Evans Liberal Politics
April 24, 2012
The Best in Liberal Christian News
and US Politics
The Economy, Entitlements and Welfare:
The Democratic Position –
A Secular and Rational Validation
I have written quite a few articles arguing for compassion towards our fellow man in the form of funding for entitlements, welfare, and the like. More often than not, the primary rationale I have used has been not only coming out of liberalism and liberal values, but also from Christianity. I took Jesus’ life, as recorded in the Gospels, and the way the early Christian community was run in the years after his resurrection, from Acts, as well as the concept of Logos, and tried to translate that into my own vision for society, which, as I see it, amounts to a basically liberal conception. I was trying to say that if we listened to the words of Jesus and saw how he lived his life on earth, and how the early church was run, it points to a model for living and for a society, an economy and a government which must necessarily be very caring towards all of our people.
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However, I don’t think that one necessarily needs to take one’s model for society from the Gospels or from the model of the early church in order to justify a society and a government which acts as its brothers’ keeper and takes care of society’s less fortunate citizens. In fact, growing up, I was agnostic, really basically into my late forties (I am 55 now), and I have always tended to follow ideals which followed those of New Deal sorts of Democrats.
I believe that there are so very many ordinary citizens, both Christians and secular citizens, who simply do not understand the situation faced by America’s poor and even, currently, that faced by much of our middle class. There is a lot of suffering in America, and many Republicans seem to feel it is the fault of the less fortunate that they find themselves in the predicament which they are in.
The right wing media, financed by very rich hard line Republicans who do not want to pay for social programs, have brainwashed far too many ordinary Americans. I refer to people like Rush Limbaugh, who (I believe) made about $53 million in 2009 or 2010. And now it seems that Mitt Romney is going to be nominated for 2012, and is being pushed by some Republican spokespersons as someone completely in touch with the “heart and soul” of ordinary Americans. This is just pure garbage, and we need to understand the facts: Mitt Romney is worth about a half a billion dollars ($500,000,000.00). Further, he has investments in the tax free Cayman Islands and owns at least one Swiss bank account. He may not be as extreme as someone like Newt Gingrich, but he certainly is much richer, and he is FAR from being any sort of “ordinary American.”
I would argue that someone like that, who grew up in a wealthy family, simply cannot be likely to understand the problems of ordinary Americans and also, may not even truly care about us. It is easy to make speeches which seem to be reaching towards us, but what does he know about running out of money halfway through almost every month, scrambling or even begging friends for money for gas, or being unable to pay the phone bill? What experience does Romney have working with the poor, and interacting with them on any sort of level of equality whatsoever?
One seventh of us live in poverty, you know. Are we beneath the rest of Americans in worth?
Barack Obama worked with the unemployed factory workers of South Chicago, and tried to help give them a hand up out of poverty and to advocate for them. He grew up in a rather modest middle class family. I would argue that he must necessarily understand ordinary Americans better.
FDR grew up wealthy. But he showed, time after time, for nearly four terms as President, that his heart and soul was with the less fortunate of society. And for that, most Republicans hate him and almost all the legislation he enacted, and everything he stands for.
What are the facts? Right now, about 400 or so people in America own one half of this nation’s wealth. The lower 80 percent of us actually only own 17 percent of the wealth. We are HURTING.
They say that the unemployment rate is dropping, that in fact it has dropped about a percent, now. Fine. Let’s just look for a minute at what the situation was about a year ago. Certain of these statistics in particular are burned into my consciousness and actually, I would bet my nose that they simply have not changed that much. In February, 2011, for those Americans making $100,000 a year or more, the unemployment rate was 3.2 percent. I hope they didn’t suffer too badly. For those making $20,000 a year or less, the unemployment rate was actually 31 percent. So, with the unemployment picture finding five applicants for every job opening, who do you think was getting the jobs, and what sort of jobs were these?
What is the Republican solution to our current economic malaise? They want to cut spending, in particular entitlements and welfare, and to enact tax cuts which would almost certainly be in favor of the rich. Every since Ronald Reagan, the Republican line has been that tax cuts for the wealthy result in a “trickle down” effect which benefits everyone. This has been enthroned in the grand theory of “supply side economics.” But it’s bunk!
