“Money And Morals”: The GOP’s Attempt To Divert The Inequality Conversation
Lately inequality has re-entered the national conversation. Occupy Wall Street gave the issue visibility, while the Congressional Budget Office supplied hard data on the widening income gap. And the myth of a classless society has been exposed: Among rich countries, America stands out as the place where economic and social status is most likely to be inherited.
So you knew what was going to happen next. Suddenly, conservatives are telling us that it’s not really about money; it’s about morals. Never mind wage stagnation and all that, the real problem is the collapse of working-class family values, which is somehow the fault of liberals.
But is it really all about morals? No, it’s mainly about money.
To be fair, the new book at the heart of the conservative pushback, Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” does highlight some striking trends. Among white Americans with a high school education or less, marriage rates and male labor force participation are down, while births out of wedlock are up. Clearly, white working-class society has changed in ways that don’t sound good.
But the first question one should ask is: Are things really that bad on the values front?
Mr. Murray and other conservatives often seem to assume that the decline of the traditional family has terrible implications for society as a whole. This is, of course, a longstanding position. Reading Mr. Murray, I found myself thinking about an earlier diatribe, Gertrude Himmelfarb’s 1996 book, “The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values,” which covered much of the same ground, claimed that our society was unraveling and predicted further unraveling as the Victorian virtues continued to erode.
Yet the truth is that some indicators of social dysfunction have improved dramatically even as traditional families continue to lose ground. As far as I can tell, Mr. Murray never mentions either the plunge in teenage pregnancies among all racial groups since 1990 or the 60 percent decline in violent crime since the mid-90s. Could it be that traditional families aren’t as crucial to social cohesion as advertised?
Still, something is clearly happening to the traditional working-class family. The question is what. And it is, frankly, amazing how quickly and blithely conservatives dismiss the seemingly obvious answer: A drastic reduction in the work opportunities available to less-educated men.
Most of the numbers you see about income trends in America focus on households rather than individuals, which makes sense for some purposes. But when you see a modest rise in incomes for the lower tiers of the income distribution, you have to realize that all — yes, all — of this rise comes from the women, both because more women are in the paid labor force and because women’s wages aren’t as much below male wages as they used to be.
For lower-education working men, however, it has been all negative. Adjusted for inflation, entry-level wages of male high school graduates have fallen 23 percent since 1973. Meanwhile, employment benefits have collapsed. In 1980, 65 percent of recent high-school graduates working in the private sector had health benefits, but, by 2009, that was down to 29 percent.
So we have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits. Yet somehow we’re supposed to be surprised that such men have become less likely to participate in the work force or get married, and conclude that there must have been some mysterious moral collapse caused by snooty liberals. And Mr. Murray also tells us that working-class marriages, when they do happen, have become less happy; strange to say, money problems will do that.
One more thought: The real winner in this controversy is the distinguished sociologist William Julius Wilson.
Back in 1996, the same year Ms. Himmelfarb was lamenting our moral collapse, Mr. Wilson published “When Work Disappears: The New World of the Urban Poor,” in which he argued that much of the social disruption among African-Americans popularly attributed to collapsing values was actually caused by a lack of blue-collar jobs in urban areas. If he was right, you would expect something similar to happen if another social group — say, working-class whites — experienced a comparable loss of economic opportunity. And so it has.
So we should reject the attempt to divert the national conversation away from soaring inequality toward the alleged moral failings of those Americans being left behind. Traditional values aren’t as crucial as social conservatives would have you believe — and, in any case, the social changes taking place in America’s working class are overwhelmingly the consequence of sharply rising inequality, not its cause.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, February 9, 2012
“Can’t-Win Cul-de-Sac”: Mitt Romney’s Clumsy Economic Centrism
There are times when I feel a twinge of sympathy for former Gov. Mitt Romney. Really and truly. The Unbearable Heaviness of Being Mitt in the current ideological climate—with its highly-charged suspicions of both “socialism” and conspicuous wealth—forces him to tack left and right in ways that leave him pitifully exposed.
His calculated moves toward the right sometime in the mid-2000s, on key issues like abortion, gay rights, and immigration, are well-known and justly scrutinized.
Less noticed—but no less calculated—have been his efforts to hew to the center.
I’m thinking, first, of Romney’s proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes only for married couples making under $200,000 and singles making less than $100,000. The cap at those income levels is head-scratchingly pointless, as the vast majority who benefit from low capital gains tax rates make well over $200,000.
