” Trump has proven deeply popular with the Republican base. He in fact commands more support from self-identified Republicans than any Republican president in the history of polling.”
“What’s going on? Donald Trump is America’s first populist president since Andrew Jackson. He swept into office on the strength of crowded rallies in Rust Belt states and lofty promises to look out for the “forgotten man.” The icon of his campaign, a plain ball cap bearing the message, “Make America Great Again,” became the symbol of a movement to take the nation back from Washington elites.
Once Trump took office, he went full billionaire, and it seemed at first that his entire populist pose was revealed as a sham. He appointed the wealthiest Cabinet in modern history; his agencies are studded with high-level corporate executives. Speaking to a crowd of cheering supporters in Iowa in June 2017, Trump said, “I love all people, rich or poor. But in these particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person.”
Political observers have been waiting for the whole coalition to fracture. In raw dollar terms, there’s little doubt who benefits most from Trump’s policies: He has slashed corporate taxes and opened U.S. waters to offshore drilling; he signed a tax law that overwhelmingly favors the extremely high end of American earners. Trump himself spends huge amounts of time at his luxury golf clubs and held a $100,000-per-couple fundraiser, catered with caviar. How long could his voters believe the “forgotten man” message while he surrounds himself with billionaires and lines their pockets?
But the coalition didn’t fracture. You don’t have to listen to many interviews with heartland voters to realize Trump’s message still has real traction, and that his supporters genuinely expect a real estate developer with Louis XIV living-room furniture and a private jet to fight for their interests against some other kind of “elite.”
There are a number of familiar explanations for how Trump gets away with all of this. One is that it’s all a con. Trump is an incredible salesman, the thinking goes, and he’s duping the white working class on behalf of a new set of overlords who put on their MAGA hats and sell false hope and snake-oil policies.”
“Another explanation is that it’s all racism. Some of his white supporters from lower-income households are fine with the wealthy making off like bandits, as long as they can comfortably look down on immigrants and others of racial minority groups.”
Yeah, for fifty years now the base has been voting for the same exact reason, and somehow people forget that simple historical fact.
Another moronic episode of the national reality show.
By Charles P. Pierce
Jun 5, 2018
Getty Images
(Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post)
Once and for all, let’s dispel with this fiction that Paul Manafort is an international criminal mastermind. From The New York Times:
In court documents, prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said that violated the terms of Mr. Manafort’s release while he awaits trial. They asked a federal judge to revise those terms or send him to jail until trial.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Manafort tried to contact witnesses by phone, through an intermediary and through an encrypted messaging program. One witness told the F.B.I. that Mr. Manafort was trying to “suborn perjury,” prosecutors said. Two witnesses provided the texts to the F.B.I., which also searched Mr. Manafort’s cloud-based Apple account, according to court records.
So, you’re Manafort, OK, and you know that Mueller’s got you in a leghold trap for the rest of your life and that you’re extraordinarily lucky not to be enjoying the concierge level of the Graybar Hotel. So, naturally, because you are an international criminal mastermind, you decide to tamper with Mueller’s witnesses in a clumsy and easily detectable manner. Back during Watergate, Howard Hunt’s attorney, a respected Washington lawyer (and a fellow Marquette Warrior) named William O. Bittman, was driving around Washington with cash for the burglars’ defense in a brown paper bag. Compared to Manafort, Bittman was Professor Moriarty.
Getty Images
I mean, who does this? A guy confident of an eventual pardon? Maybe, but this seems like an awful lot of purgatory to bring on yourself on the way to heaven. Mueller’s people are authentically furious, and they’re pretty dogged when they’re just doing their jobs with cool professional dispatch.
Prosecutors say that was part of a secret lobbying campaign in the United States. Mr. Manafort argues the lobbying was focused on the European Union—a key point in his defense. In court documents, prosecutors accused Mr. Manafort of trying to reach members of a public relations firm who could get word to the Europeans and help shape their story. “They should say their lobbying and public relations work was exclusively in Europe,” one of the public relations officials told the F.B.I. according to court documents. Prosecutors provided the judge a summary of contacts that they said were made from February to April, while Mr. Manafort was under house arrest on a $10 million bond.
House arrest, dude. All the time you need to binge-watch, nap, read some good books, listen to the complete works of Mozart, or Coltrane, or the 1910 Fruitgum Company, or, even, maybe, you know, work with your lawyers on your legal defense? Me? If I were in Manafort’s wingtips, “Find A New And Obvious Way To Allegedly Obstruct Justice” would not have been at the top of my to-do list. But, apparently, it was the second item on Manafort’s, right below “Be Really Stupid Again.”
