To renew print media to full life two commonsense things can provide it with a high volume of news that only print (even the internet version) can deal with fully – and that only print opinion writers can deal with comprehensively.
One: if income taxes were adjusted monthly in direct step with increased or decreased expenditures, newspapers would have to add a new section for avid taxpayers to follow the latest additions and cuts.
We would not build a courthouse for 100 years.
Second: a randomly picked grand-type-jury could become our informal third branch of government. Such a directly-powerless citizens’ branch could informally set the public agenda in accordance with the needs and interests of everyday people – without worrying about the tangles of expending political capital (automatically building it; see below) and avoiding controversy and all the usual stagnation inducers.
Mad Mayor Bloomberg’s crazy idea of building a new $400 million Bronx courthouse in 2004 to TAKE OVER from the almost brand-new $120 million supplementary court building opened in just 1977 to pick up the criminal case overflow during the crime wage AND ALSO take over from the 1939, landmark status, main court building up on the hill (the latter still standing because it is the architectural anchor of the area — both still standing actually — empty) – would have been laughed to derision by a real people jury. Ditto for the new $600 million Brooklyn courthouse opened by Crazy Mikey in 2004 – also after criminal cases had declined 4X.
Obamians and Clintonians and friends want to help everybody, just nobody in particular. They pick a limited number of objectives each year and fight them to a standstill with Republicans — perpetually leaving untouched key bread-and-butter issues like doubling the minimum wage and rewriting the entire American social landscape with legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements – issues that promise no immediate results (at least not in the eyes out of touch elitists).
Let’s face it; Obamians and Clintonites are academic liberals who do not relate on any visceral level to what immediately interests everyday Joan — so what interests Joan can always wait until next year, or decade, of forever. They never catch on that if they were pushing hard on doubling the minimum wage reform and sector-wide re-unionization (the only market setup that works historically, and world-wide) they might build more political capital then they would knew how to spend — even if they did not immediately succeed on the specific issues.
Harry Truman said: “The power of the presidency is the power to tell people what they damn well should have known in the first place.”
The automatic solution to progressives’ political capital building inability could be a monthly adjusted income tax and an informal political grand-type-jury that would put society’s truly deepest concerns on the very front of the political burners and keep them hot until resolved. Interested, high volume content-newspapers; interested long analysis pieces-magazines?
Welfare, Not Full-Time Work, Is Now America’s No. 1 Occupation
At the end of 2011, the last year for which data are available, some 108.6 million people received one or more means-tested government benefit programs — bureaucratese for welfare.
Meanwhile, there were just 101.7 million people with full-time jobs, the Census data show, including both the private and government sectors.
Anytime more people are being paid not to work than to work, it imperils our democracy. No one votes to cut his own welfare benefits. So welfare grows.
According to official data from the government, 46.5 million people live in poverty in the U.S. Doing the quick math, that means just 43% of all those on welfare are officially considered poor.
When you add in other government programs with a check attached — Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, unemployment and other non-means-tested benefits — you find a whopping 151 million Americans get a check from the government other than an income-tax refund.
“Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour.”
Given all the disincentives, it seems as if the government doesn’t even want people to work. But why would that be?
Perhaps it’s in the interest of those on the so-called progressive left — those most responsible for the uncontrolled growth of the welfare state — to keep Americans out of work and dependent on government.
Sure looks that way. After all, for Democrats, dependent voters are reliable voters.
Workers without jobs turn to big government. Sadly, America, land of the free, has become America, land of the dependent
Sammy,
>> According to official data from the government, 46.5 million people live in poverty in the U.S. Doing the quick math, that means just 43% of all those on welfare are officially considered poor. <<
The official poverty line is a 1955 formula: three times the price of an emergency diet (dried beans only; no expensive canned beans please) — which lately comes to about $19,000/yr for a family of three.
Using the "minimum needs" table (3-2) on p.44 of the 2001 book Raise the Floor maps out a minimum needs line for a family of three at $45,476 in 2012 dollars — including $8,786 cost of medical insurance — which is somewhere in the mid-40s percentile family income. The Raise minimum needs line is computed by totaling up a comprehensive list of needs.
PS. For (Detroit) Chicago, factor in 100,000 out of 200,000 gang-age minority males in gangs instead of at work — I claim because the federal minimum wage is half what it should be.
