I have been watching the conversation on the stimulus package with interest. As the debate has gone on a graphic depiction of the problem is etched in my mind.
It is an analysis of the income disparity within the US:
Yes the bottom of the graph is wrong, it should be below 100K-but the bottom line is still the same. Rich bastards are getting a lot richer while the rest of us deal with about the same money as we always did.
Which is why I find it hard to cry salt tears when dickheads Senators like Mitch McConnell cry the blues: “The only thing we know for sure is that it increases our debt and locks in bigger and bigger interest payments every year. In short, we’re taking an enormous risk with other people’s money.”
Funny, he did not have the same heartburn while Bush was spending over 1 TRILLION dollars on a stupid and unnecessary war. What makes it bad is that these are the same individuals who are now decrying “the debt we are putting on our children”-when only four short years ago, they were more than happy to burden our children with just as much debt-to finance a war for worthless Arabs. Who in the end could care less about us.
So maybe you can see why appeals to my better nature about the national debt fall on some deaf ears. ” So let me get this straight, its OK to spend billions on a war for worthless Arabs-but its not OK to spend money to help real Americans. And why is that exactly?”
BTW, the issue is not whether the war in Iraq was right or not. ( It wasn’t). It is about the fact that if you have to do something-you have to pay the bill for it. We should have charged a dollar a gallon tax on gasoline, or on businesses to pay for the war that protected them.
A bill is still a bill.
I’d rather do something to help Americans than I would to help Iraqis, that’s for sure. ( although maybe if we had leveled Baghdad up front in 2003-we would be better off now).
The Republicans new found love of fiscal responsibility is a hollow one. And for that they deserve a beating with one of these:
Will the stimulus bill work? I’m not sure. However that was never the point was it really?
The point was to show the American public that someone, anyone, in a position of public trust-cared about more than some rich, greedy, Wall Street banker. In that regard, I find incredible fault with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They should both be taken out in back of the Congress and shot. Poorly begun is poorly done and Obama needs to shoot Ms. Pelosi for being a horse’s ass. ( I would have used the “C” word-but I know c**ts who are better than her. I even hold Pelosi in lower esteem than Sarah Palin and that is a saying a lot). Had Pelosi not been so stupid and not allowed the House Democrats to load up the bill with projects that may have been worthy in their own right, but had no business in this particular piece of legislation-we all would have been better off.
Plus, nobody has made an effective case to me for the tax cuts. The issue of the bill is to allow the government to replace stupid businessmen as consumers. All tax cuts do is allow, people to take money and stuff it away. Good for them-bad for the economy. You can be damn sure that all I am going to do with any tax rebate is put it in a money market. Why?
Because the worst is yet to come.
I have mixed feelings myself about the package. I think a stimulus bill is necessary-but then again, I think the idea of a “shot in the arm” for the economy is moonshine. I think that what we are really looking at is the government becoming the replacement consumer-making up for the lack of consumption by people and business for a while till they can get their courage back. There is nothing wrong with that, but it would be nicer if I could feel the government was buying the right things to create the right kind of jobs.As they said in Goodfellas”
Fuck you-pay me!
Actually, if it were me- I would pass a bill that would grow the economy, not just stimulate it. I’d invest in high speed trains like they have in Japan. invest in space and defense-which creates really good jobs at high wages. Work on roads, but more importantly do what it took to fix housing. A lot of whose distress has come because house prices are simply too high.
So if I could, I’d do this to house loans and the other facets of the cost of living:
Why did people get themselves in bad loans? Because they could not get into a decent place to live for an affordable price. Or rather, their expectations about what was a reasonable place to live was too DAMN HIGH! Tell me again why folks need 4 bedroom monstrosities for 700,000 dollars?
A side note-that I find disturbing for a whole bunch of reasons-all of the really big houses in our neighborhood are owned by non Caucasian people. There’s a reason for that, its probably not a good one. Go back and reread the previous paragraph. That did not say what I meant to say.
