Tag Archives: middle-class

Joe Biden goes to Costco

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Nothing else that happened this week mattered as much as Joe Biden’s visit to Costco.

Huffington Post: [Vice President Joe Biden], who flashed a store membership card as he entered the city’s first Costco on its opening day, said consumer confidence is growing – as demonstrated by the huge crowd at the gleaming new store in Northeast Washington.

“The last thing we need to do is dash that” confidence by imposing a tax increase of about $2,200 for a typical middle-class family, Biden said. Bush-era tax cuts are scheduled to expire Jan. 1, the same time as across-the-board spending cuts are scheduled to take effect. The combination of tax hikes and spending cuts could spike unemployment and bring on a new recession.

Biden and President Barack Obama have pressed Congress to extend middle-class tax cuts while raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, while congressional Republicans have pushed to extend cuts for all taxpayers.

Biden said Congress should act on the middle-class tax cuts before Christmas to spur consumer confidence and then fight later over tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 a year.

“We have a lot we have to settle, but there’s one thing we should all agree on and that’s the middle-class tax cut should be made permanent. I think it’s important Congress acts now, I mean right now,” Biden said at an impromptu news conference at the store, where he was surrounded by shoppers and employees eager to shake hands, take photos and even hug the vice president. [...]

Biden said he was optimistic about reaching a deal to avoid the fiscal crisis and said, “all these folks in this store, man, it’s going to make a difference. Take $2,200 out of their pockets next year, you have a big problem.”


afternoonsnoozebutton: Look at this picture of Joe Biden examining the giant pies at Costco

  
  
  

Joe Biden enjoys himself at opening of D.C. Costco


yahoopolitics: Joe Biden’s visit to Cosco, gif’ed. You’re welcome.


“Guys in all honesty I didn’t have my own card, Jill wouldn’t let me have one. So I went to get my wife’s card, and she said: ‘No, no, no you get your own.’” – Joe Biden at Costco in DC today.
[Source: CBS News]

Joe Biden single-handedly jumps-starts economy at Costco!

…

Meanwhile, before his lunch with the President:

downlo: Biden being charming at Costco vs. Mittens looking awkward as hell at McDonald’s. He also reportedly was there ahead of his lunch with Obama today. Does he think the White House isn’t going to serve a good lunch? Weird. (1, 2)

Stockholm Syndrome victims for Romney!

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via: tosdoh


Reference

Once upon a time, there was an American middle class

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From a Pew study showing that America’s middle class is receiving less of the nation’s income than it did 40 years ago — 17% less:

The new study reviewed 2010 data from the Census Bureau and Federal Reserve, defining “middle class” as the tier of adults whose household income falls between two-thirds and double the national median income, or $39,418 to $118,255 in 2010 for a family of three. By this definition, “middle class” makes up about 51 percent of U.S. adults, down from 61 percent in 1971.

In 1970, the share of U.S. income that went to the middle class was 62 percent, while wealthier Americans received just 29 percent. But by 2010, the middle class garnered 45 percent of the nation’s income, tying a low first reached in 2006, compared to 46 percent for upper-income Americans.

Since 2000, the median income for America’s middle class has fallen from $72,956 to $69,487.

— The Associated Press: Middle class share of America’s income shrinking

You know the median incomes of the wealthiest didn’t fall in the past 40 years — and they get to take home more of their incomes because of the way they’re taxed compared to the way we’re taxed ($77,000 deductions for horses, for example). Look at these numbers:

  • 1970: middle class share of U.S. income was 62% to a 29% share for the wealthy.
  • 2010: middle class share of U.S. income was 45% to a 46% share for the wealthy.

Let’s not pretend Romney and the billionaires who want to buy the White House aren’t looking to take most, if not all, of that remaining 45% income share that’s currently going to the dying middle class.

But let’s keep pretending there isn’t a massive, ongoing bottom-to-top income redistribution happening — just keep saying job creators and trickle down.

We can thank patriots like this for supporting their own demise over the past several decades:

GOP Class Warfare: tax cuts for 20 million vs. tax cuts for 2 million

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It’s pretty easy to see who loses under the Republican Senate tax plan: More than 20 million families would lose tax credits under Sen. McConnell’s tax plan, compared to the 2.1 million high-income households that would lose some of their George W. Bush-era tax cuts under the Senate Democratic plan. (source: Center for American Progress)

amprog: It’s pretty easy to see who loses under the Republican Senate tax plan: More than 20 million families would lose tax credits under Sen. McConnell’s tax plan, compared to the 2.1 million high-income households that would lose some of their George W. Bush-era tax cuts under the Senate Democratic plan.