Pay people enough and they might not need government support — my minimum wage worksheet — note that if the federal minimum was doubly-indexed for inflation AND per capita income growth (as it is in many countries) since its high point in 1968, it would have exceeded $14/hr by 1978:
I left Chicago — and free rent and free cable and free use of my brother’s town car and headed for San Francisco after Chicago allowed one 30 cent hike in the meter mileage between 1991 (90 cents) and 1997 ($1.40) — at which 1990 midpoint ($1.20) Chicago started building subways to both airports, opening up unlimited livery licensing and putting on free trolleys between all the hotspots downtown (e.g., the Aquarium used to be our hottest spot outside of O’Hare …
… and adding 40% more taxicabs.
They my job was outsourced to Pakistan, Russia and Africa even as fast food jobs were outsourced to Mexico and India. (Plenty of room here — I’d even open the border to Mexico — for Mexicans — once we get our labor market fair and balanced — see comment above for how.)
Sammy – the chart on your link is more than a little deceptive. A good many of the folks receiving benefits are actually working. Now tell me how many are children? How many are elderly in nursing homes where Medicaid has picked up some of the charges because they have no assets or income beyond Social Security.
Your point is intellectually dishonest – I expect that someone with the time and familiarity with the data could make it look quite foolish. More than anything what this says is that we don’t pay people enough to live on.
You’ve made a wonderfully counterintuitive argument for better and more redistributive policies as a means of reducing inequality and getting people fully into the economy.
To renew print media to full life two commonsense things can provide it with a high volume of news that only print (even the internet version) can deal with fully – and that only print opinion writers can deal with comprehensively.
One: if income taxes were adjusted monthly in direct step with increased or decreased expenditures, newspapers would have to add a new section for avid taxpayers to follow the latest additions and cuts.
We would not build a courthouse for 100 years.
Second: a randomly picked grand-type-jury could become our informal third branch of government. Such a directly-powerless citizens’ branch could informally set the public agenda in accordance with the needs and interests of everyday people – without worrying about the tangles of expending political capital (automatically building it; see below) and avoiding controversy and all the usual stagnation inducers.
Mad Mayor Bloomberg’s crazy idea of building a new $400 million Bronx courthouse in 2004 to TAKE OVER from the almost brand-new $120 million supplementary court building opened in just 1977 to pick up the criminal case overflow during the crime wage AND ALSO take over from the 1939, landmark status, main court building up on the hill (the latter still standing because it is the architectural anchor of the area — both still standing actually — empty) – would have been laughed to derision by a real people jury. Ditto for the new $600 million Brooklyn courthouse opened by Crazy Mikey in 2004 – also after criminal cases had declined 4X.
Obamians and Clintonians and friends want to help everybody, just nobody in particular. They pick a limited number of objectives each year and fight them to a standstill with Republicans — perpetually leaving untouched key bread-and-butter issues like doubling the minimum wage and rewriting the entire American social landscape with legally mandated, sector wide labor agreements – issues that promise no immediate results (at least not in the eyes out of touch elitists).
Let’s face it; Obamians and Clintonites are academic liberals who do not relate on any visceral level to what immediately interests everyday Joan — so what interests Joan can always wait until next year, or decade, of forever. They never catch on that if they were pushing hard on doubling the minimum wage reform and sector-wide re-unionization (the only market setup that works historically, and world-wide) they might build more political capital then they would knew how to spend — even if they did not immediately succeed on the specific issues.
Harry Truman said: “The power of the presidency is the power to tell people what they damn well should have known in the first place.”
The automatic solution to progressives’ political capital building inability could be a monthly adjusted income tax and an informal political grand-type-jury that would put society’s truly deepest concerns on the very front of the political burners and keep them hot until resolved. Interested, high volume content-newspapers; interested long analysis pieces-magazines?
Welfare, Not Full-Time Work, Is Now America’s No. 1 Occupation
At the end of 2011, the last year for which data are available, some 108.6 million people received one or more means-tested government benefit programs — bureaucratese for welfare.
Meanwhile, there were just 101.7 million people with full-time jobs, the Census data show, including both the private and government sectors.
Anytime more people are being paid not to work than to work, it imperils our democracy. No one votes to cut his own welfare benefits. So welfare grows.
According to official data from the government, 46.5 million people live in poverty in the U.S. Doing the quick math, that means just 43% of all those on welfare are officially considered poor.
