A lot of people grew up in the 80s, when Reagan was president and supposedly times were great, and the seed of “just let businessmen run the country” was planted. And/or their parents or (in the case of journalists) first bosses did.
Reagan never saw inflation under 4% and he nearly tripled the national debt with his fairytale self-funding tax cuts for the rich and his military spending. The media still speaks of trickledown Reaganomics with respect but treats the far more effective Bidenomics, with its emphasis on growing the economy by growing the middle class, with disdain.
In the great tradition of “every Republican accusation is a confession,” Reagan really did create the fake economic sugar high of running up your credit card and not paying the bill.
(He also invented the so-called 11th Commandment (“Republicans shalt not criticize other Republicans”) when other Republicans started to criticize him, even though MFer ran a primary campaign against a sitting Republican president. Don’t get me started on that fuckhead.)
Like a lot of people I heard about the Reagan boom but wasn't doing well and didn't know anybody who was doing well either. It was very uneven, good for the Northwest and Deep South because he boosted extractive industries, defense contractors , and military bases. In the Great Lakes region it was not good times.
This is the most cogent and incisive analysis I’ve read anywhere on the Great Mystery of Voting Against Your Own Economic Interests, a mystery that has deepened with every presidential election since Reagan. Thank you Paul. Thank you.
It continues to amaze me how fucking stupid a large portion of Americans are. I've had this same discussion with otherwise intelligent people and sent them links to articles from magazines like Barrons and Forbes showing these same statistics and they still won't believe it. You just can't fix stupid.
Paul, I agree with you entirely. So tell me this: why is it that Democrats, including Paul Waldman cannot manage to tell the people that Social Security is not a cause of the deficit/debt. It is paid for entirely by the people who will get the benefits. And if they are going to live longer and therefore need more benefits, why does nobody tell them the extra cost of those benefits is paid for entirely by raising the payroll tax one tenth of one percent per year. That's about a dollar per week per year while wages are going up about ten dollars a week per year.
And why can't the people understand this even when someone who knows the truth tries to explain it to them with evidence they can check for themselves?
you start out absolutely right, then you spoil it by essentially calling for a "tax the rich" solution. FDR rejected this solution: he insisted the workers pay for their own Social Security so "no damn politician can take it away from them." The replies to your earlier post show that people...democrats..live in a fantasy world in which they can get what they need without paying for it....even an extra dollar a week. I assume the Democrats calling for raising the cap...or having "the government pay for it" simply do not know how SS works. but some of them are just politicians and say whatever they think people want to hear. I have talked in person to both of my Democratic senators and my Democratic Representative, and they are very nice to me and don't hear a word I am saying.
looks like my reply to Sko Hayes didn't go through. I asked if he read my comment. The depressing thing about SS is that everybody believes the lies, and has a brilliant idea of their own which won't work, and they show no sign of even hearing when someone tries to start them thinking about ,first: SS has nothing to do withthe Debt, and second: that the great big huge trillions of dollars of unfunded deficit turns out to one dollar per week more payroll tax per year when you know that the trillions of dollars is what 200 million workers would pay over 75 years. [yes, the math works.] and you get your money back over threefold when you will need it most.
tax the rich for sure, but tax them to pay for the government they need, even though they pretend not to. do not tax them to pay for your groceries unless you are realy poor and need the help. otherwise they will own your grocery supply and decide what you have to do to be allowed to eat.
Strange that Waldman didn’t point out the obvious - when white voters say the GOP is better on the economy, they mean they believe they get to keep more of their tax money, instead of Democrats supposedly giving it away to other countries or to lazy dark-skinned minorities. And in the broad sense, it’s not that most voters are stupid, is the economy is a huge and intangible concept, so they project just about any gripe onto it. Or else they process the concept only through their personal economic experience.
I think that part of this is that the kind of rich person that working and comfortable middle class people actually encounter -- successful car dealers, male doctors, small business owners -- are Republicans, so we instinctively think they've conquered "the economy." We don't know these guys (mostly) are just cashing in on inherited advantage. We mostly don't meet the corporate really rich or even the tech bros. (Fortunately.) And "the economy" is a great mystery, while the restaurant owner down the street who is proudly GOP is imaginable.
A lot of people grew up in the 80s, when Reagan was president and supposedly times were great, and the seed of “just let businessmen run the country” was planted. And/or their parents or (in the case of journalists) first bosses did.
Reagan never saw inflation under 4% and he nearly tripled the national debt with his fairytale self-funding tax cuts for the rich and his military spending. The media still speaks of trickledown Reaganomics with respect but treats the far more effective Bidenomics, with its emphasis on growing the economy by growing the middle class, with disdain.
