Economists estimate that between 1981 and 2021, more than $50 trillion dollars moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.
[Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]
[Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American]
Thanks to Reagan and the Conservatives
- Thread starter What Would Jesus Do?
- Start date
That sounds about right, the numbers may even be higher.
Here's the email. Too long for 1 post, so links are in the next post.
Two big stories today that together reveal a broader landscape.
The first is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics today released another blockbuster jobs report. The country added 272,000 jobs in May, far higher than the 180,000 jobs economists predicted. A widespread range of sectors added new jobs, including health care, government, leisure and hospitality, and professional, scientific, and technical services. Wages are also up. Over the past year, average hourly earnings have grown 4.1%, higher than the rate of inflation, which was 3.4% over the same period.
The unemployment rate ticked up from 3.9% to 4%. This is not a significant change, but it does break the 27-month streak of unemployment below that number.
The second big story is that Justice Clarence Thomas amended a financial filing from 2019, acknowledging that he should have reported two free vacations he accepted from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow. While in the past he said he did not need to disclose such gifts, in today’s filing he claimed he had “inadvertently omitted” the trips on earlier reports. ProPublica broke the story of these and other gifts from Crow, including several more trips than Thomas has so far acknowledged.
Fix The Court, a nonprofit advocacy group that seeks to reform the federal courts, estimates that Thomas has accepted more than $4 million in gifts over the last 20 years. As economic analyst Steven Rattner pointed out, that’s 5.6 times more than the other 16 justices on the court in those years combined.
These two news items illustrate a larger story about the United States in this moment.
The Biden administration has quite deliberately overturned the supply-side economics that came into ascendancy in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan took office and that remained dominant until 2021, when Biden entered the White House. Adherents of that ideology rejected the idea that the government should invest in the “demand side” of the economy—workers and other ordinary Americans—to develop the economy, as it had done since 1933.
Instead, they maintained that the best way to nurture the economy was to support the “supply side”: those at the top. Cutting business regulations and slashing taxes would create prosperity, they said, by concentrating wealth in the hands of individuals who would invest in the economy more efficiently than they could if the government interfered in their choices. That smart investment would dramatically expand the economy, supporters argued, and everyone would do better.
But supply-side economics never produced the results its supporters promised. What it did do was move money out of the hands of ordinary Americans into the hands of the very wealthy. Economists estimate that between 1981 and 2021, more than $50 trillion dollars moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.
In order to keep that system in place, Republicans worked to make it extraordinarily difficult for Congress to pass laws making the government do anything, even when the vast majority of Americans wanted it to. With the rise of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to the position of Senate majority leader in 2007, they weaponized the filibuster so any measure that went against their policies would need 60 votes in order to get through the Senate, and in 2010 they worked to take over state legislatures so that they could gerrymander state congressional districts so severely that Republicans would hold far more seats than they had earned from voters.
With Congress increasingly neutered, the power to make law shifted to the courts, which Republicans since the Reagan administration had been packing with appointees who adhered to their small-government principles.
Clarence Thomas was a key vote on the Supreme Court. But as ProPublica reported in December 2023, Thomas complained in 2000 to a Republican member of Congress about the low salaries of Supreme Court justices (equivalent to about $300,000 today) and suggested he might resign. The congressman and his friends were desperate to keep Thomas, with his staunchly Republican vote, on the court. In the years after 2000, friends and acquaintances provided Thomas with a steady stream of gifts that supplemented his income, and he stayed in his seat.
But what amounts to bribes has compromised the court. After the news broke that Thomas has now disclosed some of the trips Crow gave him, conservative lawyer George Conway wrote: “It’s long past time for there to be a comprehensive criminal investigation, and congressional investigation, of Justice Thomas and his finances and his taxes. What he has taken, and what he has failed to disclose, is beyond belief, and has been so for quite some time.” A bit less formally, over a chart of the monetary value of the gifts Thomas has accepted, Conway added: “I mean. This. Is. Just. Nuts.”
As the Republican system comes under increasing scrutiny, Biden’s renewal of traditional economic policies is showing those policies to be more successful than the Republicans’ system ever was. If Americans turn against the Republican formula of slashing taxes and deregulating business, those at the top of the economy stand to lose both wealth and control of the nation’s economic system.
Trump has promised more tax cuts and deregulation if he is reelected, although the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently projected that his plan to extend the 2017 tax cuts that are set to expire in 2025 will add more than $3 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. In April, at a meeting with 20 oil executives, Trump promised to cut regulations on the fossil fuel industry in exchange for $1 billion in donations, assuring them that the tax breaks he would give them once he was in office would pay for the donation many times over (indeed, an analysis quoted in The Guardian showed his proposed tax cuts would save them $110 billion). On May 23, he joined fossil fuel executives for a fundraiser in Houston.
In the same weeks, Biden’s policies have emphasized using the government to help ordinary people rather than to move wealth upward.
On May 31 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that it will make its experimental free electronic filing system permanent. It asked all 50 states and the District of Columbia to sign on to the program and to help taxpayers use it. The program’s pilot this year was wildly successful, with more than 140,000 people filing that way. Private tax preparers, whose industry makes billions of dollars a year, oppose the new system.
