By: Chriss W. Street
President Obama doesn’t need to campaign for financial support from the highest 1% of income earners, his economic policies have already won their financial backing! During the Great Recession the top 1% sufferred a lower percentage decline in income than during the Bush Recession of 2000 to 2002. Then during the 2009 to 2010 economic expansion the top 1% captured a staggering 93% of all income gains. It should not be surprising that President Obama is now on the campaign trail talking about income inequality, this is something that he is good at. His government-run, high-tax, heavily-regulated, bureaucrats-pick-the-winners-
U.C. Berkley economist Emmanuel Saez just published an analysis of the growth of income inequality titled: “Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States”. The Report illuminates that the top 1% under George Bush’s Presidency suffered 57% of all income losses in the 2001-2002 recession and recovered just 65% of the all the income gains in the 2002-2007 economic boom. But under leadership of President Obama and his happy band of social engineers, the ultra-rich suffered a 14% less percentage income loss in the 2007-2009 recession and hit the mother lode by bagging 93% of all the economy’s income gains in the 2009-2010 expnsion.
In analyzing one of Saez’s charts below, Matt Stoller of the extremely liberal Roosevelt Institute explains Obama’s failure by stating, “It’s not obvious that Obama’s policy framework is worse than Bush’s, only that the outcome is.” Stoller sums Obama’s grim performance as, “Perhaps it’s a competence issue.”
The American hard Left campaigned against their interpretation of the legacy of George Bush during the 2008 election. The Left promise that if voters delivered a Presidential victory for Barack Obama and a swept in a filibuster proof Congress, they would launch an epic period of social justice and income redistribution. Three and a half years later the results are in. The only American social class to benefit from this new era of income redistribution is the richest 1%.
A year and a half ago, the CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll of American voters rated Barack Obama a better President than George W. Bush by 23%. Just six months ago the results were even. CNN Polling Director, Keating Holland, advises, “Democrats may want to think twice about bringing up former President George W. Bush’s name while campaigning this year.”
According to the latest Rasmussen Report’s latest poll, 49% of American voters trust Mitt Romney over Barack Obama on the economy; while only 39% trust the President more. The Daily Kos recently reminded its socialist readers that Democrats do not have the same overwhelming advantages in this election cycle: “2008 all the GOP Presidential Primary Candidates were under the shadow of George Bush who was polling at around 30%. The GOP candidates were running on keeping the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq going.”
With the primaries out of the way, President Obama will now face the prospects of trying to defend his own legacy. Last time around it was Obama who was battle tested from a bruising primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, when he faced a grizzled war hero, who was 25 years his senior and admitted to being not very knowledgeable about the economy. This time Obama faces a slim and trim executive, closer to his age and with a great entrepreneurial track record. Perhaps President Obama’s campaign dilemma is summed up by those road signs in Texas with the smiling and waving George W. Bush: “Do you miss me yet?”
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Amazing. Absolutely amazing. It’s as if nothing has happened prior to Bush.
For fun go back and look at the 1920’s-1940’s. From the Robber Barons to the New Deal. History is great at showing us stuff, but we aren’t great from learning from it.
What FDR did was fourfold.
1) Took from the rich (progressive taxation)
2) Used that money to create work for the working class by investing in “the public good” which created jobs
3) Re-wrote the laws to provide oversight with teeth (regulations)
4) Created a social safety net to ensure that it wouldn’t happen again.
This stood the test of time. Even Dwight D. Eisenhower didn’t mess with it when he was elected as the first Republican after many many years.
Then Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford started to tweak the system. They loosened some of the regulations, reduced some of the progressive taxation, started to roll back the changes.
But it took Reagan to really sell everything down the river (read Stockman’s book). A full throttle embrace of the Chicago School economic policies and a belief that in an unfettered free market the consumers would win, when there was history showing that that was NOT the case, was embraced by the next three administrations.
Reagan lowered taxes on the wealthy and the middle classes in his first tax cut, but in the 11 tax increases that followed, he raise them proportionally higher on the working class, keeping almost all the corporate and upper class breaks. The end result was a skewing of the tax paying base to the working class, where more paid a small amount more to make up for the few paying a lot less.
At the same time Reagan era banking policies included a major loosening of credit (Remember how hard it was to get a credit card pre-1980? Remember how easy it was to get one by 1988?).
Clinton undid a small portion of the upper-class and corporate cut in his last years in office (leading to a balanced budget), but he exchanged slightly higher tax rates for a short period to undoing all of the banking regulations that were designed to protect the economy.
Bush came in, restored and triple-downed on the reset of the tax for the wealthy and corporations. In addition he embroiled us in two wars without creating a revenue stream to pay for it.
