Envy

I was a science major in college, so I never got much beyond the introductory courses in economics.

I did, however, have lots of courses in anthropology, and some in psychology, and I can still read.

I've been reading Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson on economics and politics.

What these authors demonstrate, to my mind convincingly, is the very fact the distribution of wealth has become so extreme is a bad thing.

Those who control wealth or those who think they may one day control wealth will say there is no harm in a small percentage of people getting control of most of the wealth in the country, just as long as the pie keeps getting bigger so the small slice left to the "bottom 80%" is actually only relatively small--it is still so big it keeps that bottom 80% happy.

If the American economy is big enough, the poorest among us are still much richer than people in Africa and South America and most of Asia. The poor still have big color TV's, computers, automobiles, if not houses, then warm and dry apartments, entertainment, vacations and, this argument runs, even our poorest would be considered rich in Africa, Brazil, Asia.

The argument is, don't envy the American rich, their wealth does not make you poorer, or hurt you in any way. In fact, the argument goes, their wealth is good for you.

In fact, what Hacker and Pierson demonstrate is neither of these things are true. As the rich have got richer, the poor have got poorer, and in fact not just the poor have got poorer but people who were not poor in the 1950's, 1960's, 1970's have become relatively poorer.

I realize there are all sorts of statistics out there, but this fits my own personal experience. When I lived in a very asymmetric society--Washington, DC, even though I made more money than I do living in New Hampshire I felt poorer, and in fact was poorer in some very measurable ways.

The presence of rich people diminished my life.

How?

I had to compete with a group of much richer people when I went to buy a house. I was barely able to afford a three bedroom house in Washington, a very small three bedroom, with few amenities, because the competition for housing in the WDC area was made intense by rich people who would buy smaller houses, crush them and build McMansions. Gentrification became mansionification.

Money for the rich was simply less valuable than it was for me.

When the small ranch house next door was bought, crushed and a huge McMansion erected, my own house looked like a carriage house, and when I tried to sell, many buyers drove up and passed us buy and many buyers told us they could simply not get around the dwarfing effect of the house next door. Our house, assessed at $850,000 sold for $650,000, in no small part, and in reasonably direct measure, because of the power of the rich guy to diminish the value of what I owned.

The rich simply have the power to bid up prices, to blow away competition.

This is the essence of what Trusts used to do in the days of the robber barons--get control of a market, and ruin their competitors.

Moving to New Hampshire, I find there are rich people here, but not as many, and so my house is much bigger, and I can compete for restaurant meals and other goods and services because there are not enough rich people to out compete me. I feel wealthier, even though I am actually making less money.

People abbreviate this as "a lower cost of living." What that means is, you don't just feel wealthier in a society where incomes are more evenly distributed and there is no heavy weight of rich people tipping the boat over, you are actually safer and more wealthy.

The rich constitute a weight which threatens to capsize the whole boat.

If we taxed the rich at rates which were more prevalent in the 1950's, it's not that we could take what we got from the rich and make individual poor people middle class--those numbers do not add up. But what we could do is make it more difficult for the rich to simply bid up life for the middle class. We could use the money to educate, train and employ the middle class and help more of them to make the leap up to the next level.

The one percent are not irrelevant to the middle class. They are keeping the other 99% down. They may live in walled off, gated communities, but their influence seeps out and contaminates the whole pie.

Money is power and when you allow 1% to have too much power, the whole body politic is poisoned.

That's not the politics of bitter envy. That's simply what happens.

It's not so obvious in rural areas, like New Hampshire, where even poor people have land which makes them feel protected from others around them. It's more obvious to city people, like New Yorkers, who seem the limousines pull up the clubs and restaurants and they see when even 1% of the population wants something, that means you are crowded out. Even more so for living space, and space to recreate. The buildings which line Central Park have no middle class people. Only rich people look out over Park vistas.

We get so accustomed to the idea that, "Well, that is not for people like me," we do not even see any more that things don't have to be that way.

Shoreline property on Lake Winnipesaukee no longer belongs to middle class people, who owned small bungalows. They have all been moved out and displaced by the one percenters. And one of the biggest compounds along the lake belongs to Mitt Romney.

There is no Jones Beach, at Lake Winnipesaukee, no major public beach. The lake has become, for the most part, the property of the rich.

