The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

You don’t get the payroll tax “cut”

There has been much ballyhoo about how there is a payroll tax cut and that an extra $40 per paycheck (every two week) will make a big difference.

Sure, if you get to keep it (via Americablog):

Some rates will be significantly higher, such as a 27.4% increase to $17 from $13.34 just to receive local broadcast channels. Others will be modestly higher, such as a 9.5% increase to $69 from $63 for broadcast plus basic cable channels, or a 7.3% increase to $58.99 from $54.99 for the digital video package. Compare that with a 3.5% annual inflation rate as of October. “The cable industry maintains a near-monopoly over television services,” said Doug Heller, executive director of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group. “Their prices are completely disconnected from the real lives of their customers.”

Pricing power is the ability to raise your prices beyond the inflation rate and expect that most people will pay.  It occurs in monopolies and oligopolies and in necessities during crises (how much is a loaf of bread worth if you’ll die without it?)

American consumers and workers, as a group, do not have pricing power and they do not have alternatives.  They cannot charge more for their labor, because there is a huge surplus of workers.  Because almost every major industry is an oligopoly or a local monopoly,  as consumers, they cannot move from one company to another, as the companies are almost all in collusion and raising prices more or less in lockstep.  There is no real competition on price in most industries (certainly not in telecom).

Until Americans have the ability to opt out, things will not get better.  And tax cuts will do NOTHING.  If you give money to ordinary people corporations with pricing power will take it away.  If you give money to corporations or rich people, they will use it for leveraged financial plays (job destruction), offshoring or outsourcing (job destruction) or on luxury consumption like $50,000/night hotel rooms and private jets (some job creation, but destroying the quality of services you get.)

What the US needs right now is a massive tax increase on the rich and corporations.  They are not spending their money usefully, and in the case of corporations are sitting on billions.  In fact, every extra dollar of profit makes things worse, not better.  If corps and the rich can’t use money to create growth, and in fact are using it in destructive ways, you take it away and use it to create growth (assuming the Obama administration knew how to do that, which it doesn’t.  But theoretically, assuming competent individuals of good will in power.  Yes, you can laugh hysterically now.)

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45 Comments

  1. Matt Stoller

    If people don’t get a tax cut, won’t corporations just gauge them anyway? How does a tax cut matter in this scenario?

  2. Ian Welsh

    They do actually do the math of how much more people can afford. How many customers will they lose vs. how much more money. A tax cut makes it easier to raise prices.

    A tax cut will put money into the hands of the rich and corps which wasn’t there before. They will then use that money to offshore/outsource, play leveraged games or buy ridiculous luxuries. These things make you worse off.

    There is only one rule right now: nothing of significance can be fixed till you break/tax the rich. Nothing.

  3. polyblog

    My husband’s and my combined SSI went up about $65 per month(supposedly by the rate of inflation), but the escrow on our devalued home went up $85 per month, as well as our home/auto insurance (haven’t figured out by how much yet). So, yes, the bleeding continues and even gets worse. At this rate we can’t afford to get much older.

  4. Matt Stoller

    They do actually do the math of how much more people can afford. How many customers will they lose vs. how much more money. A tax cut makes it easier to raise prices.

    So Comcast colludes with your water utility which colludes with your bank which colludes with your health insurance company?

    I feel like the explanation is missing a step.

  5. someofparts

    So Ian, when are you folks in Canada going to start closing the border to keep us out? I would.

  6. Joanie in Brooklyn

    “So Comcast colludes with your water utility which colludes with your bank which colludes with your health insurance company?” No, that’s not what Ian was implying. My interpretation of what he meant is that there is virtually no variation in pricing for cable or health insurance or water utility in any given town, city or county. Check around where you live, the difference in price for food, cable or almost anything you can name is miniscule. It’s almost a waste of time to “bargain shop”, but yet we do it; more for the “feel good” factor than the savings. It’s almost as if these entities are price fixing.

    Ian says it more clearly here: “Because almost every major industry is an oligopoly or a local monopoly, as consumers, they cannot move from one company to another, as the companies are almost all in collusion and raising prices more or less in lockstep.”

  7. Ian Welsh

    Collusion between industries is rare, as far as I know. But de-facto collusion within industries is obvious. Prices rising in lockstep used to be considered de-facto evidence.

    I do have a friend who used to do this sort of work, and they do do the numbers. Of course, with everyone trying to pick the consumers pockets, they are likely to kill too many consumers, but hey, whatever.

  8. Morocco Bama

    Well, in one sense, pricing people out of the market for some industries is a good thing. Obviously, that doesn’t apply to basic food stuffs, medical care, insurance and any other basic quality of life products and/or services. But the rest of the shit, please, by all means you bloody fools, price the majority of us out of the market so I don’t have to witness another day of the rapacious rape of this planet.

