I’m still gathering my thoughts on the “meaning” of Tuesday. For now, I’m not seeing half as much meaning as most others.
Until my further posts on the subject, this segment below by Dennis Miller (via Hot Air) is worth a listen.
Miller makes the point that we are heading, if not already there, to a society where it is not economically rational to work hard as a means to advancement particularly for the lower-middle and middle classes.
This is the point I made in my post on November 11, 2009, 100% Plus Taxation Key To Permanent Dem Majority. When you add up increased tax rates and loss of government benefits, the “implicit marginal rate” for increasing income exceeds 100% for those making under $50,000 per year:
Is it possible to pay more than 100% of your last dollar of income in taxes? And if it were, would you bother to earn that last dollar?
Herein lies the key to how Democrats will obtain a permanent, economically-enslaved majority if universal income-based health care subsidies are enacted. And it is much worse and more nefarious than even the Wall Street Journal recently pointed out in Confessions of an ObamaCare Backer.
The key distinction is between marginal tax rate and implicit marginal tax rate. The marginal tax rate is the rate we all talk about – what absolute percentage of your last dollar earned will be taken by the government.
The implicit marginal tax rate is the absolute percentage of your last dollar taken by the government plus the loss of government benefits resulting from that last dollar. This implicit marginal tax rate can, and does, exceed 100% for the lower-middle and middle classes, and will expand under Democratic health care proposals.
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Comments
I’m feeling very gloomy about the outcome. We now have a President who has a terrible economic record and no incentive to improve it. I see no likelihood that the US will return to prosperity in the next four years, probably not in the rest of my working life, and possibly not in my natural lifetime.
I suspect that (like us) that a lot of folks in the $250K range are the ones meeting with their financial and tax advisers looking at how they can reduce or defer their income profile. We were fortunate to make a few good investments but now we have to figure out how to defer and divert that income and we’re looking at closing our business because we can’t afford to have the income. That’s pretty sad, because when a small business closes, all it’s suppliers take the hit.
Quite simply – for the foreseeable future, the middle class won’t be able to afford to work for a living.
I am quite ready to soldier on, as many are advising we do.
Thing is, we just made an existential wrong turn. This is not like other times in America.
Unless we can stop it with civil disobedience (think Prohibition) ObamaCare will destroy our economy. Quickly.
We were given a choice between reform and uncontrolled collapse, and we choose collapse.
Good point Ragspierre – I didn’t mean to sound quite so gloomy there. We must soldier on, there isn’t another option.
But, for most of us, we’ve got to figure out how to do this without going broke – which means taking some of our favorite toys off the table and making them inaccessible to the confiscatory tentacles of the government. Last year, when I paid my tax bill, I realized that my five figure payment would only pay for half an hour of operating Air Force One. And Obama thinks I didn’t pay nearly enough. I admit I’m leaning very doomsday this week, but I think the only way to force the changes that must happen both in reducing the size of government and it’s expenditures is to starve the beast.
Funny you should say that…
A couple of years ago, I proposed a movement I called STARVE THE BEAST. I put it on hold because I felt we needed to run the election options first.
It would essentially apply the things we’ve learned about civil disobedience to stage a revolt.
Simply…and publicly…withdraw your support for the Federal government by refusing to pay income tax.
It is impossible to counter if a critical number of people do it.
My thoughts probably need a lot more refinement, but my version of Starve the Beast is to use the single principal that Obama doesn’t seem to comprehend. Freedom and choices. We can make choices about our incomes and expenditures. We can move to tax friendlier states. We can reduce or defer income. We can reduce spending, keep our savings in cash or gold (or at my house ammo and firearms). Become as self sustaining as possible in the modern world – hunting and gardening are still legal. Making your own breads, cheeses and beer can be a pretty good hobby.
I think there are too many hazards in defying the IRS – they are already targeting small business owners in huge percentages and under Obamacare, they got a crap more new agents who get to come look under your bed. Considering their ability to confiscate without due process, the hazards and costs to fight back are too futile. In short, examine every opportunity you have to legally reduce your tax profile.
The path would not have been easy in either case. We have been piling problems for many decades, and it would take major pain and similarly long time to recover, if at all possible.
Romney, as much as his conservative credentials were not always reliable, was uniquely well suited for the job that needs to be done. His experience with turning around failed enterprises is sorely needed at the time when this country is failing. Paul Ryan was, likewise, an inspired choice of someone who gets this and provides a good match to what needed to be done.
