“The Democrats have to stop attacking Republicans for running federal budget deficits. I know it’s political fun and that the Republicans are hypocritical about budget deficits. Deficits are going to be “massive” when an economy the size of the U.S. suffers a Great Recession. We have had plenty of “massive” deficits during our history under multiple political parties. None of this has ever led to a U.S. crisis. We have had some of our strongest growth while running “massive” deficits. Conversely, whenever we have adopted server austerity we have soon suffered a recession. In 1937, when FDR listened to his inept economists and inflicted austerity, the strong recovery from the Great Depression was destroyed and the economy was thrust back into an intense Great Depression.”
“As the polling data showed her losing the white working class by staggering amounts, in the last month of the election, the big new idea that Hillary pushed repeatedly was a promise that if she were elected she would inflict continuous austerity on the economy. “I am not going to add a penny to the national debt.”“
One of my favorite writers, Bill Black, on what austerity has wrought.
Now it is perfectly legitimate to attack the manner of creating those deficits (financial kleptocracy) and how empty they are of any public ownership.
It is a long read and a challenge for some to recognize the reality of his history without becoming defensive. But pay-go should be DEAD for the immediate future.
Which will have the unfortunate effect of causing people to think that Trump’s tax cuts stimulated the economy, not the deficit spending. That’s what happened when Reagan was elected talking about a balanced budget and tax cuts. People (guided by the 1%) focused on the tax cuts, not the huge increase in defense spending, which in those days was spent in the USA.
Exactly. But military spending isn’t spending, dontcha know. It’s supporting the troops.
And tax cuts aren’t tax cuts, they’re stimulus. Ironically, that “stimulus” actually is as rich people invest most or all of it in Asia (because that’s where the big profits are). Just not stimulating the USA.
What Democrats should stop doing is creating a communications strategy without a legislative and electoral strategy.
Who is the audience for what they say? Who will actually hear it given the media and the social media they have at hand?
What legislative procedures will actually attract the attention of low-information voters instead of just the Beltway crowd and base cheerleaders?
And how do you get the public educated about how public finance works as a complement of private saving and investment?
The deeper issue is having a simple to understand replacement for the current Byzantine tax code. Is there a progressive group that can be trusted to write that in a way that gets corporations and the 1% paying their fair share of taxes?
And a way of highlighting what the national security budget does to the deficit.
Yes, Reagan’s “eliminating deductions and lower rates” mostly cut middle class tax deductions. Post-2000 we have the geriatric tax cuts. Most of my life over-65s got an extra exemption. Post-2000 sometime that became an elevated standard deduction. Big deal! Now that we are over 65 instead of our two extra exemptions we get a 12,000 standard deduction which is worthless because we have 15,000 in itemized deductions. Many older people in the Chicago suburbs will meet the 12,000 just on property taxes. I have lower property taxes but have a mortgage and significant medical expenses that exceed the Schedule A cut off. Which really burns me as I consider that in Europe, individual medical expenses don’t exist at all.
Or was it Clinton? We turned 65 in 2000 but I don’t recall ever getting the double exemption.
These are all valid points but…
… if the Democrats were to somehow arrive at a legislative and electoral strategy (and that’s a big “if”) why should we assume it would have any bearing on representing our interests? And why do we assume that if such a strategy were in place, any (or most) of them would follow it beyond the point at which they realized it conflicted with their own interests or those of their funders?
We have to start taking some responsibility for our own dire situation and quit assuming that the Democrats, having had no small part in creating the crisis we face, are equipped (never mind willing) to do something to fix it. Too often, leftist/liberal/progressive activists will say things like, “What the Democrats should do [for us] is X…” or, “If only the Democrats would fight for Y [for us]…”. What the Democrats do, they do for themselves; they aren’t in it for us. If we want anything done for us we have to do it ourselves.
By “Democrats” here, you really mean “Democratic elected officials” with the understanding that “elected” goes with “officials” and “Democratic” goes with “officials” as well.
Yes. Good clarification.
Although, it gets tricky. Many Democratic non-elected activists here are deep into George Lakoff; they want to clean up what they call their “messaging” to better communicate their “values”. That’s partly valid, the Republicans are very good at messaging distortions of all sorts, not the least regarding values. So this Democratic messaging talk becomes an example of a “communications strategy”.
Problem for my Democratic friends is their party’s main “values” (in Wisconsin at least) boil down to neoliberalism. People get that, and “messaging” won’t fix it.
Did you see Lakoff’s latest? https:/georgelakoff.com/2016/11/22/a-minority-president-why-the-polls-failed-and-what-the-majority-
can-do
When Dems decided to become economic Republicans…well, a morally conflicted history of behavior is the least of their problems.
Don’t know that liberals even understand Bernay’s formulation (what works) and Lakoff’s (why it works) is elusive, in part because Lakoff supplies too little of the why before jumping into political applications.
