I didn't like Mark Dayton as a candidate, wasn't enamored of him as a Senator, but compared to the neo-con, slash and burn alternative offered by the Republicans (Tom Emmer), I guess I'm glad he won - ok, I'm really glad, we've had an obstructionist Governor (Tim Pawlenty) for eight years, and during that time the budget was a catastrophe. Pawlenty pushed debt off to future generations and future administrations, used shell-games to hide his debt, took advantage of inflation-based growth in revenue while holding flat (in real dollars) the outlays for programs which cared for the most vulnerable. He was a disaster as a Governor for the state's finances, and likely has no hope in his bid for the Presidency.
Had the Republicans run a more mainstream, less extreme candidate, they almost certainly, given the national Republican wave, would have once again won the Governor's race. Had the Democrats run a better candidate and campaign (Dayton was weak and ran a horrid campaign), they likely would have beaten Emmer by 10 points (he was our Christine O'Donnell).
What is more instructive through all of it though is this. This election, both in Minnesota and nationally, was about jobs, and nothing but jobs (or if you like, economic security). Dayton failed to capture or even understand that message. Emmer, by contrast did, but his solution (and that of too many Republicans) of simply cutting taxes, sounded hollow and unlikely to succeed. As Joe Scarborough said this morning, "The Democrats were told this year that we can't spend our way out of this unemployment crisis, but the Republicans had better hear that they were ALSO told we can 'tax cut' our way out of this mess either." In fact virtually every slash and burn/no-new taxes extreme ballot measure was repudiated yesterday. This was not a validation of Republican ideals, but a repudiation of a President (and his party) which seemed deaf to the continuing plight of American workers who suffer with what is close to 15% actual unemployment.
If this country is going to restore its economic future to one of opportunity and prosperity, both parties must recognize that the policies which put short-term profits ahead of long-term, sustainable job growth AND wage growth for the middle class, were myopic and foolish. The Democrats were told that no amount of short-term stilumulus was going to solve the problem, because it won't. The Republicans were told in 2006 & 2008 that tax cuts didn't work either. While they may have made a scant handful of people fabulously wealthy, they did it at the expense of the rest of the country. We cannot afford health care costs escalating at 10-15% per year. We certainly cannot afford to see jobs which paid $25-$50/hour evaporate because the spending that employee used to engage in (and the taxes she/he paid) matter. Paying someone $5/day in India or China may make the "bottom line" better, but it only does so for a time. If the Republicans fail to hear that message, then in 2012 or 2014, they will get kicked in the head as surely and as squarely as the Democrats did last night. Regardless of party politics, regardless of the quality of the candidates, the Democrats and Republicans must come to grips with the fact that is is not voter disaffection with government which was expressed last night, but rather voter disaffection with ineffective government. Obama may have passed laws, but he clearly didn't convince the voters they were helpful or even the right thing. They (the voters) want this mess fixed and they don't much care how. The voters want decisive, effective action, and actually they probably want much more drastic action than anything Obama contemplated to protect their jobs, to save their future and the future of their children. If they do not, the worst part is the country will suffer even more than the irreparable harm it has been done over these past 30 years of trading manufacturing power and intellectual capital for short-sell, near-term payoffs. (please refer to the link below which describes the massive shift in wealth and control of that wealth since 1980 - this is an extensive report from the University of California Santa Cruz).
"Who Rules America" http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.htmlThe parties may get kicked in the head, but we'll all have headaches the size of Minnesota. They've given the Republicans another try. I, for one, hope they (the Republicans) have a real solution, not just some retread "tax cut" garbage. The country sure needs one.
I sympathize with your desire to bring back or create more $25-$50 / hour jobs, Dog Gone. I don't think that there is anyone who would not want to see that.
ReplyDeleteThe question is, how? Free trade is an orthodoxy on the left and the right. The pressure on companies to outsource or otherwise reduce labor costs is literally unbearable, unless they can find some refuge from competition.
As you can probably guess I am not a fan of free trade. What I find annoying is the refusal of even labor-centric liberal activists to recognize that cheap immigrant labor has the same effect on local wages as outsourcing.
"They (the voters) want this mess fixed and they don't much care how."
ReplyDeleteThis is the problem. Of all the blathering I heard by myopic media personnel (of both the left and the right) on Tuesday, only Chris Matthews said anything remotely accurate. He said, "The American people have long since stopped voting while bearing prescriptions in mind. Now we are voting based only on our emotional reactions to symptoms."
