The Unnamable
This one time, Mitt Romney decided to make this election about the most important issues facing this nation: Restraining government, reforming entitlements, and getting the economy producing jobs again. There is — ahem — some overlap among the three. Romney pivoted from anti-Obama to pro-growth in one decisive stroke: He named Paul Ryan as his Veep.
And then he sort of forgot about all that stuff, it seemed.
But video emerged of Romney telling a group of his supporters that Obama’s supporters tended to be grievance-issue voters dependent in one way or another on government. Suddenly, whether Romney meant to or not this time, he made this an election about issues again. The Wall Street Journal sums it up thusly:
In his comments to fundraisers captured on video, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said 47% of Americans would almost automatically vote for President Barack Obama because they were “dependent” on the government, in part because they received government benefits and paid no federal income taxes.
The WSJ then goes on to break down the data:
26.4% of U.S. households had someone enrolled in Medicaid (the health-care program for low-income Americans)
16.2% of households had at least one member receiving Social Security.
15.8% lived in a household receiving food stamps
14.9% had a member with Medicare benefits
4.5% of households received assistance with their rent
1.7% had a member receiving unemployment benefits.
This is something, uncomfortable though it may be, which needs some serious talking about — all the partisan stuff aside.
There are plenty of Medicare recipients who vote Republican, and plenty of überrich Democrats, too. Just because you’re on the dole doesn’t mean you can’t support Romney. In fact, I can think of a few million people getting unemployment checks who might just be dying to vote for anyone but Obama. Twice, if need be.
We now live under a system where almost three trillion dollars get hoovered out of the economy, sent to Washington, and then (mostly) sent back to individual Americans in the form of some kind of benefit. People, especially people in power, enjoy this process so much that they magically conjure up out of thin air another trillion dollars, which is then (mostly) sent back to individual Americans in the form of some kind of benefit, too.
About half of the people pay no income tax, despite getting all these benefits. Ten percent of the people pay more the half the income tax. The payroll taxes which are supposed to pay for the two most ginormist benefits — Social Security and Medicare — have been gutted, in order to provide “stimulus.” While SS and Medicare are now going broke even faster than they were before the cuts, we’re still waiting for that stimulus to arrive. Any day now. Tick tick tick.
See, Obama broke the New Deal.
One of my lefty friends was quite butthurt that I wasn’t screaming in anger at Romney’s comments. Because, you know, stuff.
Was at a large party here in silicon valley. Lots of 6 figure plus income folks that work for a successful company. Talk drifted to how the republicans would kill the “stimulus” and how awful that was. I simply stated a shorter version of the above facts. Everyone shut up. We need to really push what Steve is talking about. It’s the key fact of the election. If the takers become the majority, you only have 3 options, be raped, leave, or fight. Don’t know about you guys, but my family has been here for generations.
There really is nowhere to run. I suppose we could all run to Texas and secede from the Union.
Wasnt the Independent Republic of Texas where they were taking the A-Bomb in the last episode of Jericho?
Just make sure that y’all refuse to accept any of the national debt, which was incurred without your consent and over your strenuous objections.
Have plans to make your own hard-asset-backed currency from the get-go.
Otherwise, y’all will be facing THIS – which will happen to the rest of the US unless we get a handle on things RIGHT NOW.
I think it is what he’s about — there are hints. He’s just afraid of being crushed in the media and — sigh — can’t blame him too hard. Take what he said after the embassy attack — absolutely right and automagically a “gaffe” — of course we should have IMMEDIATELY have an ad buy in all major markets showing Kerry and Obama and all those nice people attacking the president in war time, but never mind.
Worse than Greece. The Greeks aren’t allowed to print money in the EU.
We’ve been gettin’ by on Asian loans and Reserve Currency and Trade/Petro Dollar status for decades now.
Monetizing the debt partially to get out the hole is almost assured.