With regulation stripped the financial industry went to town creating bogus financial products. They sold these to institutional investors. The product material was residential mortgages. But rather than selling one mortgage to one investor, they bundled up mortgages into secured securities that they then sold to millions of investors in little tiny chunks.
This might have been okay, but as they ran out of the secured assets they needed to generate more so that they could maintain the product for sale. This led to them getting “junk” and adding it to some good stock and then selling those as “well rated”. But they knew that they were junk as they went and bet against the success of their vehicles by insuring them for failure.
Now, when the house of cards came tumbling down, Bush was in office. Rather than letting the financial firms fail, Bush decided to bail them out, or what is referred to as “socializing their losses”. If this “gains privatized, losses socialized” sounds all a bit too familiar, it’s because it was the same plan that Hoover had.
Which gets us to today. The regulations have NOT been put back in place. The progressive tax system has NOT been put back in place. And today, while we are no longer in a fast car accelerating towards a cliff, we have NOT turned the car around. We are now in a slow car still heading off that same cliff.
Why, considering the past and the present, has the car not been turned around? A close look at Obama’s actual policies, and not his rhetoric, shows that his policies are just to the RIGHT of Reagan. Yes, the commie-socialist actually governs just to the right of Reagan. Instead of pushing processes in place to protect the working class he has maintained the Bush programs (and Timmy G) that protect the monied interests (banks, Wall Street, the 1%).
Now, we know Obama is bad for the working class, or at least as bad as Reagan was (take a look at real wages from 80-88 and you will see that working class families actually lost real income). Unfortunately we can only tell what Romney will do from his presented plans, and each one of those is a boondoggle for Corporations and the 1% and a great deal of pain for the working class (as measured by the CBO).
While the left is clearly unhappy with Obama, as they said in An Officer and A Gentleman “I go nowhere else to go.” It’s not like there is an actual true progressive in this race. The choice is the center-right of Obama, or the more far right of Romney. If you were a Reagan supporter, Obama is closer to what Reagan was than Romney (Obama wears Reagan’s mantle). Even on social issues he leans right (he has been evolving on civil rights for non-heterosexuals for over four years, his Darwinian speed being required if he intends on getting the Black Church Leaders who are vehemently anti-gay to provide him with positive press so that he can maintain the very large Black vote he will need in a General).
For progressives both choices suck, one a tad less than the other. One could hope that Obama feels his legacy should be doing something more than slowing down the car rushing off the cliff, and that slight glimmer of hope is about the only reasons progressives will grudgingly go to the polls to vote for him.
They say that when you die there is a review moment when your entire life flushes in front of you.
By reading your comment, and it is good one, I felt that I have died!
Lets simplify it met00, virtually every living entity asks the following question in the end of the day: Was my life better today than it was yesterday?
So tell us met00 do you feel that your life is better under Obama regime than it was under any prior president?.
If you feel progressive today, then tell us if our life would be worse or better providing that Gröfaz and Golem would be in the charge of it?
Interesting question. My favorite Prez from that last century was before my time (Truman). He was a hardass who didn’t like government waste, fraud or abuse of the system. But, as I said, he was before my time. My time is from DDE forward, and the reality is that none of them were really all that good.
True, until Bush II there was no one who came as close to incompetent as Hoover, but Bush as already the next century, so we have another 90 years to see if he will really go down as the worst of this century.
Having worked as paid staff or paid consultant on Presidential campaigns from 1976 (Scoop Jackson to Al Gore -and before you think they were all (D), I also worked for John Anderson in 1980) I can say that I have failed to pick a winner so far at that level.
Your question is interesting. I’ll put it back into Reaganesqe terms. “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” No, but I am no worse off, and I couldn’t say that in the prior eight years where each year I WAS worse off than the year before.
But, as a progressive, it isn’t about me and me alone. A progressive tends to ask about others as well. Is society better off now than it was four years ago? And here I would have to say, yes we are. Not much better, but better. Is the system still failing? Yes. Is there anyone pushing to fix the problems? No. Has the car that was racing over the cliff been turned around? No. Has it been slowed down? Yes.
Personally my life is much the same. I have no immediate need for the health insurance system Obama put in place as I have health insurance provided by an employer. But if I didn’t have that (as I didn’t for three years under Bush) I was un-insurable because of prior health conditions. So, if I were to lose my insurance from my employer NOW, the changes made would allow me to be insured, which would make me much better off, and makes many people better off today than they were before.
I know a very nice gal who has served for over 15 years for our country. She has been in war zones and even has a purple heart and I believe a bronze star. For all but a year she had to live a lie in order to serve her country. Now she no longer has to. I believe her life is much better under Obama. Much better than it was four years ago.