Romney’s official rationale for limited capital gains tax relief is that “We need to spend our precious tax dollars on the middle class.”
That sounds nice and centrist-y, but the more likely reason became clear when Romney finally released his tax returns: If he proposed eliminating taxes on capital gains altogether—as former Speaker Newt Gingrich, Rep. Ron Paul and Gov. Rick Perry have proposed—then Romney would be forced to defend the prospect of paying even less than his already low rate of 13.9 percent.
“Under that plan”—meaning Gingrich’s—”I’d have paid no taxes in the last two years,” Romney said, in one of his sharpest lines in the debate in Tampa last month.
Romney is similarly lukewarm, from the libertarian economic perspective, on the issue of the minimum wage. As in 2008, Romney favors automatic increases to keep pace with inflation. The right uniformly hates this idea—they think it will actually eliminate entry-level jobs and hurt the very people it’s trying to help.
As with his suspicious-seeming lurches toward the right to appease the social conservative base, Romney trims toward the center on sensitive economic issues to limit the appearance of rank plutocracy.
Steve Forbes tells Yahoo News: “It goes to show he’s still very defensive about his own wealth. All it does is give the base another reason to be unenthusiastic about him.”
At National Review Online, Andrew C. McCarthy likewise asserted that Romney was “doubling down on stupid to overcompensate for any hint of a compassion deficit.”
Hence my (momentary) twinge of sympathy for Romney. His ideological contortions, whichever direction they take him, land him in the same can’t-win cul-de-sac.
By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, February 7, 2012
“Half-Time In America”: It Isn’t Political, It’s American
Many Republicans want President Obama to fail. That’s completely understandable and defensible, if one is talking about success or failure in his re-election campaign. It’s stunning when that’s extended to the performance of the economy as a whole or any of the nation’s job-supplying industries.
Thus we have uber-political operative Karl Rove complaining about how offended he was by a Super Bowl TV ad, sponsored by Chrysler, which extolled the recent resurrection of the nation’s auto industry. The ad featured tough-guy actor Clint Eastwood talking about the remarkable comeback of the auto industry, and underscoring the qualities which truly characterize the best of America—resilience, optimism, sacrifice, and hard work. The script of the commercial, “Halftime in America,” is as inspiring as any speech made by an actor in a movie or a political candidate in a campaign:
It’s halftime in America, too. People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback. And we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game.
The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again.
I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life. And, times when we didn’t understand each other. It seems like we’ve lost our heart at times. When the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead.
But after those trials, we all rallied around what was right, and acted as one. Because that’s what we do. We find a way through tough times, and if we can’t find a way, then we’ll make one.
All that matters now is what’s ahead. How do we come from behind? How do we come together? And, how do we win?
Detroit’s showing us it can be done. And, what’s true about them is true about all of us.
This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.
Yeah, it’s halftime America. And, our second half is about to begin.
Really, could anyone have a problem with that ad? It featured scenes of Detroit, and of middle-class people, working hard in a struggling economy and trying to make their city and their lives better.
Yes, Rove had a problem with it. He said he was “offended” by the spot, adding on Fox News:
I’m a huge fan of Clint Eastwood, I thought it was an extremely well-done ad, but it is a sign of what happens when you have Chicago-style politics, and the president of the United States and his political minions are, in essence, using our tax dollars to buy corporate advertising.
Rove seems to be referring to President Obama’s bailout of the auto industry, and suggesting that somehow that money was used to pay for a thinly-disguised campaign ad for the Obama re-election campaign. A lot of Republicans were opposed to the bailout, saying the companies should be subject to the rules of capitalism. GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney famously penned a New York Times op-ed entitled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”
What is it about Detroit that so many conservatives despise? That it’s a still-breathing example of the “old economy?” Is it Motown music they hate, or the fact that it’s full of labor union members? Is the distaste for struggling Detroit so pronounced that people actually want the city to fail?
Had the auto companies indeed failed despite the bailout, Rove and Romney would have looked brilliant. But the companies are recovering nicely, paying back their loans (with interest), and making profits, in part because of concessions made by the labor unions so despised by conservatives.