(source: Center for American Progress)

The GOP is holding tax cuts for 98% of us hostage until tax cuts for the wealthiest are extended

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America needs to regain some balance and the Republican Party needs to be reminded of that. For three decades the wealthy have unequally benefited from tax laws, taking home more money than the rest of us, paying less tax on their incomes than the rest of us.

The rich have stashed their extra money in offshore accounts while creating zero jobs. Actually, with less revenue coming into local, state, and federal treasuries, thousands of public sector jobs have actually been lost through layoffs and hiring freezes. Paul Krugman says the fall in public employment is “about 1.4 million jobs less than it would be if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush. And, if we had those extra jobs, the unemployment rate would be much lower than it is — something like 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent.”

That’s lost jobs, lost paychecks and benefits and pensions, lost buying power, lost business. Formerly middle class people now unemployed, homes foreclosed, some now living on unemployment and public assistance. And what for? So that the rest of us can continue to finance the one percent’s tax deductions / lifestyles – like the $77,000 deduction the Romneys took on their Olympic horse.

It’s time to let the Bush tax cuts expire for the super rich.

The Hill:

“In his weekly address, the President called for lawmakers to adopt a Democratic measure which would extend the expiring lower George W. Bush-era tax rates only for those couples making below $250,000, and forcing higher income earners to pay more.

“[...] Republicans charge that a tax increase on any Americans would further hurt the recovering economy, while Obama has threatened to veto an across-the-board extension, calling on the wealthy to pay more.

“In his address, Obama again called on the GOP to decouple the middle class rates from rates for higher income earners.

““If 218 Members of the House vote the right way, 98% of American families and 97% of small business owners will have the certainty of knowing that that their income taxes will not go up next year,” said the president.

““Everyone says they agree that we should extend the tax cuts for the middle class,” said Obama. “Instead of doing what’s right for middle class families and small business owners, Republicans in Congress are holding these tax cuts hostage until we extend tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

“Obama said the country could not afford more “top-down economics” and vowed that as soon as they sent him a bill to block a tax raise on the middle class he would “sign it right away.””

GOP fast-tracking tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, paid for by eliminating our deductions

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Maybe Republican voters who earn $250,000 a year or less can explain how the Teaparty / GOP politicians they voted into office are working for their constituents and not for their wealthy donors. Get a load of this:

The Republican majority in the House have introduced a bill designed to extend tax cuts for the wealthy and make it harder to modify tax law. They want to bring the bill to a vote this coming week. That was fast, right? Why are they doing it? Because Democrats in the Senate extended the Bush tax cuts last week — but only for incomes of $250,000 or less. Suddenly the do-nothing, “party of no” is actually doing something — they’re going to protect the wealthiest one percent from a tax increase of a whopping 4.6% and give them even more of a tax cut.

The Raw Story: “Earlier this week, Democrats in the Senate scored a major coup in the fight over tax cuts. In a 51-48 vote, lawmakers passed legislation that would extend Bush tax cuts for the middle class, people making $250,000 a year or less, but not preserve tax breaks for the wealthy, which are set to expire at the end of the year. Senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) voted with Republicans.

“Republicans in the House have responded with legislation that calls for their own version of “tax reform,” a set of regulations that would shift the tax burden down the income ladder while giving millionaires an average of $187,000 in tax cuts in 2014. The Republican changes would encourage companies to invest overseas, reorganize tax brackets, reduce taxes on corporations and restrict them to a permanent rate of 25 percent or less …[and] increase taxes on families making less than $200,000 a year and repeal tax credits for low-income Americans signed into law by President Obama.”

Think Progress: ”If the House GOP bill were adopted, tax reform legislation would “have special protections in the U.S. Senate, limiting the opportunities for lawmakers to use blocking tactics.” But the GOP bill only calls for a certain kind of tax reform — specifically that which would benefit the rich and corporations. Under the GOP’s fast-track approach, a tax reform bill would have to consist of:

      1. a consolidation of the current 6 individual income tax brackets into not more than two brackets of 10 and not more than 25 percent;
      2. a reduction in the corporate tax rate to not greater than 25 percent;
      3. a repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax;
      4. a broadening of the tax base to maintain revenue between 18 and 19 percent of the economy; and
      5. a change from a ‘‘worldwide’’ to a ‘‘territorial’’ system of taxation.

“As Citizens for Tax Justice noted, these changes would massively benefit the wealthy and corporations, shifting the tax burden down the income scale. In fact, consolidation of the tax code in the way the GOP envisions would give millionaires a $187,000 annual tax cut, while likely increasing taxes on the middle-class and working families, due to the elimination of deductions upon which they depend.”