    Another excellent post, Ian, but considering your last post, the chances of taxing the rich are slim to none at this point. All of that stolen wealth is going to have to be pried from their cold dead hands, I’m afraid, but alas, there’s hardly anyone up to the challenge.

  9. Celsius 233

    What I find fascinating is the pricing in America for cable and Internet services and the prices here in Thailand for same said services.
    Basic Internet @ 6mb is $19.03/mos. at the present exchange rate.
    9mb is $29.03/mos.
    Satellite TV (no cable yet) for premium service is $61.29/mos.
    Unless I’m mistaken, the prices here aren’t that much different than in the U.S. This in a country where the average wage is about $260/mos.
    I haven’t had a TV since 1994 (I left in ’03) and I’ll be damned if I’ll start watching now.
    I do not have any truck with MSM and that whole cabal.
    Frankly; the U.S. citizens are prisoners of their own minds/thinking/indoctrination/sillyness!
    Little to no sympathy coming from this one…

  10. There was a slight price war going on between AT&T and Comcast last year. They were both losing so many customers they were bargaining with people to stay or bribing them to sign up. Now that everyone is settled into being poor, the cable companies have hit their bottom numbers for service. The only thing that will make prices go down further will be the worsening of the economy.

    oh and fuck AT&T and Comcast.

  11. Tony Wikrent

    I’m not laughing, certainly not hysterically. This is very serious stuff: “assuming competent individuals of good will in power.” It takes us back to the founding of the republic and the “Spirit of 76.” As I added to the Wikipedia entry on the economic history of the USA a few weeks ago:

    Both the Revolution, and the creation of the Constitution and federal union, were motivated by specific beliefs that only a republican form of government could ensure political and economic freedom; that the goal of any good government was to promote the general welfare, and that the maintenance of republican government depended above all else on a sense of public virtue, or civic virtue.[18] In his 1973 study of the economic principles established at the foundation of the United States, E.A.J. Johnson wrote:

    “The general view, discernible in contemporaneous literature, was that the responsibility of government should involve enough surveillance over the enterprise system to ensure the social usefulness of all economic activity. It is quite proper, said Bordley, for individuals to “choose for themselves” how they will apply their labor and their intelligence in production. But it does not follow from this that “legislators and men of influence” are freed from all responsibility for giving direction to the course of national economic development. They must, for instance, discountenance the production of unnecessary commodities of luxury when common sense indicates the need for food and other essentials. Lawmakers can fulfill their functions properly only when they “become benefactors to the publick”; in new countries they must safeguard agriculture and commerce, encourage immigration, and promote manufactures. Admittedly, liberty “is one of the most important blessings which men possess,” but the idea that liberty is synonymous with complete freedom from restraint “is a most unwise, mistaken apprehension.” True liberty demands a system of legislation that will lead all members of society “to unite their exertions” for the public welfare. It should therefore be the policy of government to aid and foster certain activities or kinds of business that strengthen a nation, even as it should be the duty of government to repress “those fashions, habits, and practices, which tend to weaken, impoverish, and corrupt the people.” [19]

    What causes me anguish now is that I can’t digest and write this material as fast as our situation worsens. Every day, there are more signs of radicalization on the tubez. Unfortunately, many people are beginning to look to Marxism as a possible new model for restructuring the economy – despite the long, and painful historical record of failure. But I have found, in looking back at the American Revolution, that the ideas of public virtue are almost as, well, revolutionary, as anything Marx wrote. From my notes on Gordon Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic:

    GW 53-54 “The sacrifice of individual interests to the greater good of the whole formed the essence of republicanism and comprehended for Americans the idealistic goal of their Revolution. From this goal flowed all of the Americans’ exhortatory literature and all that made their ideology truly revolutionary… it alone was enough to make the Revolution one of the great utopian movements of American history. By 1776 the Revolution came to represent a final attempt, perhaps—given the nature of American society—even a desperate attempt, by many Americans to realize the traditional Commonwealth ideal of a corporate society, in which the common good would be the only objective of government.”

