The Republicans want to repeal the health care bill the Democrats passed last year. They want to repeal Medicare and Medicaid. They want to make it next to impossible for poor people to get contraceptives. They want to stop all efforts to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Basically, they want to return the country to the 1950’s. They even want to restore the racial and religious demographics of 1950’s America. There’s only one problem. The top marginal income tax rate in the 1950’s was between 91%-92% on all income over $400,000. Without question, the rich payed a higher share of their earned income under Eisenhower than any other president in our history. It was JFK who cut the top rate down to 77% in 1963.
Obviously, the 1950’s cannot serve as a proper model for the Republicans. They have to go back to the mid-to-late 1920’s when the top rate was 25% on all income over $100,000. And do you know what happened in the late 1920’s? The stock market crashed and brought on the beginning of the Great Depression, which, in turn, brought fascism to Germany and greatly enhanced the seductive appeal of Soviet-style communism. It brought world-wide war and genocide on an unprecedented scale. It brought radiological weapons so powerful that they can still end all life on Earth. I think we ought to consider whether or not there is a correlation between the policies that ruined everything in the 1920’s and the policies that ruined everything in 2008. And while we may have had the tools to turn a second Great Depression into a mere Great Recession, we only limited the damage and the risks; we didn’t eliminate them.
We see new strains of xenophobia, race-consciousness, religious intolerance, and hyper-patriotism. We see major new strains of anti-intellectualism. We have a toxic brew that is being stirred up and heated up by irresponsible entertainers, demagogues, and provocateurs. It’s being funded by corporate interests in a way that is eerily reminiscent of the German industrialists who lent support and encouragement to the National Socialists.
So, we can talk about numbers all we want. We can talk about what constitutes a good or bad compromise on the budget. But we’re actually fighting a much larger battle, and losing isn’t an option we want to contemplate.
We see new strains of xenophobia, race-consciousness, religious intolerance, and hyper-patriotism. We see major new strains of anti-intellectualism. We have a toxic brew that is being stirred up and heated up by irresponsible entertainers, demagogues, and provocateurs. It’s being funded by corporate interests in a way that is eerily reminiscent of the German industrialists who lent support and encouragement to the National Socialists.
Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding. We have a winner!
So, we can talk about numbers all we want. We can talk about what constitutes a good or bad compromise on the budget. But we’re actually fighting a much larger battle, and losing isn’t an option we want to contemplate.
The religious wingnuts have used the term “culture war” since the 1970s to describe their war on America. GWB introduced the term “class warfare” as shorthand during the debates with Gore to deflect concerns about his pro-rich policies.
But the reality is that this is a culture and a class war that has been planned and executed over the last 30 years. And it is about time we started fighting back.
What the middle class needs in this war is a Winston Churchill. Alas, what we have is Neville Obama.
I think I’d rather have a Clement Attlee than a Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill was a disgusting man (although I get the metaphor, obviously). What we need is an Olof Palme.
It was just a metaphor. I understand that in reality you would NEVER want Winston Churchill. For anything.
Green Caboose, having just finished Eric Foner’s “The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery”, I think what we’ve got is another Lincoln—in this regard: throughout his career Lincoln carefully (or so it seems) positioned himself in the center of (what became) Republican Party politics and its views on slavery.
In Foner’s retelling, this was true in the early 1850s as the Republican Party was forming. It was true when Lincoln ran for president. It was true throughout his presidency.
*Like Lincoln, Obama has carefully (or so it seems) positioned himself in the center of Democratic Party politics at least since his campaign and election to the Illinois Senate.
*Like Lincoln, Obama has developed the talent of giving good, even great, speeches that point a way forward on the great issues of the day.
*Like Lincoln, Obama seems willing to embrace any number of approaches towards solving those problems. *Like Lincoln, Obama has a higher tolerance for debate and politicking than many of his contemporaries.
*Like Lincoln, Obama is frequently a source of exasperation to the left wing of his party…and to the right wing of his party.
Unlike Franklin Roosevelt, Obama is never going to “welcome the hatred” of “economic royalists” who consider him a “class traitor”. FDR could afford to use that kind of language because he was descended from hundreds of years of the New York Anglo-Dutch aristocracy. Obama—with his Kenyan socialist freedom fighter alcoholic father with four(?) wives on one side, and his working-to-middle class grandparents and free-spirited, hippie/intellectual mother on the other side—can’t afford the luxury of such incendiary language.
