Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Romney, Ryan, Cravaack, Bachmann, Kline and Paulsen and that misrepresented '47%'

We're talking here about the U.S. population, not Alaska versus contiguous states; I made the play on words in the title because some of the people I've talked with recently who hadn't followed R-money's latest mega-gaffe didn't get the reference, mistaking it for the common reference to  the location of states as in the 'lower 48'.

Turns out the number of people who don't pay federal income tax is closer to 46% since 2011. Some who don't pay federal income tax DO pay state income tax because those tax laws differ from state to state. While most of those who don't pay federal income tax are in the lower 99% in terms of income, not all of them are; there are also wealthy people who don't pay income taxes.  Ooops! you can bet R-money didn't mean THEM in his comments, and that he has absolutely NO intention whatsoever of touching those deductions that make that possible - like his $77,000 dressage horse deduction.

Mitts on R-Money wants poor people to pay more. Republicans like Chip Cravaack who support Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan want poor people to pay more, and to receive less - even when those same tea partiers are themselves benefiting from government tax deductions or subsidies.

From a New York Times article earlier this year about they hypocrisy of conservative Minnesotans who supported Cravaack who want to cut out the safety net from those 'takers', even while they themselves are 'taking' from the government:
Support for spending cuts runs strong in Chisago, where anger at the government helped fuel Mr. Cravaack’s upset victory in 2010 over James L. Oberstar, the Democrat who had represented northeast Minnesota for 36 years.  
“Spending like this is simply unsustainable, and it’s time to cut up Washington, D.C.’s credit card,” Mr. Cravaack said in a February speech to the Hibbing Area Chamber of Commerce. “It may hurt now, but it will be absolutely deadly for the next generation — that’s our children and our grandchildren.”

But the reality of life here is that Mr. Gulbranson [who printed the tea party campaign t-shirts supporting Cravaack, his neighbor] and many of his neighbors continue to take as much help from the government as they can get. When pressed to choose between paying more and taking less, many people interviewed here hemmed and hawed and said they could not decide. Some were reduced to tears. It is much easier to promise future restraint than to deny present needs.
Who are those poor people? Just for example, it is estimated by non-partisan ConAgra, a major food corporation (they are the parent company for brand names like Banquet foods) estimated that 14.5% of households in the U.S. go to bed hungry at some point in the year. You can rest assured those going hungry come out of the 47% that Mitt Romney was complaining about.  Now he wants to take more money from people who are hungry, often homeless, where 1 in 5 are children going hungry, and make them pay higher taxes, but NO! NEVER make those rich people taking $77,000 deductions for their hobby horses pay more. For those not familiar with the current jargon, 'food insecurity' is the new catch-all phrase for hungry, and not having regular supplies of food.  While I do not have more current stats handy, the problem with food insecurity is generally understood to have worsened rather than improved; per the National Coalition for the Homeless, dating back almost a year ago to 2011:


INTRODUCTION

Fifty million Americans – one in five children - go to bed and awaken hungry. Across the United
States, the number of families and individuals who are food insecure or living in constant fear of
not being able to feed their families and themselves has remained constant or been growing for
many years. The country’s crippling economic crisis is resulting in record high spikes in poverty,
unemployment, hunger and homelessness.

CAUSES

Trends in national food insecurity levels parallel national poverty levels, showing how food
insecurity is inherently connected with income. This was shown to be especially true during the
recent recession. The number of families that experience food insecurity has risen dramatically
since the current economic crisis began in 2008. 

The principle causes of food insecurity in theUnited States are:
Unemployment
High housing costs
Low wages and poverty
• Lack of access to SNAP (food stamps)
• Medical or health costs


WHO EXPERIENCES FOOD INSECURITY?

In 2010, 14.5% (17.2 million) of households in the United States experienced food insecurity at one
time.


Demographically:

Households with children have almost twice the rate of food insecurity as households without children.
26.1% of Hispanic households and 25.2% of black households experience food insecurity, compared to 10.8% of white households experience food insecurity.
Almost 14% of households experiencing food insecurity consist of a married couple with children, but 35.1% of households consist of a single woman with children, and 25.4% of households with a single father and children experience food insecurity.

That is the national picture of the people the GOP is representing as the moochers in the 47%; in Minnesota the numbers are worse -- and our Republican members of Congress are consistently failing to recognize the problem or represent that demographic of voters, while favoring holding the line on tax increases for the wealthy, and while favoring low corporate taxes and corporate welfare, despite the fact that corporations are sitting on record high amounts of cash on hand and paying corporate executives and upper management record high salaries.