    55 “From the logic of belief that “all government… is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community,” …followed the Americans’ unhesitating adoption of republicanism in 1776. The peculiar excellence of republican government was that it was “wholly characteristical of the purport, matter or object for which government ought to be instituted.” By definition it had no other end than the welfare of the people: res publica, the public affairs, or the public good. “The word republic, said Thomas Paine, “means the public good, or the good of the whole, in contradistinction to the despotic form, which makes the good of the sovereign, or of one man, the only object of government.” “

    60-61 “In a republic “each individual gives up all private interest that is not consistent with the general good, the interest of the whole body.” For the republican patriots of 1776 the commonweal was all encompassing—a transcendent object with a unique moral worth that made partial considerations fade into insignificance. “Let regard be had only to the good of the whole” was the constant exhortation by publicists and clergy. Ideally, republicanism obliterated the individual. “A Citizen,” said Sam Adams, “owes everything to the Commonwealth.” “Every man in a republic,” declared Benjamin Rush, “is public property. His time, his talents—his youth—his manhood—his old age—nay more, life, all belong to his country.” “No man is a true republican,” wrote a Pennsylvanian in 1776, “that will not give up his single voice to that of the public.” “

    Essex Result, Theophilus Parsons; Memoir, 365, Adams to Caleb Davis, Apr. 3, 1781, Cushing, ed., Writings of Samuel Adams, IV, 255; Benjamin Rush, “On the Defects of the Confederation” (1787), Dagobert D. Runes, ed., The Selected Writings of Benjamin Rush (N.Y., 1947), 31; Four Letters on Interesting Subjects (Philadelphia, 1776), 20.

    A decade and a half later, as the country feebly stumbled along under the Articles of Confederation, there was great anxiety and despair that this utopian vision seemed so far from being realized, and that the sacrifices made during the war had been in vain. Perhaps the masterful stroke of genius of the framers of the Constitution, the great insight that gave such enduring resiliency to so simple a document, was that Americans were forced to erect a new structure of government that incorporated their exhaustive inquiry into why their utopian vision of the republic had failed to materialize. Jefferson lament in 1782, “If men were angels we would not need government,” was not just a sad lament, but the expression of a realization and determination to design a system of government that fully accounted for human weakness and foibles, and incorporated measures—checks and balances—that would restrict and channel the selfish energies of humans in such a way as to promote the general welfare. The laissez faire of free market economics was never an end in the sight of any of the founders. In fact, as Bailyn notes, one of the great founders of free market thinking that conservatives today proudly point to, Bernard Mandelville, was reviled and explicitly denounced by the American pamphleteers he read as an opponent of Enlightenment rationalism, one of the five major foundational sources of American revolutionary thinking. (BB page 28) The idea that private vices could lead to public good was, to the thinking of the time, absurd and ridiculous.

    BB refers to The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, by Bernard Bailyn, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1967

    The argument I want to make, and which I desperately hope takes root among my fellow citizens, is that modern conservative theory and doctrine, especially on economics, is seditious and treasonous, once you fully understand the ideology of the American Revolution. Both Wood and Bailyn reject the economic determinism school of Charles Beard and show how truly revolutionary the American revolutionaries were.

  12. I don’t think a whopping 2% temporary tax holiday (which doesn’t even keep up with our modest inflation) will matter much to most household budgets or business planning, whatever the supposed economic effects are supposed to be. But even if it did, I think that is only half the story. Less than half.
    The other part is the dogshit stupid American consumer who will waste any “excess” income on unnecessary items (like choosing gas guzzling SUVs, or stupid recreational vehicles over cars that are cheaper to buy and to own) or even the apparently responsible ones who took the extra income when single income household turned into double income households and started bidding wars on homes in supposedly better school districts (and now they are underwater and stuck in overpriced houses). Americans have been stretched to the max for a generation now, but most folks that could just raided their home equity or what should have been their savings and frittered it away on lifestyles that they should have known they couldn’t afford. If we had sane folks in charge of the Fed and Congress and the Whitehouse, I think any return to a better economy would also mean a return to profligate spending and waste of resources, individually and collectively.
    I don’t want to sound like the Republicans who claim that having cell phones mean the poor in America are not poor. But when I see young people, often with kids already, who are obviously poor but have smart phones that must cost them at least $100/mo plus plenty of other gadgets and services that they probably think are necessities, I just can’t imagine what their priorities must be like (I mean, TV might be tempting if there were good programs on every night or even every week, but who the fuck pays $50+/month for cable just so they can watch Real Housewives from Hell or Kim K whine and shop – WITH constant commercial interruptions). These are not people who would have the discipline or self-restraint to walk away from overpriced cable or wireless service or whateever it would take to force the duopolies and monopolies to set their prices reasonably. Much less would they have what it takes to do any sort of collective bargaining for employment.
    People in America do not pencil out what they can afford or how much they need to save in order to retire. They look around and compare their income to their peers’ income, then look at what their peers have (houses, cars, vacations), and based on that spend just as much or more. Then when they run into trouble (job loss, medical bills, etc) they are fuct. It’s been this way for decades. That’s why the depression of the last 3 years has not set off any panic, despite the widespread misery it’s causing. We’ve become inured to it (inured to other people’s suffering at least, when it hits home, of course being fuct is being fuct). Does anybody else remember the economic anxiety of the 70’s and 80’s? Those were much better times than now, and yet now people seem MUCH more complacent about the economy (OWS notwithstanding). Yes they are worried about it, but nobody seems to think anybody in power can do anything about it, and so why get too worked up about it?