(That’s not even getting into the severe, largely invisible restrictions he faces as our first black president. Remember the weeks of furor over his use of one adverb—“stupidly”—at the end of a press conference on health care when he, in a moment of weakness, answered a hometown reporter’s question about the arrest of his old friend Skip Gates.)
To end on a hopeful note, Obama’s always (in my view) been an excellent political counterpuncher, good at taking advantage of his opponents when they overreach. Let’s see what he does in the days and weeks (and months) ahead with the House Republicans’ FY 2012 budget proposal.
Agree, thanks for detailed comment. Especially important – his focus on problem solving and invisible restrictions on him, contrast to FDR.
Would be great if our party leaders agreed with you Boo, but they’ve decided to take a much different approach on tactics, or perhaps, as some of the disenchanted left argue, a lot of dem party elites don’t have too much of a problem with returning to pre-60’s America.
Overall though its tough to pin them down on wanting to go back to any specific era. What the really want is a “best of” list from American history: the tax rates before there was an income tax, the racial policies of the 50s, the regulatory environment pre-Lochner, the lax fnancial regulation of the 20s, etc. Looking back to American history isn’t really particularly instructive to understanding today’s Republicans. They want policies that support the aristrocracy, and that tension has been present in all societies since the dawn of history. As always, the problem is whether our party stands for anything other than “a less sucky version of aristocracy” where the peasants are well taken care off, but you know, still peasants.
If you read studies of fascism you’ll see that one of the elements in common to all fascist movements is the desire to go back to some vaguely-defined time of greatness when things were close to ideal and the rightful group (religion/race/sex/etc) was in charge. Some time before the “enemy within” betrayed that wonderful society and ruined it.
In the US the fascist movements usually focus on two time periods as representing the betrayal. The most common is the 1960s-70s, with civil rights, the sexual revolution, etc. But you’ll also sometimes hear the “intellectual leaders” of the right (and I use that term very loosely) refer to the 1930s New Deal as the beginnings of the betrayal. That is a harder sell, of course, but they do go there because otherwise they have to cast the 1950s as the “time of greatness” and if they do that they have to accept Social Security, high income tax, and the GI Bill. What they really want is the 1920s, but without the Republican isolationism.
For the fascist followers it’s not important to be specific. You just have to tap into the hatred and fear — doesn’t matter if it is hatred of dark-skinned people or hippies or smart people or people who drive a Prius or cute women who won’t smile back at you and therefore are oversexed feminazis or all of the above.
But ironically what’s different in this situation is that the biggest following is amongst those who have it the best — today’s retirees. More common is that they tap into the hatred from the angry, underemployed young people (there is a reason “angst” comes from the German word meaning “fear”). But although the US has its fair share of those people, most young people in the US are into diversity and pro-environment.
However, the current crop of 65-and-above are the biggest source of Tea Party support. Which makes them the most selfish generation in history. Consider that these folks are not baby-boomers, and except for the very oldest they aren’t the “greatest generation” either. No, these are the ones who were too young to remember the depression or maybe even WWII — who became the bobby soxers and James Deans. No great sacrifices for them. They entered the work force when the economy was booming, bought houses on the cheap, paid pennies for Social Security, saw Medicare start as they were half way through their working lives, for the most part retired before the offshoring got out of hand, and now are enjoying all the benefits of the society the Greatest Generation set up for them. And now they want to take it away from the following generations before we get to their age.
Thanks, pre-boomers.
I’m not sure how much public support Republicans have, despite their hateful rhetoric, now that they’ve tipped their hand and touched the third rail.
Obama says he wants to get agreement, not cast blame. But Paul Ryan’s maneuver shows exactly who’s to blame.
The serious problem is the Supreme Court’s tobogganing over precedent as fast as they can. That could put judicial roadblocks into any snapback by voters.
So far, the good news is that the toxic brew is not as widespread as on thinks and that Wisconsin has brought a lot of rank-and-file labor union members to attention. Even in the South. Yes, there are union members in the South. IBEW, Teamsters, and SEIU are here; in NC, the Association of Educators is an SEIU local.
BooMan,
I always enjoy reading your work, but man, sometimes you think just right. Due to the reality of the situation, this time it’s too bad that you do.
like I’ve said before
‘the good old days’==’get your Black Ass to the Back of the Bus.’
