There is an advantage to Biden going big. There is something for everyone.
Sharing is easier to sell than donating.
A big strategic error was embedded in the Great Society programs. The most visible programs are need-based. Food stamps. Aid to Dependent children. HUD housing subsidies. School lunches. Head Start. Pell grants.
Middle-income people were taxed to pay for benefits they didn't qualify for.
Obama's Affordable Care Act continued that pattern. It has a sliding scale of benefits for the poorest, the not-so-poor, up into middle income people. People with jobs with benefits didn't need the ACA, but health benefits included in a job are a form of wages, so people whose efforts and good fortune entitled them to benefits--something earned--were paying taxes to help people whose efforts and less-good-fortune did not. It was donating down.
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| Luke 14 |
There is a simple logic to allocating valuable things when valuable things are scarce: give them to people who need them. The morality of that is deeply embedded in Western Civilization, and the vast majority of Americans grew up in the Judeo-Christian tradition. We are taught to help the poor, feed the hungry, give hospitality to the stranger, but the Christian tradition acknowledged that this teaching was hard to follow and against our natures. The reward comes in heaven, not now.
I get Social Security and Medicare. As a child I got free public education for twelve years. There is no shame in this. It is near universal for people living and paying taxes in this country. All three of those "entitlements" enjoy overwhelming public support. "Welfare" does not, the Old and New Testaments notwithstanding.
Need-based benefits pick at the scabs of jealousy and resentment in a free, diverse, capitalistic, multi-ethnic country. Incomes are unequal; abilities are unequal; attitudes and ambitions are unequal; inheritances are unequal. America includes people of different ethnic and racial backgrounds. Some people find themselves--or work hard to make themselves--prosperous and secure and others do not or can not.
Since there is a racial and ethnic component associated with outcomes, there is every opportunity for people who are prosperous and secure--or at least doing well enough to get benefits. They can assume the misfortunes of the poor are due to bad DNA, bad choices, bad attitudes, bad work habits. They made their choices and should live with the consequences. One can hear a dog-whistle of racial thinking, or not hear it, depending on ones inclination. Poverty is complex, with a multitude of overlapping and interconnected paths.
Biden went big. Biden's plan is generous to everyone. It targets benefits to 99% of the population, everyone making less than $400,000/year. Biden says even that 1% shares in the benefits because government policies helped make them rich and spreading the wealth means they get to spend their fortunes in a country whose democracy is secure. Better to be rich and taxed in a country at peace, than a bit richer and less-taxed in a country amid populist insurrection.
Can we afford to spend so lavishly? Modern Monetary Theory says we can. A key to the Biden proposal was where he said "Buy American. Buy American." He said there is no reason wind turbine blades cannot be made in Pittsburgh rather than Beijing. If the money to pay for infrastructure and Aid to Families benefits is taxed out of Americans and then re-spent here in America, the money did not disappear. It circulated. Because of progressive taxation it would be re-distributed downward, but there is something for everyone, including the turbine-fabricator in Pittsburgh earning a family-wage union income.
Biden's appeal to American unity is not just a rhetorical and political change from Trump, who profited politically by presenting a divided America and then winning the tribal war by owning and conquering the libs at home. Biden said we are one big tribe, and therefore taxing Americans and buying American was the moral and political justification for big spending. Everyone shares in the big pot.
Biden doesn't have robust majorities in Congress, but he has an edge and opportunity: People like getting benefits from the government. I like my Medicare and Social Security. And no one feels that sorry for the richest one percent of people, nor for corporations. People think they get away with not paying taxes. Square-shooter Mitt Romney paid taxes at the 15% rate. Trump is a billionaire and paid $750 per year. Try to convince middle-income Americans that the wealthy are overtaxed.
Biden has a shot.
3 comments:
One thing is emerging as we crawl out of the Trump morass:
Democrats do not have a majority in the Senate. Joe Manchin can not be called a Democrat and we need to stop pretending he is. Today he opposed DC statehood which just shows that he is boxed in and an anomaly. Lacking a majority the Biden administration will not be able to forward a Progressive agenda.
What then? 2022.
The Biden proposals are ambitious, and while I'm trying to be optimistic, it may be that the best we can hope for to bring these issues to the attention of a distracted and exhausted electorate and hope the midterms strengthen the Democratic position. These initiatives are polling well, but it's an open question whether their popularity will translate into votes.
Of course taxes must be raised. This is the fundamental conflict of this era. Republicans have nothing to offer the majority of Americans but pandering on culture, and are singularly and viciously focused on reducing or eliminating taxes on the wealthy. They will incite insurrection and race baiting to achieve this end.
People are waking up to this basic truth. It's called "woke".
The White woke left lost out to the policies and sensibilities of Black voters in South Carolina, but they are still a force in the Democratic Party.
Recent surveys have demonstrated that woke messaging is a political loser. If the Democrats lose one or both houses of Congress in 2022, it will most likely be the political equivalent of, “Get woke, go broke.“
A black woke is an awareness of being screwed by the white power structure. Pretty easy to be woke if you are brown or black. White woke is a pandering without involvement. Cheerleaders who never get their heads beat in. However I do resent calling free Need based programs, like food stamps, aid to the disabled, SSI for single mothers, Oregon Health Plan (Medicaid) giveaways that are resented by the middle class. Almost all families have a relative who has dipped into one of these safety net programs. They are there to uplift so the other relatives don’t have to chip in and pick up the pieces of a destroyed life. It’s shut up money, not enough to live on or eat on or even function on but enough to salve a conscience of the “well off” and encourage these “flakes” to stay away from climbing in your window or camping in a van in your street. It’s a pay off, and those who take it , know it. The vanishing middle class knows it could easily have to be on the food line, debate over prescription drugs or a can of beans or the rent. The old know it all too well. The young know their jobs can’t keep them in an apartment without a room mate to help with rent. At least Biden has a vision. The power structure will manipulate the message into the ground and only more broken families will keep the message alive...by living the street, by mounting militias, by mass shootings, by scapegoating, by conspiratorial fantasies , and religious fanaticism and marching to disrupt business as usual. Blessed are the meek.
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