  13. (On the other hand, it’s just as well folks wasted their money and didn’t save it, because had they saved it, there would have been just that much more candy (i.e. pensions and 401Ks) in the baby’s hands for the banksters and corporate thieves to steal. Same goes for higher incomes, if we can even imagine Americans being able to wring those out of.)

  14. I hope, Ian, that you’re talking about “tax the rich” in the sense of breaking their power, and not in the sense of doing so in order that the “99%” can collect from those taxes in order to get “their fair share of the wealth” which the nation generates or to assure that the rich “pay their fair share” of the cost of government.

    The national obsession with who has how much money while ignoring the slaughter of women and children overseas and the loss of civil liberties at home in the name of “keeping us safe” shames me as an American and a former member of America’s armed forces. Certainly there are economic forces at work in this country which need to be addressed, but the fact that envy of the rich is the only thing which is able to arouse Americans to protest is profoundly disgusting to me.

    Obama started this “tax the rich” nonsense and the rant against “income inequality” as a distraction from his policies which favor corportism over the individual and his proclivity for “national security” abuse and endless war. With the American focus on “what’s in it for me” and being about money, the voters took the bait hook, line and sinker.

  15. Bolo

    guest:

    But when I see young people, often with kids already, who are obviously poor but have smart phones that must cost them at least $100/mo plus plenty of other gadgets and services that they probably think are necessities, I just can’t imagine what their priorities must be like (I mean, TV might be tempting if there were good programs on every night or even every week, but who the fuck pays $50+/month for cable just so they can watch Real Housewives from Hell or Kim K whine and shop – WITH constant commercial interruptions). These are not people who would have the discipline or self-restraint to walk away from overpriced cable or wireless service or whateever it would take to force the duopolies and monopolies to set their prices reasonably.

    On the topic of smart phones, communicating with friends and family is a necessity. The reason you see poor young families with smart phones is because all their friends and many of their family members have them too. When I hang out with people my age or younger (less than 30 years old), smart phones are everywhere. Routine social interaction involves looking things up online, using google maps to find addresses/phone numbers, texting, taking pictures, playing music or video for others, etc. Not everywhere and all the time, but often enough that those who don’t have smart phones–such as myself–are a bit left out. I’m a social recluse compared to how I was in my early 20s, so it doesn’t bother me that I’m not in on all the fun. However, if I were more active or younger, I could see a smart phone being close to a necessity.

    As it is, I don’t even have a text message plan on my old-style cell phone. This hugely reduces my communication abilities with my friends and I have to remind many of them not to text me because it costs me $0.25 just to read each one. If I didn’t have a computer and access to facebook, I would not have a social life at all. Everything is planned on facebook. Everything.

    I don’t know the utility of having a smart phone when you have kids, but I’d guess that its handy to be able to take a mobile internet connection with you rather than be tied down to a desktop or lug around a laptop. An internet connection (either mobile or at home) has quickly become a necessity.

    And as for paying through the nose for cable that you don’t watch–everyone I know voices the same complaint that you do, though with the added note that there are just enough shows they want to watch that they don’t get rid of it. It seems like everyone watches just a handful of channels/shows and couldn’t care less about any of the other content on there. They’re paying for entertainment that they want but also getting lots of content they don’t want. Everyone I know would love to pay less for just the content that they want, but the cable companies don’t allow this.

    I don’t have cable but do subscribe to Netflix streaming and DVD, so I think there’s a happy medium there. The only problem is not getting sports games, which would be a big deal to a lot of people but not me.

    This is all a long-winded way of saying that its not just a question of self-discipline, but also of social connections as well. For many people, to not participate in these systems is to not see friends or family.

  16. Bernard

    since we have been re-distributing wealth to the Rich for the last 40 years, i find such pleas of not “taxing the Rich” sad and typical of the America i live in.

    the Success of the “Poor picked upon” Rich propaganda is so pervasive as to be unconscious and inherently heralded/defended by the very “suckers” who subsidize the Rich with their taxes.

    the amount of ignorance by Americans of our present “tax the Poor to give to the Rich” policy, of the Government and those Parties/R/D involved, is not astounding, when i consider how well the Propaganda has been embedded into our language/thought.

    i remember hearing about how Competition was good for business and America. what a good line that was. Business liked competition up to a point. Competition is useful only to achieve dominance and stopped once complete control of the Market has been achieved.

    such uneducated Americans have bought hook line and sinker the “Poor Rich” BS. , and voted themselves poor, via wealth re-distribution a la Congress, the cause of America’s demise. Reagan did such a good job selling America to the average ignorant American. All so the Rich could take their rightful place on the Throne. Caretaker Obama/Bush/Clinton being their Representatives to the Sheeple they so completely fooled.

    it is apparently okay/Capitalist to redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich in American and not okay/Communist/Socialist to do the opposite.

    a truly sad sign of the ignorance of the Sheeple/Americans and of the success of their fleecing.