When you add in other government programs with a check attached — Social Security, Medicare, veterans benefits, unemployment and other non-means-tested benefits — you find a whopping 151 million Americans get a check from the government other than an income-tax refund.
“Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit, and in 13 states it pays more than $15 per hour.”
Given all the disincentives, it seems as if the government doesn’t even want people to work. But why would that be?
Perhaps it’s in the interest of those on the so-called progressive left — those most responsible for the uncontrolled growth of the welfare state — to keep Americans out of work and dependent on government.
Sure looks that way. After all, for Democrats, dependent voters are reliable voters.
Workers without jobs turn to big government. Sadly, America, land of the free, has become America, land of the dependent
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/102513-676767-nearly-half-of-all-americans-get-federal-benefits-of-some-kind.htm?p=full
Sammy,
>> According to official data from the government, 46.5 million people live in poverty in the U.S. Doing the quick math, that means just 43% of all those on welfare are officially considered poor. <<
The official poverty line is a 1955 formula: three times the price of an emergency diet (dried beans only; no expensive canned beans please) — which lately comes to about $19,000/yr for a family of three.
Using the "minimum needs" table (3-2) on p.44 of the 2001 book Raise the Floor maps out a minimum needs line for a family of three at $45,476 in 2012 dollars — including $8,786 cost of medical insurance — which is somewhere in the mid-40s percentile family income. The Raise minimum needs line is computed by totaling up a comprehensive list of needs.
PS. For (Detroit) Chicago, factor in 100,000 out of 200,000 gang-age minority males in gangs instead of at work — I claim because the federal minimum wage is half what it should be.
Pay people enough and they might not need government support — my minimum wage worksheet — note that if the federal minimum was doubly-indexed for inflation AND per capita income growth (as it is in many countries) since its high point in 1968, it would have exceeded $14/hr by 1978:
yr..per capita…real…nominal…dbl-index…%-of
68…15,473….10.74..(1.60)……10.74……100%
69-70-71-72-73
74…18,284…..9.43…(2.00)……12.61
75…18,313…..9.08…(2.10)……12.61
76…18,945…..9.40…(2.30)……13.04……..72%
77
78…20,422…..9.45…(2.65)……14.11
79…20,696…..9.29…(2.90)……14.32
80…20,236…..8.75…(3.10)……14.00
81…20,112…..8.57…(3.35)……13.89……..62%
82-83-84-85-86-87-88-89
90…24,000…..6.76…(3.80)……16.56
91…23,540…..7.26…(4.25)……16.24……..44%
92-93-94-95
96…25,887…..7.04…(4.75)……17.85
97…26,884…..7.46…(5.15)……19.02……..39%
98-99-00-01-02-03-04-05-06
07…29,075…..6.56…(5.85)……20.09
08…28,166…..7.07…(6.55)……19.45
09…27,819…..7.86…(7.25)……19.42……..40%
10-11-12
13…29,209…..7.25…(7.25)……20.20?……36%?
By early 2007, 25% of the American workforce was earning less than LBJ’s 1968 minimum wage — double the average income later!
Just to patch in my own American labor sob story:
I left Chicago — and free rent and free cable and free use of my brother’s town car and headed for San Francisco after Chicago allowed one 30 cent hike in the meter mileage between 1991 (90 cents) and 1997 ($1.40) — at which 1990 midpoint ($1.20) Chicago started building subways to both airports, opening up unlimited livery licensing and putting on free trolleys between all the hotspots downtown (e.g., the Aquarium used to be our hottest spot outside of O’Hare …
… and adding 40% more taxicabs.
They my job was outsourced to Pakistan, Russia and Africa even as fast food jobs were outsourced to Mexico and India. (Plenty of room here — I’d even open the border to Mexico — for Mexicans — once we get our labor market fair and balanced — see comment above for how.)
Sammy – the chart on your link is more than a little deceptive. A good many of the folks receiving benefits are actually working. Now tell me how many are children? How many are elderly in nursing homes where Medicaid has picked up some of the charges because they have no assets or income beyond Social Security.
Your point is intellectually dishonest – I expect that someone with the time and familiarity with the data could make it look quite foolish. More than anything what this says is that we don’t pay people enough to live on.
You’ve made a wonderfully counterintuitive argument for better and more redistributive policies as a means of reducing inequality and getting people fully into the economy.