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From Truman to Eisenhower the highest bracket tax rate was about 94 percent and the economy grew steadily at four percent, without deficits. Then the highest bracket was lowered to 75 percent. Still, the economy grew at about four percent. This continued, at decreasing tax rates under Nixon and Ford, with a downturn at the end of Ford’s term. We had a problem under Carter which I recall was called “stagflation.” The economy was contracting and there was inflation which reached about 17 percent.
Reagan swept into office under the banner of supply side economics, and two things did occur which stimulated the economy into growth. First the overall normal business cycle came around and the economy, as normally occurs after a recession, began to grow again. Normal recession, normal recovery. Secondly, tax cuts were enacted which, it could be argued, served as an effective stimulus to the economy. But the economy did not grow nearly as fast as it did under Reagan’s successor, Bill Clinton. Clinton raised taxes on the rich, and, what happened? We saw economic growth return to its “normal” post WWII rate of four percent a year, and a fairly severe budget deficit was entirely erased and turned into a surplus.
Let’s look at President Bush’s economy. In the first place, regulations which governed the banking and investment industry had just been trashed and these institutions then grew ascendant and arrogantly powerful, growing from about 14 percent of the economy to about 34 percent. This problem actually began in the Clinton administration but that most of the abuse was under Bush. There were then in fact two sets of tax cuts which strongly favored the rich. We saw economic growth of about 2 to 3 percent, followed by a severe turndown due to a typical Republican failure to regulate business. In this case the main problem was the investment industry, and the banking industry in particular with regard to the nearly unrestricted enactment of mortgage loans. Even after the picture for mortgages had deteriorated, the severe structural problem was concealed in the practice of issuing “derivatives,” as investments, which disguised bulk packages of trash mortgages in packages of corruptly highly rated bonds.
It was this combination which has put us in the severe downturn in which we find ourselves. It has not been a typical cyclical contraction but a severe structural problem in the economy because, mainly, America’s middle class lost the ability to finance loans, having lost any equity they had in their homes, assuming they were able to keep them. Progressive economists have argued that because of the severe and structural nature of the contraction, which some argue did in fact reach the level of a depression, only real stimulus of the overall economy by the government would pull us out of the slump. It has been shown factually, for example, that one dollar invested in infrastructure returns money into the economy at a significantly higher rate than does one dollar in tax cuts. But of course, the Republican line is that Obama’s stimulus accomplished little or nothing. Yet without it, we might have suffered far worse.
Recently among other things, the Republican majority in the House forced a continuation of the low Bush tax rates for the wealthy. Democrats wanted a return to the proven success of the Clinton tax rate levels, but did not have power to enact this. Has the continuation of low tax rates for the rich stimulated the economy into any sort of stiff growth? I would argue that, in fact knowing the facts about what tax cuts for the wealthy really are for (and it isn’t to stimulate economic growth), the almost single minded purpose behind a great deal of the proposals and enactments of Republicans during Barack Obama’s three plus years has been to PREVENT the economy from growing fast at all.
This is of course so that a “pro-business,” President can be elected who is a “true Christian” and has the “right sorts of social values.” In fact, Mitch McConnell has been quoted as saying at one point recently that he would allow no legislation to pass which would materially help Barack Obama to be reelected. This is the sort of “true patriotism” which the Republican Party demonstrates.
The leaders of the Republican Party don’t care how much ordinary Americans suffer so long as they can have full political power to do as they will. In other words, they will do whatever is necessary to have full control of the House, the Senate and the Presidency. And why should they care about ordinary Americans? Because of their – I might call it almost a pure capitalist religion, but, you know, “their sort” of capitalism – corporations are growing, Wall Street is again expanding, and the rich are seeing their stock portfolios once again grow fatter. While ordinary Americans suffer.
To sum it up, these Republicans are entirely for the wealthy, for big corporations, against any sort of prosperity so long as a Democratic President is in office, against continued aid to society’s less fortunate at current levels, and they lie about their true purposes. They are adamantly pro-life, but pro-life ends at birth. Children of the poor are supposed to get by as best their parents are able, and if this means babies and children suffer or even die, somehow this is the fault of the poor. This is not the Republican Party of Lincoln or Eisenhower. This is the truly patriotic and morally steadfast Republican Party at it’s absolute best, as it has been over about the last eleven or twelve years.
In conclusion, if we always favor the rich, even when in fact it has been shown that this does NOT stimulate the economy effectively, if we fail to enact or even roll back crucial regulations and laws which keep our economy functional and support the welfare of all of our people, and if we are against continuing aid to society’s less fortunate, I ask you: how moral is that? I would argue that purely secular and rational considerations point to a strong superiority in the liberal or Democratic positions about government, and that the current Republican agenda is in fact morally bankrupt.