“But we’re actually fighting a much larger battle, and losing isn’t an option we want to contemplate.”
Booman, thanks for putting the budget into a larger (and more appropriate) context. I just want to add a thought/suggestion about the spirit and the mentality with which we progressives enter into this “larger battle”—we should enter into battle aware of our power and confident that we can win.
The problem for Republicans wanting to return to 1950s America is that, thanks to the Immigration & Nationality Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965—that America no longer exists. Instead we live in a better America: one in which African-Americans can vote (as in 2008) in larger numbers (percentage-wise) than the rest of the population, one in which nearly half of our children are not of primarily European ancestry.
What that means for our power is that every year 4 million of those children become adults. If only half of them vote, and only 60% vote Democratic, then that’s an additional 400,000 votes for “our side” every year. And that’s not counting the effects of annual mortality—those dying each year in the coming decade are older, whiter and more conservative than the electorate as a whole.
On social issues, young people are overwhelmingly liberal. (One of the big concerns among older conservative white evangelical Christians is how tolerant their children and grandchildren are of “homosexuals” and “coloreds”.)
On economic issues, the Midwestern Republican governor’s (aka labor’s “mobilizers of the year”) recent actions have revealed the public’s strong support for collective bargaining rights. Chairman Ryan’s budget proposal is likely to have a similar impact on how voters view the Republicans nationally.
As progressives, we should expect President Obama to position himself in the center of the nation’s “center-left” governing coalition. We should see our role as creating “events on the ground” that expand “the left” so as to allow him (and other Democrats) to move in our direction. The recall efforts in Wisconsin are a good example of creating events on the ground. Note too that in Wisconsin progressives have made conservative Republicans—not Democrats—their target. (I’m not saying Democrats should never be targeted. I’m just pointing out that one tactical advantage to attacking reactionaries is that it allows moderates and progressives to unite.)
In the past Obama has spoken at civil rights gatherings about the “Moses” generation that went before him and made his opportunities possible. He would then go on to talk about the responsibilities of the “Joshua” generation.
If you’ve ever read the Book of Joshua you know it’s not a pretty story. Taking control of the land (whether promised or not) is not for the faint of heart. Some scholars say that Moses had to keep the Israelites wandering around in the wilderness until everyone who had grown up under Pharaoh’s rule had died. These scholars say that only a generation that had been forged in freedom could walk into the promised land and take it.
I’d suggest that if we’re living in a “Joshua” moment, we go forward with the confidence of Joshua—who knew what the previous generation had accomplished and what it could not accomplish, and knew he and his people were prepared and ready to accomplish their mission.
See my latest post for some similar observations.
A few remarks about the 50s and the rich paying a high rate on taxes. I don’t know if the rich actually ended up paying more under Ike than any other prez. That 91% looks pretty impressive, but I do know that in the 1950s very few paid at that rate given the many loopholes available to them.
JFK’s 1963 proposed bill, meant to avert yet another recession by growing the economy with a novel demand-side approach, sought to end many of these loopholes while calling for an across-the-board tax cut for all, including at the highest rate — and 91% is ridiculously high, absent a nat’l emergency or world war.
The Kennedy bill was passed just a few weeks after his death in early 1964, but some of its original tax-avoidance reform features had been eliminated (in the House Ways & Means comm’ee) along with JFK’s intended reduction in the oil industry’s very generous 27% oil depletion allowance (which reform the Big Oil-backed LBJ did not favor).
Result was a net overall tax reduction for all income groups, along with a booming 1960s economy, which ended up significantly boosting overall tax revenues. Quite a success, in other words, but some misread and misunderstand the Kennedy tax cut/reform effort, and choose to narrowly see only the top-rate reduction as the sole cause of the resulting booming economy.
I don’t know if the rich actually ended up paying more under Ike than any other prez. That 91% looks pretty impressive, but I do know that in the 1950s very few paid at that rate given the many loopholes available to them.
That’s the standard Heritage Foundation-approved talking point for addressing the 91% figure. However, while it’s true few paid that marginal rate the reason didn’t have anything to do with loopholes. Indeed, while there were a lot of loopholes that the IRS plugged in the 1970s and 1980s, they really didn’t add up to huge amounts. Mostly to do with executive perks and the like.