Wish he weren’t so stuck on his “strict father” and “nurturant mother” metaphor. IMO it blinded him to the fact that both Trump and Hillary were pushing “strict” and “fear.” As often as not, mother is the strict one and the enforcer. And he’s way too quick to see a Clinton or a Democrat as innocent. After eight years, Obama and Biden have managed not to be tagged as corrupt for personal self-dealing. Why? Because they haven’t engaged petty tawdriness.
Disagree with Lakoff that “crooked Hillary” was powerful. It was clunky, adolescent, and lack zing outside of the GOP base that still holds to the notion that Obama is an illegitimate POTUS. It was serviceable but weak.
Far better, even though I still think it fell far short of a slogan that zings was Make American Great Again. As I pointed out way back in September 2015. The Hillary response, America is already great, was awful. As was, “I’m with HER.”
At the end of the day, there were two dreadful candidates that had only their own personal self-aggrandizement on offer for their candidacies, one with a soupcon of “change” embedded in all his twelve year old vocabulary verbiage and one that had “no change” and the country split roughly 48:48 on the question. If “no change” had spent the same amount of money as “change,” the split would likely have increased the vote for “change” because “change” has a slight and inherent advantage after eight years of a party in the WH.
To this day liberals fail to see that in ’48 Truman ran on “change.” Similarly in the ’16 election cycle, they dismissed that Sanders was a “change” candidate, who also, unlike Trump, knew what he was talking about.
One more thing. Marketing, as taught in business schools, is a piece of cake. Cognitive psychology is complex and requires much more time to study and comprehend. It’s also a bit spooky like that brain is.
Part II, wherein he unloads on Krugman.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/bill-black-krugmans-failure-to-speak-truth-to-power-about-aus
terity.html
(I apologize for the length, but I got on a role)
Here’s what I’d like liberal politicians to say:
Bingo! Excellent!
Just one point: Even granting that military spending is an overall negative, it can be a local positive. That’s one reason there are so many military installations in the South – the old Congressional Seniority System. I’ve heard it said that if Mendel Rivers put one more installation into Charleston, it would sink into the sea. So, military spending can be locally good for Charleston, Pensacola, San Diego, and yes San Francisco. I hope you concede that the Navy leaving San Francisco would be, at least for a while, a drag on the economy. Naval installations with their higher rate of mechanical & engineering contracting may be particularly important to an area.
Military Spending and trump’s Wall can be compared to Pyramid building in Egypt. It kept the population (and brick contractors) occupied.
True. This was just a first draft and to inform the public properly would require four to six “chats.” Set up each of those “we need to talk more about this later” in the first one.
wrt military installations, we’ve been closing “surplus” sites for decades. While I haven’t looked at this in any depth, I probably wouldn’t agree with many of those closings for the simple reason that they are now less well distributed throughout the country and more heavily concentrated in the south and those installations have been expanded to accommodate the personnel that would once have been at the now closed sites. I don’t much like monopolies. For whatever reason, the efficiency gains in consolidations seem not to translate into cost reductions.
I was under the impression that the base closing committee did consider the impact a closing would have on a community. So many of the sites were contaminated and not usable for another purpose until after decades of remediation which is another variable that they had to consider.
It’s the foreign installations that need to be significantly reduced. Start with those where the local population would cheer our leaving.
What I wouldn’t do is reduce the military personnel (maybe they could cut out some of the brass but not the enlisted men and women). It’s a job/career option for many that don’t easily fit into something else when they’re young.
Think peacetime military. Reduce the amount spent on new (and untested) very expensive equipment. ie the new gazillion dollar fighter jet that doesn’t work and The Navy’s New Stealth Destroyer Broke Down in the Panama Canal, U.S. Navy’s new $13B aircraft carrier can’t fight. Kick out all the bloody arms merchant lobbyists and ban retired military officers from such jobs for years after they leave the service. Seriously, did they learn no marketable skills other than buying expensive equipment (and they don’t seem to be too good at that).
100% agreement from me as an ex-Navy civil servant.
>> I hope you concede that the Navy leaving San Francisco would be, at least for a while, a drag on the economy
the Navy hasn’t been in San Francisco Bay for years, except for the annual Fleet Week exhibition. it probably was, at least for a while, a drag on the economy, but that’s over now.
https://www.google.com/search?q=us+navy+west+coast+bases&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
on the West Coast, the Navy is in San Diego.
I’m not disagreeing with you about the impact of military spending, but in California it’s more about SoCal aerospace contractors than bases.
California had our share of bases, like Fort Ord and the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, that were important to winning World War 2 and were primarily pork after that.
Well, I haven’t kept up much since 1979 when I left. I’m rather surprised. We had some major contractors there as well as two shipyards and a Naval Air Rework facility. I suppose everything was privatized or as I say vampired.
There were far more military installations in CA than you seem to suggest. One positive is that they kept a lot of primo land out of the hands of developers during the 1945-1990 era when they ruined so much of it. Shudder to think what they would have done with the Presidio. South Coast residents seem to feel something similar about Camp Pendleton and that it’s in better hands than if it were let go.