The Inflation Reduction Act provided funding for this program and for beefing up the ability of the IRS to audit the wealthiest taxpayers. As Fatima Hussein wrote for the Associated Press, Republicans cut $1.4 billion from these funds last summer and will shift an additional $20 billion from the IRS to other programs over the next two years.
Today the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued five new reports showing that thanks in part to the administration's outreach efforts about the Affordable Care Act, the rate of Black Americans without health insurance dropped from 20.9% in 2010 to 10.8% in 2022. The same rate among Latinos dropped from 32.7% to 18%. For Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, the rate of uninsured dropped from 16.6% to 6.2%. And for American Indians and Alaska Natives, the rate dropped from 32.4% to 19.9%. More than 45 million people in total are enrolled in coverage under the Affordable Care Act.
President Biden noted the strength of today’s jobs report in a statement, adding: “I will keep fighting to lower costs for families like the ones I grew up with in Scranton.” Republicans “have a different vision,” he said, “one that puts billionaires and special interests first.” He promised: “I will never stop fighting for Scranton—not Park Avenue.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/06/07/may-jobs-unemployment/
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/jobs-report-may-06-07-24/index.html
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/07/jobs-report-may-2024-us-job-gains-totaled-272000-in-may.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-gift-disclosures-harlan-crow
https://fixthecourt.com/2024/06/a-staggering-tally-supreme-court-justices-accepted-hundreds-of-gifts-worth-millions-of-dollars/
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
https://apnews.com/article/treasury-income-taxes-irs-audits-direct-file-04c3b4b55ca0d37b2c40697a392c78aa
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/06/07/biden-harris-administration-releases-data-showing-historic-gains-health-care-coverage-minority-communities.html
https://thehill.com/business/budget/4652668-extending-trumps-tax-cuts-would-cost-us-trillions-of-dollars/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/donald-trump-big-oil-executives-alleged-deal-explained
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/trump-oil-industry-campaign
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/07/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-may-jobs-report/
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/jobs-report-may-06-07-24/index.html
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/07/jobs-report-may-2024-us-job-gains-totaled-272000-in-may.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-gift-disclosures-harlan-crow
https://fixthecourt.com/2024/06/a-staggering-tally-supreme-court-justices-accepted-hundreds-of-gifts-worth-millions-of-dollars/
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-money-complaints-sparked-resignation-fears-scotus
https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-america/
https://apnews.com/article/treasury-income-taxes-irs-audits-direct-file-04c3b4b55ca0d37b2c40697a392c78aa
https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2024/06/07/biden-harris-administration-releases-data-showing-historic-gains-health-care-coverage-minority-communities.html
https://thehill.com/business/budget/4652668-extending-trumps-tax-cuts-would-cost-us-trillions-of-dollars/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/16/donald-trump-big-oil-executives-alleged-deal-explained
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/trump-oil-industry-campaign
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/07/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-the-may-jobs-report/
Republican tax cuts to the rich everytime they're in power.com
Republican Democrats like Joe Manchin.org
The cons, with Gingrich, (sp), had the House during the Clinton years,
Explain.
If not for “DINOs” like Manchin, how would have Democrats reversed that forty-year trend?
Even without him Dems only had control of the House two years with Clinton and two with Obama. So four total years out of forty. That's not much.
I really hope you’re not doubting this because it’s crystal clear it’s been the case since he slashed corporate tax rates. CEO pay compared to worker pay growth since 1980. The middle class got effed.
Wait…you doubt that information? It all started with Reagan.
Because the elites don’t give a shit regardless of party affiliation? Why should it be on democrats to fix this broken system?
Yes, that tends to happen when the other party has the Oval Office.
I’m asking for specifics on what would be different under Democratic leadership to reverse the widening wage gap and shrinking middle class.
That’s kind of the entire point. Both Democrats and Republicans are sucking from the same tit.
Hence the problem: continuing down the same path election after election while ignoring the ridiculous amount of corruption in government thanks to the two-party system and career politicians. Neither Democrats nor Republicans are going to fix anything. Either party could have control over the house, senate, and executive branch and still not fix a damn thing other than to significantly increase their own personal wealth and that of their constituents.
Politicians talk about Main Street all the time, but it’s just lip service and heaping piles of bullshit. None of them actually care because they know the same idiots will stick to their tribe and continue to pull the lever for the party or person they stupidly think is actually working for them.
This is one of many reasons why I will never understand or respect millions of people’s sad devotion to the orange con man. I mean, people are willing to throw their lives away because they believe so deeply in this MAGA delusion. It’s the same false hope being peddled in churches and other religious institutions, provided you put enough money in the offering plate.
Evolution is just too damn slow of a process and full-fledged stupidity in America seems to be doing the opposite of decreasing.
The Democrats had control of the House all through the 1970’s and 1980’s until 1992.
Every one of the budgets Reagan submitted to the House was Dead On Arrival. DOA.
And every one of those Reagan budgets, save one, called for HIGHER spending than was eventually passed.
