is not even planning to attend G20 and possibly not attending G7; it favors one-on-one discussions with autocratic nations.
Since this will require 100% conformance, you are really asking for world government here. It is hard to imagine anything other that interplanetary war bringing that into necessity. Until then we will bicker amongst ourselves and unity in the face of wealthy scofflaws impossible. They can always buy influence somewhere.
Unfortunately mass media is concentrated in the hands of a few elite right wing billionaire oligarchs. As long as the mass media and social media platforms are mostly controlled by rich elite oligarchs, who only see government as a threat to their wealth and power, we will never have proper debates about fiscal responsibility on what it would take to improve our economy with suggestions like these. At my gym Fox News runs 24/7 pushing lies, hate and division to cover for our bought-off Republican led Congress pushing through bills that will destroy the future of our democracy and enslave the 99%. That's the problem with America, the masses are becoming less educated and more sound bite oriented and will never get to understand or see serious debates on our economy to help them make the best choice for our future and economy when voting. Sad.
William Randolph Hearst
Do yourself a favor as well as one for the nation. Disengage from any business that supports Trumpism. The supposedly ineffective “boycott It’s tearing a new asshole for Musk (as it should).
I won’t set foot in Walmart, and dozens of corporate retailers that have supported Trump.
It’s always illuminating when the obvious choices are there for the taking to address systemic budget problems. We face similar issues here in Australia albeit not at the scale of fiscal deficit facing the US. Here for example , instead of having a proper resources rent tax on mining and gas extraction we are literally giving away national resources for almost nothing to foreign corporate entities and shareholder profit. So said our former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry whom Paul may well know. The common thread , being my point here, is vested interests corrupting the political process and the common good.
Representative democracy introduces “single points of failure” which are easily bribed, hijacking the state. It is an inherent weakness. For example, the entire political donorsphere in DC is about $2B, which then regulates a budget of Trillions. The leverage is insane and the temptations to tip the scales irresistible. Without rigorous prosecution, we are lost.
A comment I saw once about the Mexican government: One must understand that corruption is not a flaw in the system, it is the system. This apparently is universally applicable. It look like the only thing that keeps a government somewhat honest is having a gun pointed at its head, so to speak. In the case of the US, this was the CCCP during the cold War. The instant the cold war ended, it was back to a feeding frenzy at the government trough.
I found your blog at the New York Times almost twenty years ago because our prime minister at the time, Stephen Harper and his Conservative Party were pushing the low tax ideology, so familiar to Americans, on Canadians. They were also publishing handbooks for their mps to use to disrupt parliamentary committees, trying to kill our long form census, the CBC, research centers like our Experimental Lakes Area, so much more. They were preventing government scientists from speaking to the public. They were demonizing the bureaucracy, our Medicare system, basically anything except business (the private sector). I wanted to know if they were right about the economy. Was our country being ruined by high taxes and bureaucracy. I was looking for credentials, Nobel prize, author of respected economics text book, ivy league university professor, New York Times columnist. I read your book, Conscience of a Liberal. I was looking for something else
humanity, decency, a sense of justice because a lot of the things the Conservatives seemed to be attacking like Medicare, Old Age Security, Unemployment Insurance seemed to me to be rooted in these values. I have learned from you and others over the years (another of your good qualities is a willingness to engage with serious criticism) that not only are these programs realistic and affordable when managed responsibly, but they actually contribute to a robust economy by keeping the economy afloat during recessions, and contribute to democracy by promoting social cohesion. I want to plug Martin Wolf’s book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism because he doesn’t have a reputation as a lefty socialist. That label should be deep sixed. This Bilderburg attending Senior Finance Editor for the Financial Times makes a robust defence of the welfare state and democracy. Watching what is happening in the US leaves me breathless and near tears most days. I hope you will find your way through this. Thank you for giving me the tools to understand that the institutions of my country are solid and worth preserving.
This truism comes to mind: "Never argue with a man whose compensation depends on him not understanding" (not sure of the origin...it's not mine). The people in congress depend on the people they are enriching. Until this tie is broken, the system will not get fixed.