He's clearly slanted toward the left, which his follow-up statements revealed. However, in that particular statement, at least, he's correct. Until we get rid of this overly-simplified "kick da' gull-durn bums out" mentality, we'll just keep doing this merry-go-round thing every two or four years. (Some of this is okay, obviously, because a solid opposition is necessary, as is occasional change at the top, but a lot of it is counter-productive.)
Hence, a president who has served only 21 months in office is suddenly blamed for almost everything, even though he inherited the most horrendous scenario in the U.S. since the Great Depression. (Back then, Mr. Roosevelt, who also inherited quite a mess, was not blamed for everything in his first two years, by the way.) It's as though we have no societal long-term memory whatsoever anymore. It's a sort of mass political dementia. We don't see how much of this started because we don't care to do the thinking necessary for this. So, we have no time for long-term solutions beyond "cut taxes," which is sometimes the right thing to do but (once again) often an indication that we have no idea of the complexity of the scenario.
That being said, the Democrats were messageless, so they did not deserve to do well in these mid-term elections. The president bears some responsibility for this. For their part, many of the Republicans seem to want it to be 1952...or something...and similarly have very little to offer insofar as solutions are concerned to 21st century problems. (This is not nostalgia and it is not traditional American values, both of which I support to a certain extent. Instead, it's living in the past, and it's a clear indication that a country is on the decline when one of its two major parties embraces such a mindset.)
Given the choice between the Democrats (21st century whimps) and the Republicans (mid-20th century provincial "C" students), the voters went with the party that was out of power.
I voted for the whimps, but I wasn't happy about it.
Well, stop voting for whimps, then!
ReplyDeleteThe reason the vote went the way it did yesterday is that people see no end to the recession, and Obama's bag of tricks is empty.
Hasslington, you must see the irony in complaining about the GOP's 1952 mindset when Obama's economic ideas come from the 30's!
This much seems simple: for very well understood economic reasons small businesses both hire and fire people more quickly than medium-sized and large businesses. Small businesses aren't hiring because they don't have the money and they are worried enough about the prospects of future growth that they do not want to borrow it. There are other issues as well, of course, but that is the problem in a nutshell.
Not that I have a solution for the problem.
Hass - always good to see you comment here too!
ReplyDeleteTerry, I have been looking at how the voting demographics are affecting this election. It was a far older shift in age, apparently significantly more so than usual.
You might want to back off of those claims about being 'representative' of what people in this country want. I'm not so sure that is accurate.
It is dubious, and anything but clear, what it is that those who did vote even want, or how many want the same thing.
But that will be a separate post after I gather a few more sources.
Terry,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment, but I'm not suggesting that the president has all of the answers, and in comparing the president's situation to that of FDR I am assuredly NOT suggesting that the 1930s should be the model here. You read that section far too literally. (It seemed obvious to me that I was simply suggesting that voters should have a longer memory, and not vote based on 21 months, but rather on the arc of this problem. I thought this was rather obvious...if one takes the time to read my full answer prior to composing a response in one's head. Perhaps you should do this.)
Yet this retrograde "just cut taxes" attitude isn't likely to make things much better. This is a complex international economy now (I should know--I've lived and worked abroad), and tossing about simple solutions to complex problems is either disingenuous or ignorant, or (most likely) both.
I, for one, am more than willing to meet GOP-ers halfway on several issues, but not the "USA! USA!!!!" screaming pitchfork politicians and their provincial minions, who routinely confuse ideology for pragmatism, amongst other things. I would point out that I am similarly dismissive of the far left, because their ideas, though well-intentioned, are also overly ideological and not pragmatic enough.
I will continue to vote for whimps who recognize the century they are in over myopic thinkers who don't. However, I would much prefer for someone to give me a positive reason to vote for them, and I saw that out of neither major party this time around.
"I didn't like Mark Dayton as a candidate, wasn't enamored of him as a Senator, but compared to the neo-con, slash and burn alternative offered by the Republicans (Tom Emmer), I guess I'm glad he won."
ReplyDeleteI agree with this opinion wholeheartedly...including the tone, which might be called one of resignation.