Along the Seacoast, there is public ownership. Hampton has three public beaches, and although private rich homes loom above the beach at Plaice Cove, the beach is open to the hoi polloi.

This is, to put it bluntly, a good thing. But as economic power is ineluctably translated into political power, one can see the movement toward a Lake Winnipesaukee effect may yet, years hence, grip the seacoast.

James Baldwin once observed that slavery harmed not just the enslaved, but it hurt the masters as well. That was a very keen insight. Those who dominate, who have to spend the energy and the malevolent force to dominant others become meaner, unhappier people.

We ought to consider taking the benevolent action of saving the rich and powerful from themselves, by taxing them down to size.

Democrat Nation: Where is Our Don Draper?

Okay, citizens, we need to think.

Republicans have, it must be admitted, outclassed Democrats for years when it comes to selling ideas.

Romney is confronted with the fact he pays only 15% income tax when the average nurse or police officer pays 20%.

"I will not apologize for being successful," he says.

That's a sure fire applause line. Who would want a fellow citizen to apologize for his own, hard won success?

A lot of politics is about saying outrageous things and making them sound reasonable and correct.

So how do we point out the problems with this line?

"It's not your success in making money you should apologize for...it's your unwillingness to allow others to have a chance to be successful."

No, you haven' t shown how his success prevents others from achieving success.

How about, "You mean, you don't have to apologize for bribing the referees?"

That's closer.

Or maybe, "So you refuse to tax billionaires, and you refuse to apologize for that?"

Or, "So, if the game is rigged, the losers are guilty of envy?"

Or, "So, if the casino has rigged the games, the losers are guilty of envy, if they complain?"

I don't know. We need to work on this.

Other things which need to be answered:

The estate tax is the death tax.

Regulations are the government's way of torpedoing our economy. If it weren't for the government, the economy would be going gang busters.

What we need is a Don Draper of our own. We need a bunch of Democrats sitting around a table at a nightclub, a drinking bourbon, thinking up a good ad campaign.

I open the floor to the public. Let me hear from you.

We need some help here in New Hampshire.

Al Sharpton Finds Redemption in Blueberry Pie

Al Sharpton has redeemed himself.

Whatever sins he has committed in the past, however much he has offended by being a blow hard, an exploiter, a self promoter, however much you may have disliked him in the past, go on line and find his "Blueberry Pie," commercial.
Finally, a Democrat who can actually communicate.
He tells the tale of kids being caught with blueberry pie all over their faces and proclaiming their innocence to their indignant mother, who cooked the pie. "Oh, no, it wasn't us!"
You have to see it for yourself. If I were smarter, I'd figure out how to do a link to it.
But it's just right--to pick up the pie motif. The American pie, which the Republicans and their rich patrons have eaten and they claim they had nothing to do with the way the pie got consumed.

Oh, wait, I may have done it. Try clicking on this link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uisC1zHcxLk

Every Democrat should be wearing a T shirt or a sweat shirt with the Republican Pie chart (see above) to keep that image in the eyes of every citizen, red and blue.

It is, as Mitt Romney would say, the politics of bitter envy. And it works for us.

Dead Seals and the Feds

This is not a dead seal, although there is a resemblance. This lab is alive.

Someone from the Gulf coast emailed me about my post about the dead seals who were washing up on the Hampton beaches last summer and fall.

The answer is, no there have been no more dead seals.
The federal government picked up each and every one, along with dead birds, and did autopsies which revealed influenza.
The implication was this particular virus had made the leap from gulls to seals, but that was never confirmed.
I cannot resist pointing out how effective and efficient and all around helpful our federal government has been in addressing this distressing event.
Of course, nobody in Hampton or along the seacoast said anything like, "Gee, I'm glad those federal workers were there."
It's not like when Superman swoops in and sets down the little girl, all safe and sound, and everyone beams and shouts, "Gee, thanks, Superman!"
The feds were just doing their jobs and nobody said, "Good old NOAA," or "Thanks."
They just expected this work would be done by someone and would have complained if those seals had been left to rot.
Live Free or Die.

Winner Takes All Politics (and Economics)

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson have written a book, Winner Take All Politics, about numbers and politics and economics.

