Tag: economy

[An] increasing share of national income [has] gone to the top 1 percent of earners since the 1970s, when their share was 8 percent to 9 percent. In the 1980s, it rose to 10 percent to 14 percent. In the late-’90s, it was 15 percent to 19 percent. In 2005, it passed 21 percent. By 2007, the last year for which complete data are available, the richest 1 percent were taking more than 23 percent of all income.
The richest one-tenth of 1 percent, representing 130,000 households, took in more than 11 percent of total income in 2007.
That does not leave enough spending power with the rest of the population to sustain a flourishing economy.

Bob Herbert discussing Robert Reich’s book Aftershock.
Generic GOP response to everything but the last line: So what?
Generic Democrat response to everything: If we just move those deck chairs to this side, and these to that…
Generic Population response, living it, far too busy to read about it: inchoate blood rage.
Making the current situation any clearer?

No, this has nothing to do with sound economic policy. [It’s] about a dysfunctional and corrupt political culture, in which Congress won’t take action to revive the economy, pleads poverty when it comes to protecting the jobs of schoolteachers and firefighters, but declares cost no object when it comes to sparing the already wealthy even the slightest financial inconvenience.

Paul Krugman summarizing in 50 words or less exactly why all of us on drugs out here are dispirited.

Message Consistency

Bob Corker (R ,TN) 2009: After the president forced the firing of General Motors chief executive G. Richard Wagoner Jr., Republican Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.) proclaimed Obama’s actions “truly breathtaking” and said the government ownership roles at Chrysler and GM “should send a chill through all Americans who believe in free enterprise.”
Bob Corker (R, TN) 2010: The ideas we [Republicans] laid out there were followed through. I take some pleasure out of helping make that contribution. . . . I think what we did is we forced a debate and we forced a hard look at these companies.

No One Could Have Expected

Are you trying to tell me that immigrants spend money?

In a 2008 study, she found that Arizona immigrants contributed $29 billion annually to the state economy, representing about 8% of its activity.

When immigrants leave, Gans said, “stores experience dramatic drops in sales. Apartment owners who rent to immigrants have high vacancy rates and risk losing their buildings. Legal workers or renters or consumers don’t generally step in quickly enough to prevent these businesses from experiencing real additional hardship.”

At 43rd and Thomas, such short-term economic perils are no abstraction.

“If people don’t come here, I don’t make money and I don’t pay taxes,” Katchi said.

[…]

merchants say the repercussions are clear — not just in how it’s prompted many families to leave the state, but scared others enough to curtail their regular activities.

“The economy’s already bad, but on top of it [SB 1070] is like a bullet in the head to us,” said Osameh Odeh, 35, whose Eden Wear clothing store was empty one recent afternoon. “People don’t come out of their houses anymore.”

Odeh has laid off workers and doesn’t pay his utility bills until the day they come due. He’s not sure he can stay open and notes that the effect spreads well beyond the rough-and-tumble streets of Maryvale. A resident of the middle-class suburb of Gilbert, Odeh has cut back his purchases at home.

No One Could Have Expected

Where’s My Belt?

John Boehner, March 2009: It’s time for government to tighten their belts and show the American people that we ‘get’ it

Barack Obama, yesterday: “At a time when so many families are tightening their belts, he’s going to make sure that the government continues to tighten its own,” Obama said.

Paul Krugman, today: We’ll never know how differently the politics would have played if Obama, instead of systematically echoing and giving credibility to all the arguments of the people who want to destroy him, had actually stood up for a different economic philosophy. But we do know how his actual strategy has worked, and it hasn’t been a success.

Won’t Somebody Think of the Fatcats?

FinReg Conference Committee headed back to the table:

In an extraordinary move aimed at winning over reluctant Republican senators, the top Democratic negotiators on the Wall Street reform bill will reopen the conference committee Tuesday to swap out a controversial $19 billion tax on big banks, according to House and Senate aides.

Yes, you read that right. Fresh off nearly destroying the global economy, fresh off being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars, fresh off the entire affair being compared to “an ant” by Boehner, the GOP is again moving the goalposts (and being allowed to do so by Democrat asshat enablers, which on this occasion includes Russ Feingold (D-Wis.); thanks a lot, and I hope you enjoy your years in the minority).
The banksters just can’t be held accountable for any amount money, no matter how small, no matter how justified, no matter how directly related to their own future operations. Not even a relatively paltry $19 billion that’s intended to bail their sorry asses out in the not-too-distant future. Nope. That’s also coming out of your ass, American Taxpayer. Hope you enjoy it. The GOP got it just for you. Because you’re special. See you in 2010.

The Plan

Ezra Klein notes the outcome of some polling on what the average American thinks should be done:

1. Raise the limit on taxable earnings so it covers 90% of total earnings.
2. Reduce spending on health care and non-defense discretionary spending by at least 5%.
3. Raise tax rates on corporate income and those earning more than $1 million.
4. Raise the age for receiving full Social Security benefits to 69.
5. Reduce defense spending by 10% – 15%.
6. Create a carbon and securities-transaction tax.

I don’t see any of these that are antithetical to the broad strokes of Democratic policy, at least as it has played out under Obama. Plus, these are the popular ideas. So steal them. This should be the Aims for a Renewed America (or whatever). You run on it across the board. Individual candidates may feel free to leaven in some Wall St. Fatcat mentions such that they can play down #4.

You’ve already allowed the Republicans to devestate whatever recovery there was…you’d damned well better have a platform that, in a stroke, both recognizes that we have a serious problem and outlines real, substantive, measurable ways to address it. Starting our First Day back in the Congress.

You got a better idea, Reid? Didn’t think so.

southpol:

The Third Depression:

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

I’d agree with all that Krugman says above (and in the editorial), but take small issue with this part:

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery.

I think the GOP leadership realizes all too well that not enough has been done. They have chosen to use the crisis for short-term political gain. There is no other explanation for the withdrawal of unemployment benefits. None. They just want to maximize pain to the citizens out there that may be inclined to vote come 2010 and, more urgently from the GOP perspective, in the 2012 follow-on when they could well be poised to take power in both branches.

Then, of course, they’ll fix it all with a rigorous program of tax cuts for the wealthy. Which is touched on in the closer:

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

Yep.