The thing about that is, we can only do it once. It will cause hyperinflation, which is a debt jubilee by other means, and in the process it will destroy the US Dollar’s status as the global reserve currency (and with it, our ability to run massive trade deficits), and indeed, the current incarnation of the USD itself. The government will be forced to balance the budget for want of lenders and lose the ability to print currency endlessly for want of people willing to accept them as payment. Government workers and contractors will either demand payment in gold/silver/Euros/Yen/Yuan/Pounds or in a new dollar that is strictly limited in supply. Failing that, they’ll bail on the government.
Now, this may take several months, or even a few years (from the time it begins), but it is the nature of hyperinflation. As I said, hyperinflation is a jubilee by other means, so it wipes the slate clean. Of course, it would be better to just declare a jubilee, because the side-effects of hyperinflation are quite literally deadly. Besides the many who will be driven to suicide over the despair of losing everything they worked so hard to build or have no means of survival apart from welfare, there will be riots, starvation, diseases untreated for want of doctors and medicine, and general lawlessness. Zimbabwe is the most recent example: the utter devastation of hyperinflation increased the unemployment rate to 95% (not a typo), and most of the nation turned to prospecting, hoping to find enough scraps of gold to buy bread each day. The Zimbabwe dollar has ceased circulation, with the ten trillion and one hundred trillion Third Zimbabwe Dollar notes being worth US$2 and US$5, respectively, strictly as collector’s items.
You are entirely correct.
More about the Zimbabwe hyperinflation and other hyperinflations here.
Yes, Zimbabweans WERE using Zim dollars as toilet paper. Unfortunately, they found out that worthless currency clogs toilets.
I am not joking. This is the truth.
Oops, the link got lost:
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“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work….After eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started…and an enormous debt to boot!”
Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, address before Congress, 1939.
But back then the U.S. still had a budget.
Good times, good times.
What hurts Romney is insulting that 47% by saying that they all lack personal responsibility, as if their lack of income is their fault rather than a result of circumstance. Putting aside the young children and the retired, people cannot work because there are no jobs for them. Even the basic service jobs that used to tide someone over between jobs are now too competitive to get. Here is an example of that:
http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/get-a-job-the-craigslist-experiment/
The economy may look fine if you are wealthy from an inheritance or when you have a steady job with a stable employer. When you don’t, it’s quite different.
@Tang, Yeah, BUT… Romney knows what the rest of us know instinctively — there is something far wrong with a system that allows a large percentage to simply cruise. The top 1%, those horrid bloodsuckers constantly vilified on the airwaves, pay 37% of the federal income tax. THIRTY-SEVEN PERCENT. His point is well taken, and has been said by others, and deserves repeating — we’re reaching the point where a much-too-large group of people literally have nothing to gain by voting for lower taxes, and nothing to lose by voting for higher taxes and more cake. If you don’t have an inheritance or a stable job or a steady employer, IT IS NOT NECESSARILY MY FAULT. It is very likely YOUR fault.
Wasn’t this the whole thesis of that “What’s the matter with Kansas?” book that the progressives all loved? They thought that people getting goodies should always vote for more.
Tang Romney didn’t actually say that; what he said, in effect, was that voters who don’t pay income taxes won’t respond positively to any taxation policy that takes them off the government dime. He wasn’t speaking to responsibility or fault, but merely pointing out the cold hard facts: why would they want to vote for someone who might upset their tax situation? As a result, he is talking about the cold logic of the election, that he can’t rely on their votes.
His biggest mistake (and I really don’t see it as one) is that he quoted the percentage ultimately as too high. Yes, 47% don’t pay income tax. But many DO pay taxes, both state and federal. And many of those 47% WILL stay home, for various reasons (as they do for many elections). That is where he was “inartful.”
He’s at least doing the right thing, and sticking by his meta-narrative and fleshing out what he meant. As Glenn Reynolds has pointed out, this will blow over the moment Obama realizes that ITS A TRAP and run away from the Death Star that is the Entitlement/Economy issue. Also, Obama can’t do his “Romney is a rich bitch who wants to stop taxing the wealthy!” line anymore. Romney is talking ABOUT an expansion of the taxation base (to where it should be). So much for class warfare!