Interesting info in the 2018 SS report. SS will run a net deficit this year and every year for ever. A year ago SSA forecast a surplus of $44.7b for 2018. The new forecast if for a deficit of 1.7b.
When you skew Productivity Gains to Capital over Labor that is what happens. And there still is a large amount of slack Labor. Put Labor back to work in meaningful jobs with meaningful wages and the deficit goes away. Why do you come here with this stupid sh*t??? Where did you graduate from so I can send an email to the junior college you went to and tell them they failed in educating you.
BK, you are just a piece of flotsam that floated in to our conversation. Maybe we need to flush again?
Shows audited balances of US government “trust funds.
Note SSTF balance gained about $23B from 2016 to 2017. However that was a lot less than interest accrued so some cash had to be raised by the treasury over and above SS payroll tax receipts to pay SS recipients.
Figure 5 at 30/35 of pdf shows federal debt outstanding the mix between public held and trust funds. Publicly held had risen rapidly.
You come in here with a factoid that has nothing to do with anything except to scare the people who don’t know anything and you have been doing this for ten years. And you expect us to be polite.
Well, I have been trying to be polite, and I hoped you had gone away because you tempt me to say harsh things to you, and then you get the sympathy vote.
I have submitted a post re the Trustees Report to AB. I hope it runs. I was pretty light on details this time because I want people to grasp the important facts. There are two of them: SS can be paid for in full, forever by raising the payroll tax one tenth of one percent per year. That’s about a dollar per week for the average worker. If we don’t begin this year or next, the yearly raise will need to be a bit bigger each year, but never big enough to affect anyone’s life style, and never more than the reasonable cost of retirement insurance.
The Second fact is that the cost of Social Security has NOTHING to do with the federal deficit or the national debt.
I will try to provide more details if I have to. But I’m getting really tired of trying to explain to the sort of people who worry about the ten cent increase in the cost of fire extinguishers while their kitchen is on fire.
your reputation precedes you, so what from someone else would be seen as an honest question deserving a reasonable answer is seen in you as just more of the same… you see a “fact” that looks to you like proof that Social Security is doomed and we are all going to die…
and each time you do not hear the explanation, or understand it, or remember it, so we respond to your comment with irritation and in some cases abuse.
In the present case, the difference between the results predicted for 2018 in 2016 and those predicted for 2018 in 2017 are within the bounds of normal prediction error. These errors can run about 10% from year to year, but over the decades have never amounted to anything material. It simply does not matter if the Trust Fund is going to run out in 2030 or 2033, or even in 2040 or 2020.
It will run out. It was designed to. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do about it. The sane thing is to just raise the payroll tax a small amount.
Same thing about the “net deficit.” This was foreseen as early as 1983. The tax needs to be set high enough to cover costs. That is no different than your needing to save enough to cover your expected costs in retirement. But there was no reason in 1983 to set the tax high enough to cover the costs in the next century. They predicted a need to raise the tax… a small amount… at about this time to cover the expected increase in life expectancy and the expected decrease in birth rates. I am not sure they expected the decrease in the rate of wage growth.
But yes, if we do not raise the tax rate a small amount, SS will run a period of negative cash flow until the Trust Fund is exhausted. Then it will need to cut benefits or raise the taxes about 2% (4% combined) all at once. Not a big deal, but likely to cause consternation in some quarters, at least briefly.
Or we could do something really stupid like turn SS into welfare as we knew it, or “privatize” it. Or, as the people now in power want to do: eliminate it entirely.
Me, I prefer the dollar per week raise in the tax starting this year or next. That tax is not really a tax. It’s an insurance premium that guarantees you will be able to retire in at least minimal comfort at a reasonable age, having paid for it yourself. At a fair cost. Unfortunately the only way to do this is with government, but this is one of those places where government does something far better than private enterprise. And in this case “government” does not pay for it. Each person pays for his own retirement.
” Trump has proven deeply popular with the Republican base. He in fact commands more support from self-identified Republicans than any Republican president in the history of polling.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/why-congress-wouldnt-impeach-trump-for-shooting-james-comey.html
“What’s going on? Donald Trump is America’s first populist president since Andrew Jackson. He swept into office on the strength of crowded rallies in Rust Belt states and lofty promises to look out for the “forgotten man.” The icon of his campaign, a plain ball cap bearing the message, “Make America Great Again,” became the symbol of a movement to take the nation back from Washington elites.
