American Politics

[QUOTE=Xpartan;2753875]What other developed countries? Please enlighten us. Of course, we'd need to define what the middle class really is. Can be anything from hand-to-mouth homeowners to the independently wealthy. The term has become as ambiguous as so-called "small business."

I personally don't feel that the middle class in America is "lavished" by the government. If anything, all governments are using the middle class as a milk cow. For one thing the middle class can't afford power lobbyists. It also doesn't have time for activism. A sitting duck for unfair taxation.[/QUOTE]Xpartan, I'm going to try to address a couple of JustTK's points about inequality here too, so this is going to get a little off topic from your post. Also, I agree with you, the middle class isn't lavished by the government. Rather, in the U.S.A., it pays in less compared to what it gets out of the system compared to the rich, at the federal level in particular. And poor here don't receive the level of help they get in many European countries. To lavish the middle class with government benefits, you'd have to raise taxes a lot on the middle class, as explained by Peter Whiteford below.

We already have the most progressive tax system in the OECD. Again, see.

http://gregmankiw.********.com/2011/03/what-nation-has-most-progressive-tax.html

(Replace *'s by be l o g s p o t. See o m if you want to read.).

Look at the table. While it's from the mid 2000's, if anything our tax system has become more progressive, with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. And, more importantly, read Peter Whiteford's comments. Whiteford is the OECD economist who did the seminal work on tax progressivity. Here's the relevant part, in bold text.

[B]As others have pointed out this measure includes all direct taxes on individuals so it includes income taxes and employee social security contributions, but not employer payroll taxes. It also doesnt include sales taxes, but these are much heavier in most other OECD countries, and not as progressive as direct taxes, so if you added indirect taxes in through some sort of modelling it is almost certain that the USA would still have the most progressive overall tax system.

However, as the OECD report points out, progressivity is not the same as redistribution. Progressivity measures how the distribution of the tax burden is shared, while redistribution measures how much the tax system reduces inequality. Redistribution is influenced both by the progressivity of taxes and the level of taxes collected.

In fact, the US system of direct taxes actually reduces inequality more than any other country as well. But overall, the USA reduces inequality a lot less than most other countries, because the other thing that you need to take into account is what taxes get spent on.

Now the US system of social security and cash benefits reduces inequality by less than any other OECD country except Korea. The US social security system is marginally less progressive then the OECD average, but the level of spending is very low only Mexico and Korea spend less in the OECD.

So while the US tax system is progressive and reduces inequality, the US welfare state is much less effective at reducing inequality. And because the US has a very unequal distribution of income from capital and a much wider wage distribution than many other OECD countries, it ends up as a relatively unequal country after taxes and benefits.

If you look at Nordic countries, they all have much less progressive tax systems than the USA, but they collect a lot more in taxes (including in VAT). They then spend this much higher tax revenue on social security and services, and it is this side of the equation that is most important in reducing inequality.

So the implication is not that the USA either needs to increase or reduce the progressivity of the tax system. If you want to reduce inequality, you need to increase the level of taxes collected and spend it more effectively.[/B]

When you look at graphs of tax rate versus income for countries, you'll see the USA System is quite progressive. European welfare states actually have regressive tax systems, because of their large, regressive VAT taxes:

[URL]https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/01/business/01economist--mulligan-dec/01economist--mulligan-dec-blog480.jpg[/URL]

I will note that in a book I'm reading by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, advisors to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, there's a graph that shows the poor and the rich paying much higher tax rates than the middle class, which is partly why I said the middle class gets a better deal than the poor too. I'll also note that even Saez and Zucman, who go out of their way to present data in a way favorable to the Progressive manifesto, show higher income Americans progressively paying higher and higher tax rates at higher income levels, until you get to the top 0. 01%. They attribute that, the lower rates for the top. 01% versus, say, the top 10%, to be the billionaires ravaging America. I'd attribute it to people making a lot of money when they, for example, sell a business that they've owned for a lifetime.