And honestly, while I’m at it, the “we are the 99%” catchphrase worked because it ultimately was egalitarian in principle (although it became the tyranny of the majority in practice). “We are the 47%” doesn’t work, because that’s actually kinda shameful in practice AND in principle. Being a member of the 47% really means admitting that you don’t want to win in the game of life, and want to mooch off someone else’s life. That’s not a winning argument.
That 47% is low. It excludes all the Public Employees who pay income taxes. But those folks don’t actually pay taxes. The private sector pays both the Public Employees’ salary and taxes. Any tax that a Public Employee pays is being paid with your money.
Bingo!
Still, public employees aren’t all Democrats. There are plenty of Republicans in government, particularly in the Department of Defense. Besides which, public employees have pensions to protect, giving the rational ones a vested interest in fiscal responsibility to avoid a collapse.
While that seems clever, you actually are telling someone like me, a conservative working in the public sector that I’m a leech. I put in 50+ hours a week, don’t give a rats ass about the union, and am good at what I do. Unless you believe there is no such thing as a worthy public sector job, you’re painting with a broad brush. I get your point, but it’s a little too easy to make. We are not all slobs. Soldiers are paid that way, too. Didn’t think about that?
I’m saying you’re like corporations. Corporations don’t pay taxes and neither do public employees. That doesn’t mean the jobs aren’t necessary, it means that those jobs don’t create wealth or generate economic growth. Every dollar the Public Sector spends is a dollar taken from the Private Sector. Consequently, Public Sector jobs must be maintained at the lowest possible level because, again, they don’t create wealth.
Of course no one is calling you a leech. The point is our economy cannot grow if too many jobs are financed by tax revenue. That doesn’t include just public sector jobs. Many private sector jobs, such as defense contractors, derive some or all of their income from government contracts, which means they are paid for by taxes. Where will that money come from when the private sector economy has been destroyed?
Many hard working people rely on government for their income. That doesn’t make them bad. Neither does it change the fact that the situation is unsustainable. It’s not 1945 anymore. Heck, it’s not 1985 anymore.
“The deal was, you give Washington a big chunk of your paycheck, and Washington would look after you in retirement.”
The deal was, “you work hard and if you live past the average life span and hadn’t saved enough money, the government would help you out.” Retirement was 108% of average life span when it was implemented.
^THIS
It wasn’t Obama who broke the New Deal, it was the doctors. They kept figuring out ways to keep people alive longer, and the politicians didn’t revise the age of eligibility to keep it higher than the average life expectancy.
The original idea was not that Social Security would pay for your retirement. The original idea was that YOU would pay for your retirement, and if you somehow managed to outlive YOUR savings by being one of the ‘lucky’ ones ‘blessed’ with long life, the government would help out.
It wasn’t a bad idea, nor was it an inherently flawed plan. The problem is that they wrote a specific age into the legislation, rather than something like “…one year older than the average life expectancy, as determined by the Census”.
Now, Obama certainly didn’t help the situation. Nor did Bush. Or the vast majority of elected officials who have served in the last half-century or so.
Acting like all the blame for this should go to Obama just makes it easy for the other side of the debate to debunk and discredit us, and that makes the undecided voters we are trying to persuade dismiss our arguments.
You’re barking up the wrong tree. For every welfare mama, there’s at least one six-figure hopenchange junkie. The real problem demographic isn’t the family getting food stamps, it’s the Prius crowd. They have the bucks to donate and the influence to get leverage. The food stamp family probably doesn’t even vote.
They’ll vote if the Democrats run down the street screaming “THE REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO TAKE AWAY THE FOOD STAMPS THAT KEEP YOU FROM STARVING”.
Which they are gearing up to do.