    Americans truly are exceptional. refusing to see their own handiwork in this “Morning in America” Con, and buying all the lies to keep on believing this false “reality”.

    Ah, the blowback involved!

  17. tom allen

    I’m pretty much with Bolo on this subject. Same with SUV’s. If you have a family with young children, SUV’s make sense — they’re what station wagons or VW vans were when I was a kid. They’re big, they’re protective, they keep the kids entertained. Of course they’re inefficient for everyone else, but for young families they actually make sense.

    Now I’m a middle-aged old fart with no young kids of my own, and while a car would be useful for getting groceries and stuff, I could make do with the same old beater I had in high school or college. One of my brothers and both my sisters, though, are raising kids. What irks me are the commercials showing the macho dude plowing through the rain forest alone with his GPS in his SUV — gah! That’s why I’ve pretty much stopped watching TV altogether. (See again, middle-aged old fart.) My laptop computer, though, that is damn near a necessity, for work and for play.

    Shorter: Each generation and family has its social media and individual needs. Just know when we’re being suckered and monopolized and by whom.

  18. zot23

    The long range con on the payroll tax is that it is win/win/win for the elites/corporations/corrupt politicians.

    You get people to believe that the payroll tax is necessary to get more more in their pockets since times are so tight. The fact that this money is robbing social security from running a 37+ year surplus is lost on Joe Six-Pack who sees another $80/mo. So it passes and as Ian notes, even if it put a solid, extra $80/mo in their pockets, the corporations figure out there is some coin to extract and so they extract it. Cable companies are a great example as Ian points out above. So the money disappears down an inflation hole and Joe 6 is back in the same bind. But now, is there any way politicians can not extend that payroll tax cut now that it is priced in for survival? Meaning if they yank it away after the corps have raised the price of living by $80/mo to suck up that surplus, how can you take it back? If anything, the impulse is that much stronger to make the last payroll tax permanent, issue a new temporary cut to provide more “relief” and the cycle continues. The big loser in all this is SS itself, which goes from 37 years solvent to 31 to 23 to 15 to 8 to 1 to insolvent as the cycle winds on. And Gee, who would want to get rid of SS and unwind the greatest social program we’ve ever had in America? Who indeed…

    This is a scam, front to back and tip to tail. To think this isn’t a straight up shafting of everyone else by the rich is pure folly.

  19. soullite

    I love how the same people who gladly tell you how advanced economics is – that they can prove, for instance, that illegal immigration doesn’t hurt low income workers – expect us to believe that businesses are completely incapable of finding their ideal price point on a curve.

    Everything has to be a conspiracy, because basic math is hard.

  20. Ian Welsh

    Breaking the rich’s power is goal#1.

    There are also useful things the money can be spent on, like switching the economy to a different energy basis.

  21. ks

    Good points Bolo though I think you may be conflating social conditioning with necessity a bit. People certainly communicated with friends and family before smart phones.
    Also, tom allen, station wagons are still around. : ) The modern breed compares very favorably with SUVs ( a little less space but much better gas mileage and handling).

  22. Morocco Bama

    but the fact that envy of the rich is the only thing which is able to arouse Americans to protest is profoundly disgusting to me.

    I can tell you, unequivocally, in no uncertain terms, I do not envy the rich. I couldn’t possibly envy tasteless, sadistic, shallow, conceited, greedy, manipulative criminals. I do hate them, though, and for good reason. They can’t just live and let live, let alone collaborate and cooperate in a union of solidarity. They have created, and perpetuate, a world that mandates the destiny of the remainder of the world’s population. Their stolen wealth affords them status and influence over the fates of the remaining 7 billion people on this planet. They are egregious abusers and exploiters. They are endemic of a System that is rotten to the core. A System, contrary to what Tony is asserting, that was always corruptible, and therefore was always destined to be corrupted. Yes, removing their heads wouldn’t do the trick, although it would be icing on the cake. The problem must be tackled at its roots….and the roots are the System….the System that allows sadistic, psychopathic Plutocrats to hold sway over the destiny of humanity and this planet. The System must go. So long as there are “rich” people, there is still the System. They are the Gatekeepers of the System….them, and their technical, sycophantic minions.

    So, Bill H., I agree with what you say about all the other issues you raised, and I agree with Ian’s focus on the wealthy in this latest post. The two are not mutually exclusive, and in fact are very much related. A Venn Diagram would show significant overlap.

  23. Ian Welsh

    I don’t want people to envy the rich, because then they will just want to be like them.