Once Trump took office, he went full billionaire, and it seemed at first that his entire populist pose was revealed as a sham. He appointed the wealthiest Cabinet in modern history; his agencies are studded with high-level corporate executives. Speaking to a crowd of cheering supporters in Iowa in June 2017, Trump said, “I love all people, rich or poor. But in these particular positions, I just don’t want a poor person.”
Political observers have been waiting for the whole coalition to fracture. In raw dollar terms, there’s little doubt who benefits most from Trump’s policies: He has slashed corporate taxes and opened U.S. waters to offshore drilling; he signed a tax law that overwhelmingly favors the extremely high end of American earners. Trump himself spends huge amounts of time at his luxury golf clubs and held a $100,000-per-couple fundraiser, catered with caviar. How long could his voters believe the “forgotten man” message while he surrounds himself with billionaires and lines their pockets?
But the coalition didn’t fracture. You don’t have to listen to many interviews with heartland voters to realize Trump’s message still has real traction, and that his supporters genuinely expect a real estate developer with Louis XIV living-room furniture and a private jet to fight for their interests against some other kind of “elite.”
There are a number of familiar explanations for how Trump gets away with all of this. One is that it’s all a con. Trump is an incredible salesman, the thinking goes, and he’s duping the white working class on behalf of a new set of overlords who put on their MAGA hats and sell false hope and snake-oil policies.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-wealthy-elite-billionaires-donald-trump-learned-to-love-populism-politics/
“Another explanation is that it’s all racism. Some of his white supporters from lower-income households are fine with the wealthy making off like bandits, as long as they can comfortably look down on immigrants and others of racial minority groups.”
Yeah, for fifty years now the base has been voting for the same exact reason, and somehow people forget that simple historical fact.
Social Security Trustees Report is out:
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2018/index.html
Obviously the actions of an innocent man.
Another moronic episode of the national reality show.
By Charles P. Pierce
Jun 5, 2018
Getty Images
(Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post)
Once and for all, let’s dispel with this fiction that Paul Manafort is an international criminal mastermind. From The New York Times:
In court documents, prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said that violated the terms of Mr. Manafort’s release while he awaits trial. They asked a federal judge to revise those terms or send him to jail until trial.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Manafort tried to contact witnesses by phone, through an intermediary and through an encrypted messaging program. One witness told the F.B.I. that Mr. Manafort was trying to “suborn perjury,” prosecutors said. Two witnesses provided the texts to the F.B.I., which also searched Mr. Manafort’s cloud-based Apple account, according to court records.
So, you’re Manafort, OK, and you know that Mueller’s got you in a leghold trap for the rest of your life and that you’re extraordinarily lucky not to be enjoying the concierge level of the Graybar Hotel. So, naturally, because you are an international criminal mastermind, you decide to tamper with Mueller’s witnesses in a clumsy and easily detectable manner. Back during Watergate, Howard Hunt’s attorney, a respected Washington lawyer (and a fellow Marquette Warrior) named William O. Bittman, was driving around Washington with cash for the burglars’ defense in a brown paper bag. Compared to Manafort, Bittman was Professor Moriarty.
Getty Images
I mean, who does this? A guy confident of an eventual pardon? Maybe, but this seems like an awful lot of purgatory to bring on yourself on the way to heaven. Mueller’s people are authentically furious, and they’re pretty dogged when they’re just doing their jobs with cool professional dispatch.
Prosecutors say that was part of a secret lobbying campaign in the United States. Mr. Manafort argues the lobbying was focused on the European Union—a key point in his defense. In court documents, prosecutors accused Mr. Manafort of trying to reach members of a public relations firm who could get word to the Europeans and help shape their story. “They should say their lobbying and public relations work was exclusively in Europe,” one of the public relations officials told the F.B.I. according to court documents. Prosecutors provided the judge a summary of contacts that they said were made from February to April, while Mr. Manafort was under house arrest on a $10 million bond.
House arrest, dude. All the time you need to binge-watch, nap, read some good books, listen to the complete works of Mozart, or Coltrane, or the 1910 Fruitgum Company, or, even, maybe, you know, work with your lawyers on your legal defense? Me? If I were in Manafort’s wingtips, “Find A New And Obvious Way To Allegedly Obstruct Justice” would not have been at the top of my to-do list. But, apparently, it was the second item on Manafort’s, right below “Be Really Stupid Again.”
Save us, Moron Gods. You’re our only hope.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21085244/paul-manafort-witness-tampering-mueller/
Interesting info in the 2018 SS report. SS will run a net deficit this year and every year for ever. A year ago SSA forecast a surplus of $44.7b for 2018. The new forecast if for a deficit of 1.7b.