Actually Terry, this was my post (Penigma) - and I agree with you entirely about both the negative reality of "free trade" and the pressures on business leaders. In my opinion you can't relieve this pressure through business practice, because it is in fact pressure to maximize profits as fast as possible. What we have to do is to control/plan for the integration of the global labor pool rather than allowing for unrestricted access to effectively free labor. NO labor market can survive contact/competition with labor which is by comparison free. This reality is the genesis of what has occured in the US (and Europe) over the past 30 years. When US capital/corporate leaders saw an opportunity to cut costs w/o real quality sacrifices, while maintaining price, thereby achieving very much higher profits, especially when they could do so AND because of tax changes the ownership could keep much higher portions of those profits, the pressure to do so was unstoppable.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to avoid this is to create rules whereby such offshoring has a transitional effect and brings the labor into somewhat even competitive levels. We already have a "repatriation tax" for the profits, which is by and large ineffective, the profits get to the end-user/owner anyway (it just does so offshore), but the tax DOES prevent the profits from being invested. There currently is $1 TRILLION dollars sitting in accounts which could be repatriated, and probably would be, but for this tax (which is 40%).
If we put the impetus on the outboud side, e.g. we made the cost of offshore labor higher by placing impediments for use, as Japan and some of Europe have done, then companies will make the decision based on a more fair field and for reasons which are BETTER by far than simply profits, such as ease of manufacturing, proximity to consumption, transport costs, availability of resources, etc.. Right now, because the cost is SO low, these other factors, which create excess energy use as well as greatly depressing our labor market, nothing else is considered.
I'm not saying you can prevent offshoring, but rather it must be staggered until those other markets become net consumer economies on their own - as is happening in China. You manufacture for Chine IN China, with the applicable labor costs, but you manufacture in Europe and the USA for those markets until the labor costs achieve some level of parity.
To give credit where due - this post was written by Pen, not me.
ReplyDeleteWe are currently rewarding - REWARDING - with tax credits the 'outsourcing' and 'offshoring' of our manufacturing jobs. It would be a huge incentive to bringing back and/or keeping those $25 + an hour jobs NOT to reward that outsourcing with tax credits on top of the profits these companies make from exploiting the labor forces of other countries at wages that amount to little more than paying them in handfuls of dirt. This is not good for us, this is not good for them, it is not good for the global economy. Not even when it results in short term improvement, but not in long term progress.
I DO agree with you Terry that cheap immigrant labor has the same effect on local wages, or at least a similar effect (depending on the outsourced wages - some are lower than immigrant labor, some are equal to immigrant labor wages).
What I voted against, rather than 'for' in this election was against the assertion, which is bad theory not fact, that giving tax breaks to the rich will produce jobs.
Never has. The right calls it 'common sense' that if the rich have money, which is why we call them 'rich', that if we give them more money they will create jobs with that additional money.
I took a good, long, hard look at that premise. It is not true, it is not factual, it is a wish, a hope, a myth, a vain belief.
Investment occurs not on the basis of tax cuts. Investment, which results in creating jobs, results when the stock market is good - and the market HAS made a comparatively fair recovery since 207-8. That is because there is money to be made in a good stock market.
The reason we have the current situation of somewhat slow job recovery is that companies -- and rich individuals -- are NOT making the investments in jobs and new factories, or other businesses.
Why? Because this economy (and most others) are consumer driven. People make things, or provide services ONLY when there is the expectation that someone will pay to buy those goods or services.
All the tax breaks in the world will NOT produce a single job without the creation or stimulation of consumption of those goods or services.
That is why the Bush Tax Cuts were a failure when they were made and why it would be DISASTEROUS to reinstate them for the wealthy. It would drastically increase our debt, and would contribute NOTHING.
I challenge every reader here on Penigma to look at their pay check stubs for the past six months, and compare them to a year ago, and two years ago, and five years ago.
Unless you are making more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, you WILL see more money; less money is being taken out for taxes. For both individuals and families, some part of that additional money is going into savings, but most of that increased paycheck is going out in expenditures on goods and services, which in turn is driving our economy and driving a small but steady growth. In the latter Bush admin years and the early Obama admin, there was no growth, no expansion; we had contraction.
More importantly, we have the best growth in the manufacturing sector that we have seen in decades. THAT is what I voted FOR.
Doggone,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment regarding the taxes taken out in our paychecks. This is my experience as a middle-class worker:
1.) Prior to leaving the U.S. in 2005, I had a certain amount of money taken out in my taxes.
2.) Upon my return to the U.S. (and to the same job at the same wage adjusted for inflation, I might add) in 2008, I had LESS money taken out in taxes per pay check than in 2005.
3.) Since the election of President Obama, my taxes HAVE NOT increased. That is, they have remained consistent from 2008 through 2010. They remain lower than they were in 2005.