From a report on 'food insecurity', ie HUNGER, in January 2012:
In the Twin Cities, food insecurity — the lack of consistent access to healthy, affordable food — is almost four times higher than previously believed and more than two-and-a-half times the national average, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The U of M researchers also found that Twin Cities parents in food-insecure households are significantly more likely to serve unhealthy foods, such as sugar-sweetened beverages, and significantly less likely to serve fruits and vegetables to their families.

“We were surprised at just how much worse off they were than we thought they would be,” said Meg Bruening, lead author of the study and a nutrition doctoral student and research assistant at the U of M’s Division of Epidemiology and Community Health.

“It adds evidence that we need to build a stronger safety net for these families — in fact for all families,” she added.

“Other research shows that mothers [from food-insecure households] restrict their own food intake to protect their kids,” said Bruening. “I imagine that’s part of the reason we’re seeing lower healthier food intake among these parents compared to food-secure parents.”

Anecdotal evidence also suggests, she added, that when low-income people receive their monthly allotment from the federal government’s food stamp (SNAP) program, they tend to use it right away. “Then, at the end of the month, there’s nothing left,” said Bruening. “So it’s this cycle of abundance and deprivation. And when the abundance is there, people overeat because they’ve just gone two weeks without having much food.”

Right now, of course, the political environment is leaning toward reducing, not expanding, the budgets of many food safety-net programs.

“I think that would be a big mistake,” said Bruening. “It would be so detrimental to these families that are struggling already so much to have those programs cut."
Romney, Ryan, Cravaack and the other Republican representatives from Minnesota share the view that the reason people end up in these circumstances is that they failed to be responsible for themselves.

That is not in fact true; many of them were in no way responsible for the unemployment problem that resulted from inadequate market regulation under George W. Bush, an aversion to regulation that they are still promoting. Of course we have people who should have been promoting sensible regulation who helped promote the dismantling of it, like Alan Greenspan, who has now admitted just how very wrong he was about the need for regulation in the context of the Bush era financial crash that began in 2007, and we continue to experience the ripples of that economic policy disaster in 2012. But we have Cravaack, and the other GOP representatives from Minnesota wanting to make those same mistakes all over again with deregulation and a loosening of enforcement of those protections which benefit consumers.  There is an excellent PBS documentary on the topic, shown on Frontline, and available for free online here, which should be watched by every voter in the 2012 election. That massive crash resulted in large part from massive fraud which should have been caught by regulators, not to mention the upsurge in Ponzi schemes that occurred under the GOP, like that conducted by Bernie Madoff, or the Peregrine executive who tried to commit suicide.  Unlike Bush, Obama and his administration set up special financial fraud units which have prosecuted financial sector crooks - like the recent successful prosecution of the second largest Ponzi scheme in the history of Minnesota, involving Trevor Cook, Gerald Durand, Bo Beckman and Chris Pettengill.

We have also had in Minnesota, a high amount of real estate /mortgage fraud, not by the people applying for mortgages, but fraud by the mortgage originators during the Bush era where the looser regulation and more lenient enforcement was promoted that directly contributed to the number of people who have lost their homes pushing them into poverty through no fault of their own, and no irresponsibility for their welfare.

From the FBI website - note this is fraudulent loans by the ORIGINATOR, the mortgage producers, not the people who took out the mortgages.  These are the same people in the financial sector that Biden described Romney as wanting to 'unshackle' - the reality is not nearly enough of them ended up in handcuffs or in jail. Rather than blame the lack of regulation of the crooked financial sector, that engaged in bad behavior ranging from LIBOR rigging to bad risk taking to fraudulent credit rating and included pushing qualified buyers into higher and riskier term mortgages, Romney and Cravaack and the rest of the conservatives in government are blaming those who were the victims of that misconduct, and ridiculing them for being victimized.


image011
 
 

So who else has found themselves too poor to be paying federal income tax, who else is struggling that Romney and Cravaack, Bachmann, Paulson and Kline want to hit harder for 'their fair share', while refusing to take a dime more from the 1%? That would be the people who have had to file bankruptcy because of serious medical illness.  These are for the most part NOT people who had the money but didn't want to spend it on insurance, who chose to gamble on their health.  These are people who hit caps on costly medical conditions or illness; these are people who were dropped because of losing their jobs, and then got sick; these were people who were elderly, who had costly geriatric illnesses that exceeded their resources in spite of having saved for their old age; these are people who couldn't get health care in the first place because of a 'pre-existing condition'.  In a few cases these were people who could not afford insurance at all, and were not otherwise able to obtain coverage or care.