There is a point where both overseas, and at home-the US is going to have to reign in its appetite. That day has arrived, and we actually may be better off in smaller more affordable places to live. Particularly since whatever jobs that are created are not going to pay the bill for the houses we have.
So forgive me if I have no sympathy for the Republicans right now. They are gambling that the stimulus will fail. If it does-they look like heroes. If it doesn’t-they will look like the uncaring rich bastards they are. I’m rooting for the latter to happen.
The other 99% of us need more than lip service.
Speaking of stimulation by the way:
Love that graph…
One reason (still does not give them the right to default) people got into loasn that they couldn’t afford was that they wanted to get better places to live, with out all of the madness that seems to going on in most American neighborhoods. Also, as is the case in my home town where the “black side” of town has become fashonable to live in again, long term residents had to place mortages homes that they all ready had paid off to all of a sudden pay off huge increases in taxes and other “fees” that come with living in an area that suddenly became fashonable. Gentrification is an ugly word to me.
The fact that most of the homes in your area are probably owned by “non-whites” means that they have enough money to buy them, or that the banks saw some easy targets and will set them up for a fall just to line their pockets.
The Republicans don’t want the bill to fail. That would be societal suicide. Opinion polls, if you believe them, show a lot of skepticism about the bailout/stimulus. I share that viewpoint.
Too much money, too little oversight, too much greed.
Skippy,
Not to be charitable, you really are some kind of idiot.
That graph is a manifestation of pure unrestrained greed. You attribute that rise of the blue to rethuglicans when the evidence is all around you that the really greedy people are the ones that are planning to steal all the money you have and all the money you ever will and all the money your kids and grandkids will ever have in order to ‘stimulate’ their friends pocketbooks.
George Soros ring a bell with you? He is greed and evil personified.
Jamie Gorelick ring a fucking bell with you? What did she ever do to earn hundreds of millions as a director for Fannie Mae or Freddie mac.
Claude Rains ring a bell?
All those shitbags who went to Harvard and Yale and who sit on the Boards of the Fortune 500 and who vote to ‘compensate’ the CEO, COO, CFO with hundred million $ packages and hundred million $ golden parachutes……THEY ARE ALL FUCKING DEMOCRATS. They are just like Feinstein’s motherfucking husband! They are all in bed with each other. And for their noble service on the Board they ‘earn’ 7 or 8 figure compensations. And all that good advice…..
Why exactly is it that the ENRON CEO et al were tried and sent to jail or died trying and all the current crop aren’t even considered for charges for defrauding investors? What about that shit Madoff. He religiously voted Democrat for the last 45 years and he still isn’t in jail.
At least the God damned Republican/Libertarians still feel some obligation to creating shareholder value and making a profit for the shareholders.
Shit, a bill that will create another 300,000 government jobs in perpetuity so they can join the government employee union and retire at 55 with 150% of base salary.
Fucking democrats are like locusts. They ruin everything for everybody and the ones ruining it all get rich at the expense of everyone else. How exactly does a shitbag like Rangel become a millionaire on his congressional salary? How exactly did the GORE family amass their wealth when they’ve been ‘honest’ public servants for generations? Oh, I know, they’re motherfucking democrats and don’t pay taxes.
Sorry, I was writing the same way I write on Skippy Stalin’s site. I had a lot of fun over there and got as good as I gave.
regards,
Does not matter what party affiliation the rich folks have-the simple fact of that graph is that its too much.
I have reservations about the stimulus package too, but it if created 300,000 jobs where I could retire at 55-sign me up! I really don’t think its doing that because there are going to be an equal number that will be offset by other contractions in the economy.
If those CEO’s were simply creating shareholder value and profit, the companies they run would be in better shape. Instead of making over 1 million a year, they’d get 400,000 and live comfortably and plow the rest back into the company. “How many yachts are enough, Gordon?”.
