Makers, Takers, Fakers

[_Kevin Graham]

By Paul Krugman

Republicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell “Class warfare!” and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn’t work: the picture of the G.O.P. as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades.

As a result, prominent Republicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here’s the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the G.O.P. is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful.

Consider, as a case in point, how a widely reported recent speech by Bobby Jindal the governor of Louisiana, compares with his actual policies.

Mr. Jindal posed the problem in a way that would, I believe, have been unthinkable for a leading Republican even a year ago. “We must not,” he declared, “be the party that simply protects the well off so they can keep their toys. We have to be the party that shows all Americans how they can thrive.” After a campaign in which Mitt Romney denounced any attempt to talk about class divisions as an “attack on success,” this represents a major rhetorical shift.

But Mr. Jindal didn’t offer any suggestions about how Republicans might demonstrate that they aren’t just about letting the rich keep their toys, other than claiming even more loudly that their policies are good for everyone.

Meanwhile, back in Louisiana Mr. Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state’s income tax, which falls most heavily on the affluent, and make up for the lost revenue by raising sales taxes, which fall much more heavily on the poor and the middle class. The result would be big gains for the top 1 percent, substantial losses for the bottom 60 percent. Similar plans are being pushed by a number of other Republican governors as well.

Like the new acknowledgment that the perception of being the party of the rich is a problem, this represents a departure for the G.O.P. — but in the opposite direction. In the past, Republicans would justify tax cuts for the rich either by claiming that they would pay for themselves or by claiming that they could make up for lost revenue by cutting wasteful spending. But what we’re seeing now is open, explicit reverse Robin Hoodism: taking from ordinary families and giving to the rich. That is, even as Republicans look for a way to sound more sympathetic and less extreme, their actual policies are taking another sharp right turn.

Why is this happening? In particular, why is it happening now, just after an election in which the G.O.P. paid a price for its anti-populist stand?

Well, I don’t have a full answer, but I think it’s important to understand the extent to which leading Republicans live in an intellectual bubble. They get their news from Fox and other captive media, they get their policy analysis from billionaire-financed right-wing think tanks, and they’re often blissfully unaware both of contrary evidence and of how their positions sound to outsiders.

So when Mr. Romney made his infamous “47 percent” remarks, he wasn’t, in his own mind, saying anything outrageous or even controversial. He was just repeating a view that has become increasingly dominant inside the right-wing bubble, namely that a large and ever-growing proportion of Americans won’t take responsibility for their own lives and are mooching off the hard-working wealthy. Rising unemployment claims demonstrate laziness, not lack of jobs; rising disability claims represent malingering, not the real health problems of an aging work force.

And given that worldview, Republicans see it as entirely appropriate to cut taxes on the rich while making everyone else pay more.

Now, national politicians learned last year that this kind of talk plays badly with the public, so they’re trying to obscure their positions. Paul Ryan, for example, has lately made a transparently dishonest attempt to claim that when he spoke about “takers” living off the efforts of the “makers” — at one point he assigned 60 percent of Americans to the taker category — he wasn’t talking about people receiving Social Security and Medicare. (He was.)

But in deep red states like Louisiana or Kansas, Republicans are much freer to act on their beliefs — which means moving strongly to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted.

Which brings me back to Mr. Jindal, who declared in his speech that “we are a populist party.” No, you aren’t. You’re a party that holds a large proportion of Americans in contempt. And the public may have figured that out.

[_cinepro]

Meanwhile, back in Louisiana Mr. Jindal is pushing a plan to eliminate the state’s income tax, which falls most heavily on the affluent, and make up for the lost revenue by raising sales taxes, which fall much more heavily on the poor and the middle class. The result would be big gains for the top 1 percent, substantial losses for the bottom 60 percent. Similar plans are being pushed by a number of other Republican governors as well.

My first thought was to wonder how Florida and Nevada get along without income taxes. The answer doesn't appear to be encouraging for Jindal's plan:

http://thelensnola.org/2013/01/29/bad-n ... biz-taxes/

[_Droopy]

Good grief! Say the words "discredited intellectual hack" and who comes to mind? Its always rather shocking to see someone with his background sell out for fame, fortune, and ideological hucksterism the way Krugman has done.

Krugman is to economics what Ehrlich is to environmental science and Sunstein is to constitutional law.

[_Tarski]

"discredited intellectual hack"

WTF? Does your foolishness know no bounds at all? Krugman is a brilliant economist who some have had intellectual disagreements with. He is in no sense discredited.

Of course, we see that every single person, no matter how intelligent, no matter how well respected and no matter how eminant in their field is described by you as "discredited" on the single condition that they do not toe your extremist party line in every respect.


In other news,....

do you think there is one single person who doesn't see the absurdity of you accusing others of being blinded by ideology?

Consider that you rountinely accuse me of that on the basis that I take climate scientists seriously. You are talking about someone who barely cares about politics, has ambivalent attitudes about the various economic theories and only gets worked up when science or scientists are attacked for nonscientific reasons. In other words, I am very very far from being an ideologue.