[URL]https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/10/18/nolte-far-left-npr-acknowledges-bidenflation-busting-budgets-killing-joy/[/URL]

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[QUOTE=JustTK;2753977]I don't agree with anything you wrote. In fact I would go as far to say it's absolute BS. Real wages have not increased in the USA since the 1970's. Yet productivity has increased massively. So where has this extra money gone? To the oligarchs and super-wealthy. The middle classes, just like in all neo-lib countries, are being squeezed out / strangled.

[URL]https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/heres-how-labor-dynamism-affects-wage-growth-in-america.html[/URL]

[URL]https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/[/URL]

All the real assets of the country are being bought out by the wealthy and charged on to the lower and middle classes. USA is one of the most unequal societies in the world it has the same profile as a developing country like Brazil, or Colombia.

[URL]https://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/20-facts-about-us-inequality-everyone-should-know[/URL]

The politicians do not really care about the middle classes; they do not need to bcos neither of the corrupt options does. They just through them a bone and see who wins the middle class can decide which bone they prefer. But the real winners are always the wealthy bcos the political system in the USA is totally corrupt bought out by the wealthy.

The USA also has shocking public services again, equal to a typical developing country. And that includes lack of support for the poor. Lack of public health, public transport, public utilities, continued education all bankrupting the young, squeezing families, stopping young people from having children, causing health crises and all to the benefit of the wealthy.

Yes, shlt-paid jobs, like pathetic labour jobs in McDonalds or Amazon warehouses, where you slave for cents so that the wealthy can get richer. That's why there is a record number of people searching for decent jobs there aren't any. The industrial sector and its jobs has been moved offshore. Why? You guessed it, so the wealthy can get richer.[/QUOTE]The only way you'd come up with the USA being as unequal as Colombia or Brazil is by ignoring taxes and transfer payments, a common trick of Progressives. See my wikipedia link in the post you're responding too. Median, by definition the middle of the middle class, per capita income in the USA after transfers and taxes is higher than just about any place. If you exclude small countries and petrostates, the only countries with per capita GDP comparable to the USA, are also countries like the USA where government expenditures as a % of GDP are low: Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Ireland. Smaller government produces better results. It's preferable IMO to leave more money in the hands of the people and businesses, instead of devoting larger and larger resources to our wasteful and inefficient federal government. The private sector is the engine of economic growth, not government.

As to public utilities and public transport and the rest, I believe New York City and California and all other progressive cities and states should be free to spend as much of THEIR money as they want on public services and public welfare. Have at it. As to shocking public services my ass. Maybe where you live. Where I live things work better than in Europe. We have efficient city, state and county government, and I don't begrudge paying taxes to support them one bit. The politicians in Washington D.C. though who want to enforce their priorities on us should go f*ck themselves.

The USA doesn't subsidize the rich per se. It's the opposite. See the reply to Xpartan below, where I partly address your points about inequality. The federal government does give away lots of corporate welfare, to farmers, agribusiness, green companies and the like. And that should stop. I agree with you about the poor and shit wages, and believe it makes sense for many cities and states to raise minimum wages. There should be additional support for poor single mothers and children. And better education.

You're right that real median wages and household income haven't increased enough since the late 1970's. But will point out that they really started to take off in 2019 before COVID hit. I'd attribute part of that to the CORPORATE tax cut and deregulation. You'd undoubtedly poo poo that. The stagnation of wages is a result mostly of improvements in technology and globalization though. There's not a lot you can do about that, unless you want to go back to horses and buggies, or paying lots more for goods. Which I guess does fit with the Progressive goal of making everyone more equal without giving a f*ck whether everyone becomes poorer in the process. Progressive Democrats should focus on improving the lot of the poor instead of dragging down the rich.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2754036]Median, by definition the middle of the middle class, per capita income in the USA after transfers and taxes is higher than just about any place. If you exclude small countries and petrostates, the only countries with per capita GDP comparable to the USA, are also countries like the USA where government expenditures as a % of GDP are low: Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Ireland. Smaller government produces better results. [/QUOTE]That is a shockingly poor take. Firstly, the stat is clearly based around the USA as its benchmark bcos everything is in USD. So other countiries's median income is exposed to whatever rate of excha is prevailing at the time. Plus it does not account properly for cost of living. For example, in the USA, bcos the government just pays out its tax receipts in helping the rich and buulding bombs, the USA people need to pay for their own health care, pay for continued education, pay for pizzas at USD 15+ a pop.