In short, most of these people would be able to afford and obtain coverage under the Affordable Care Act, commonly abbreviated ACA, and often called 'Obamacare', who went from contributing, stable members of society to being poor, often homeless - and not paying income tax.  A few statistics about Minnesota that those representatives are ignoring. A landmark study by David Himmelstein and Elizabeth Warren found that 54% of bankruptcies are related to illness or injury.  More recent data thant the Himmelstein/Warren study show higher, not lower numbers.  Characterizing people who are financially devastated due to illness or injury as 'irresponsible' is factually inaccurate, in addition to being demeaning and cruel; using these false claims to try to squeeze more money out of them is reprehensible. These are the people that are helped by Obamacare, which Republicans, including our Minnesota quartet of Bachmann, Cravaack, Kline and Paulson, want to hurt by repeal of Obamacare.

From the nationwide Bankruptcy Attorneys website, total bankruptcy:



Just One Medical Emergency Away from Financial Disaster

Bankruptcies due to medical costs have risen by almost 50% over much of the decade, and most bankruptcy filers fell into the demographic of middle-class homeowners with significant education.
“Unless you’re a Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, you’re one illness away from financial ruin in this country,” said Steffie Woolhandler, the lead author of the study, which will be published in the August issue of the American Journal of Medicine.
"If an illness is long enough and expensive enough, private insurance offers very little protection against medical bankruptcy,” continued Woolhandler.
The study surveys 2,314 random people who filed for bankruptcy in 2007. It concluded that 62.1% of the surveyed bankruptcies occurred because individuals either had more than $5,000 (or 10% of their pretax income) in medical costs or because an individual lost significant income due to their illness.

Many Winding Up in Bankruptcy Court Even Though They Had Health Insurance

The average family that went bankrupt due to medical costs had $17,943 in out-of-pocket expenses.
For those who never had insurance, that number is higher, with those families having on average $26,971 in medical expenses. Those families who had insurance at some point still ended up with $17,749 in medical debt.
Three quarters of people with a medically-related bankruptcy had health insurance, according to the study.
“Seventy-eight percent of them had health insurance, but many were bankrupted anyway because there were gaps in coverage like co-payments and deductibles and uncovered services,” Woolhandler told CNN.
But not everyone is convinced by the findings.
Peter Cunningham, Ph.D. is a senior fellow at the Center for Studying Health System Change, a nonpartisan policy research organization. He believes it is difficult to tell which bankruptcy cases are specifically caused by medical costs and which are caused by the overall economic climate.
Cunningham agrees that medical bills are a growing problem.
“I think medical bills are something that a lot of families are having a lot of difficulty with and whether it’s the direct cause of bankruptcy or whether it helps to push them over the edge because they already were in a precarious financial situation, it’s a big concern and hopefully that’s what medical reform will try to address.”
Cunningham thinks the study may overestimate the number of bankruptcies caused by medical bills while underestimating the burden health care places on American families, because most people struggle along but do not declare bankruptcy.
“Bankruptcy is the most extreme or final step for people who are having problems paying medical bills,” Cunningham told CNN.
A study by his group found that one in five families is unduly stressed by their medical costs.
Unfortunately, the increasing cost of health care is a problem that has likely gotten worse as the economic woes of the country worsened.
“The recession didn’t happen until a year after our study,” said Woolhandler. “We’re quite sure that the problem of bankruptcy overall is worse.”
As interesting and disturbing as the study’s conclusions are, unfortunately many American families live that research every single day.

Romney's recent statements that have become such an embarrassment about the 47% show he is out of touch, and has been such a problem for Romney, Ryan, Cravaack, Bachmann, Kline and Paulson, are consistently factually inaccurate in who they hold accountable for our national problems.  While nationally bankruptcy filings have declined in the first half of 2012, mostly due to economic improvement under Obama policies, in Minnesota, our decline in bankruptcy filings has been slower than the national average according to a recent Pioneer Press article.

So we have Romney, Ryan and the Minnesota Republicans wrong generally about the reasons the 47% don't pay specifically federal income tax (although they pay other taxes), and more wrong in the case of Minnesota as to why these people are among that 47%.  It is not negligence, it is not laziness, it is not stupidity or lack of education, and it sure as heck is not irresponsibility.

