Source: CNN
Remember in 2008 when McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm instructed us all that Bush’s Great Recession was just imaginary? “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said.
Now Kevin Hassett, a top adviser to Willard (“Mitt”) Romney’s presidential campaign writing in The Wall Street Journal, tells America that economic inequality is a myth.
“Today we hear that the gains from economic growth accrue to the highest-income earners while the standard of living of the poor and middle America stagnates and the gap between the richest and the poorest grows ever wider,” Kevin Hassett and Aparna Mathur argue. “That portrait of the country is wrong.”
Using a very tired right-wing argument, Hassett says that the availability of cheap consumer electronics, such as cell phones and microwave ovens, means that non-rich Americans have nothing to complain about. But this ignores everyday expenses like food, rent, and utilities. Today struggling families are spending at least 15 percent of their household budget to pay their electric bills.
Igor Volsky on Think Progress:
Hassett argues that safety net programs like “unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid” help families afford basic needs, further shrinking the nation’s income gap. But these programs are already failing to keep up with need and Romney and Ryan have proposed massive cuts to the safety net in order to pay down the deficit and finance a tax cut plan that is heavily skewed towards the rich.
Their approach would only exacerbate the differences between the rich and poor — a gap that has grown dramatically since the late 1970s. Indeed, compared to the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United States has a Gini coefficient — a number that measures the distribution of income on a scale of 0 (perfectly equal) to 1 (perfectly unequal) — of 0.47 and ranks near the very bottom in inequality. America also suffers from the absolute highest “percentage of national income that went to the top 1 percent” and “has seen income inequality increase at a much faster rate than most other countries.”
This trend is already devastating the American democratic ideals of equal opportunity and upward mobility. Unfortunately, neither Romney nor his advisers can see the problem or offer the kind of tax and economic policies that will help solve it.
#1 by Richard Warnick on October 26, 2012 - 11:07 am
Romney and Meat Loaf sing painfully off-key ‘America the Beautiful’
#2 by brewski on October 26, 2012 - 11:24 am
“But this ignores everyday expenses like food, rent, and utilities.”
Food:
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/01/america-food-spending-less
Housing:
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/images/2009/May/uk-housing-size.gif
Utilities:
You are the one in favor of $0.30/kWh electricity and $9/gal gasoline.
#3 by Richard Warnick on October 26, 2012 - 11:43 am
Food Prices Could Rise 5 Percent in Next 5 Months
One presidential debate question that they forgot to ask this year: What’s the price of a gallon of milk?
Why the Rent Is Too Damn High
Wind is the Cheapest Power Source in the World, Report Says
And nobody is talking about wind shortages, wind cartels, peak wind…
#4 by brewski on October 26, 2012 - 1:11 pm
Ever try to build a wind project?
I have. Several.
You know who tries to stop them?
Liberals.
#5 by Richard Warnick on October 26, 2012 - 1:21 pm
Josh Marshall once said that the right-wing philosophy ought to be called “up-is-downism.”
Telling low-income working Americans that there is no inequality problem from flat wages and soaring wealth at the top, and saying that wind energy supporters are actually the opponents of wind energy both fit the philosophy.
#6 by brewski on October 26, 2012 - 1:36 pm
How much first hand experience do you have building wind farms?
http://www.capespin.com
You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.
And in Utah some groups want NO wind farms anywhere on any public land, which is most of the state.
#7 by brewski on October 26, 2012 - 1:43 pm
http://www.wind-watch.org
National organization opposing all wind projects:
“Large-scale wind turbines cause significant harm to wildlife, people, and the environment.”
#8 by brewski on October 26, 2012 - 1:59 pm
Every wind project has some objection to it from lefties. Views. Desert tortoise, sage grouse, raptors, bats, migration routes, access roads scarring, pretty much everything you can think of.
Windy places in Utah are often ridge tops and mesas and you think the various Utah enviromental groups are good with building access roads, foundations and the 100 meter high towers on the ridges and mesas? You’re nuts.
Then there are the hundreds of miles of transmission lines from these windy places to where people actually live and use the power. Lawsuits and objections are filed by lefties every step of the way.
You are the ignorant one who doesn’t know the difference between up and down and are the last person capable of making up is downism accusations.
#9 by Richard Warnick on October 26, 2012 - 2:13 pm
“National Wind Watch” appears to be just one guy, Eric Rosenbloom, who is unhappy about wind turbines on the ridge behind his house.
Wind power has to comply with environmental law and public land law. Nobody should suggest otherwise. Unnamed Utah groups can oppose wind power on public lands, but unless the proposed projects violate the law their opposition won’t change anything.
I really think it’s unfair to categorize “liberals” or environmental groups as opponents of wind power. I get scores of e-mails from a variety of conservation groups and never once have I gotten any message opposed to wind power. I pay attention to the news, and I have yet to read a story about an environmental lawsuit that has stopped a wind power project in Utah.
#10 by brewski on October 26, 2012 - 2:16 pm
Here is my suggestion. Go try to build a wind farm and tell me who sues you. Then get back to me.
#11 by cav on October 26, 2012 - 2:17 pm
A cool national wind map that’s updated frequently;
http://hint.fm/wind/
#12 by Richard Warnick on October 26, 2012 - 2:19 pm
Here is my suggestion. Present some facts and then I will believe you.
#13 by brewski on October 26, 2012 - 3:04 pm
What makes you think you will start now?
#14 by brewski on October 26, 2012 - 7:45 pm
The tax system today is more progressive than under Clinton.
http://www.exponentialimprovement.com/cms/uploads/cboratiooffedtaxliabtoafttaxincquintiles_744.jpg
#15 by Richard Warnick on October 27, 2012 - 2:48 pm
Why President Obama’s tax plan is still a huge tax cut for the rich:
#16 by cav on October 27, 2012 - 3:42 pm
Looks like it’s all pointed to the noble effort to create MORE millionaires.
Maybe they’ve got something there.
#17 by brewski on October 27, 2012 - 10:11 pm
The CBPP should be given a prize for the most creative misuse of massaged statistics.