You on the other hand are manifestly a monomaniacal person obsessed with the bogey of leftism.
You post a lot. You post about absolutely nothing else. Even our many conservatives around here cannot stomach it. You rant, you blather, you regurgitate on only one topic. It never ends.
You do not talk about the sick, the poor, or the sad. You do not talk about the nature of God, space, time or matter. You do not talk about science as such, art, music, sports, beauty, women, novels, pets, games, nature, or any other human topic unless you can fit it into a rant against the left. You confuse your own religion with a temporal, transient and extreme political position.
You are an ideologue in every sense.


And, after many years and countless repetitive rants about the left with no interuption for any other topic, and for most of that time over the years I have posted on many other topics especially regarding science and relatively little promoting a political view, you dare say such things as the following to me?

"Tarski and all those of his ilk rubbing their hands over the possibilities of "global governance" and "sustainable development" "

I think I have said approximately zero about "global governance" and "sustainable development".

Or how about this?

You're nothing but a pathetic shill for your ideology, Tarski, and you, like so many others in the warminst cult, have sold your intellectual souls to the dark god of hubris, and that god demands a vast quantity of human sacrifice to placate its thirst for power and control.

A shill for ideology??? (project much???)

dark god? Power and control? LOL
Yeah, right Droopy, it’s all about power and politics for me. I don't love science. I only learned more of it than you could ever imagine just to obtain the crazy power I have now (a modest salary that forces my wife to work from 5 am until 7 pm, and absolutely zero political or administrative power). On the other hand you, YOU Droopy, aren't about ideology at all, you aren't a shill that posts regurgitations of ideological rants day and night for years on end. (sarcasm) (Except that there is apparently nothing more to you --period)

Droopy, I don't even know what you do for a living, whether you are married (wife not worth mentioning?), if you are moved by music or art, whether you are sick or well, or even what words of Jesus stir your soul. I couldn't say whether you have graduated from college or whether you are likely to have ever solved a nontrivial equation (I am guessing not), played a musical instrument, or sired any children (not worth mentioning?).

You are utterly one dimensional and no thesaurus can remedy that.
After years of nothing but interminable grandiloquent rants about the bogey of leftism, after years of your unoriginal ideological vapors and that sweaty furrowed brow, ....you dare call me a "pathetic shill for [my] ideology"?

The ironic lack of self-awareness is stunning!.

Surely, a psychological condition has to be named after you. Surely, Oliver Sacks needs to feature you in a chapter of his next book. The idea of a "man who mistook his wife for a hat" seems altogether less weird at this point.

PS. I shall refute or reveal the true significance of every one of your climate "facts" in due time. Being an actual scientist, I have a few better things to do for a while especially given that there is no hope of enlightening one such as you.

[_ludwigm]

... nothing ... (as usual)

...
You are utterly one dimensional and no thesaurus can remedy that.

The best description until now.


***********************************
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Writing pseudonymously as "a Square":

The story is about a two-dimensional world referred to as Flatland which is occupied by geometric figures. Women are simple line-segments, while men are regular polygons with various numbers of sides. The narrator is a humble square, a member of the social caste of gentlemen and professionals in a society of geometric figures, who guides us through some of the implications of life in two dimensions. The Square has a dream about a visit to a one-dimensional world (Lineland) which is inhabited by "lustrous points". He attempts to convince the realm's ignorant monarch of a second dimension but finds that it is essentially impossible to make him see outside of his eternally straight line.
...
After the Square's mind is opened to new dimensions, he tries to convince the Sphere of the theoretical possibility of the existence of a fourth (and fifth, and sixth ...) spatial dimension. Offended by this presumption and incapable of comprehending other dimensions, the Sphere returns his student to Flatland in disgrace.

The Square then has a dream in which the Sphere visits him again, this time to introduce him to Pointland. The point (sole inhabitant, monarch, and universe in one) perceives any attempt at communicating with him as simply being a thought originating in his own mind (cf. Solipsism):

'You see,' said my Teacher, 'how little your words have done. So far as the Monarch understand them at all, he accepts them as his own – for he cannot conceive of any other except himself – and plumes himself upon the variety of Its Thought as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from his self-satisfaction.'
— the Sphere

(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatland - or read the book)

Flatland house diagram
[#img] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... iagram.png[/img]

[_beastie]

Surely, a psychological condition has to be named after you. Surely, Oliver Sacks needs to feature you in a chapter of his next book. The idea of a "man who mistook his wife for a hat" seems altogether less weird at this point.

My guess would be obsessive compulsive disorder.

[_Darth J]

Good grief! Say the words "discredited intellectual hack" and who comes to mind? Its always rather shocking to see someone with his background sell out for fame, fortune, and ideological hucksterism the way Krugman has done.

Krugman is to economics what Ehrlich is to environmental science and Sunstein is to constitutional law.

Tell me about constitutional law, Droopy.

[_Darth J]

Surely, a psychological condition has to be named after you. Surely, Oliver Sacks needs to feature you in a chapter of his next book. The idea of a "man who mistook his wife for a hat" seems altogether less weird at this point.

My guess would be obsessive compulsive disorder.

Try again.

[_beastie]

Try again.

Yes, that also fits, but he is absolutely compulsive obsessive. There have been times when he starts multiple threads within the course of one day, all basically about the same thing. It's bizarre.