Instead, the reason few paid that much is that when the tax rate is that high it doesn’t make sense to keep bumping up your income. You didn’t have obscene levels of income from company Presidents (the term “CEO” didn’t exist then) or board directors. They still made out very well, but no one would have dreamed of getting a billion for a year’s work, like can happen today.
What 91% did, in effect, was set a Maximum Wage. This, in turn promoted all kinds of positive behavior. In the 1950s you wouldn’t see a CEO show up at a new company and sell it off within a year in exchange for a bonus totaling in the millions, screwing everyone in the process but his small circle of rich buddies. In the 1950s if a President were hired from the outside (and that was a much less frequent event than it is today) he would be expected to stay in that position for 10 years or more and to build the business. In the 1950s you didn’t have a permanent class of CxOs who flit around from company to company every 2 or 3 years, collecting huge hire-on bonuses and severance packages but never really contributing to the long term fortunes of the companies.
In the 1950s you wouldn’t have seen the sort of financial bubble and collapse that we saw in the 2000s. Part of that was due to lax regulation, yes, but part also because the Maximum Wage meant that the leaders of the financial industry weren’t able to benefit from a fraud operation on that scale.
The world is better off when there is a Maximum Wage — one that is very high (so that people are still motivated to work hard and get ahead), but a ceiling nevertheless. The problem with the 95% and 96% top marginal rates in places like the UK and Sweden was that they were triggered at relatively low points on the income scale. At a certain level the motivation for more money is a good incentive in terms of society’s productivity. After a certain point, however, the money itself is of no value and it becomes a pursuit of power, and that concentration of power has very negative results for a society.
Indeed. And even still, so what if the effective rate never hit 91%? It did hit 50% for a lot of people, some hitting 70%. Now our on the paper rates aren’t even near 50%, let alone the effective rates.
Different social-political world back then, and we were coming off a nat’l emergency-world war situation that required sacrifice. 91% for the uppers under the circumstances probably didn’t seem unreasonable.
We won’t be seeing 91% again, or close, short of a dire nat’l situation such as in the 1940s. 45-50% might be a more reasonable goal towards seeking economic fairness, if the right leader or leaders would only pick up the banner and start speaking forcefully.
Another thing — back then, most reporting on these issues were making middle-class wages. Today, many, especially in the MSM-electronic media, are well into the 6-figures in annual income. Some, 7 figures. And they work often for huge corporations, some which don’t even pay a corporate tax. All the less likely therefore for our media to want to broach the subject.
Media’s always had a structural bias, so I’m not sure I buy the media element.
And our debt as a percentage of GDP will hit WWII levels in just a few years if projections are correct, and the interest on it is eventually set to overtake Medicare.
In any case, I’d rather rates float from year to year, and I’d like most if not all deductions removed from the code itself. In fact, I think progressives in the liberal blogosphere are just as afraid of tax increases on the poor and middle class as any politician. That’s not making a good case for liberalism, in my opinion. I wouldn’t mind a flat tax if it brought in the necessary revenue for all of the government programs that I’d want. It’s not my preference, but I’d take a flat tax with no deductions and universal (daycare, health care, college education, apprentiship opportunities, housing, etc) over what we have.
Hey, I was just trying to put into a little fuller context what Kennedy was intending with the tax cut, and from recall using primarily Dem- and liberal-friendly sources, not RW tax cutting orgs. And I didn’t set out to give an exhaustive explanation — just a mention about the many loopholes available, which were there in abundance for the upper income set, which Kennedy became aware of and set out to tighten. (Actually the tax bill he proposed was supposed to be at least as much tax reform as tax cut — which tends to underline my point about the importance of tax loopholes — but much of the former got cut out in the cong’l process.)
Of course there didn’t exist a corporate-social culture of paying obscene salaries to ceo’s and execs — that was the 1950s, prices were low, inflation and hyperinflation would come later, in the 1970s, and the political-social culture of trickle-down Reaganomics and greed is good was a couple of decades in the future.
And as for setting a Maximum Wage, well good luck getting back to the 50s. Though I think there’s beginning to be a political opening for a bold leader — would that Obama were one — to present some of these glaring economic disparity statistics (recently summarized neatly by Jos Stiglitz at VanityFair) and take to the bully pulpit to argue that we need to reform our tax system a little more along the lines of what we had in the 1960s with the upper income earners paying more of their fair share.