A Republican tax plan built for plutocrats ... Red Rules apply.
I remember when Martin Wolf was the very smart, very reality based, but very sincere and committed Tory. (He would probably say that he still is such.) Yet now his shrillness is up to 11 on the 10-point Krugman scale...
Martin Wolf: A Republican tax plan built for plutocrats : How does a political party dedicated to the material interests of the top 0.1 per cent of the income distribution win and hold power in a universal suffrage democracy?...
That is the challenge confronting the Republican party. The answer it has found is “pluto-populism”. This is a politically successful, but dangerous, strategy... [that has] brought Donald Trump to the presidency. His failure might bring someone more dangerous, more determined, to power. This matters to the US and, given its power, to the wider world.... About 45 per cent of the tax reductions in 2027 would go to households with incomes above 500,000....This simply is reform for plutocrats....The bill might also increase the cumulative fiscal deficit by about $1.5tn over the coming decade.... In all, then, this is a determined effort to shift resources from the bottom, middle and even upper middle of the US income distribution towards the very top, combined with big increases in economic insecurity for the great majority.
How, one must ask, has a party with such objectives successfully gained power?... Find intellectuals who argue that everybody will benefit from policies ostensibly benefiting so few.... Second... abuse the law... give wealth the overriding role in politics... suppress the votes of people likely to vote against plutocratic interests, or even disenfranchise them.... Third... foment cultural and ethnic splits... the “Southern strategy”.... Yet this is too limited a view of the strategy.
More interesting is the echo of the antebellum South itself. The pre-civil war South was extremely unequal, not just in the population as a whole, which included the slaves, but even among free whites.... Peter Lindert and Jeffrey Williamson note, “Any historian looking for the rise of a poor white underclass in the Old South will find it in this evidence.” The 1860 census also shows that the median wealth of the richest 1 per cent of Southerners was more than three times that of the richest 1 per cent of Northerners. Yet the South was also far less dynamic. The South was a plutocracy. In the civil war, whose stated aim was defence of slavery, close to 300,000 Confederate soldiers died. A majority of these men had no slaves. Yet their racial and cultural fears justified the sacrifice. Ultimately, this mobilisation brought death or defeat upon them all. Nothing better reveals the political potency of identity.
A not dissimilar threat arises for today’s plutocrats. The economics and politics of pluto-populism have stoked cultural, ethnic and nationalist anger in the party’s base.... If the current tax bills get through, the tensions within the US are almost certain to get worse. Latin American inequality leads to Latin American politics. The US the world once knew is drowning in a tide of unconscionable and apparently unlimited greed. We are all now doomed to live with the unhappy consequences.
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by Martin Wolf
Grasping Reality With Both Hands
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The purpose of this seed/article is to foster serious conversation: to exchange and examine pertinent ideas. Therefore, Red Rules apply:
- Read the article.
- Comment on the article... Stay on topic... Be constructive.
- Be polite.
If you do not wish to be constrained by these rules, please do not participate here. Thank you.
Martin Wolf writes for the paywalled Financial Times, an excellent newspaper/website, but rather expensive. Last year I let my subscription lapse in favor of the NYT.
I have relatives who are on a very tight budget, very dependent on Social Security and Medicaid. They are ardent Trump supporters. I have tried, very gently, to explain that the Republican tax plan will cut deep into their budget... but they are of the Unthinking Faithful TM.
Republican tax plan
As of this moment, there is no Republican tax plan. There is a House plan, and there is a Senate plan, and nothing has passed.
I would not predict what the plan will look like at this point.
I predict that
Ya wanna take bets?
The arguments are easy to find, if you wish to... and impossible to see if you do not want to see them.
Because you think they don't exist, you clearly fall into the "don't want to see" group. I won't waste my time showing something to someone who has already demonstrated that he doesn't want to see it.
Ignorance is bliss...
I don't put no weight to Arguments.
Argument is biased by rule.
Argument is one persons take on a situation. You can choose to believe and accept or not and don't.
Does that mean the person that does not and don't is an idiot?
You seem to be making that argument Bob.
Interesting...
What I said is true. Easily verified.
But if I don't supply the data, you feel vindicated.
Ummm.... You do realize that you didn't supply any data, either? The absence of data does not justify the invention of whatever-you-wish.
Go search for tha pertinent data. If you dare...
No, but none of points 1-5 will happen.