As a progressive I am very disappointed in my choices. I really would like to have a candidate to vote for, rather than always getting stuck having to pick between the least of the evils.
Stanley, I don’t know if I answered your question, but then again, your question as framed was a bit hard to answer because I don’t share the frame that it is “all about me.” A progressive frame is more “it’s about the public good.” and I do believe Obama was better for “the public good” than McCain would have been, and do believe that he will be better for “the public good” than Romney (and much better than Paul, who doesn’t believe in “a public good” at all).
This again leaves a progressive with a choice of the least evil, rather than having anyone to vote for. A promise of hope and change we can believe in, when after four years our hopes have been dashed and the change has been minimal is not a motivating way to go to the polls, but the other options look far worse for “the public good” so we have no choice, we need the least evil choice to win, for the others are just unacceptable in any way, shape or form.
I have an advantage over you met00 because I have lived your dream from 1946 till 1968 in old CSSR at which time I was accomplished Air Force Officer.
My pay was about 2,100 gross (for a simplicity think of it as if it were dollars), my take home was about 1,750 so total taxes an fees were 350, about 17%. For comparison, a general or CEO would get about 5,000. If you would have a kids you would get extra about 350 per kid. Rent per month would be about 75, free medicare, 2 month 100% payed vacation (in my position), unlimited 100% payed sick leave, school 100% free….. and more.
Good huh?
Now the bed part: because we were all more or less equal you couldn’t be unemployed but couldn’t do any moonlighting which was punishable by jail. Why? because you would be richer than your neighbor.
Money had no value so you couldn’t exchange it and couldn’t travel. Travel was also prohibited because of the political reasons. Why? if the government pay you for everything they did not expect you to go to USA and gave USA what they payed for giving them highly educated workforce.
If you got married you would be eligible for an apartment within about 25 years unless you joined communist party in which case it would be about 5 years. Same for automobile.
Radio was jammed so you couldn’t listen to neighboring country.
All freedoms were restricted as are now under Obama’s (NDAA), you probably do not know how bad it is but so haven’t I when I was there.
Live was normal and happy, but corrupt.
The people pretended that they were working and the government pretended that it is paying.
So why did I rebel and eventually had to goo underground to exile?
If you can get into my shoes and feel how I felt when I was 22 you may live your dream and if it turns into a nightmare you got what you are praying for now.
The point is that under any form of the socialism (church, commune, cult, corporation, HOA, government etc.) you will never be a sovereign individual who can be in the control of his own destiny.
If that is what you want in exchange for a relative economical security than you are on the right truck with Obamaism.
Nothing in this country and around the world is better then it was yesterday since I have come here in 1969 and start observing the world with my open eyes.
The point is that you are misinformed and you are lazy to search for truth because everything is presented to you by the government controlled media and other media are stigmatized so you will remind uninformed.
The socialism is an utopia which will never work because if it would work, there would be somewhere, during the evolution, a successful socialistic society to which you could point and say: You see Stan there it is….. but there is none.
Newer was and never will be.
The constitutional Americanism, in which a person is born sovereign and the government is prohibited to encroach on that sovereignty is as close as humans ever got to a perfect society which eroded too because the people are monkeys and need relative safety in exchange for their sovereignty.
It is like selling your soul to a devil….. would you do that?
Based on my lifetime experience, I believe that the socialism is also terminal mental disorder where an individual can’t function for himself.
Since the New Deal we have had what you call socialism at some level. And at many times in our history we have had regulations that business considered extraordinary as it “stopped business from doing business”.
Whether it was child labour laws, minimum wage laws, laws dealing with workplace safety or laws dealing with what you can’t pollute, we have had regulations and laws that have hamstrung the “free enterprise” system.
That is the job of government, to look out for the public good. And those regulations were fought, tooth and nail, by business each and every time they were enacted.
In much the same way, we have had laws that have allowed the government the right to invade our privacy. But always before the government had to get TWO branches to agree to it (there was a need to obtain a warrent). That ended with FISA, a creation of the fear machine that ran amok after 9/11. Today, thanks to FISA, we are closer to soviet society than at any time in our history.
Do you drive on a freeway/highway? If so, that is an example of your tax dollars at work. Eisenhower determined that the infrastructure benefit to all the people would be greater if there was an effective national transportation system. A big job that couldn’t be left to profiteers who would build point-to-points selling access to other cities along the way. Even with all the checks and balances, there were still some who abused the public system and did just that. But for the most part, the corruption on the project was fractional, and the benefits are seen every time you go to the local market and pay a fraction of the cost for something that was shipped on our public roads. Additionally, that same effort created thousands of jobs on the development of those roads, as well as throwing off millions of jobs in additional businesses.
