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Too many Americans are unaware of the extreme disparities that have been caused by the unregulated profit incentive of capitalism. Our winner-take-all system is flailing away at once-healthy parts of society, leaving them like withered limbs on a trembling body, even as the relative few who benefit promote the illusion of opportunity and prosperity for all. Concerned citizens armed with facts are not fooled. Instead, the more they learn the angrier they get. And as in revolutions of the past, discontent leads to change. 

Hacking Off the Poor Half of Society 

Some wealthy and uninformed individuals have referred to the lowest-income 47% of Americans as the “takers,” who enjoy government benefits at the expense of the high-earning one percent. But their claim is meaningless. The total amount paid out in ‘welfare’ (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) is less than the investment income of just three men in a single year.

The monthly TANF income for a family of four is less than what the average member of the Forbes Top 20 made in one second at the office.

The 47% don’t own stocks. They don’t own anything. The so-called ‘takers’ have ZERO wealth. The value of any assets owned by nearly half of the country is surpassed by their debt.

Slashing the Security of the Elderly 

Recipients of ‘entitlements’ are accused by the uninformed of getting something for nothing. The opposite is true. According to the Urban Institute, the typical two-earner couple making average wages throughout their lifetimes will receive less in Social Security benefits than they paid in. Same for single males. Almost the same for single females.

Getting something for nothing? Yes, the rich are. Tax expenditures, which are deductions and exemptions that primarily benefit the highest-earning individuals, cost about 8% of the GDP, the same percentage that goes to Social Security and Medicare. (more…)

When we had democracy, We, the People made the rules and we ran our country and our economy for our benefit. Now that we are a plutocracy things are different. The reason our elites are not doing anything to fix the economy is because from their viewpoint, things are just fine.

Merriam-Webster: plu·toc·ra·cy noun \plü-ˈtä-krə-sē\1: government by the wealthy

2: a controlling class of the wealthy

Our political leaders dance with the ones that bring them. Increasingly they are dancing with the billionaires and their giant corporations.

Our politicians are doing and saying increasingly incomprehensible things. The separation from regular people is unbelievable. But in politics you “dance with the one that brung ya,” and these things become comprehensible and believable when you look at who is bringing them to the dance.

Our Benefit

In a democracy a successful business is the result of our investment in infrastructure, education, and a system that enables our businesses to thrive. A business can’t deliver products except over the roads or ports or the Internet our government built. Our police and firefighters protect our businesses. Our schools and universities train and educate the inventors and managers and line workers. Our scientific research brings about the innovation that leads to new technologies and products.

“Entitlements” are the things We, the People are entitled to as citizens of a democracy. Those who do well as a result of our investment in our system pay back through taxes, good jobs and great products. When we were a democracy we were entitled to a minimal level of retirement, and health care, education, protection if we lost our jobs, protection of our environment, protection from corporate fraud, and other things that are now disappearing.

Now that democracy is gone, a wealthy few are living off our past investment, and cutting back on the things we used to do for each other. (more…)

This week there was another big attack on Social Security by another elite. This time the attack comes from an elite columnist, other times it comes from Wall Street types, wealthy CEOs or the kind of politicians that have been in DC way too long. These attacks never come from people who depend on these programs (i.e. almost all of us.) Why do the privileged elites hate Social Security so much?

Robert Samuelson wrote this week in the Washington Post, Would Roosevelt recognize today’s Social Security? Samuelson writes that Social Security, “has become what was then called “the dole” and is now known as “welfare.” ” He discusses a book that, he writes, “shows how today’s “entitlement” psychology dates to Social Security’s muddled beginnings.”

Entitlements

Elites hate “entitlements” — those things we all are entitled to as are citizens in a We-the-People democracy. Democracies are based on “we are in this together” and “watch out for each other.” Plutocracies are based on rule by the elites. These elites especially hate what Samuelson calls “entitlement psychology” — a state of mind in which 99% of us forget our place and get all uppity about being citizens in a democracy and the things that entitles us to.

Samuelson’s core attack on Social Security is that there is no trust fund, that the money has been spent, and it is just a program where working people pay for the retirement of older people,

Millions of Americans believe (falsely) that their payroll taxes have been segregated to pay for their benefits and that, therefore, they “earned” these benefits. To reduce them would be to take something that is rightfully theirs.

And, he restates, while people think they are entitled to their Social Security benefits it really is just “welfare,” writing,

What we have is a vast welfare program grafted onto the rhetoric and psychology of a contributory pension. The result is entitlement.

The “rhetoric” and “psychology” of “entitlement.” Public pride in We-the-People democracy. Gotta stamp that out!