If Republicans don't understand who is in the half (or larger) population of the United States, they cannot effectively govern or make reforms. We have to correctly understand and identify the problem to fix it. The Republicans would take food out of the mouths of poor people to pay more taxes, especially children, rather than increase taxes on the upper 1% or 2% to be more equitable. The Republicans want to add to the burden of those who are impoverished by illness or injury.  The Republicans are ridiculing those who were actually victimized by fraudulent financial sector corporations.

If Republicans have such contempt for fact and for people, they should not be elected in 2012. They cannot fix what they do not understand.




19 comments:

  1. There once was a conservative troll who read an article in the PiPress about Mai Village being run out of business by light rail. The troll invited his three favorite liberals to dinner - Dog Gone, Penigma and Laci the Dog - as a show of support for local business.

    When the bill came, the troll handed it to Dog Gone and Laci saying "Pen and I are the 47% who pay nothing, pony up." Dog Gone and Laci noticed the troll had ordered the most expensive things on the menu and several rounds of drinks. When asked, he said "Why not, it's FREE!!"

    Do I need to explain how this parable relates to Romney's point about people having skin in the game?

    .

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  2. Yes Joe, you need to explain a lot of things.

    Lets start with the thing you keep ducking, because this is just more of the same cherrypicked bullshit and false comparisons on the old and new right. You can't use the pretext of having a lot of things going on in your life, because you continue to comment while refusing to address those topics where you embarassed yourself.

    This is shaping up to be another one of those.

    First of all - this was no 'parable' an Romney is no messiah. I'm guessing you've never circulated among the corporate class wealthy that Romney was speaking to; I have. I grew up in a household with a parent who actually sat on multiple boards of directors, of companies like Medtronic and a bank and who was a vice president of a very large firm; and I grew up with the children of other executives. For example I remember when one of my best friends as a kid had to move to europe with his family, because his father was put in charge of the 3M expansion to Europe - yup, head of the whole darn thing.

    This was no parable; Romney was portraying people as 'takers not makers'.

    The reality is that Romney is AS big or bigger a 'taker' with his $77,000 deductions for his dressage horses, etc. than anyone taking a deduction for having a kid or a home mortgage.

    The only difference is that the people in the 47% are - like Mitt - paying other taxes, and their deductions are from far less money as income, which is likely to be their only source of money. In Mitt's case, more of it is capital gains, etc. than income, which is ONLY a difference of tax category, not of having skin in the game. There is absolutely NOTHING that makes one more 'in the game' by paying federal income tax than by paying taxes in some other category. You make a false and specious argument, one which shows you don't really know very much apparently about the topic of revenue specifically or economics generally, because you are that gullible to believe that explanation in the first place.

    Using that reasoning, shouldn't corporations be paying a higher rate of taxation? Don't they need 'skin in the game'? Are you really so dim as to believe that corporations, which are currently sitting on pretty much UNPRECEDENTED amounts of capital need just a little more capital to create jobs?

    NO economic evidence in history shows that to have ever been the case. Having grown up in the world of IPOs - and I've had to sit through discussions on more than a few by the people DOING THE IPOs (that is initial public offerings, in case you don't know the acronyms)I have some actual experience with how businesses get started, and grow. While taxes are a factor, they are not the factor modern Republicans claim they are; in fact the right engages in corporate welfare that doesn't significantly produce jobs.

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  3. Laci holds a triple degree - abbreviated as PPE - from a world class university, in addition to his other degrees, including multiple law degrees.

    One of those - the 'e' is in economics. I'm sure he'd be happy to show you in detail the error of your assertions, much the way I showed you the error of your assertions about racism and the old right and the new right, and civil rights.

    Pen works in banking, directly involved in the business decisions that result in transactions of millions of dollars. I'm sure he can add to what I've written here about how incorrect what you say really is, with his practical authority.

    There is NOTHING legitimate about what Romney said; it was patronizing, and it served only to confirm that his interest in the presidency is for one thing and one thing only, to facilitate the redistribution of wealth further and faster FROM the middle class into the hands and pockets of the 1%.

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  4. I'd rather have a rational discussion of general principles of good governance than discuss any one candidate's shortcomings. I'll concede everything hateful that you assert about Romney if you'll move along to a discussion of taxation.