It is not a party issue-it is that the rest of us are not getting ahead. We are falling behind.
I’d also highlight my other point, its kind of hard to be a fiscal conservative when these same Republicans had no problem breaking the bank financing a two wars. Even if the wars were the right thing to do ( and Iraq was not)-there should have been sacrifices made to pay for them.
You just think you’re falling behind and with you, most of the rest of us. The chart you reference is quite meaningless. Trust me, the base was not earning an average of $100k back in 1920. This is not Lake Woebegone. We can’t all be above average.
There are two routes to huge wealth in a capitalist society, 3 if you count entering public service at the national level as a Congressman. You can be born to wealthy parents, attend all the appropriate schools, form lifelong friendships as you progress through Sidwell, Exeter, Harvard/Yale and then go to law school and join a large firm. Alternatively, you can form your own company and take to market a product that the public desires in vast quantities at insane prices.
There may be a few other paths to vast wealth but trust me, only the top 1% will ever get there and barring the ones who marry the money, the route for the non-elite involves working 20 hours a day for years on end. I looked at that route a while ago and decided not. You also have to pander, shill and prostitute everything you believe in and I decided that it just wasn’t worth it. These days I think the vast majority of the jobs that hover at the top 1% of pay and allowances are sinecures that some body, usually government, appoints suck ups to. The suck ups have the required pedigree and ‘friends’ to get noticed and lifted up because they sure as hell aren’t lifted on their merits.
Bitching about it is stupid and counterproductive. It’s like an actor suddenly realizing that he will never really be the leading man in a blockbuster picture and deciding that there was never any real opportunity for him and taking it out on the industry. It is what it is.
Curtis,
My goal is not so much to be wealthy-as self sufficient to my needs. And in the location I want to be. I’m pretty much there now-but only if I work. ( Aside from the fact that I am not living where I want to.)
But its a house of cards. If I lose my job-I’m screwed in about a year and a half. I either find another one-or I starve. ( Unless I get rid of my alimony-in which case I’m fine.)
Nonetheless-the idea that someone, anyone, is worth over a mill for the job they do is ludicrous. There is no one worth that kind of money.
The problem is that after a certain point-you cannot spend the money-even if you wanted to.
Lets say for example I made 10 times my current salary. My bills would still top out at about a much, much lower amount. And that is with a house that is nice, plenty of cable, cars, TV’s, etc. So the rest either needs to go to savings-(e.g. so I don’t have to work at all-my preferred alternative) or it needs to get reinvested in the business.
The simple truth is that we could use that money to better good. If I were king, I’d have a central provident fund concept like they do in Singapore. You would have to, have to, put 33% of your income into health insurance premiums, a retirement fund, taxes for services like police and fire. The other 66% you live on. It would mean a lower standard of living to be sure-but we could actually live quite well on much less-IF, we had decent services like cheap cabs, rail transit, and health care.
The rich owe more because they benefit more. I’m not against someone being wealthy-but enough should be enough.
Skippy, you remind me of the Luxury tax that one of our communist administrations passed a while ago. “Let’s tax the uber rich bastards who buy big boats and RVs and aircraft, etc”. Who could have guessed that that particular insanity killed those businesses that produced those goods and resulted in hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs? Who?!!! Only a MENSA dude could have foreseen that!
Cheap cabs? driven by slaves?
Cheap rail? Ripped up by every single city father 5 decades ago in every city that had cheap trolley service? The mother fuckers went right down the middle of the street so of course they needed to be paved over. To replicate them nobody talks about using the existing rights of way and they plan to spend $100 million/mile for track. Sorry. I’m not interested in buying it.
Point to me one single US Mass Transit rail system that makes a profit or comes close to earning its operating costs. I’ll admit they might if they came close to the Japanese standard or the Seoul standard but the best we can do is the LAX standard. I pay more to avoid LAX and fly international through SFO.