What they discovered was that since the Bush tax cuts, which were sold as tax cuts for all, each of the wealthiest 400 families got $49 million extra dollars, whereas the middle class taxpayer got $600 the first year, and little since.

I think I have those numbers right. There are a lot of numbers.

What they describe, setting the numbers aside, is following World War II, the great bulk of the population got richer, with a huge jump in the percentage of college educated (owing to the federally funded GI bill) and a broad middle class emerged.

What has happened since the Bush tax cuts is the country has moved closer to Mexico and Brazil, where a very small number of very wealthy people are shuttled back and forth between safe havens, gated communities, while the 99% get their houses repossessed, or move back in with their parents.

Some of this was explained as happening as a result of technology and economic forces like the globalization of the economy, but as their work shows, what really drove this gobbling up of all the goodies by the one percent was government rules, laws, policy. The Congress and the Republican Presidents were in the pockets of the very rich and they made sure the very rich got everything they had paid for.

My coworkers at my office tell me they don't care how rich the rich get, as long as the pie keeps getting bigger and there's enough pie for them.

I don't think the American pie can ever get that big.

We are re capitulating history. Silent Cal Coolidge, Herbert Hoover had for their Secretary of the Treasury one of the country's richest men: Andrew Mellon. He pushed through the Mellon plan, which made fortunes for the richest and pushed the nation into the great Depression.

So here we go again.

It's a free country. People like Hacker and Pierson can tell the truth, can organize it, write about it, but other people, like Rush Limbaugh and Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney are free to drown out the truth speakers.

And in a nation where money is speech--well, we get what we pay for.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

Okay, Okay, I admit it. I am only minimally conversant with 21st century social networking, interneting and blogging.

Invoking the image of speaking to nobody at Hyde Park Speaker's corner, I closed this blog in November.

I had no reason to believe this was an action anyone noted.

But, suffering from a congenital syndrome of verbal incontinence, I let loose two subsequent screeds, and, mysteriously, I got emails saying, "Glad you are back." Multiple emails. Some from, Australia. (Go figure.)

There is probably a way of knowing how many people actually click on and read this blog, but I have never figured it out. All I know is despite the lack of "members" or comments, apparently, the number is not zero.

This sounds like a scene from "Contact." Even one contact can sometimes make a difference.

Reminds me of the famous story of the comic who wrote Groucho Marx letters, daily, for years. Never a reply. Eventually, he became a fairly successful comic--Buddy Hackett. One day he sees Groucho in a restaurant and summons up the nerve to go over to his table and blurts, out: "Mr. Marx. I'm a huge fan. I've learned so much from you. My name is Buddy Hackett."

Groucho looks at him for a moment and says, "So why'd you stop writing?"

Any way, I will keep postings short. One thing which I learned during my vow of silence is, there really is no shortage of political commentary and one voice is never missed from the chorus. There are some, like Stephen Colbert, who are really different and inventive. I'm not in that elite stratum. But U.S. Grant did some valuable things, not through brilliance but with persistence. I can aspire to that.

Today's simply is to suggest a modest proposal: Let's spend a little cash to print flags, T-shirts and hats with the American Pie graph shown above. Let us make it our T Party reply.

We will have to think about the label: Republican Pie. Or maybe, American Pie, Republican Division Technique. Or maybe, Republican Pie, Divide and Conquer. Or, Republicans: Let Them Eat Pie.

That's the first contest. Suggestions will be accepted.

The next is what to name the Splinter faction; Democrat 99 percenters. Or, American Pie Party. Or, Bong Hits for Billionaires. Just a few to get you thinking.

Mr. Romney calls this the politics of envy.

I call it class defense. His class has been torpedoes and full steam ahead, sink the rest of us.

The rich accused FDR of class warfare. It always is class warfare when you want to tax the rich, or change the rules so they do not automatically win.

For the Video Conference

I know I promised to keep my mouth shut.

I did this because I accepted, in the marketplace of ideas there are winners and losers, and like any businessman, when I saw there were no customers for what I had to say, I accepted the verdict of the marketplace, I spoke, and no body responded, so I shut up.

But I have now been invited to join a TV link to Vice President Biden, with a group of Hampton Democrats to talk about the upcoming election and our local efforts to help re elect President Obama.

I’ve been to things like this before and I realize, even if the camera is on you for ten seconds, it’s a pretty unsatisfying opportunity.