There is surely a legitimate philosophical argument to be made that the government should not bailout out big businesses (an argument not often extended to include huge tax breaks for profitable industries). Pure capitalism indeed stipulates that businesses should succeed or fail on their own. Critics can legitimately argue that government should not prop up any industry, no matter what the implications for employment. They can be angry that the auto bailouts happened, but it’s unconscionable to be angry that the bailouts worked. Comebacks—as the New York Giants proved, winning the Super Bowl after an uneven season—are about as American as it gets.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 7, 2012
“Empathy Gap”: Mitt Romney Rejects Concern For The “Very Poor”
Just two weeks ago, Mitt Romney told voters in South Carolina, “I’m concerned about the poor in this country.” This morning, Romney reversed course and said the exact opposite.
“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of America, the 90%, 95% of Americans right now who are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation. […]
“You can focus on the rich, that’s not my focus. You can focus on the very poor, that’s not my focus. My focus is on middle-income Americans.”
The Republican frontrunner added, “We will hear from the Democrat Party, the plight of the poor.”
When Romney’s rivals were hammering him on Bain Capital — and the fact that he got extremely rich by firing American workers and leading a vulture-capitalist firm — he shifted rhetorical gears in order to seem sympathetic towards those struggling most.
With his new “I’m not concerned about the very poor” line, it appears Romney has abandoned this tack altogether.
Regardless, as a matter of substance, Romney’s line this morning is just a mess.
For one thing, it’s tone-deaf to a breathtaking degree. When a hyper-wealthy politician boasts about taking pleasure in firing people, he probably shouldn’t tell national television audiences he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”
For another, Romney’s candid admission underscores a larger policy problem: he’s not only unconcerned with the plight of the very poor, he also pursuing an agenda that would make their lives considerably more difficult. If elected, a Romney administration intends to slash public investments that benefit working families, while raising taxes on those at the bottom of the income scale.
Let’s also not forget that while Romney insisted this morning that he’s “not concerned about the very rich,” either, there’s ample evidence to the contrary. Indeed, the presidential hopeful has already presented a plan to give the very wealthy yet another massive tax break.
And as for Romney’s purported concern for the middle class, what the former governor neglected to mention this morning is that his tax plan largely ignores the middle class. By his own admission, Romney doesn’t plan to do much of anything for middle-income earners.
Taken together, in one interview, Romney managed to sound callous towards those struggling, lie about his agenda’s focus on the wealthy, and ignore the relevant details of his disregard for the middle class.
Not bad for a morning’s work.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February, 1, 2012
The Problem With The Republican Party Is Not Newt Gingrich Or Mitt Romney
The Republicans chose Mitch Daniels to rebut President Obama’s State of the Union speech. They chose Bush’s budget director to talk about the economy. The guy who inherited the Clinton budget surplus and transformed it into the largest budget deficit in American history. If you want to understand how clueless and out of touch the Republican Party has become, all you have to do is start with their having chosen Mitch Daniels to rebut President Obama’s State of the Union speech.
Republican insiders are freaked out over the possibility of Newt Gingrich becoming their presidential standard bearer. That’s the technical term: freaked out. And that they are so freaked out over that possibility at least speaks to their not having completely lost touch with reality. They have completely lost touch with the American people, but they haven’t completely lost touch with reality. Not completely. At least not yet. But in light of their support for the personification of so much that is so wrong and so unpopular in this country as alternative to Gingrich, their prospects for retaining at least a partial grip on reality are not good. And they did choose Mitch Daniels to rebut President Obama’s State of the Union speech. Which speaks for itself.
The Occupy movement is not overtly political, at least not in the traditional sense of that word. It does not adhere to any political party or any individual political movement, but it is symbiotic with many political movements, and its goals align very well with traditional Democratic Party populism. The Democratic Party has been adrift from its populist traditions, and in many ways that made the Occupy movement necessary, but many Democrats seem to be recognizing what is happening. They seem to be rediscovering the Democratic Party’s populist tradition. The Republican Party has no link at all to populism. The Republican Party, since at least the Reagan era, has been the party of the economic elite, waging neoliberal class warfare and then feigning outrage at what Republicans consider to be the class warfare of merely calling the Republican Party on its actually waging class warfare.