Furthermore it says nothing about WHERE the USA has come from. After World War 2 the USA owned half of the world's wealth. Now it is being overtaken by China. The USA middle class were much better off at all times during the past 70+ years than they are now.

You also say "If you exclude small countries and petrostates", and then you go on to use "Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Ireland" as examples to support your point. You can't have it both ways.

"Smaller government produces better results. ".

Not at all. All it does is lead to stats like this. Sure the US citizens need higher incomes. BCOS THEY HAVE TO PAY FOR EVERYTHING (health / education etc) and at hihg prices due to neo -liberalism and lack of state support.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2753001]Maybe to the rest of the world Alex Jones is "shocking". But he was Trump's domestic mentor and inspiration (his foreign one was Putin) and therefore the mind (haha), heart and soul of the Republican Party.

[B]Alex Jones and Donald Trump: How the Candidate Echoed the Conspiracy Theorist on the Campaign Trail[/B]

[URL]https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/alex-jones-and-donald-trump-how-the-candidate-echoed-the-conspiracy-theorist-on-the-campaign-trail/[/URL]

[B]How Alex Jones was embraced by Trump, Rogan years after Sandy Hook lies[/B]

[URL]https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/05/alex-jones-sandy-hook-trump-rogan/[/URL][/QUOTE]

So true, w/r to the Alex Jones and Donnie J. Dummkopf, in cahoots, as far back as 2015 on Info Wars, when Roger Stone, hitched the two into right-wing conspiracy bliss.

Funny how the usual suspects tend to show up on the lunatic fringe right-wing media outlets and are the purveyors of nutjob quackery conspiracy theories.

Donnie [b]"the Devil"[/b] J. Dummkopf (the worst US president in history), Roger Stone (exiled Repub flunky, loser and lacky), Steve Bannon (fascist Viktor Orbn wanna be), Stuart Rhodes (Oath Keepers Founder, fmr Ron Paul staffer, white supremacist, militia strongman, Branch Davidian Church Waco) and Alex Jones (arch conspirator and right-wing nutter, Branch Davidian Church, Waco)

It started primarily with the Sandy Hook conspiracy and then from there to Pizzagate, to QAnon, to Charlottesville and the great replacement theory, to Corona Virus, to "stop the steal" lies and the Jan 6th "peaceful non-riot" and "patriots" exercising their political discourse.

Alex Jones has his fingerprints pretty much on all those crazy theories since Sandy Hook and to a large degree, at the center of the foundational front, for how disinformation and false narratives gain traction the right-wing media sphere.

Lately all the QAnon\Repubs\Bothsidesism political party does, [b]is limp and larch from one conspiracy theory to the next[/b], as soon as the Repub lunatic fringe, like Alex Jones, dreams up the next conspiracy, one after the other.

Naturally, as the gullible goose-stepping QAnon\Repubs\Bothsidesists, follow behind, parroting the same conspiracy drivel, lock, step and barrel.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2754074]That is a shockingly poor take. Firstly, the stat is clearly based around the USA as its benchmark bcos everything is in USD. So other countiries's median income is exposed to whatever rate of excha is prevailing at the time. Plus it does not account properly for cost of living. For example, in the USA, bcos the government just pays out its tax receipts in helping the rich and buulding bombs, the USA people need to pay for their own health care, pay for continued education, pay for pizzas at USD 15+ a pop.

Furthermore it says nothing about WHERE the USA has come from. After World War 2 the USA owned half of the world's wealth. Now it is being overtaken by China. The USA middle class were much better off at all times during the past 70+ years than they are now.

You also say "If you exclude small countries and petrostates", and then you go on to use "Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Ireland" as examples to support your point. You can't have it both ways.

"Smaller government produces better results. ".

Not at all. All it does is lead to stats like this. Sure the US citizens need higher incomes. BCOS THEY HAVE TO PAY FOR EVERYTHING (health / education etc) and at hihg prices due to neo -liberalism and lack of state support.[/QUOTE]This is a link to the tables you're questioning.