And there you have the GOP’s idea of “tax fairness.” If you make less than $250,000 and you’re all for giving away your tax deductions to help finance bigger tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent, then by all means keep supporting the Republican Party. If you’re dumb enough, or brainwashed enough, to believe that Republicans in the House and Senate really care about gay marriage or any of the other social issues they use to get you to vote for them, you’d better read this again. Look at what they can accomplish and fast track when it’s something that really matters to them: protecting their wealthy benefactors.

 

Time to end the GOP myth about job creation: the American worker is the job creator

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This post is so good, I’m reblogging most of it (h/t: liberalsarecool):

Evasporque: “The American economy is not driven by suits in walnut clad offices alone. The worker has just [as] big of [a] stake in “job creation” as the CEO who collects 500% more in pay. Without the worker on the floor, at the machines, in the line, at the computer, the American economy would come to a halt. Every worker, every employee in this nation contributes to our prosperity, and we have sat back and let the Republicans twist reality yet again and convince the public that jobs come from the wealthy… The media and even the rank and file working class conservatives signed on to the meme that only the wealthy who receive generous tax cuts have the ability to create jobs. That is a lie…The American worker should be ashamed that they allowed the Republicans to remove them from the economic continuum. I think it is time to put an end to the “job creator” myth once and for all. Take back our place in the economy. Without the worker there is no economy and no job creation.”

I’d add only one thing: not only does the American worker contribute to the productivity and prosperity of our nation’s goods and services, but without millions of American workers spending  their paychecks on goods and services, there would be no economy.

No living wage, no disposable income, no consumption, no demand… no business. Without customers, there is no business.

Romney completely unaware of what waiters and waitresses earn, calls them “middle class”

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image: christopherstreet

CBS News: “Addressing 300 contributors at a Jackson, Miss., fundraiser who paid $2,500, $10,000 or $50,000 to hear him speak, Romney acknowledged that the people in the room were well-off compared to many Americans. It was the middle class that had been let down by Obama, Romney said, and he pointed to the wait staff serving finger foods as an example:

“It’s tough being middle class in America right now… The waiters and waitresses that come in and out of this room and offer us refreshments, they’re not having a good year. The people of the middle class of America are really struggling. And they’re struggling I think in a way because they’re surprised because when they voted for Barack Obama…he promised them that things were going to get a heck a lot of better. He promised hope and change and they’re still waiting.”

***

We really are all the same to Mitt Romney. We’re the ones who serve him and his rich family and friends in thousands of ways daily, we’re the ones who sign the back of a paycheck, we’re the ones who scurry around doing our “jobs.” To Romney it doesn’t matter if a few bucks more or less per hour could change someone’s entire life for better or worse — all he sees are blobs of meat moving through space, serving finger food, while he collects millions at luncheons to spend on political attack ads.

There are only two classes in Mitt Romney’s world: those who attend his fund-raising lunches and everyone else (the middle class).

Romney’s business experience: redistribution from the middle-class to a minority at the top

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Paul Krugman sums up the reasons (the right reasons!) that the Obama campaign has decided to go after Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital:

“Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. He didn’t build businesses, he bought and sold them.”

“…why does [Romney] want us to think he should be president? It’s not about ideology: Romney offers nothing but warmed-over right-wing platitudes, with an extra helping of fraudulent arithmetic, and it’s fairly obvious that even he himself doesn’t believe anything he’s saying.

“Instead, his thing is competence: supposedly, his record as a successful businessman should tell us that he knows how to create jobs. And this in turn means that we have every right to ask exactly what kind of a businessman he was.

“Bain invested in companies that specialized in helping other companies get rid of employees, either in the United States or overall, by outsourcing work to outside suppliers and offshoring work to other countries.”

“Now, the truth is even under the best of circumstances, the case for electing a businessman as president would be very weak. A country is not a company – does any company sell more than 80 percent of what it makes to its own workers, the way America does? — and competitive success in business bears no particular relationship to the principles of macroeconomic policy. So even if Romney were a true captain of industry, a latter-day Andrew Carnegie, this wouldn’t be a strong qualification.

“In any case, however, Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. He didn’t build businesses, he bought and sold them – sometimes restructuring them in ways that added jobs, often in ways that preserved profits but destroyed jobs, and fairly often in ways that extracted money for Bain but killed the business in the process.

“And recently the Washington Post added a further piece of information: Bain invested in companies that specialized in helping other companies get rid of employees, either in the United States or overall, by outsourcing work to outside suppliers and offshoring work to other countries.