Have you had surgery where anything was used that was microscopic? Thank Kennedy and Johnson and the NASA program. In fact, thank them now for using your tax dollars by knowing that the computer you are using is a direct descendant of that public good spending of taxpayer income.
Since I was there at the “birth of the Internet” (putting the ~250 computer on it) I know where the finding for my work came from. Yep, Al Gore. He went and wrangled up the votes in both the Senate and the House to get DARPA the funds to build the system. Al may not have “invented” the Internet, but the DARPA funding HE was responsible for paid Vinton Cerfs paychecks and mine while we did work on it.
There are big jobs that are done for the public good, and these jobs would never be done by for-profit corporations. These big jobs require someone with deep pockets. From Hoover Dam to the Interstate freeway system to NASA and beyond the government uses the tax dollars taken from those that most benefit from our system to benefit the greatest number. With immediate jobs, and future jobs based on developing technologies, these investments pay dividends to every American. Progressive taxation works, and work well.
That’s NOT socialism, but wise investments designed to benefit the greatest number at the lowest costs. Just like legislation that “gets in the way of business” is not always a bad thing, progressive taxation is not a bad thing. And neither is a forced retirement system (Social Security) and forced health care system (Medicare) that workers and employers pay into so that they can be assured minimal benefits rather than living on the streets and eating from garbage cans or pet food (which is what they did prior to the advent of social security and medicare).
I’ll agree that the former CCCP was a very bad place to live. It was designed to favor the Party members, it was corrupt and it failed to invest in the people in ways that benefited them, but sought to benefit the Party and Party leadership.
But from the 40’s through to the late 60’s the system we lives under was one that used the tax dollars from progressive taxation to benefit the working class. The epitome of the period was the 1950’s when socialized education (through the military benefits from WW-II and beyond, including the educational benefits of the GI Bill) was paying dividends, and economic opportunities existed because of government funded programs for the public good threw off benefits and opportunities to the society at large as well as the immediate benefits to those whose income was generated by that spending.
So, take a moment to open your eyes and look at all the various things that you benefit from on a daily basis that were the children of progressive taxation and government spending. There are many more than you may realize. Yes, they are “owned” by private companies, but that is how the system was designed, to create economic opportunity in the private marketplace by spending progressive tax income on the public good.
Well you are going off on a tangent with your socialistic talking points and not paying any attention about what I am saying which is typical for an orthodox socialist aka communist to do.
Talking to you is like talking to religious person and trying to explain to him that there is no god!
So for the last time: Some dogs belonging to dog lowers have everything to what you socialist aspire to have for your selves and the society.
Assuming that you are a dog and dog lower is your government — would you like to be that dog?
If so then you would be living in socialism on short leash and the dog lower will control your destiny. If you like that then you are a dog not human.
That is how inhuman the socialism is and do not gave me that crapola about a the freeway because the freeway is privilege not right.
However, I believe that you will never get it so I rest my case.
You just don’t get it. No mater what I write you just don’t get it.
Without DDE’s federal highway system the cost of good sold would be higher. Without the investment in NASA you wouldn’t be using a PC, people would be getting stents in their heart, micro-surgery wouldn’t exist.
The benefits from progressive taxation and the government then spending that income on “big ideas” is massive, and the history behind it proves that it is excellent system that benefits all by creating jobs and investing in R&D that is NOT owned by the government, but owned and exploited by private companies.
No one company could have done what NASA did. It took the government through progressive taxation to have the investment dollars to make it happen. Today you are a direct beneficiary of that system (you are using a computer, you are posting on the internet, you are a direct beneficiary of progressive taxation and government spending on R&D).
No one is asking the government to “take care of us” on someone elses dime. We already do that ourselves (just raise the tax cap to $150K on SS/Medicare and it will never be defunct in our or our children’s lifetimes).
Investment spending of progressive taxation works. It is not socialism, it’s capitalism with the public good paying for the R&D to make advancements happen. Advancements that would never have happened without the investments.
To bad you are so wrapped up in your own personal pain from your past that you can’t stand to learn from US history.
“I believe that the socialism is also terminal mental disorder where an individual can’t function for himself.’
So that describes Grofaz in a nutshell. Unable to function for himself in his alcohol induced fog.
“To bad you are so wrapped up in your own personal pain from your past that you can’t stand to learn from US history.”……… Hmmmmm
I do not now how did you arrived to this moronic conclusion because I have no historical pain, but empirical global wisdom which you as mentally ill socialist can’t acquire.