    Since you require an explanation, my little story was intended to illustrate that people who Aren't paying the bill have an economic incentive to demand more and better free stuff than those who Are paying the bill. That behavior results in a higher overall bill than if everybody was chipping in.
    Are we in agreement so far?

    Assuming we are, I assert this behavior distorts public policy as the Getters demand more and more free stuff until the Payers can't afford to give it anymore. Printing more money might extend the decline but debasing our currency masks the symptoms, it doesn't cure them. Left uncorrected, the system of Getters demanding free stuff the Payers can't afford will reach maximum, at which point no amount of bread or circuses can prevent societal collapse.

    Agreed so far?

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  5. Joe wrote:Since you require an explanation, my little story was intended to illustrate that people who Aren't paying the bill have an economic incentive to demand more and better free stuff than those who Are paying the bill. That behavior results in a higher overall bill than if everybody was chipping in.
    Are we in agreement so far?


    NO, not even close. You are asserting a couple of incorrect things, beginning with income tax as a defining qualification for who is paying the bill, while ignoring other forms of contribution.

    It isn't. It especially isn't for those receiving Social Security which is funded by payroll taxes. Had social security NOT been part of the general fund, and had that money not been borrowed from by congress - and not paid back, which it could have been had there NOT been the disastrous Bush tax cuts, for example - there would be no problems whatsoever with funding social security. That means that social security worked as a savings arrangement, not people being 'takers' or 'getters' or whatever you call them.

    Then you fail to address the UNFAIR tax advantages, like the $77,000 dressage horse deduction, which is just one of many many ways in which the wealthy 1% are subsidized and ways in which those corporations are people are also subsidized. Every time a wealthy person or a corporation is subsidized or disproportionately benefits from a tax cuts - as happened with the Bush tax cuts - the tax burden is in fact shifted to the lower income brackets from the wealthy income brackets.

    Let me quote from an Ezra Klein article yesterday that I will probably post about later that explains why you - and Romney - are wrong to put disproportionate emphasis on imcome tax:
    For most Americans, payroll and state and local taxes make up the majority of their tax bill. The federal income tax, by contrast, is our most progressive tax — it’s the tax we’ve designed to place the heaviest burden on the rich while bypassing the poor. And we’ve done that, again, because the working class is already paying a fairly high tax bill through payroll and state and local taxes.

    But most people don’t know very much about the tax code. And the federal income tax is still our most famous tax. So when they hear that half of Americans aren’t paying federal income taxes, they’re outraged — even if they’re among the folks who have a net negative tax burden! After all, they know they’re paying taxes, and there’s no reason for normal human beings to assume that the taxes getting taken out of their paycheck every week and some of the taxes they pay at the end of the year aren’t classified as “federal income taxes.”

    Take someone who makes $4 million dollars a year and someone who makes $40,000 a year. The person making $4 million dollars, assuming he’s not doing some Romney-esque planning, is paying a 35 percent tax on most of that money. The person making $40,000 is probably paying no income tax at all. So that makes the system look really unfair to the rich guy.

    That’s the basic analysis of the 47 percent line. And it’s a basic analysis that serves a purpose: It makes further tax cuts for the rich sound more reasonable.

    But what if we did the same thing for the payroll tax? Remember, the payroll tax only applies to first $110,100 or so, our rich friends is only paying payroll taxes on 2.7 percent of his income. The guy making $40,000? He’s paying payroll taxes on every dollar of his income. Now who’s not getting a fair shake?

    Sorry, Joe - but your analogy was both false, and flawed and superficial. Your claims and premise are inaccurate.

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  6. This is a lot like your claims about race issues and democrats; you picked a fact about southern conservatives who were nominal dixicrats, but you failed to acknowledge that was not correct about Democrats generally, or that Democrats had led and driven the move towards civil rights and desegregation.

    You then tried to posit that Republicans were the party that promoted civil rights, when the reality was that they were the core of the old right conservative opposition, that then morphed with the party change of the dixiecrats to the new right.

    You consistently Joe make false arguments, leave out key facts (aka cherry picking) in ways that distort the larger reality. This is another, and sadly, it appears to be driven by a larger ignorance as much as dishonesty.

    I will have a lot more respect for your opinion if you can admit when you are wrong. I can field a whole lot of data to support Ezra Klein; he makes a fair representation of the tax code and how it works.

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  7. First off, Joe, you are assuming that I am a "liberal". Probably because I make sense and deal with facts.