    What I want is for them to HATE the rich. They should, the rich are killing them, impoverishing them, throwing them out of their homes, poisoning them, taking away their rights, and so on.

  24. alyosha

    @MB – money is an amplifier. In the hands of good people, great and wonderful things can be accomplished, in the hands of bad – all the pathologies you describe. Furthermore – and this might sound airy-fairy – the more you disdain wealth (and all wealthy people), the less of it you personally will attract to yourself. Take care that you’re not creating a “money repulsion field” around yourself, that is, unless you really would rather be poor, money-wise (there are many kinds of poverty, and money-poor is but one).

    Abraham Lincoln put it something like this: if you want to test a man, don’t give him poverty – most can handle this; give them wealth – you’ll then see what their character is really like.

    But I definitely agree with the comment upstream, that envy of the rich is the only thing which is able to arouse Americans to protest is profoundly disgusting to me. What sad, lost, little children dominate this country.

  25. Morocco Bama

    It sounds like you’re protecting your interests, Al, and you’re cherry-picking my posts. If you read my entire post, which you apparently haven’t, your comment to me is unnecessary, and you’ve created a Strawman to take the place of what I’ve said.

    Yep, wealth in the hands of the benevolent can do a great deal of good. Look at the castles and pyramids that serve as testament.

    Concentration of anything leads to bad outcomes…ultimately….and ultimately is where we are now. Decentralize and diversify as much as possible. That’s the key. Accumulation and acquisition are our shackles….it has enslaved us, and will most likely be our end. The direction we need to go is clear, but the logistics are a formidable bitch.

  26. “What I want is for them to HATE the rich.”

    All well and good, but pretty much useless when we keep reelecting the same corrupt politicians because the hatred of the rich has diverted us from the problem of legislators who create the framework which promotes the whole process. The endless harping about how the rich are “killing them, impoverishing them, throwing them out of their homes, poisoning them, taking away their rights, and so on” is allowing Obama’s distraction to serve precisely the purpose that he intended, namely keep him and his henchmen in power, because we are expending our vitriol on the wrong damned target.

  27. Morocco Bama

    So Bill, are you saying OWS is the brainchild of Obama and his henchmen? I’d like to hear more about that. Can you elaborate and clarify?

  28. viajera

    Frankly, I can’t get too worked up over the rising cost of cable. There is an alternative: stream all your favorite shows through Hulu or Netflix. I watch on my laptop, but if you want to watch on TV just buy a Roku box for under $100. I haven’t owned a TV since 2005, and even then rarely watched it – it was there mostly for my then-partner. Instead I watch everything I want, when I want, on my laptop for a whopping $15.98/month plus the cost of high-speed internet (which I need anyway for my work).

    Now, I agree with Ian’s general point – the corporations will find a way to get that money back from you/us. I don’t happen to accept cable as a “necessity”, but there are many other true necessities which have experienced similar rate increases recently. Case in point: auto insurance (required in most, if not all, states; and cars are, unfortunately, a necessity in much of the country, including most of the US West outside of major metro areas). I would consider health insurance a necessity (though I, like many others, have gone without it at times for lack of funds).

    As for guest’s comment re: smart phones, not all plans cost anywhere near $100/month. I have an unlimited data-and-text + phone plan for $35/month from Virgin Mobile – cheaper than my old phone-and-text-only plan from T-Mobile! It’s well worth the cost to me. It’s my primary means of communication (no land line since ’05), my camera, my map when I get lost, my phone and address book when I need to find someone or some place, and my emergency backup when my 17-year-old car breaks down somewhere far from a pay phone.

  29. LaughingCat

    @viajera uh, stupid, they’re just gonna jack up the price on high speed internet. Three years ago, I was paying $40 a month for high speed internet, now I’m paying $60 a month. Get a clue you idiot.

  30. LaughingCat

    Where exactly are they going to get the money for these pithy of a tax cut? They have to either borrow money like they did last time, in which case it is a future tax increase, or they have to cut programs, and they’re sure as hell not going to cut the military since we’re heading for war in Iran. Funny how war criminal Obama fines his political courage on such a non-issue but not when it comes to civil liberties, healthcare, or holding WS accountable. BTW, Obama just ended the most successful minority small business program in American history.

  31. “So Bill, are you saying OWS is the brainchild of Obama and his henchmen? I’d like to hear more about that. Can you elaborate and clarify?”

    No, just a bunch of people who were ready for what he was selling. He is pamdering to corporations, engaging in endless war, furthering the imperial presidency and continuing the degradation of civil liberty, and he needed something to distract voters from that. For the 2008 election it was “change you can believe in,” and we all know how well that worked out, and for 2010 it’s “the problem isn’t me and the Democrats, it’s the rich.” OWS are the people who are all too ready to chant “we want our fair share” and disregard Obama’s actual performance, the people who are willing to buy into Obama’s distraction.