So, I will use this space to be there, in spirit.

With that pre amble, here’s what I’d like to tell Vice President Biden on January 10, 2012:

Mr. Vice President, you are asking local Democrats to work hard for the re election of President Obama, which we would be willing and eager to do.

But, and here’s the big “But,” I for one am tired of doing the heavy lifting when I do not see that effort matched from President Obama.

Why should we, at the local effort, work harder for his re election than he is?

For three years now, I have been talking to my neighbors here in Hampton, saying the tough, sometimes unpleasant, sometimes offensive, sometimes combative things which need to be said in response to the Republicans and for most of those 3 years there has been nothing similar coming from President Obama, who has remained “above the fray” (a kind way of putting it) or afraid to throw a punch, presumably out of fear of looking partisan.

Ronald Reagan was not afraid of throwing a punch. The Republicans of this era from top down throw punches. Mitt Romney says President Obama is leading class warfare, trying to replace the American work ethic of ambition with a socialist ethic of envy. And that is the kindest remark coming from their would be presidents.

The spokesmen for the Democrats are an embarrassment. Every night on TV we see that Casper Milquetoast with his wispy voice and his hunched posture, the eternal apologist, Harry Reid fulfilling the Republicans’ image of the typical Democrat: an effete wuss who has no backbone, no conviction and no fight and Mitch McConnell and John Boehner eat him and the rest of the Democrats alive—they eat Democrats not because they make more sense but because they sound as if they believe what they are saying and they always have a marketing phrase to throw out there: Estate taxes become death taxes; end of life planning become death panels; government insurance programs, which citizens have paid into for years become “entitlements,” as if you are somehow not really entitled to the benefits you have contracted and paid for.

I give my neighbors a few deep thoughts, but if they do not hear this from President Obama himself, they tend to not give it much credibility.

So here’s what I would like to hear President Obama say, himself, not through you or through surrogates:

1. I agree with the Republicans government is not the solution; it is the problem. This is true whenever the Republicans have any part in government, on any level. The Republican party is a poison pill for government. They don’t believe any good can come from government. That’s why they all jumped on board when Republican Paul Ryan put forward a bill to convert Medicare from a paid for insurance program into Coupon Care. And all the Republicans voted for this killing of Medicare, trying to kill Medicare under the pretense they were voting to save it. This is the height of dishonesty. This is the typical Republican tactic: Do something that hurts the people and call it good medicine. Try to fool all the people at least some of the time.

2. I am less afraid of Big government than I am afraid of Bad government: And it is bad government the Republicans want to give us, when they are willing to give us any government at all. Medicare is Big government. I make no apologies for Medicare. I want to improve it. It can be frustrating. But the Republicans want to kill it. The Republicans see Medicare as a yellow lab with a big appetite, and rather than put it on a diet, they just say “Let’s kill it.”

3. Social Security is Big Government. It’s something people pay into. It’s true, people have no choice. The government makes them plan for their own future in this case, because we have learned something about human nature, which is people tend to solve the problems and pay the bills right in front of them and they tend to not plan for the future unless you make them. We learned that during the Great Depression and we decided to set up a system to save people from homelessness and starvation called Social Security and it’s worked well. The Republicans have tried to kill Social Security. They say they just want citizens to have more choices, to be able to do better and make more money than what Social Security can provide. They want to shunt all those dollars to their rich friends on Wall Street. They look at all that money and they say, we want that money for our Wall Street contributors, the people who have bought and paid for the Republican congress. Can you imagine what would have happened to your retirement if it depended on the stock market? You don’t have to imagine that now. The whole idea of Social Security is it is secure. No matter what happens to the stock market, you have this safety net. May not be as much as you might have if you took that money and went to Las Vegas and gambled it, but at least you know it’s there.