    The problem with arguments from people like Joe is that they are just plain off simplistic. You can't offer a simple answer to a complex issue.

    And tax law is a very complex issue.

    I seriously doubt that Joe has even a basic concept of how taxation actually works. That said, it's probably better that I don't go too far over Joe's head in trying to explain this stuff.

    Joe's story basically sucks. I would ask the "conservative" to prove that he was actually part of the 47%. But it sounds as if the conservative is a deadbeat.

    I would wonder if there isn't something deeper in Joe's story than he realises, but we are getting into economics and tax law--not psychology.

    Progressive taxation makes far more sense, even in simplistic explanations such as the ones that Joe favours. Does it make sense for someone who earns more to pay less in tax than someone who is at the bottom of the rung? Any flat tax places the burden upon the lower income groups.

    Yet, instead of someone like Doakes seeing the reason of progressive taxation, he has been programmed to hate taxation. That's a shame since taxes are the cost of society.

    Of course, someone like Romney will say crap about those lazy slobs that he laid off or outsources (remember this is the man who said "he likes firing people"). If they are losing their homes and going bankrupt, well that's their fault that they lost their jobs.

    Joe, I have to say that it is becoming blatantly obvious that your world view is not only detached from reality, but it is also ignorant: even your leaders are confessing this fact.

    So, Joe, if you carry ANY form of debt, have been laid off, maybe even lost your house through foreclosure, have kids moving back home with you, or that you have moved back home to your parents, or in any other way part of the type of people who make money from the efforts of others, which I seriously doubt, then you are part of the lazy slobs that Romney abhors.

    Yet, for some odd reason, you harbour this delusion that you actually are part of this group and that you are in anyway "overtaxed".

    I hate to bust your bubble, Joey, but the people like Romney don't work as hard as you do and they definitely do not pay as much in tax as you do, yet you are more than willing to give them the tax breaks in the hope that you will be able to lick their crumbs from the floor.

    As I said, if I were going to do a psychological profile, I would say that deep down you know that are indeed the lazy 47%, yet you want to pretent that you are part of the 1%.

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  8. BTW, Joe, are you willing to actually pay the prices that a totally privatised society would actually cost you?

    Would you pay $50 to mail a letter because you had to pay fedex type rates for the service?

    Would you pay tolls to drive down the paved roads?

    Not to mention paying the people who plowed those roads in winter?

    Joe, I seriously doubt you live your life without some form of government service that is more economical and affordable to you than any private version would be.

    And unless you are truly delusional, you are one of the people who needs government services of one kind or another.

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  9. You are correct Laci about where Joe falls in the 47%, and the delusion of conseravatives about their economic reality in relationship to government.

    As I noted from the New York Times article in my post, about Chip Cravaack Tea Partier conservatives in the 2010 election:

    "But the reality of life here is that Mr. Gulbranson [who printed the tea party campaign t-shirts supporting Cravaack, his neighbor] and many of his neighbors continue to take as much help from the government as they can get. When pressed to choose between paying more and taking less, many people interviewed here hemmed and hawed and said they could not decide. Some were reduced to tears. It is much easier to promise future restraint than to deny present needs. "

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  10. You know, I try and try to have a rational discussion about public policy with you folks, but it's just impossible. For one thing, in the few short hours I've been away from this blog, this post is already halfway down the page and there are five separate responses to my post, only one of which is even remotely responsive, the rest are pure invective. It's just impossible.

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  11. Dog Gone's 1:50 AM basically said: “Romney wasn’t giving an economic lecture, he was speaking their language to appeal to them. I know that because I grew up with that crowd.”

    Yes, and why was he doing it? Because he’s a hateful person just like them? Before you answer, consider:

    Candidate Romney, seeking donations from wealthy people, played to their prejudices about producers and takers.

    Candidate Obama, seeking donations from wealthy people, played to their prejudices about people bitterly clinging to religion and guns.

    Both candidates did it and for the same reason. Look, it’s simple human nature. You must convince donors you are on their side in order to convince them to give you money. It’s a standard campaign fundraising tactic, taught in all the candidate schools and used by every political party.

    Utilizing proven fundraising techniques says nothing about the candidate’s true feelings on the issue, and says nothing about the truth of the underlying issue because it’s not an appeal to truth, it’s an appeal to prejudice and we all know it.

    Candidates don’t say those things because they’re true, they say them because that’s what shakes the money loose, which is all that matters in a campaign fundraiser.