They were the best, and perhaps, the last hope of slowing down this country speeding toward the collapse. With any luck, they would be able to even start chipping at the problem and making it better and not just worse at slower rate.
Instead, we doubled down on stupid. Yes, it was stupid in 2008, but at least then we had an excuse. What happened last 4 years was just a prediction, not a certainty, and I can forgive those who made the bad choice. We have no such excuse this time.
This year election is perhaps the final nail in the coffin. We are not going down without a fight, but I don’t a way that we are not going down.
Just saw this posted at Protein Wisdom – I don’t think this will be the first notice like this. Also, note that this notice doesn’t include sequestration issues:
Boeing announced a major restructuring of its defense division on Wednesday that will cut 30 percent of management jobs from 2010 levels, close facilities in California and consolidate several business units to cut costs.
The company [BA 70.11 -1.47 (-2.05%) ] told employees about the changes on Wednesday, in a memo obtained by Reuters and confirmed by Boeing.
Boeing, the Pentagon’s second-largest supplier, said the changes were the latest step in an affordability drive that has already reduced the company’s costs by $2.2 billion since 2010, according to the memo
I’m still gathering my thoughts on the “meaning” of Tuesday. For now, I’m not seeing half as much meaning as most others.
Those were the first two questions that entered my mind after the initial shock wore off. They still strike me as the most important questions although there presumably are others that haven’t occurred to me yet.
Answers to those questions require an in-depth look at empirical data and perhaps person-to-person interviews. I hope the GOP and other conservative organizations have wonks and geeks assembling that data right now.
Obama was extremely beatable. The Republican Party did not beat him. It needs to find out why because the Democrats have plenty of other power-hungry radicals ambitious for higher office.
It behooves the GOP to approach the analysis with humility: not humility in the sense of self-abasement, but the humility that an open mind implies. Rage at the voters is not a constructive attitude. Neither is despair.
Look at the roughly half the states that went Romney. With a few exceptions, the margins were HUGE.
This is a VERY divided nation, and states that went Romney send conservative(ish) Congresscritters to DC, and elect conservative(er) governors.
The popular vote was narrowly lost, and I maintain that Snookie decided this POTUS election.
Outside of a very few regions (the Northwest), Collectivism is only really popular in population centers that wag the tail of whole states like Illinois and Michigan. They decide the EV to too great an extent, but not too great to overcome.
I guess what really hacks me off – is when you look at the physical map of red vs blue counties nationwide – those of us who chose to live in the rural, conservative, self sufficient flyover country will have our choices for the life we want taken away by urban liberals. How many of their mandates diminish our ability to live our lives out here? Insane vehicle regulations? Environmental regulation? Gun Control?
From S. Holmes:
There be some o’ that goin’ around…
Sean Trende takes a stab (using data) at explaining the missing voters here:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2012/11/08/the_case_of_the_missing_white_voters_116106.html
Plus, there’s another article floating around (can’t remember where I read it now) explaining how adept Axelrod was at identifying unregistered voters, getting them registered and to the polls. They had people going to black barber shops, black salons, black churches, etc. to get blacks registered and fired up.
A Romney sympathizer said Romney ran a 20th century campaign in the 21st century. While it’s certainly depressing to have lost, the silver lining may be that we may have lost because Romney’s campaign manager could not compete against Axelrod’s superior tactics, and not necessarily because conservative ideology was rejected.
“A Romney sympathizer said Romney ran a 20th century campaign in the 21st century.”
Ew… Heavy, dude…
What an empty bromide. (Not directed at you Maggot. But, just damn…)
1. Thanks for this. So the highly tentative indication is that Romney may have turned off conservative (rural?) whites in the lower to middle-middle classes.
Presumably Trende’s analysis is being extended nationwide and will be redone once all the votes are counted.
2. I suspect that there are also Obama voters who sat out the election rather than voting for Romney. They are potential pick-ups in future elections.
3. Romney left the GOP stage without blame, even with affection. That may change as the campaign is analyzed and missed opportunities become empirically evident.
4. The data are highly preliminary and the foregoing thoughts are offered in the same spirit.
I couldn’t agree more. We don’t have all the data right now to draw conclusions from the vote on Tues. The number one conflict between both sides revolved around models of the electorate. I saw plenty on both sides doubt Axelrod’s picture of a less white, more diverse proTherjection and yet from early exits it appears he was right.