Since the Reagan era, the income gap has exploded, the wealthy have grown wealthier, the poor have grown poorer, the middle class has all but disappeared, and the nation has grown increasingly segregated by income. And while President Obama’s State of the Union speech emphasized the degree to which he understands the importance of the Occupy movement and how it has changed the economic conversation in this country, the Republicans chose Bush Budget Director Mitch Daniels to speak on their behalf, thus demonstrating that they remain utterly clueless about what has gone wrong with the economy, how people feel about what has gone wrong with the economy, and how anything about the economy will ever again go right. While President Obama’s State of the Union speech emphasized the degree to which he understands the importance of the Occupy movement by announcing the appointment of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate the corporate crimes that neoliberal deregulation made inevitable, and that inevitably crashed the economy, the Republicans chose to demonstrate that they remain utterly clueless about what has gone wrong with the economy by having Bush Budget Director Mitch Daniels repeat the same stale failed Republican recipe of tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and the class warfare of feigning outrage at the alleged class warfare of calling for economic fairness and justice.
No one will openly admit it, but part of the Republican rationale for having Mitch Daniels rebut President Obama’s State of the Union speech was that he is the choice of many supposedly serious Republicans to make a late entry into the presidential race, or possibly to prevail at a brokered convention. There are actually some Republicans who understand that neither the gruesome Gingrich nor the unprincipled Romney is likely to catch political fire with the voting public. What these Republicans haven’t figured out is why. Because Republican insiders haven’t figured out that the American people are angry at and fed up with a stagnating economy and increasingly obscene income and wealth disparities. The American people don’t want handouts, but they do want a social safety net. But more than anything the American people just want a fair chance. They want to know that if they work hard and obey the laws, they will do better than maybe scraping by. They want to know that if they are taken advantage of by unscrupulous, greedy, politically connected corporations, there will be justice. They want their children and grandchildren to have at least the same, and preferably better, opportunities than they had. In the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the known history of the human race, those goals shouldn’t be considered excessive or but unrealistic fantasies, but to the Republicans those goals not only are unthinkable; they are class warfare.
The Republicans continue to promote policies that hurt people. The Republicans continue to promote policies that will only enrich the already rich while making life more difficult for everyone else. Not many still believe that if the Republicans and their wealthy friends and owners throw a lavish feast, enough crumbs will trickle down to the floor to nourish everyone else. But that’s all the Republicans have to offer. And even their usual means of convincing people to vote against their own best interests won’t work.
Under President Obama, accused terrorists have been caught and killed; one war has been drawn down, if not quite ended; and while not perfect, there is an obvious basic competency in foreign policy and national security. Republican fear-mongering fails. On the domestic front, the Republicans are finding it no longer works to exploit and exacerbate hatred and bigotry. So they turn to the economy. Because no one is happy with the economy. But the problem for the Republicans is that the public well understands who is to blame for the economy, and that someone is named Bush. And then the Republicans decide the perfect person to rebut President Obama’s State of the Union speech is Bush’s former budget director, Mitch Daniels.
The Republicans assume people have very short attention spans. Maybe because so much of their base does. But the fact is that Mitch Daniels played an instrumental role in turning President Clinton’s record federal budget surplus into the largest ever federal deficit. Mitch Daniels disastrously underestimated the cost of Bush’s disastrous war on Iraq. Mitch Daniels helped Bush downgrade the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the years immediately before the Hurricane Katrina disaster. And with the American public increasingly focused on unemployment and income disparity, in his current job as governor of the state that once sent the execrable Dan Quayle to the U.S. Senate, Mitch Daniels is busy waging war on workers. Mitch Daniels played a key role in creating some the worst disasters created by any U.S. president ever, and yet when it comes time to rebut the State of the Union speech given by the president who is leading the tentative recovery from those disasters, it is to Mitch Daniels that the Republicans turn. Mitch Daniels played a key role in creating some the worst disasters ever created by any U.S. president, and yet when it comes time to find a candidate to run against the president who is leading the tentative recovery from those disasters, it is to Mitch Daniels that many supposedly serious Republicans would like to turn.
A lot of Republican insiders are frightened for their party’s future. They should be. But not for the reasons they think. Newt Gingrich is not what’s wrong with the Republican Party. Mitt Romney is not what’s wrong with the Republican Party. That New Gingrich and Mitt Romney are the leading candidates to carry the Republican Party’s standard against President Obama is not what’s wrong with the Republican Party. That Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are the leading candidates to carry the Republican Party’s standard against President Obama is but a symptom of what’s wrong with the Republican Party. The problem runs wider. The problem runs deeper. The problem is simple. The problem with the Republican Party is the Republican Party.
By: Lawrence Lewis, Daily Kos, January 29, 2012
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