    But it’s not politically correct to admit that you appeal to prejudice to raise money so all politicians deny it and their supporters try to spin it when what voters really should do is accept it and ignore it. Campaign fundraising is a distraction from the real questions: what will you do when you get elected to fix the economy and end the war?

    If you must hate someone in that picture, hate the prejudiced people who need to be pandered to before they’ll donate. But remember, both sides do it meaning the wealthy on both sides of the aisle are prejudiced and need to be pandered to. Including the crowd you grew up with. Prejudice and hatred are apolitical and universal.

    That’s why I dislike talking about them. I’d far rather have a rational discussion about the proper limits of the federal government’s role and how it should be funded.

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  12. Pretend Romney was right and 47% of Americans paid no taxes at all. Would that be a problem? Yes, and economics is full of excellent examples proving it.

    Free Riders: Some people jump the turnstile to ride the subway for free. If enough people do it, there won’t be enough money to operate the system and the whole subway stops.

    Diner’s Dilemma: If a group of diners agrees to split the check equally, most diners will choose a more expensive dish than they would have chosen if they were paying their own way. Dog Gone denies it at 8:39 but I notice Laci the econ major doesn't.

    Tragedy of the Commons: When stuff is available to everyone for free, everyone will grab as much as they can until it runs out and then nobody gets any.

    What economists are trying to describe is the way human nature is affected by prices. When people pay their own way, they are more likely to consider cheaper substitutes. It’s only a few blocks, walk instead of paying for the subway. Order the meatloaf instead of the lobster.

    If 47% of the people can vote for ever more bread and ever larger circuses, all to be paid for by somebody else, economic theory predicts that’s what they’ll do even though they know it will bankrupt the 53% and cause the collapse of civilization. It’s just human nature.

    To avoid the collapse of our civilization, we need those 47% to be paying some significant portion of their subway fares, meals and entertainment, and in the public sphere, some significant portion of their birth control pills, abortions, daycare, food, shelter, utilities, transportation, retirement and medical care. They need to be paying enough to be willing to consider foregoing things or accepting substitutes, to keep the price incentive in play.

    That’s not hatred. That’s not racism. That's not programming or ignorance. That’s mathematics. We ignore it at our peril.

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  13. As for my inability to understand the necessity for taxation, it's no worse than your inability to understand the necessity for pooled capital in modern society, since government and corporations are merely two variations of that same idea.

    I'm the one begging to discuss tax policy instead of personality. You're the ones slinging mud in return.

    It's simply impossible to have a rational conversation with you.
    .

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  14. "Joe Doakes", btw, is a sockpuppet name.

    Mr. Sockpuppetdoakes really doesn't have much of substance to say about anything. He trots out the same tired bullshit stories that have been caroming around in the heads of teh KKKrazeepantsGOPers for the last 40 or so years. They were crap then, they have not improved with age.

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  15. Joe, 47% do NOT jump the turnstyle or get a free ride. The 47% simply go through and pay at a different turnstyle than income tax.

    YOU are the one pretending and you are the one making things up.

    See the Ezra Klein article and the graph for proof.

    So long as you make stuff up about people and free rides which are not accurate, you are factually not just a little wrong, but hugely wrong.

    When someone is factually as off as you are about taxation rates for the 47%, how do we have that rational conversation?

    I am the daughter of a man who was an executive - a VP - who was a very successful investment banker, including having been involved in numerous IPOs for companies like Medtronic and 3M in their early days before they became two of the larger companies headquartered in MN. He sat on a number of boards of directors of corporations over the years -- and yes, the stuff of those meetings was also dinner conversation.

    On the side, he and a couple of his friends started a commercial bank, which in turn not only became a successful chain of banks, but was successful in making business loans to many small businesses which in turn also were successes (mostly).

    His special interest as a stock broker / investment banker was an interest in up and coming Minnesota based companies.

    What you call 'pooled capital' was the topic of conversation every night of my life growing up at the family dinner table, unlike most people. The other topic was politics, as we were actively involved in republican politics at the state and naitonal level, and in serving on various boards like the local planning commission for zoning real estate on the local level. MY eyes still tend to glaze over talking about millage rates, which was one of the topics I had to sit through far too many discussions over, but I first learned what they were somewhere around age 7.

    You are wrong.

    Government and private business are really NOT very much alike, btw, except in the most superficial respects. And YOU appear to have a lot to learn about both.