[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income[/URL]

Please note that both tables include in kind transfers from government for health care costs and education costs. For example, if Germany provides free university education, that's included in German per capita disposable income. This makes your argument about health care and education costs mute.

The "PPP" means the numbers are adjusted on the basis of purchasing power. They've been adjusted for differences in costs between countries. The exchange rates are irrelevant. If the value of the Euro depreciates 50% against the dollar in a day, the disposable income based on PPP or purchasing power parity (after normalizing for the cost of comparable goods between countries) won't change.

[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity[/URL]

"Small places" refers to Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, San Marino, the Cayman Islands and the Falkland Islands:

[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_[/URL](PPP) _per_capita.

Luxembourg has a population of 632,000 and by some standards, including median disposable income per person and household disposable income (see Wikipedia table you're complaining about), the USA ranks higher. The other places I'd suspect all have populations of less than 100,000.

The five countries I referred to, the USA, Switzerland, Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong, all have populations of 5 million or more. Please note that Denmark, Finland, Norway, and New Zealand all have populations in the 5 million to 6 million range. I don't think you'd question whether they're real countries.

Also if you limit GDP per capita to large countries, the difference between them and the USA will be more stark. Germany, with a population of 84 million, has the highest GDP per capita adjusted for PPP of any country of size except the USA. Its GDP per capita adjusted for PPP is about 15% less than the USA. The next highest after Germany, France, is lower by about 25%. And I'll point out that government expenditures and revenues as a % of GDP in France are a lot higher than Germany. Maybe that's why France is poorer.

I finally figured out what neoliberalism is. I googled it in Wikipedia.

[URL]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism[/URL]

Neoliberalism, that is free market capitalism, has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. Thank goodness it predominated over socialism and communism!

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2753755]...While I prefer a system like Singapore's Central Provident Fund, or Australia's Superannuation scheme for retirement, the solution of Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan and other politicians to increase payroll contributions was better than letting Medicare and Social Security go bankrupt without replacements. [/QUOTE]Medicare works just fine for many Americans. I think the ONLY problem with Medicare, is the right-wing Trojan horse that is [B]Medicare Advantage[/B], meant to eventually privatize Medicare.

[B]Medicare Advantage Is a For-Profit Scam. Time to End It.[/B]
[URL]https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/08/medicare-advantage-profit-scam-time-end-it[/URL]

Medicare Advantage, pawns itself off as being better than Medicare, when in fact it is just a multi-trillion dollar scam. It deceives and uses deceptive practices to fools current users of Medicare (especially the elder) into there "Advantage" program, to relieve and Americans of their premiums, while denying medical care, by using fancy policy loopholes designed to minimize and rebuff Americans, of the necessary medical care needed.

[B]Medicare Advantage Money Grab[/B]
[URL]https://publicintegrity.org/topics/health/medicare-advantage-money-grab/[/URL]

Just get rid of Medicare Advantage, problem solved. Or at the very least forbid / copyright them from using the Medicare name.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2753861][b]Speaking of Social Security and Medicare.[/b] For those who don't think forcing workers to save 37% of every paycheck until age 55, as is apparently done in Singapore, would be a fine plan to replace Social Security and Medicare (yeah, let's wait for the vote count on that one), here comes more help from MSM for Repubs poised to gut Social Security and Medicare to win the midterm elections.

Including Morning Joe on MSNBC:

[B]Republicans promise to sunset Social Security and Medicare and the mainstream media doesn't report that![/B]
[URL]https://crooksandliars.com/2022/10/msm-ignores-gop-social-security-and[/URL] [/QUOTE]Just like democracy, Repubs, just want to kill off everything that democracy stands for and represents.

So while, Social Security and Medicare, have always been long standing pillars of democracy, they stand in the way of an eventual Repub neoliberal privatization of America.