The report – page 48 has the summary data.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/TR/2018/tr2018.pdf
BK
When you skew Productivity Gains to Capital over Labor that is what happens. And there still is a large amount of slack Labor. Put Labor back to work in meaningful jobs with meaningful wages and the deficit goes away. Why do you come here with this stupid sh*t??? Where did you graduate from so I can send an email to the junior college you went to and tell them they failed in educating you.
BK, you are just a piece of flotsam that floated in to our conversation. Maybe we need to flush again?
I post a link to the annual SSA report. In past tears this led to interesting discussions. But Runny responds with:
When you skew Productivity Gains to Capital
Gains over Labor that is what happens
you piece of S***.
I guess he realized that these were the words of a fool (or a child) so he deleted it and replaced it with the above.
As Yogi Berra said “making predictions is hard, especially about the future”.
Go to:
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/feddebt/feddebt_ann2017.pdf
See page 31 of print or 35/40 of pdf.
Shows audited balances of US government “trust funds.
Note SSTF balance gained about $23B from 2016 to 2017. However that was a lot less than interest accrued so some cash had to be raised by the treasury over and above SS payroll tax receipts to pay SS recipients.
Figure 5 at 30/35 of pdf shows federal debt outstanding the mix between public held and trust funds. Publicly held had risen rapidly.
Krasting
You come in here with a factoid that has nothing to do with anything except to scare the people who don’t know anything and you have been doing this for ten years. And you expect us to be polite.
Well, I have been trying to be polite, and I hoped you had gone away because you tempt me to say harsh things to you, and then you get the sympathy vote.
I have submitted a post re the Trustees Report to AB. I hope it runs. I was pretty light on details this time because I want people to grasp the important facts. There are two of them: SS can be paid for in full, forever by raising the payroll tax one tenth of one percent per year. That’s about a dollar per week for the average worker. If we don’t begin this year or next, the yearly raise will need to be a bit bigger each year, but never big enough to affect anyone’s life style, and never more than the reasonable cost of retirement insurance.
The Second fact is that the cost of Social Security has NOTHING to do with the federal deficit or the national debt.
I will try to provide more details if I have to. But I’m getting really tired of trying to explain to the sort of people who worry about the ten cent increase in the cost of fire extinguishers while their kitchen is on fire.
Coberly:
I am traveling. It will go up. I just need to get a few moments.
You are posted Dale.
Cob,
I can guarantee you that Krasting will not come remotely close to winning the sympathy vote in here.
Krasting
If you still care
your reputation precedes you, so what from someone else would be seen as an honest question deserving a reasonable answer is seen in you as just more of the same… you see a “fact” that looks to you like proof that Social Security is doomed and we are all going to die…
and each time you do not hear the explanation, or understand it, or remember it, so we respond to your comment with irritation and in some cases abuse.
In the present case, the difference between the results predicted for 2018 in 2016 and those predicted for 2018 in 2017 are within the bounds of normal prediction error. These errors can run about 10% from year to year, but over the decades have never amounted to anything material. It simply does not matter if the Trust Fund is going to run out in 2030 or 2033, or even in 2040 or 2020.
It will run out. It was designed to. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do about it. The sane thing is to just raise the payroll tax a small amount.
Same thing about the “net deficit.” This was foreseen as early as 1983. The tax needs to be set high enough to cover costs. That is no different than your needing to save enough to cover your expected costs in retirement. But there was no reason in 1983 to set the tax high enough to cover the costs in the next century. They predicted a need to raise the tax… a small amount… at about this time to cover the expected increase in life expectancy and the expected decrease in birth rates. I am not sure they expected the decrease in the rate of wage growth.
But yes, if we do not raise the tax rate a small amount, SS will run a period of negative cash flow until the Trust Fund is exhausted. Then it will need to cut benefits or raise the taxes about 2% (4% combined) all at once. Not a big deal, but likely to cause consternation in some quarters, at least briefly.
Or we could do something really stupid like turn SS into welfare as we knew it, or “privatize” it. Or, as the people now in power want to do: eliminate it entirely.
Me, I prefer the dollar per week raise in the tax starting this year or next. That tax is not really a tax. It’s an insurance premium that guarantees you will be able to retire in at least minimal comfort at a reasonable age, having paid for it yourself. At a fair cost. Unfortunately the only way to do this is with government, but this is one of those places where government does something far better than private enterprise. And in this case “government” does not pay for it. Each person pays for his own retirement.