“No one company could have done what NASA did.”…….. Hmmmm
Correct! NASA is bankrupt! They rely on the Russia to get to their space lab.
The only USA history I do recognize is USA constitution.
You are communist and domestic enemy of the USA because you are one who want to change the supreme law of this country.
The only private sector can sustain any progress and only if there is supply and demand environment.
The left-progressive-green-energy and global warming crapola has no such environment.
I do not see you commenting on Gröfaz’s and Golem’s OJB where they do appreciate your hallucinations.
Wow! Just Wow!
To think I took the time to reply to you because I thought you were a rational human being. I was so wrong.
“you as mentally ill socialist ”
“You are communist and domestic enemy of the USA because you are one who want to change the supreme law of this country.”
Unlike you, I learn from my mistakes. I’ll make sure I ignore your vicious rants in the future.
As an aside to the moderators (Art). Take a close look at my responses and consider them in light of the personal attacks quoted above. Now which person do you want on the blog? Policy discussions and historical perspective or personal attacks? Your blog, your call.
I haven’t been paying much attention. Very busy this past week.
“No one company could have done what NASA did. ” Hmmmm is patented by Stan so I’ll say…HUH?
So are you saying that Martin Marrietta, Raytheon, Rockwell International, McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, North American Aviation, Hughes and Lockheed (players who had some skin in space travel during the space race) had NOTHING to do with space travel and that NASA did it all? Sounds like someone who is claiming to tell someone that they should learn from US History should take their own advice and do some reading of their own on this history of the space program. If no company can achieve what NASA could, then explain why companies like Virgin International and Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan’s company, are trying to create vessels for space travel without the aid of the bankrupt NASA.
You forgot companies all over the place, like TRW, Ball Engineering, Magnavox, IBM, Digital Equipment, Prime, Honeywell, etc.
Unlike the soviet system where the government did the work, in the US NASA developed the requirements and then private enterprise bid to do the work. A very small portion of NASA’s dollars went to NASA salaries. Most went from the taxpayer, to NASA and then out to the companies you listed and many, many more.
Who developed the dialysis machine? NASA had a problem, they hired outside people to solve it. We got the dialysis machine.
Medical CAT scanner? The need to find imperfections in aerospace structures and components, such as castings, rocket motors and nozzles led to it’s development. NASA again had a need, and that need translated to a new development that saves millions of lives.
Freeze-dried food? Need by NASA, developed to spec by private industry. In every survival kit you buy.
Digital signal-processing techniques developed to enhance images from Apollo’s moon mission to Houston? Need an MRI?
Find me that cordless power tool circa 1965? You can’t if you are outside NASA. If you can, it was spec’d by NASA.
Last weekend at the Toyota Grand Prix every driver was wearing a “cool suit” designed and developed by, you go it, NASA engineers (for moon walks).
You want more?
Taxpayer dollars spent by the government, paid to private enterprise, to do an impossible mission. The benefits of which we live with today, large and small. Most without knowing about them and where they came from.
The companies you mention today that are building (or attempting to build) space vehicles are riding on the backs of giants. They are the beneficiaries of the technology that progressive taxation was able to accomplish when invested wisely in R&D almost 50 years ago.
Oh, and my favorite one of all. Water Beds. Yep, a NASA spec initially for weightless training (sleeping in zero gee).
And this doesn’t even touch the move from the transistor to the silicon chip…. . And, if you want to know who spec’d out the first GPS block, it wasn’t the military, it was Goddard (I know this one because I was working on Block 3 back in the early 80’s when the military started to take a look at using NASA’s technology for their purposes)
“Digital signal-processing techniques developed to enhance images from Apollo’s moon mission to Houston? Need an MRI?”…….. Hmmmmm
You can’t enhance images by use of MRI, you idiot.
Who Invented the MRI?
You are using leftist-progressive talking points to justify the biggest governmental bureaucracy.
It was NASA which purchased a hammer for $250 and dozens of other tools in exuberant pricing, you moron mongoloid.
OK you stupid socialist, watch how the private sector http://www.spacex.com/ conquering the space and save the ass of the incompetent government agency called NASA.
Taxes Prompt More Americans to Renounce Citizenship
C. Sherburne | Photodisc | Getty Images
“‘Truth, justice, and the American way’ — it’s not enough anymore,” the comic book superhero said, after both the Iranian and American governments criticized him for joining a peaceful anti-government protest in Tehran.
Last year, almost 1,800 people followed Superman’s lead, renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards. That’s a record number since the Internal Revenue Service began publishing a list of those who renounced in 1998. It’s also almost eight times more than the number of citizens who renounced in 2008, and more than the total for 2007, 2008 and 2009 combined.