Currently, federal taxes are actually rather low. They have been for some time now. With Governor Pawlenty crowing about his refusal to raise taxes, Minnesota taxes are relatively low, too...at least insofar as our paychecks are concerned. And for all the complaining I hear about local taxes, they seem acceptable to me.
I DO agree that targeted tax cuts can sometimes be helpful, but simply cutting taxes across the board as a solution to our problems is an overly-simplistic "solution." If it isn't, we should be booming right now, given the large size of Mr. Bush's tax cuts and the fact that a Democrat has not won the governorship of Minnesota (until now, it seems) since the 1986 election.
This is a complicated issue, as Penigma's response regarding labor markets proves. Like him, I agree with some of Terry's points. But I simply cannot buy into overly-simplistic "solutions" that actually add to our problems in the long run (i.e. huge deficits, etc.).
Where do we start? Perhaps Penigma has a good general idea, or at least it is a place to start the national discussion. I am referring to the following:
"If we put the impetus on the outboud side, e.g. we made the cost of offshore labor higher by placing impediments for use, as Japan and some of Europe have done, then companies will make the decision based on a more fair field and for reasons which are BETTER by far than simply profits, such as ease of manufacturing, proximity to consumption, transport costs, availability of resources, etc.. Right now, because the cost is SO low, these other factors, which create excess energy use as well as greatly depressing our labor market, nothing else is considered.
I'm not saying you can prevent offshoring, but rather it must be staggered until those other markets become net consumer economies on their own...."
If not this, then perhaps something else that is nonetheless in the same ballpark can be considered.
Pen AND Terry agreeing?
ReplyDeleteOk, now I AM worried the end of the world is near, ROFL!
You're welcome Hass - and you were thinking along the same lines as the research I was doing for the post I just published about understanding the apparent contradictions in the 2010 elections.
ReplyDeleteI'm kind of surprised for example that the right is claiming something is fishy because of winning well in the U.S. congressional and state and senate house elections.
But the results in the governors race tracks quite consistently with the results for Sec State, Auditor, AG. So to try to assert that this reflects something dishonest is an unreasonable claim. Those margins were not so close. Approximately 9,000 votes is not close, and based on the numbers for the Sec State, Auditor, AG elections, I wouldn't be surprised to see the margin in the Governor's race at worst shrink a hundred or so votes, but even more likely would be to see the percentage grow, not shrink.
Understanding the other wins by conservatives is going to take a less simplistic explanation than what has been offered so far, if you begin to look at it seriously, not simply spouting empty ideology.
Sorry about the mistaken identity, Penigma!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to be enormously relieved when it's confirmed that Emmer will not become Governor. The little interaction I've had with him showed clearly that he doesn't understand the distinction between politics and science. In politics, everyone can have his or her interpretation of events and their ramifications. In science, there is verifiable fact and fiction; evidence-based conclusions are defensible, while non-evidence-based assertions are not. You can't just make measurements be what you want them to be or make claims that aren't backed by objective reality. Emmer seemed not to understand this, and I am horrified by the thought that someone who dwells in the Land of Make-Believe could wield power over our state.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes no sense about the offshoring is the companies don't see that they are getting rid of their customers. Think about it. Where I work our customers are banks and financial institutions, every job we send overseas is one less person who will buy a car, house, furniture, or other big ticket items. If they don't buy they don't take out loans. We make money doing credit checks on loans, servicing the loan, collecting on bad loans, and other services for the banks. If people don't take out new loans the banks won't have new business to send us. You take those kinds of effects and apply them to every large company in the country and you can easily see the mess we are in. It is really nuts to see all these CEOs talking about tightening the belts until the economy improves, it is not going to improve until you quit tightening the belt, hire some people, bring some jobs back from overseas and the economy will improve.
ReplyDeleteTtucker, what you've written makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid, however, that many (though probably not all) corporate leaders aren't society-minded so much as "my-bottom-line" minded.
Perhaps if they viewed these two things in more of a balanced state...and kept their eyes on the obvious economic connections between them...we'd be at least a little better off.
the18hourmom - welcome to Penigma! We are delighted to have you join us in commenting.
ReplyDeletePen AND Terry agreeing?
ReplyDeleteOk, now I AM worried the end of the world is near, ROFL!
Do not fret, Dog Gone! I am against free trade for the right reasons. I am sure that whatever Pen's reason are they are wrong. Pro-labor or pro-environment or something.