If you revise “THE FOOD STAMPS THAT KEEP YOU FROM STARVING” to “THE FOOD STAMPS THAT KEEP YOU BUYING BEER AND OTHER FUN STUFF” since one can find ways to exchange food stamps for cash. I think the going rate is something like 2:1, food stamp value to cash.
There are, of course, plenty of people who need and properly use food stamps. There are also people who cheat and game the system, finding a way to be on the public dime for decades through every fault of their own.
Recently had a discussion with a liberal minded individual who questioned my acceptance of Social Security and Medicare payments. I had to explain to him that when I was forced to apply for a SS Number in 1943 at age eleven I tried very hard to ‘opt out’. The SS local could not believe that I wanted to pass up such a wonderful ‘gift’ from the Feds. And it was only one and a half percent of my paycheck and would stop when my pay got to $3,600, and that it was only $54.00 a year. They made me an ‘offer I couldn’t refuse’ and I will hold their feet to the fire to fulfill their part of the agreement.
Funny thing happened some years later when the Fed Mob came up with Medicare. No ‘opt out’ provisions, no intention of providing the ‘benefits’ so lavishly promised. You’re damned right I will refuse to let them off the hook.
Social Security has rightfully been called the Greatest Ponzi Scheme Ever and Medicare is right alongside. But the most unconsionable Government fraud anywhere, anytime is the so-called Affordable Medical Care or ObamaCare, which by its very nature and design is nothing but a device to remove assets from those who earned them and distribute a sub-par service to people who think they are receiving something for nothing from the feds.
Poor Old Bernie Madoff should have known not to compete with the guys who write the rules.
Obamacare: the efficiency of the DMV delivered with the compassion of the IRS and the respect for privacy of the TSA.
There are plenty of rich dems, but most of them are concentrated in just a few groups:
1) Athletes, rock stars, actors, etc.
2) Lawyers, especially class-action ones
3) Trust fund babies
If you leave out those 3 groups, I’d bet that almost every rich person in the country is a Republican. Especially the self-made business-owner types.
academics including those who write books about why socialism is so great. You forgot them.
We have long since run out of other peoples money to spend. Now we are printing baseless dollars in order to devalue the dollar so we can pay back our existing foreign debt more cheaply. Problem is, all of us seniors, who decided long ago to support ourselves in retirement, are watching the value of our savings deteriorate. It isn’t just Social Security going broke for all of us old folks. Looks like after all my efforts, I am being taxed to death by the malevolent devaluing of my dollars by my government. I have no illusion that Romney can save my bacon, but I do believe that beating Obama will be the only way I might not be eating your bacon someday. This isn’t freedom, it is government tyranny, plain and simple. Soon, I am sure, the greedy political pawns will pay the piper and point their pusillanimous fingers at me and my ilk, as they like to say. ABO2012
Too many commas. My bad. I hope all the niggling pawns got my point anyway.
Romney’s right: the main leftist, Emocrat meme is still Marx’s assertion that: “Propery IS Theft!”
Which of course really only ever meant: “You owe me because you earned stuff I didn’t bother to! Whee!”
Emocrats are infantile delinquents, who have been taught since birth that they are entitled to the right to remain irresponsibly wrong, while only everyone else has the responsibility to be right!
And how many attempts at reforming SS so it IS sustainable were torpedoed by Emocrats screaming “They want to take away your social security check!”?
Face it, if you’re on the government *dole*, you want the cheese to continue: saying you’ll hold “them” to the fire is to encourage “them” to raise taxes on those who continue to make the cheese so “they” don’t have to suffer the consequences of their MOUTHS making promises their checkbook couldn’t cover.
Please note that I said *dole*, not *payroll*: the maintenance of the peace is the PROPER role of government, but the large fraction of what the Government takes in is just TRANSFER payments. without those, we’d be running a surplus.
QE3 – Pay Attention If You Are in the Real Estate Market Thursday, September 20, 2012 – by Catherine Austin Fitts
http://www.thedailybell.com/4323/Catherine-Austin-Fitts-QE3-Pay-Attention-If-You-Are-in-the-Real-Estate-Market