Upton Sinclair 1878–1968. American novelist and social reformer. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
It’s a great quote, but the strained construction blunts its impact. As you get older, it becomes depressingly clear just how commonly conviction is bought and sold, and for how little. We do not celebrate the miracle that was the enlightenment enough.
To base your opinions on measurement and fact?! Unheard of!
Thanks!
The tax gap problem was addressed by President Biden in the Inflation Reduction Act but Trump and DOGE eliminated those new hires and gutted the enforcement division so the tax gap will likely increase by as much or more than DOGE's savings target of $150 billion for next year. From Yale Budget Lab summary:
"If the lack of IRS resources leads to a substantial increase in noncompliance, net forgone revenue could rise by $2.4 trillion over 10-years."
https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/revenue-and-distributional-effects-irs-funding
Negotiating prescription drug prices for all Americans would save around $1000 a person per year and would only hurt big pharmaceutical profits while cutting a big branch off the tree of greed in our healthcare system.
Your proposals are too straightforward and easy to implement. Our politicians prefer convolution and obfuscation because it makes look busy. One important issue you didn’t cover is Citizens United, the root cause of our present problems in government.
Money doesn't talk, it swears.
It’s nice to start the morning with some common sense. Thank you. The humor doesn’t hurt, either.
The question that is more root cause arises: How do you get a government that passes a decent budget? That is a matter of convictions in the population. Such convictions aren't just the logical outcomes of observations and reasoning, if anything, the relation between observations and reasoning and convictions is mostly the other way around: our existing convictions work as speedy, efficient mental automation and thus influence reasoning and observation more than the other way around, as in "no observation or reasoning has much of a chance to make a flat-earther accept that the earth is round".
How do these convictions arise? Mostly from what we hear often and what we get from people we consider close, which includes operators like influencers, prime time talk radio/TV hosts, etc. which act like (and our brains experiences as) 'friend' and thus automatically trust.
In the end, we need to have a serious (and extremely complicated and risky) discussion about human limitations (in our intelligence) and how getting decent results will have to include taking those limitations account. One seriously bad idea is 'free speech absolutism' and the idealistic idea of a 'marketplace of ideas', with the naive background assumption of very intelligent, completely informed humans. In economics, we already know those ideas are naive. We just haven't made the step yet to accept they are naive in politics as well.
Short version: propaganda works.
Indeed, sort of. And the difficult question becomes: how do you protect a rule-of-law democracy against it?
Believe in the scientific method. Require fact. Dismiss, fine and deplatform liars.
The question is not what people should do, but how do you get them to do that given how human psychology works and what thus the limitations of our human intelligence is. For instance: Most if not all people 'require fact'. It is the issue however what makes them accept something as fact. And they may not accept the scientific method, for instance, because they are convinced it is biased. They ignore certain lies by their own sources as 'small unimportant lies' (seemingly for one just to be able to keep their convictions, or m ore precisely, because having stable convictions has several evolutionary advantages). We all do that, it is fundamental to human psychology. Even scientists will not immediately drop their paradigm when confronted with a problematic measurement.
So we need to have a difficult discussion about freedom of speech. How does protecting a nation against too many lies not turn onto massive loss of free speech? There are ideas. For instance, you could increase the threshold of being allowed to say untruth depending on your reach. Say, as soon as your channel/message/etc, has more than a million views, you have to fulfil stronger requirements as regard to trustworthiness, where trustworthiness than relies on concrete proof. And maybe you should drop the long-standing precedent that lying about the government is always OK (created by SCOTUS as an exception to "lies are not protected under the 1st amendment" to protect the population against a too powerful government, but government has for a while now not always been the strong party). There really is much that needs to change if wel want to be able to create rule-of-law democracies in an age of mass-to-mass communication.
One way or another, you need to rebuild the idea of shared facts and shared values, because that is exactly what the foundation of a society relies on.
That's what Trump is doing. The problem is that he's the one who decides what's fact.
Fact is just a four letter word to him. I don't think he cares about or thinks about fact at all. He just says stuff because it sounds good to him and he'd like to mold our thinking.
But he's just an example. Ian says "Require fact." Who decides what's fact? That question is why the 1st amendment exists. As one of Terry Pratchett's characters says when someone accuses him of abusing his power - "and what would be the other uses of power?"
Yes, that’s the key question IMO.