    Did he plan this “tax the rich” and “make the rich pay their fair share” as a deliberate and cynical ploy to distract voters from the real problems which he is not addressing and from his performance in terms of the maintenance of Democratic power? You bet he did.

  32. Morocco Bama

    Bill, those are fair points and worthy of further discussion by all here, but to be fair, I don’t think Ian’s aligning himself with Obama and OWS on this point. Since money talks in the System in which we currently operate, those with all the money hold sway over the rest. It appears imperative that the mechanism of “money talks” needs to be broken to have any chance of bringing down the corrupt System. Frankly, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell The Masses could pull off a tax the rich scheme considering the System and its trajectory. But a way must be found to cut off the influence of the moneyed, because it is the engine for the greater egregious acts of which you speak…..and that’s just a start to a very long and arduous journey.

  33. viajera

    @Laughing Cat uh, stupid, they’re just gonna jack up the price on high speed internet. Three years ago, I was paying $40 a month for high speed internet, now I’m paying $60 a month. Get a clue you idiot.

    Uh, gee, how about actually reading my post before calling me “stupid” and “idiot”, eh? Pot. Kettle.

    I was making a clear distinction between necessities (auto and health insurance, and – as I clearly stated – in my case, as for many others, high speed internet is a necessity for work) and non-necessities (cable TV vs. Netflix and Hulu). High-speed internet is rapidly becoming a necessity in this society. Nearly everyone I know has it at home, *PLUS* cable TV. Thus I’m arguing for Netflix + Hulu (at $16/mo) as a substitute for cable (at $60-100+/mo), above and beyond the fixed cost (whatever that may be, which for me right now is $20/mo) of high-speed internet. That’s a huge cost savings. Even if they raised the cost of broadband while lowering cable TV, you couldn’t just give up and switch out internet for TV, as internet serves so many other necessary functions. It’s not an either/or question.

    Get it??

  34. Ian Welsh PERMALINK*
    December 28, 2011
    I don’t want people to envy the rich, because then they will just want to be like them.
    What I want is for them to HATE the rich. They should, the rich are killing them, impoverishing them, throwing them out of their homes, poisoning them, taking away their rights, and so on.
    **********************
    I think that just aroused me. 🙂

  35. Celsius 233

    A sea change? That’s the sought after solution, no? Somehow I just don’t see it happening; there’s an impotence(?) to almost everything I see going into the rhetoric, coming out of all the mouths, featured on all of the news; in all its iterations.
    Yeah, the good/real news programs have the alternative voices; and there’s the schism; speaking to the already converted.
    Hate the rich? I already do! But that very notion is the antithesis of every/all things Americans are taught from the very beginning of their lives. Most of the U.S. citizens are taught to equate wealth with success; therefore the rich are to be looked up to and emulated.
    Only a sea change will do it; but whence cometh the “changer”?
    And therein is the second problem; we’re looking for Klatu, while utterly failing to understand change has to come from within; we’re the “changer”, and until that reality strikes home/heart we’re just going to keep the impotent yelling, flaming, blaming, and dying the slow death of a poverty of intellect and money for a sustainable life. That’s how I envision this descent into hell with no salvation in sight…

  36. @Morocco Bama

    You are undoubtedly correct that the “tax the rich” cannot happen, but diversions don’t need to be workable to be successful. All Obama needs is for us to be on the subject of “the rich” instead of talking about that which not only has he not done, but which he has not even attempted, like jobs, restoration of civil liberties, etc. In that he has succeeded completely, because look at what the topic is.

    Bringing down “the money” in order to destroy the system is hugely unworkable. Suppose we burn Wall Street to the ground and imprison everyone who works there. What do we have left? We still have the corrupt legislators taking bribes, now, from oil companies. Burn down the oil companies and we still have corrupt legislators taking bribes from insurance companies. Etc. There are 535 legislators, while there is an endless line of people willing and eager to bribe them.

    There is no framework of law for us to take down the rich. The lawmakers can do it, but we cannot. We do have the power to take down the corrupt lawmakers.

  37. Morocco Bama

    Bill, I’m not part of OWS and I’m not an Obama supporter. Obama doesn’t enter the equation for me. He’s a cheerleader, a front man and nothing he and his administration do surprises me. I expect it. To concentrate on him and his administration and their latest egregious policies is as much a distraction as concentrating on The Rich…because they’re both tentacles of the same Octopus, or heads of the same Beast. It’ s the Octopus, or Beast, that must be the focus of any efforts, or else said efforts will be in vain.

