Saturday, August 22, 2015
The Rank Fallacies of Bernie Sanders
a) That the economy is a fixed pie and that the only real question is how to divvy it up. b) That the poor and middle class are worse off than they were decades ago. c) That high tax rates on the wealthy don't have negative consequences (mainly that the rich will simply alter their behavior). d) That individuals and families are forever stuck at their present strata. e) That regulations don't retard economic growth and that they disproportionately hinder the big boys. f) That tinkering with the price (and wage) system doesn't have dire consequences. g) That it is OK to look at economic inequality numbers without including transfer payments and income taxes paid. And h) that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer ( the fact that Treasury statistics show the exact opposite; namely, that the ACTUAL human beings in the top 1% and bottom quintile experience a sharp decrease and increase respectively when it comes to their Adjusted Gross Income).............Data - http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/incomemobilitystudy03-08revise.pdf - as you can plainly see in table 3, the bottom quintile (THE ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS!!) saw their income go up 91%, this while the top 1% saw their income go down 26%.
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8 comments:
In his favor, Sanders is refreshing among candidates. Regardless of ideology (My principled opposition to him in all of the points you mention has been discussed elsewhere)
Where else do you find a candidate who is direct, honest about his beliefs, and apparently without guile? You certainly won't find anything of the sort in the Hillary camp.
Those are fair points. I just find him to be kind of a surface-thinker, that's all.
Yeah. true. The surface thing goes along with "Regardless of ideology".
He's riding a bubble, like the Occupy Movement did, of support that is still only going to be very small.
So, Will. how many of Sanders' more extreme points will vanish if he does persist in a lnog term campaign and ends up moving to the moderate pragmatic center?
Also in his favor, Sanders is the sole candidate who is more interested in the
economic well being of ALL US citizens. Regarding the economic sector mobility
statistics vs the obvious redistribution of wealth out of the lower sectors over
the last 40 years (and hence the popularity of Sanders among those who not only
study the economics, but are adversely affected by them) we should examine those
mobility statistics (96-07) in the ref'd article. Keeping in mind the axiom that
statistics definitely proves each American possesses one breast and one testicle,
consider the nuts and bolts of the mobility: Person A drops from the top 1%, his
portfolio mismanaged, and suffers a devastating loss from $2 million that year to
$1.75 million. Harsh. Person B lands a 3rd job, detailing cars on the lot weekend nights, hoping that his $18,000 annual income might cover one of the kid's surgeries. And indeed, he makes $24,500 the next year, moving him up into the next sector. More harsh. But statistically pleasing. (and meaningless in terms of
the wealth distribution problem) Let's give Orwell the last word
here: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
The person making $2 million a year probably went to college for 6-8 years, worked 60-70 hour weeks to establish him or her self, and has a shitload of student loan debt to pay off.......And your scenario about the bottom quintile fellow working 3 jobs is an aberration in that as the Census data plainly says, the average number of workers per family in that particular strata is .5 while the average number in the highest quintile is 2.0 AND the average number of hours worked per week per employee is 14 versus 34. It's easy to make more when you work more.
And just to be fully accurate here, a 26% reduction from $2 million brings you down to $1.48 million and not $1.75 million (still enough to get a dude reamed at the 39.6% mark, with an additional 13.3% if the person lives in CA).......And as for Orwell's last word here, I believe that it was directed at socialism and not at a country in which 70% of the Forbes richest 400 are entirely self-made.
Animal Farm was directed at communist totalitarianism. As for socialism, we note:
"-Despite the posthumous claims by conservatives and communists alike that Orwell had abandoned socialism by the end of his life, none of his colleagues at Tribune or in the Labour Party and ILP, has ever disagreed with the continuing force of Orwell’s self- assessment, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand it."
-Orwell and The British Left, Ian Williams
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