So let me get this straight absence of data damages his argument, but absence of data doesn't do anything to your argument?
Lemme ask a question...
Without data, how can anyone adjudge the argument to be valid? that appears to be the argument you making towards his argument, but it appears that you are proclaiming the opposite as far as your argument.
Why is this?
Why bother? and this is for two reasons.
1. How can he search what the basis is for YOUR claim.....
2. No matter what he comes up with YOU can claim it is false.....
What it is, is a debate tactic where you do not have to put anything out there to be challenged, yet you get to challenge everything anyone else says.
And anyone who uses this tactic, (which has happened often around here) really hasn't an argument to make, they are just throwing musings out there baiting for a response trying to make themselves appear more intelligent than their opponent. But what they reveal is they are not as intelligent as they themselves think they are.
Cheap and childish Bob, you ARE more intelligent than this...
Mod please delete, off-topic
As I said... it takes a few minutes to Google the pertinent data. Probably less time than you needed to type your last Comment. But you don't want to see that data, so you don't do the search.
That's fine with me. Be happy!
Ok, nice to know your still having a temper tantrum.....
Carry on.... No skin off my ass....
I generally ignore you because I have found you to do nothing but blast out bumper-sticker slogans, even when they have been disproved over and over. Please prove me wrong this time...
massive tax cuts for the ultra-rich
Which plan has that?
federal deficit will skyrocket
Would that be more or less than the $10.5 trillion during the last 8 years?
poor will lose their health-care
They won't, and yes, I'll bet you.
lower-middle, middle and upper-middle classes will pay more taxes
Which plan has that?
Medicaid will be gutted
If you're referring to the people under retirement age who went on Medicare in a number of states as a backdoor to ObamaCare, then yes, it will be gutted.
Both Senate and House
How is that relevant?
All the serious analysts say they will.
Both Senate and House
If you think the GOP will stop its rollback of Medicaid there... I have this bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you for really cheap!
Apparently, we will have to wait until we see the bill to continue this conversation.
As far as speculation on the deficit, "skyrocketing" is a very subjective term. I merely asked about the $10.5 billion as a frame of reference. Clearly, you saw the need to defend some kind of indefensible action.
Shame....
The experts are saying $1.5tn. That's a skyrocket.
Rehashing old nonsense bores me. Obama got us (too slowly, IMHO) out of the mess his predecessor put us in. The economy required Keynesian priming, so the deficit ballooned. Now the economy is reasonably good, so we should be budgeting surpluses: the other half of a Keynesian cycle.
There is no economic justification for running deficits at this time. The Republican bills are a naked give-away, to the portion of the population that already has the most.
It's sad, Bf. You're smart. You could be a worthwhile conversation partner, but you prefer your games. Skirting the CoC [ph]
Skirting the CoC [ph]
And you, Dean?
I really don't know. You put so little thought into your Comments that it's impossible to know Skirting the CoC [ph]
You settle for "pale copy of Bf".
You don't believe a word you're saying. Just your usual ego games. Tiresome...
Yes.
Since Nixon, the data is perfectly clear. Democrats have shrunk the deficit. Republicans have increased it. Reality...
Look...
I don't care what you know or don't know. The data I'm speaking of takes about three minutes to find on Google.
Look...
I don't care what you know or don't know. The data I'm speaking of takes about three minutes to find on Google.
Show us the data Bob....the graphs, charts, facts and figures, otherwise you're just blowing hot air.
Maybe Bob meant to say that Democrats slowed the Deficit spending a bit.
We ALL know it still grew ! And we all know....Growing a deficit, no matter how slow....is still a burden on the "Average Joe" !
For the life of me, I can't find a perk in this, like Liberal types do !
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
If you want to remain in ignorance, that's fine with me.
Mod please delete, off-topic
That the balance sheet has changed.
Reality has not...
You posted a fact that is true... but irrelevant. My Reply was all your Comment deserved.
"... the last refuge of the incompetent..."
There's no way of knowing, after the fact. The priming was a political package, with all the compromises that implies. Too little money, too late, and not all applied as it should have been. But political solutions are never perfect, and at least it got the job done.
OTOH, there is no need for priming now, but the Republicans are planning to explode the deficit.
Why are you applauding?
You are never ready to debate. You don't want to debate. You want to play ego games. Ego games are your reason for being on NT.