Congress (House) was controlled by Republicans 6 of Clinton's 8 years….Clinton was able to negotiate HIGHER tax rates on the Reagan tax cuts to “balance spending” (as well as institute “pay/go”)…..As soon as Clinton left office, Newt and Junior abandoned “pay/go”, passed their tax cuts, fully embraced deficit spending, started two wars a halfway around the world…..and blamed Democrats for the whole damn mess there created. Obama also had a Republican Congress for most of his term as POTUS……and a President cannot do a budget all by himself.
Question was why the Dems didn't fix taxes. They only had full control for 4 years out of 40. And 2 of those years were spent doing the ACA.
They decided NOT to pay for the war but to finance it, instead……THEY CHOSE TO CUT TAXES and increase spending….so yes Doobi, THEY were the two persons MOST responsible not for 9/11, but for the financial collapsed of 2007-08……..
Taxes and shipping manufacturing jobs overseas with NAFTA…..the fastest growing economic segment of the American economy since 1984 Reagan taxes in the race to poverty by the middle class……Bill Clinton warned America that “trickle down economics doesn’t work”…..but America chose to believe Newt and the Republicans.
In 1980, the US had 13 billionaires which had accumulated over the nation's first 200 years. In 1990, 10 years later, the US had 66 billionaires, 5 times as many. What happened during that decade?
The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America
William Kleinknecht
PublicAffairs, Jan 26, 2010 - Biography & Autobiography - 352 pages
Since Ronald Reagan left office -- and particularly after his death -- his shadow has loomed large over American politics: Republicans and many Democrats have waxed nostalgic, extolling the Republican tradition he embodied, the optimism he espoused, and his abilities as a communicator.
This carefully calibrated image is complete fiction, argues award-winning journalist William Kleinknecht. The Reagan presidency was epoch shattering, but not -- as his propagandists would have it -- because it invigorated private enterprise or made America feel strong again. His real legacy was the dismantling of an eight-decade period of reform in which working people were given an unprecedented sway over our politics, our economy, and our culture. Reagan halted this almost overnight.
In the tradition of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas?, Kleinknecht explores middle America -- starting with Reagan's hometown of Dixon, Illinois -- and shows that as the Reagan legend grows, his true legacy continues to decimate middle America.
NAFTA was signed into law by Bill Clinton, correct?
I don’t think available jobs are the issue anymore. The issue is stagnant wages and inflation.
What specific policies have or would have been put in place by Democrats to change all of that?
NAFTA was signed by Clinton, but it was Reagan's dreamchild, and Bush Sr. actually negotiated it. Clinton screwed up big time. Even Ross Perot warned us.
Also:
As U.S. farmers exported their subsidized corn to Mexico, local producer prices plummeted and small farmers could no longer earn enough to live on. Rural farmers left Southern Mexico in droves and migrated north, spurring increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants to the U.S. from Southern Mexico states.
https://cronkite.asu.edu/projects/b...ported their,U.S. from Southern Mexico states.
Also for reference, in July 2009, the minimum wage was raised to $7.25/hour, the last time it was raised in the past 15 years. Congressional republicans have opposed raising it every chance they have had since then. Fortunately post Covid, wages have been growing for the last 2-3 years. Inflation though has curbed some of that growth.
Right, so then Clinton was as much of the problem as anyone else, right?
As far as the minimum wage is concerned, yeah, it should be raised incrementally over time. I would imagine $11-13 an hour would be appropriate at the federal level for 2024. I don’t know. But I do know even if the minimum wage were $15 an hour that still wouldn’t be good enough to make ends meet for many families in many states.
So, again, we’re back to stagnant wages and inflation. How will either party fix that?
Clinton agreed to NAFTA to get Newt to agree to raise rates back to original Reagan rates PLUS to get Congress to agree to “pay/go” to finance any new programs…Clinton got Dems to agree with Newt and the GOP to balance spending which resulted in the most productive US economy since WW2… The Clinton economy and has never been matched by any other POTUS administration. I don’t know how old you were then, but those Clinton years (‘92-01) were golden! Good times!
Was that the reason Clinton signed it? I just remember that giant sucking sound of manufacturing jobs leaving the country that Ross Perot warned us of. I actually lived through that decade and remained employed continually for the first decade of my life. Bought my first house, bought 3 new vehicles and was pretty well off. Got married in '96.
The giant sucking sound was us jobs going abroad…Clinton beat Bush in ‘92 because he had the balls to tell his supporters their jobs were leaving the country and never coming back…American began transitioning itself from a manufacturing economy to a service economy during Clinton’s time as POTUS…401k’s became more common place and lots of Americans prospered…. Alas, many American’s weeere left behind….may I suggest reading “Deer Hunting with Jesus” as a commentary of those times….
Yeah, Reagan greased our skids to a service economy and our economy changed from a manufacturing base to a financing/banking base. Lots of money could be made for the connected and we saw the rise of vulture capitalism. What had normally been good paying jobs in manufacturing and production were largely eliminated. Not our nation's shining moment as a lot of people got tossed to the side. My dad retired from farming in 1978 and he said it was the best move of his life. No regrets, especially with all of the farm collapses in the 80's. Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plow, as John Mellencamp would say.