    I understand the reasoning for going after The Rich, i.e. Tax The Rich, because an effective strategy must consider starving The Beast, and let’s face it, a large part of The Beast’s nourishment is accumulated wealth and the accompanying status and influence it affords. However, I will admit that the Beast’s nourishment is more than just that, so doing only that will not only not completely starve the Beast, it will not kill it either.

    No more half measures and quarter measures. If this thing is to be stopped in its tracks once and for all, the delusions and myths about returning to Shangri-La must be jettisoned, and any misdirected notions of rehabilitation must be abandoned.

  38. Morrocco, I think that you and I agree more than we differ, and it’s always interesting to discuss with people who are expressing thoughts rather than merely spouting talking points. I’m inclined to think Obama is a bit more than a mere cheerleader, but the overall point you make is well taken and I have no argument with it.

    I think that you sort of supported my point about taking down the rich, but when I said that we have the power to take down the corrupt legislators I was speaking theory and, in actuality, I’m not sure we actually do and that any attempt to do so would be, as you phrase it, another half measure.

    My personal feeling after watching this nation slide into oligarchy and self serving voter apathy, is that we have gone past the tipping point and that nothing short of literal revolution is going to put us back on course.

  39. BDBlue

    On the upside, the payroll tax also weakens social security politically by making it a “welfare” program, so what’s not for an oligarch or “progressive” to love?

    You can buy a smart phone for a little more than $100 and get unlimited text/streaming for about $30-40 a month if you get one of those non-contract phones and are willing to limit your talk minutes and other things (e.g., don’t care about roaming). Given that Verizon charges folks in my area $30-40 a month just for a local phone line – yes, they are a monopoly, I can’t really say poorer people are wrong with going the smart phone route. A phone, IMO, is a necessity.

    Now, cable/satellite is a waste of money assuming you live in an area where you can get decent reception. A big if for most people and digital has made it worse. With analog you could watch snowy tv from a ways away – I did it all the time in my childhood, pre-cable – but with digital signals the entire picture pixilates and you can’t hear or see shit.

  40. Bolo

    @ks:

    Good points Bolo though I think you may be conflating social conditioning with necessity a bit. People certainly communicated with friends and family before smart phones.

    I don’t know if I’d call it social conditioning though. It’s certainly possible to communicate with friends and family without smart phones (as you’ve pointed out, and as I currently do), but when everyone else is using them and preferentially communicates via them… you kind of have to do it too or else you end up limiting yourself. It blurs the line between necessity and social conditioning. It’s only going to get more intense too–as it stands now there are plenty of people without smart phones, but in 5 or 10 years they’ll be pretty much standard for all. Using only a “dumb” phone will be like using a mechanical typewriter. I may exaggerate here a bit… but only a bit.

    To bring this side-conversation back around to the main topic, the growing social necessity to adopt new technologies and buy into new systems for communication/information (and, in longer time frames, new systems of transportation, material consumption, living arrangements, etc.) is part of the reason that monopolies, oligopolies, and the rich in general must be broken.

    Technology does not set us free and will never deliver a utopia, but it does open up new avenues of action, thought, and life. As the pace of technological change has increased, the opportunities for the elite to use it to maintain their grip on the rest of us have increased as well (or, the opportunities for a new elite to supplant the old–but still maintain the overall structure). The important struggle of the 21st century is going to be whether or not a small group of plutocrats will be able to dictate and control the creation and distribution of these new avenues. Similar to the 20th century, only the details of what’s in play are different–and the details are important. Given the technological developments on the horizon right now (nanotech, biotech, robo-tech, info-tech, cognitive-tech), control is going to be extremely important. And of course, add in energy tech as well, which is necessary to run all of these.

    The stakes in these tech areas are huge. The current rich have shown how venal, corrupt, and incompetent they are with our existing system. It’s almost impossible to overstate how bad things will get in the next 100 years if this doesn’t change.

  41. Curt

    “Breaking the rich’s power is goal#1.”

    I agree but how? If our elected officials are bought and paid for by corporate and special interests what chance is there for change other than the whole system burning to the ground?

    Maybe I just answered my own question.

  42. mistah charley, ph.d.

    hatred is bad.

  43. beowulf

    “Frankly, I can’t get too worked up over the rising cost of cable. There is an alternative: stream all your favorite shows through Hulu or Netflix.”
    You’re overpaying. :o)
    http://www.quicksilverscreen.ch/
    http://www.thefreetvnetwork.com/

  44. tBoy

    Everything most people need to know – watch the first 7 minutes of this CSpan interview with Chris Hedges – http://www.c-span.org/Events/In-Depth-with-Author-and-Journalist-Chris-Hedges/10737426679-1/

  45. Celsius 233

    tBoy PERMALINK
    January 2, 2012
    ___________

    Hedges hits all the high-points; nice one…

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