Much like Medicare and Medicare Advantage, just wait for Repubs, to introduce the Trojan horse that is [B]"Social Security Advantage"[/B], to insidiously negate the last bastions of social safety nets, Americans have worked for.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2754085]This is a link to the tables you're questioning.
[/QUOTE]Sorry, but I dno nt accept that at all. The metrics have been heavily criticised and are biased to the USA. They don't equalise differences across countires properly. It's similar to how some people try to use IQ tests to demonstrate that black people are more genetically stupid. It doesn't work bcos you cannot apply the same metric across different countries.

And even if they did, it would have nothing to do with my points that middle classes are being squeezed. To confron that claim you would have to demonstrate that the middle class is no worse off now in real terms than it was in previous years. And it has nothing to do with the inequality.

[QUOTE=Spidy;2754096]Medicare works just fine for many Americans. I think the ONLY problem with Medicare, is the right-wing Trojan horse that is [B]Medicare Advantage[/B], meant to eventually privatize Medicare.

[B]Medicare Advantage Is a For-Profit Scam. Time to End It.[/B]
[URL]https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/09/08/medicare-advantage-profit-scam-time-end-it[/URL]

Medicare Advantage, pawns itself off as being better than Medicare, when in fact it is just a multi-trillion dollar scam. It deceives and uses deceptive practices to fools current users of Medicare (especially the elder) into there "Advantage" program, to relieve and Americans of their premiums, while denying medical care, by using fancy policy loopholes designed to minimize and rebuff Americans, of the necessary medical care needed.

[B]Medicare Advantage Money Grab[/B]
[URL]https://publicintegrity.org/topics/health/medicare-advantage-money-grab/[/URL]

Just get rid of Medicare Advantage, problem solved. Or at the very least forbid / copyright them from using the Medicare name.[/QUOTE]Yep, enacting Medicare Advantage was the most egregious and wasteful money scam of the 20th century. They relentlessly spam and confuse seniors getting them to sign up for inferior medical plans by offering a few bucks in return. What they do is criminal, and it's not a figure of speech.

Freddie Sayers coming good again. Super interviewer. Great guests.... COVID stuff.

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fr0-TMdjQ0[/URL]

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2754094]I finally figured out what neoliberalism is. I googled it in Wikipedia.

Neoliberalism, that is free market capitalism, has lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty.[/QUOTE]I don't agree with everything George Monbiot writes, but this is the best I have ever read from him. Neo-lieralism is: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

"freedom for the pike, not for the minnows. Freedom from trade unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation means the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, charge iniquitous rates of interest and design exotic financial instruments. Freedom from tax means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty. The greater the failure, the more extreme the ideology becomes. Governments use neoliberal crises as both excuse and opportunity to cut taxes, privatise remaining public services, rip holes in the social safety net, deregulate corporations and re-regulate citizens. The self-hating state now sinks its teeth into every organ of the public sector. ".

Hope you enjoy the read. I know you hold the Bible close to your heart, but we atheists hold the truth close close to ours. Neo-liberalism can never fix our problems, bcos it doesn't have our needs at heart.

In classic Repub Party fashion, deabeat Repubs shoulder none of the heavy lifting, assume none of the political risk, leave all of the work to the Dems, do nothing but slam and snipe at the Dems for their hard work and effective legislation and then swoop in afterwards and try to con their constituents and the American voter into giving them credit for it. LOL.

[B]Biden Calls Out Socialist Republicans Now Begging for Money From Program They Voted Down[/B]

[URL]https://news.yahoo.com/biden-calls-socialist-republicans-now-191450315.html[/URL]

It is beyond all debate and will now and forever be proven in the data and actual record of results that, in just the past 21 months, POTUS Joe Biden's Administration and his Dems in Congress have accomplished more to materially improve the lives of more Americans, especially Repubs in Red States, as well as to strengthen and spread democracy and Western democratic alliances around the world than all of the Repub Administrations and all of the Repub members of Congress of the past century or more combined.

By stark contrast, no administration, now the holy template for all future Repub administrations and slavishly aped by virtually every Repub in Congress and running for election, inflicted more damage to the health, well-being and the economy of America as well as the cause for democracy around the world than the immediate previous one that still refuses to simply apologize for his total disaster, admit defeat and go away.

Snap out of it.

Wake up.

Pay attention.

Vote accordingly.