    When you become more honest about topics, and better informed, THEN we can have that rational discussion.

    Trying to discuss this with you is like waiting for you to be honest about the old and new right, and racial inequality, when you won't admit the historic factual role of conservative republicans, but instead try to blame democrats, failing to distinguish between conservative dems and republicans from the democrats who led the adoption of full civil rights.

    Why are you unable to admit when you are wrong Joe? It's not a strength.

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  16. Joe, your problem is this - those who don't pay income tax still pay a lot of other taxes that contribute to paying for government at a higher rate of their income than wealthy people pay.

    THAT was one of the reasons that the income tax was set up as a progressive tax - because the 47% already had a disproportioante tax burden they paid.

    You can't ignore that or pretend it doesn't exist and call people free loaders when they aren't. It is ignorant and it is wrong. The 46% have a lot of skin in the game - and it is being rubbed raw.

    So, if you can show me that the 47% ISN'T paying for government, and paying MORE than the wealthy as a percentage of their income and assets, we cannot and will not pretend they're freeloaders.

    We will wait - but since we're factually correct (see the Ezra Klein piece above) and you - and Romney - are not......your whole premise falls down.

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  17. sorry, that second to last should have read'unless you can show me'

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  18. Joe, in spite of poking you with a pointy stick from time to time, I really do like you.

    That's why I wrote this, just for you and all the other conservatives who slept through their American history classes that dealt with U.S. taxation and government. You need to read this:

    http://penigma.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-little-history-of-us-income-taxation.html

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  19. Joe,

    People who paid INTO the system, like my parents, who now pay ZERO income taxes, HAD skin in the game, shall we take away their benefits? If not, why not? It's redistribution from the young to the old, isn't redistribution wrong?

    People who had a job of any form PAID into the system, no not federal income taxes, but via their employer in payroll taxes. They HAD skin the game in that those taxes could have otherwise been paid to them. Furthermore, they PAY for Social Security and Medicare no matter their income level. So they HAD skin in the game for those entitlement programs which are 100 times larger than food stamps and other forms of welfare combined. They ALSO paid unemployment tax, no choice on that one either. So they HAD skin in the game.

    The only people who don't are unemployed, either because they are a. retired AND living essentially solely off social security (so they get a rebate on the taxes they are assessed) b. receiving income via another source like Capital Gains, or c. ARE TRULY UNEMPLOYED.

    What would you have them do? Pay from nothing? If they have no bread, let them pay with cake? How is that providing a safety net? Your argument that since they don't have skin in the game, they'll ask for anything.. well, what would they actually be able to contribute is the first question , but the second and far more important one, the one that DEALS with your meme' quite completely is this... we, tbe ENTIRE population vote on social support programs. Nowhere near 47% of people don't have "skin in the game" as the vast majority are paying OR HAVE PAID, for the vast majority of all social programs. WE decided to give the disadvantaged support. Your meme' falsely asserts that the people who are getting "over" are able to do so essentially without the consent of very many others... that's poppy-cock and nonsense. The poorest among us have the least power and have had social program after program cut to the bone.

    Moreover, your parable falls on it's face in that it is the RICH, not the poor who receive the lion's share of "welfare" that they don't pay for. They receive it when we keep our military FAR larger than it needs to be, filling the pockets of the owners of Lockheed, Teledyne, General Electric and more. They receive it when THEY only get taxed at 15% on income while the rest of us, including Social Security, Medicare and FEDERAL INCOME TAXES pay a far higher number. Of course THEY don't mind having US build the roads for their factories, after all, they don't have to pay, they get public subsidy to do it.

    You all (conservatives) are blind to the log in your eye. You complain about the poor "controlling" society when they do no such thing. You assert that the 47% of those not paying income taxes are the ONLY people who support Obama consistently, which is an absolute piece of shit lie, 40% of those who are in the lowest quintile support Romney - and I support Obama. The stats show in fact the more educated you are (which often equates to higher pay), the more likely you are to support Obama - so PLEASE - this meme' is absolute crap. Only 18% of people ACTUALLY don't pay either federal income taxes OR payroll tax, half those are retired, leaving 9% who don't - 9% don't decide policy - except for the wealthiest 9% who can buy Republican votes - other than that we all decide. This meme' is fiction - nothing more. Your parable is a complete irrelevancy, it's not akin to the situation being faced. It also excuses doing nothing to help those who actually need it.

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