Daily Archives: 13 Mar 2012

Conservative Arrogance and Willful Ignorance

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I’ve talked before about David Harvey’s excellent Marxist critique of our current economic crisis. HowTheWorldWorks presented a response video titled Crisis of Capitalism, The Critique. It is offensive in its ignorance or disingenuousness. Noscman1 then presented a response to that video titled “The Critique of the Crisis of Capitalism Critique by HowTheWorldWorks.” It is rather good and provides most of what you need to know about the HowTheWorldWorks video [Sadly, it is no longer available. -FM]

The main argument in the HowTheWorldWorks video is: Marxism bad; capitalism good. At least 50% of what he says is simply, “Well everyone agrees this is just wrong.” As noscman1 points out, it’s just all the people committed to HowTheWorldWorks’ ideology who believe that. If you are going to attack an argument, you really need to argue and not dismiss out of hand the argument.

There is one major point that noscman1 misses. HowTheWorldWorks contends that wages in the United States have increased substantially since 1980. Noscman1 counters this by saying that although wages have increased in the United States, they have not worldwide. This is not true. The problem with HowTheWorldWorks’ claim is first that these wages he presents are not in inflation adjusted dollars. More important, however, is that the wages given are averages. We all know that over the last 30 years there have been huge increases in total wealth. The point that those on the left make is that all those increases have gone to the wealthy. The middle and lower classes have seen very small (and even negative) wage growth.

Conservatism has weathered this financial crisis with a combination of arrogance and willful ignorance.

Pee on Me

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Tinkle on meYesterday, I was talking to Andrea and the subject of trickle down economics came up. I said that it should really be called “tinkle down economics” because it is all about urinating on the poor. She countered with something that I don’t even like to think about, so I certainly won’t repeat it here. (She was having a bad day.)

I thought that phrase was pretty clever, but like anything clever I come up with, I was sure it wasn’t original. So I performed an internet search, and it turns out to be a fairly uncommon turn of phrase. But Jim Hightower beat me to the punch. (That’s not bad; I don’t mind following in the footsteps of someone as wonderful as Hightower.) Last tax day, Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of The Nation Magazine, wrote about this in an article title End ‘Tinkle Down’ Economics.

For thirty years, we’ve been treated to the big whopper that cutting taxes on the rich creates jobs. Let’s get real. Trickle-down—or, as my good friend Jim Hightower likes to call it, tinkle-down economics—hasn’t worked. Case closed. After George W. cut taxes for his rich pals, far fewer jobs were created than after President Bill Clinton raised them in the 1990s.

Then in December, the Obama-GOP deal extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy at a two-year cost of about $70 billion a year. Now Congress is making $40 billion in painful budget cuts this year. Meanwhile, President Obama, Representative Paul Ryan and others are battling over budgets and tax plans for the next decade and beyond. For the most part, what’s been missing from these suffocatingly narrow discussions is an easy source of income: taxing investments like ordinary income.

The folks over at Responsible Wealth believe not only that the Bush tax cuts on upper-income folks should be ended but also that money made from money (i.e., capital gains and dividends) should be taxed like money made from work, not at the preferential 15 percent rate. They have a simple calculator that calculates your tax savings using just three numbers from your tax form (or from your head), and an interactive graph with videos of people talking about their taxes. It’s worth checking out at responsiblewealth.org.

Taxing capital gains and dividends at regular income rates would save $84.2 billion in 2011 alone, twice the amount we’re cutting from this year’s budget.

Don’t let the rich pee down on me.

“‘Cause you’re just like Hillary”

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Game ChangeLet’s suppose that I didn’t have HBO, but really wanted to see Game Change. I know I can’t get an online subscription to HBO, because I’ve tried. And I don’t have a TV. That would leave me with two options: find an illegal copy online or go visit a friend who has HBO. Let’s just assume I went to visit a friend.

The film is really good; in its way as good as Primary Colors. But unlike Primary Colors, I will never watch Game Change again; it’s just too painful. The first half of the film made me really sympathetic toward Sarah Palin. I had forgotten that before running for Vice-President, she had only just started as governor of a small state, whose only real experience was as mayor of a place too small to comfortably call a town. And she isn’t that smart. The film does an excellent job of showing just how out of her depth she was. After about an hour, it really does look as though she is going to have a nervous break down. But she rallies and turns herself into something much worse.

The first we see of this is after Palin’s catastrophic interview with Katie Couric. She is on her cellphone, raging at her advisor, Nicolle Wallace, saying, “Now I understand what Hillary meant when she said she had to find her own voice.” Wallace pauses. “Yeah,” she says. “‘Cause you’re just like Hillary.”

It is only after the debate that Palin completes her metamorphosis into the rogue who ate the campaign. It is hard to say for sure, but the film indicates that she believed that she had done so well in the debate[1] because she had done things her way and not by listening to her advisors. From then on, she is uncontrollable. The high point of the movie comes on election night when Palin wants to give a concession speech. Steve Schmidt, McCain’s senior campaign strategist, has been itching for a fight with Palin ever since Nicolle Wallace bailed on her after the “Hillary” speech. He tells her angrily:

Governor, this country has just elected the first African American President in the history of its existence. And it is the concession speech that will legitimize his secession as Commander in Chief. It is a serious and solemn occasion, and John McCain, and only John McCain, will be giving this sacred speech. This is how it has been done in every Presidential election since the dawn of the Republic. And you, Sarah Palin, will not change the importance of this proud American tradition.

From a technical standpoint, the film is professionally done. Everyone involved helped to create a really well told story. Talk of Emmy Awards seem a little much, even though the film will doubtless garner some. The one thing that stood out to me was the special effects that allowed Julianne Moore[2] as Sarah Palin to debate the real Joe Biden.

If you have a “friend” with HBO, I highly recommend watching this film.

[1] My recollection is that she did not do well at the debate. Expectations for Palin were by that point so low that all she had to do was show up and not drool. The main thing I remember is that she refused to answer the questions and just said things from her speeches. And no one countered her, because, you know: she wasn’t drooling.

[2] Here is Julianne Moore in Neil Jordan’s filmed version of Not I in Beckett on Film:

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