In the great tradition of “every Republican accusation is a confession,” Reagan really did create the fake economic sugar high of running up your credit card and not paying the bill.
(He also invented the so-called 11th Commandment (“Republicans shalt not criticize other Republicans”) when other Republicans started to criticize him, even though MFer ran a primary campaign against a sitting Republican president. Don’t get me started on that fuckhead.)
Like a lot of people I heard about the Reagan boom but wasn't doing well and didn't know anybody who was doing well either. It was very uneven, good for the Northwest and Deep South because he boosted extractive industries, defense contractors , and military bases. In the Great Lakes region it was not good times.
This is the most cogent and incisive analysis I’ve read anywhere on the Great Mystery of Voting Against Your Own Economic Interests, a mystery that has deepened with every presidential election since Reagan. Thank you Paul. Thank you.
It continues to amaze me how fucking stupid a large portion of Americans are. I've had this same discussion with otherwise intelligent people and sent them links to articles from magazines like Barrons and Forbes showing these same statistics and they still won't believe it. You just can't fix stupid.
Paul, I agree with you entirely. So tell me this: why is it that Democrats, including Paul Waldman cannot manage to tell the people that Social Security is not a cause of the deficit/debt. It is paid for entirely by the people who will get the benefits. And if they are going to live longer and therefore need more benefits, why does nobody tell them the extra cost of those benefits is paid for entirely by raising the payroll tax one tenth of one percent per year. That's about a dollar per week per year while wages are going up about ten dollars a week per year.
And why can't the people understand this even when someone who knows the truth tries to explain it to them with evidence they can check for themselves?
I've said it before, many times! Here's just the latest: https://paulwaldman.substack.com/p/fixing-social-security-is-a-piece
Paul,
you start out absolutely right, then you spoil it by essentially calling for a "tax the rich" solution. FDR rejected this solution: he insisted the workers pay for their own Social Security so "no damn politician can take it away from them." The replies to your earlier post show that people...democrats..live in a fantasy world in which they can get what they need without paying for it....even an extra dollar a week. I assume the Democrats calling for raising the cap...or having "the government pay for it" simply do not know how SS works. but some of them are just politicians and say whatever they think people want to hear. I have talked in person to both of my Democratic senators and my Democratic Representative, and they are very nice to me and don't hear a word I am saying.
What they could do is raise the income limit, which is currently 168K.
looks like my reply to Sko Hayes didn't go through. I asked if he read my comment. The depressing thing about SS is that everybody believes the lies, and has a brilliant idea of their own which won't work, and they show no sign of even hearing when someone tries to start them thinking about ,first: SS has nothing to do withthe Debt, and second: that the great big huge trillions of dollars of unfunded deficit turns out to one dollar per week more payroll tax per year when you know that the trillions of dollars is what 200 million workers would pay over 75 years. [yes, the math works.] and you get your money back over threefold when you will need it most.
Cool story bro.
Tax the fucking rich. Hard.
tax the rich for sure, but tax them to pay for the government they need, even though they pretend not to. do not tax them to pay for your groceries unless you are realy poor and need the help. otherwise they will own your grocery supply and decide what you have to do to be allowed to eat.
Strange that Waldman didn’t point out the obvious - when white voters say the GOP is better on the economy, they mean they believe they get to keep more of their tax money, instead of Democrats supposedly giving it away to other countries or to lazy dark-skinned minorities. And in the broad sense, it’s not that most voters are stupid, is the economy is a huge and intangible concept, so they project just about any gripe onto it. Or else they process the concept only through their personal economic experience.
I think that part of this is that the kind of rich person that working and comfortable middle class people actually encounter -- successful car dealers, male doctors, small business owners -- are Republicans, so we instinctively think they've conquered "the economy." We don't know these guys (mostly) are just cashing in on inherited advantage. We mostly don't meet the corporate really rich or even the tech bros. (Fortunately.) And "the economy" is a great mystery, while the restaurant owner down the street who is proudly GOP is imaginable.
WHAT MATTERS IS THAT FOX VIEWERS KNOW NONE OF THE TRUTH ----> OUR TASK IS TO FIND A WAY TO TELL THEM. OTHERWISE WE ARE IRRELEVANT
william
yes, that's the challenge. but it's not only Fox viewers.
Don't be greedy. I would settle for Fox viewers getting the truth all the time (not just once at 2am)
The Democrats are the worst at messaging their success. They're the worst. And i don't know how to change that.
Repetition. “Tax and spend liberals, open for bidness conservatives”. Rarely questioned by truebelievers or the socalled liberal media.