Sean Trende wrote about the mystery of the missing white voters today:
I suspect we will find a host of reasons to explain why they stayed home. A key factor just may be that these folks felt as though they were doing well enough and opted for “status quo.” Economic growth was very weak but it was just enough for the economic forecast models to predict a tight election tilted slightly in Obama’s favor. Incumbency factors in that equation.
Right before the election I was visiting my mother in Wilkes Barre PA. We stopped in a budget grocery store since my mother is a child of the depression. The place was swamped with people spending their food stamps. Whether these folks consider themselves “better off” under Obama is questionable.
On the other hand, there may well be folks in Ohio who are working at higher rates than other parts of the country who see no real reason to change leadership. I suspect some will cling to the auto bailout issue as a reason but also might just use that as justification in the aftermath.
The power to use taxpayer dollars to lull otherwise regular voters into complacency is a part of the reason incumbency is such a factor in economic forecasting. Whether political scientists will admit that is another matter. No doubt the health care law will be used, as it was in this election, to influence greater portions of the electorate. It will equally outrage other portions. I wonder if John Roberts factored any of this in his decision back in June.
No doubt the right has to find a way to make inroads with minority voters. I am not convinced, however, the demographic time bomb blew up in our faces between 2008 and 2012. Incumbency will not be a factor in 2016 nor will a historic candidate be a considerable factor. It is quite likely another four years of zero leadership will leave the Democrats they hadn’t intended. Is there really anything in Bush’s 2nd term that has been a boon to the right?
One thing we have to acknowledge though, Obama spent years engineering “Dolly the Sheep” voters in test tubes in an OFA cave. The sheep voters showed up in droves for O despite near unanimous disbelief on our side. Chances are good if they get married over the next 4 years they vote Republican. We need to either work on getting them husbands or convincing them freedom and free markets are more valuable than free birth control. It seems we have our work cut out for us.
We are fulfilling the Tytler Prophecy (attributed to Tytler)
The following unverified quotation has been attributed to Tytler:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to selfishness;
From selfishness to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage
I think Dennis is right that Romney was not the problem. He was a fine candidate, accomplished and experienced, free of the usual personal character flaws that Team Obama loves to exploit.
I think Miller and Rush have both touched on the shift in thinking in America from “work is good and is part of striving for excellence in our lives” to “work is for suckers and why would I do that when I can live comfortably without working and sit around and play Call of Duty all day?” I first witnessed this when I moved to California from Ohio in the mid-90s. I was in my 20’s and ran into many people of similar age who were completely okay with being on welfare and/or living at home with Mom (Dad was usually not in the picture). To understand what a shock this was, I never lived at home more than 3 months after leaving for college at age 18–why would I want to live with my parents–very uncool–and my thinking was the norm.
I do think the only cure for the slacker mentality is reality. Republicans in the House need to say yes, we will offer benefits but only the barest minimum. We need to make life A LOT more uncomfortable for these people.
Additionally, I think we have simply failed to understand the “coolness’ factor. Obama was cool, Mitt was not. Didn’t matter that Obama has a record of failure–he wears cool sunglasses, goes on cool shows, hangs with cool people, so they don’t care about the rest of it. As shallow as that is, look at California again–who was the last Republican governor to be elected in the last 15 years? Arnold. He was cool. Didn’t matter that stuff was coming out about affairs and that he had no governing experience–didn’t matter because he was the Terminator. Our nation has become Californianized.
I don’t know how we solve the cool factor because we need qualified candidates and they tend not to be cool, but I do think voters will overlook a lot of positions and evidence they don’t like if they think the candidate is hip, which I would argue is exactly why we should not change our positions on many issues (plus we will lose a huge portion of our base if we do). Sadly, yes, our message needs to be recalibrated for stupid people.
Dennis Miller, Greg Gutfeld and others go a long way to taking back the minds of the young.
I wish Red Eye was in prime time.
I LOVE Miller!!
In keeping with his profound disappointment for his country, I’ll quote Rush from yeaterday:
“In a nation of children, Santa Claus wins.”
The Punk (POTUS) Has just eaten the gold egg laying goose. Without the average worker producing where is he gonna get the bribe money to the “takers”?
By January unemployment will exceed 12% officially, probably 20% actualluy, then where’s the money gonna come from?
I like funny, moral Jews.
No, it’s not the end of the world. However, a suggestion, embrace the corruption, and hope you are not consumed.