(Samuelson, for some reason, does not talk about how the military budget trust fund is depleted and we need to cut back on the trillion-or-so we will spend this year, how it is bankrupting us, etc. Oh, wait, there isn’t a trust fund at all for military spending… we just spend it.) (more…)

Mitt Romney seems ready to wield his version of birtherism as a major weapon in the fall campaign against President Obama. In his standard stump speech he tells audiences that President Obama wants “to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society.” According to Romney, this means a European-style welfare state that redistributes wealth and creates equal outcomes regardless of individual effort and success.

That’s pretty strong stuff, but of course this doesn’t sound anything like the President Obama who many of us have come to know and criticize. After all, this is the guy who got the top Wall Street bankers and told them that he was the only thing standing between them and the pitchforks. And, according to Ron Suskind, he assured them that he would hold his ground.

The Wall Street boys have not seen much leveling in the Obama years, nor has anyone else in the top rungs of society. It seems the substance of Romney’s complaint involves President Obama’s occasional references to “fat cats,” his plans to restore the Clinton-era tax rates, and his national health care plan.

Taking these in turn, it really is touching how sensitive the rich and powerful are to being called out in public. While the men and women at the top rungs of the corporate hierarchy give the impression of being tough streetfighters who clawed and kicked their way to the top, we now find that they are actually shrinking violets who get hurt when the president isn’t nice to them.

OK, so a President Romney will not say bad things about rich people. But there is a big difference between being somewhat impolite and doing anything that threatens the wealth of the rich.

On the latter front, the staple of the Romney argument is that President Obama wants to raise the tax rate on high-income taxpayers back to the level of the Clinton years. Calling this sort of tax increase a redistribution that leads to equal outcomes regardless of individual effort and success is just nonsense.

The rich got plenty richer during the Clinton years. Romney may be too young or too old to remember, but this was the time when the stock market had its greatest rally since the 20s. There were huge fortunes made on Wall Street, Silicon Valley and other centers of the “new economy.” If this was a time when we saw equality of outcomes regardless of individual effort and success, someone forgot to tell Bill Gates, who became the richest person in the world during these years. (more…)

Earlier this week, Republican Presidential candidate Willard Mitt Romney delivered a speech framing the 2012 presidential election as a choice between an “entitlement society” and an “opportunity society.”

It really takes chutzpa for a guy who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth to rail against an “entitlement society.” Here is a guy who got his start in life the old-fashioned way — he inherited it.

Now I realize that you don’t get to choose your parents. He had no role in deciding that he would be born into the family of an auto executive and Michigan Governor — but at least he should have the decency not to attack “entitlements.”

This is not a guy who pulled himself up by his boot-straps. His name, his family connections and — not incidentally — his money gave him a real leg up when he decided to go into the investment banking business. And let’s not forget that when he did go into business for himself, he didn’t make money building things or inventing things — or designing new products. He made money buying companies, and often breaking them up, or firing employees.

Last Sunday’s New York Times reported that Romney continued to make money from his old firm Bain Capital through his time as Governor and his attempts to run for Senate and President. It noted that much of his income is likely taxed at only 15% — though we don’t know for sure since he refuses to release his tax returns.

He is the poster boy for the one percent — and he is talking about “entitlements”?

If you ask someone on the street which kid in high school Mitt Romney reminds him of, he is likely to tell you it’s the kid who drove to school in a Ferrari and got all the socially “in” girls. He was the smug guy who knew he was set for life. (more…)

Just days from a potential default, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) this afternoon rejected Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) plan for raising the debt ceiling, saying he can’t support any plan that doesn’t cut entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. Reid’s plan, just hours old when Boehner aimed to kill it, essentially called the GOP’s bluff, giving them exactly what they have been asking for all along — spending cuts matching the increase in the debt ceiling and no new revenues.

The White House had already signed onto Reid’s conservative plan, making it the best hope of averting a crisis since Boehner walked out of negotiations Friday. “This is an offer that Republicans can’t refuse,” said Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY).

Apparently not. The Reid plan “makes no changes to the biggest drivers of our deficit and our debt and that would be entitlement programs,” Boehner said at a late afternoon press conference, flanked by other GOP leaders. This demand seemed to be a brazen moving of the goal posts, as entitlement cuts never appeared to be red-line demand for Republicans for raising the debt ceiling.

(more…)

By Roger Hickey
Co-Director, Campaign for America’s Future

Last week’s special election in New York’s 26th Congressional district was a political earthquake, demonstrating that the American majority, even in the most Republican of districts, will reject a candidate who embraces cuts to Medicare benefits or major changes to that most popular program. And, since almost every Republican in the House — and now the Senate — has voted for such drastic changes, Democrats across the country are happily learning how they can campaign to win back the House and keep the Senate.

But we can’t let Democrats undercut themselves again. Even as most of them practice their talking points about the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare, prominent beltway Democrats and Washington pundits are advising candidates that pressing their advantage on Medicare would not be the right thing to do. And others are urging Democrats to embrace policies — like cutting Social Security benefits — which would just as unpopular as dismantling Medicare and would confuse voters and undermine a winning message. (more…)