These are some of the secular arguments which come to my mind in favor of basically Democratic positions about the economy, entitlements and welfare. ~ Paul
Comment by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans: So fiscal conservatives want to slash Medicaid. OK, fine, note to world: many doctors and most dentists no longer accept Medicaid. I have a broken off tooth with inflamed gums and my jaw hurts. Well, there is only one Medicaid dentist in Wooster, serving a county of 105,000. So there’s a long wait, and many people just resort to going to the ER. See Hidden America: Medicaid’s Youngest Face Dental Crisis, ABC News, April 24, 2012, by Chris Cuomo:
With more than 16 million low-income U.S. children on Medicaid not receiving dental care — or even a routine exam — in 2009, according to the Pew Center on the States, dentists and ERs say they are treating very young patients with teeth blackened from decay and bacteria and multiple cavities.
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See “Supply Side Economics, the Bush Tax Cuts & John Boehner Completely Discredited,” Evans Liberal Politics, December 31, 2011, by Paul Evans.
See In Addition to Geithner, Republican Economists Also Argue That Tax Cuts Do Not Pay for Themselves, Center for Budget and Policy Research, August 8, 2012, by CEPR.
See Americans Believe in Tax Equity: Polls Show Americans Want Tax Fairness as Part of Deficit Fix, Center for American Progress, April 15, 2011, by James Hairston.
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Moody’s declares Greece in default of debt
Evans Liberal Politics
The Best in Liberal Christian News
and US Politics
Moody’s declares Greece in default of debt
But New debt deal should tide Greece over
Moody’s declares Greece in default of debt, AlJazeera English, March 10, 2012, by AlJazeera, quoted verbatim, with commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans:
"Bond credit rating agency says EU member has defaulted on its repayments as it secures biggest debt deal in history."
Moody’s Investors Service has declared Greece in default on its debt after Athens carved out a deal with private creditors for a bond exchange that will write off $140 billion of its debt.
New debt deal
should tide Greece over
Moody’s pointed out that even as 85.8 per cent of the holders of Greek-law bonds had signed onto the deal, the exercise of collective action clauses that Athens is applying to its bonds will force the remaining bondholders to participate.
Overall the cost to bondholders, based on the net present value of the debt, will be at least 70 per cent of the investment, Moody’s said.
“According to Moody’s definitions, this exchange represents a ‘distressed exchange,’ and therefore a debt default,” the US-based rating firm said.
For one, “The exchange amounts to a diminished financial obligation relative to the original obligation.”
Secondly, it “has the effect of allowing Greece to avoid payment default in the future.”
Ahead of the debt deal, Moody’s had already slashed Greece’s credit grade to its lowest level, “C,” and so there was no impact on the rating.
Moody’s said it will revisit the rating to see how the debt writedown, and the second Eurozone bailout package, would affect its finances.
However, it added, at the beginning of March “Moody’s had said that the risk of a default, even after the debt exchange has been completed, remains high.”
"Source: Agencies"
Commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans: I have to say that this looks exactly like the story by Agence France-Presse that The Raw Story ran yesterday, but since AlJazeera and a gazillion other internet sites saw fit to republish this, and I have an agreement with The Raw Story anyway, I felt I should republish it.
Please watch the video to get the full lowdown on what is going on with the Greek economy and the credit default. To me, the whole thing seems as though it is an arranged situation, with no dire consequences, for example, for the European and world economies. The articles around the web have alarming titles, and the text of this article is rather alarmist in it’s tone and content, as well. However the video portrays a more hopeful, if somewhat grave, situation for the Greek people. Investors in the Greek bonds will lose something like 86 percent of their investment, and we’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. Therefore there will be some pain among the mostly European investors.
See Will the EU and the IMF & Investment Banks relent or will Greece erupt in chaos, Telegraph.co.uk on Evans Liberal Politics, February 15, 2012, by Peter Oborne, with commentarty by Paul Evans: At the time this article was written, it looked like Greece might erupt, perhaps, even into violent revolution. This is a proud, civilized people and they are being driven deep into poverty and sometimes hunger. If the new debt deal results in suffering beyond what is tolerable to most, with the Greek Communist Party and other left wing parties now getting the support of 40 percent of Greeks, anything could happen.
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