4. The Republican party is now a hard right to life party. Most of its candidates are now saying they would not allow a woman whose pregnancy occurred from rape to have an abortion. They would not allow a woman whose blood pressure is rising, whose kidneys are failing to have an abortion to save her life, even if the chances are both she and her fetus would die together. I am not for infanticide. I do not know anyone who really is “for” abortion. Pro choice people are not happy about abortion. It’s always a sad choice. But, sometimes when you have two bad choices, you have to make a choice. Ethics is about line drawing. To my mind, and I think most of my fellow citizens are with me, there is a difference between that potential life which is eight cells and a human being. I agree that a 28 week fetus is close enough to life, I would not intervene. Then you are faced with a different choice, but we cannot give the same rights to an eight cell conceptus we give to a 28 week old fetus. We have to have the courage to make hard choices. Mr. Paul is very consistent about this. He says life begins at conception, at the two cell stage. But if you believe that, then you will eliminate birth control pills, IUD’s, and virtually every form of contraception except the less reliable barrier methods. Absolutists can always be consistent, but they are often wrong.

5. I am not a socialist. Nor am I a “crony capitalist.,” as Mr. Romney has said.

Of course, if I suggest government has a role in health insurance, I’m a socialist to some people. If I suggest we need to step in and prevent a 1929 stock market crash, if I suggest we need to invest in solar energy, as other governments do, even as China does, then I’m a “crony capitalist.”

I was not born in Kenya, or in Indonesia or on Mars. Of course, like most people, except perhaps, Rick Santorum, I cannot actually remember the day of my birth or know exactly where it happened. But I was told by a reliable source, my mother, it was Hawaii. Last time I heard, Hawaii is as much a state as Alaska. And yet, the same people who want to believe I am an alien, would love to vote, and did vote for an Alaskan.

6.The Republican party is and has been for the past 3 years living in a state of delusion and fantasy. They would rather hallucinate than see the real world. They would rather repeat history than study it. The ghosts of 1929 do not visit the Republican party because the Republicans willfully refuse to see that a government which does nothing is the problem, not part of the problem but the larger part of the problem. Mr. Paul would have us do nothing with our military. I share his concern about putting American citizens to war. But we fought Hitler and we should have done that. There are times we have to defend ourselves. Mr. Paul would not have killed Osama Bin Laden. Mr. Romney would have put that task out to bid, maybe awarded the contract to Hallburton. But I used the power of the federal government to strike a blow to protect the American people, to protect the American people. I was well aware when President Carter failed in his attempt at a secret mission, he paid for that with his job. But I was willing to take the risk. Republicans are always saying the rich are rich because they are risk takers. What risk does a man who grows up rich take in life? He fails and he’s not homeless. He’s got a house on a lake, another in town and condo somewhere else. Well, I took a real risk and I did it because I was trying to protect my country.

7. The Republican party says Democrats have no guts. But people often accuse others of the failings they perceive in themselves. The Republicans, I imagine, want good health care for the nation. But they are afraid to take the steps which would make healthcare a calling and a public utility rather than a commercial enterprise. So they refused to allow a government option which would have introduced true competition into the medical marketplace—they were afraid of that—and now they are trying to kill even the watered down compromise affordable healthcare act., which they call “Obamacare.” They use that name as a pejorative. Well, I welcome that. Better Obamacare than Nomorecare or Coupon Care.

8. We have a choice between the Democratic Party which will give you some government, government where it’s needed, and the Republican Party, which would kill government. The Republican Party wants to live in a world of their imaging rather than the world which actually exists. The logical extension of the philosophy of Mr. Paul and Mr. Santorum would be life off the grid, where no man cooperates with his neighbor but simply builds a fence. The world of Mr. Romney is the world of businessmen on the top, the one percents, distributing cake crumbs to the bottom 99% and the world of Mr. Gingrich, well that’s a moveable feast. I cannot keep up with Mr. Gingrich’s visions, they are too fluid.

This November, the American people will have to make a choice. I hope they choose wisely.

But know one thing, there is no point at all in voting for me in November if you return Republicans to Congress. That would be nothing more than what we’ve had for the past two years. A Congress which invests a debt crisis rather than facing the real problems of this country.

And we need enough Democrats in Congress to be able to push past the George W. Bush Supreme Court, which, in it’s arch conservatism, has transformed free speech into nothing more than a commodity with it’s bizarre Citizen’s United decision. They may very well thwart the will of Congress, weak as it was, by over turning Obamacare. We need enough Democrats in Congress and in the state legislatures to deal with this third, increasingly deranged branch of government.

I have nothing to offer you but action, trial and toil. I can only echo Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom as my guiding principle: We had better all hang together, or surely, we will all hang separately.