“[Romney was] a captain of deindustrialization, making big profits…by helping to dismantle the implicit social contract that used to make America a middle-class society”

“The Romney camp went ballistic, accusing the Post of confusing outsourcing and offshoring, but this is a pretty pathetic defense. For one thing, there weren’t any actual errors in the article. For another, it’s simply not true, as the Romney people would have you believe, that domestic outsourcing is entirely innocuous. On the contrary, it’s often a way to replace well-paid employees who receive decent health and retirement benefits with low-wage, low-benefit employees at subcontracting firms. That is, it’s still about redistribution from middle-class Americans to a small minority at the top.

“Arguably, that’s just business – but it’s not the kind of business that makes you especially want to see Romney as president.

“Or put it a different way: Romney wasn’t so much a captain of industry as a captain of deindustrialization, making big profits for his firm (and himself) by helping to dismantle the implicit social contract that used to make America a middle-class society.”

A two-income family today is poorer than a one-income family was in the 1970s

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“On several occasions, I have glibly referred to how it now takes two spouses working to equal the wages of a one-income family of 40 years ago. Unfortunately, that is now an understatement. In fact, Western wages have plummeted so low that a two-income family is now (on average) 15% poorer than a one-income family of 40 years ago.” — Jim Nielson | The Street

This death of the American middle class can be blamed on the Republican Party’s decades-long union busting efforts combined with men like Mitt Romney who run companies like Bain Capital for the purpose of creating wealth for the few, by laying off hundreds of thousands of American workers, who once earned living wages and benefits, who once shared in a company’s productivity and success. For decades now vulture capitalists have downsized and closed American companies, offering only low-wage replacement jobs to some of the workers they laid off, while outsourcing most of the formerly American jobs to countries like China and India. And we can also blame a tax code, won by a lobby of the wealthiest among us, that rewards corporations with deductions and loopholes and subsidies for taking American jobs to other countries, enriching a few while cratering our economy at home.

And the Republican Party tells us the One Percenters need more tax cuts (i.e. they need to hoard even more money?) to ‘create’ a few more jobs — tax cuts that would be paid for, by the way, by cutting programs and services that the rest of us depend on. It’s almost comical when you consider this fact: the average Fortune 500 CEO now makes 380 times more than the average worker, CEO pay has grown more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the last 30 years, and their pay increased last year. 

More, to these people, is never enough.

image: destroythegop

Can you imagine this cyborg being our president? Seriously.

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Romney’s amazed by sandwiches at Wawa. Good God — this machine made my sandwich! I’ve never had a sandwich that wasn’t delivered to me under a silver dome by my man-servant… AMAZING!

…

We’re reminded again how flabbergasting average food from average places is for Mittens (remember the cookies and donuts). Mitt shouldn’t try to be funny or amusing. Or likable. There isn’t any level of human contact where this guy can interact successfully (or even naturally) with persons below the $1 million threshold. He has no idea what average people like, think, want, know, or care about. So he guesses, he tries to sound funny… and he sounds like that instead.

This is Mr. Burns wanting to pal around with the Simpsons — temporarily. Until the votes are counted.  I can’t even imagine how many bottles of Purell Romney goes through in a day.

Mitt Romney wants to ‘trickle down’ all over you and tell you it’s raining

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Taking a break from mocking the president for wanting to retain teachers, cops, and firefighters, Romney talked about his plans for massive financial deregulation and more tax cuts for the wealthy – which, he says, would make America the most attractive place in the world for job creators:

“It’s not just because I love job creators, it’s because I love jobs,” Romney said. “I want more good jobs for the American people and I want such competition for good, hard workers that salaries and wages go up so people make more money. I want to help the middle class of America and I’m going to do it.”

We already know that Mitt wants you to believe that firing even more public sector employees will magically free up a huge number of “good” private sector jobs. In case you weren’t aware, that’s how middle class employment works apparently.  All those teachers, cops, and firefighters — or any public sector worker, really — are somehow hogging all the other jobs that could be created by the kind, gentle wealthy folks in the private sector. They’re holding back the job creators!

So Romney’s ‘vision’ is that the job creators are just waiting for more government workers to be fired. Then, jobs! Of course, they also need bigger tax cuts — and they’ll need some relief from all this ridiculous government regulation. But then, definitely, this’ll be a wonderland for job creators. We’ll have so many good jobs, we’ll be knee deep in jobs. We’ll have jobs coming out of our ears!

Here’s an observation on Romney’s vision from a NY Times editorial this morning:

“There is no meaningful difference between the trickle-down economics of George W. Bush, rejected by the country in 2008, and the plans supported by Mr. Romney and his Republican allies in Congress. All the elements are there, from the slavish devotion to tax cuts for the rich, to a contempt for government regulation, to savage cutbacks in programs for those at the bottom.”

How’d that work out for Bush? “[P]ainfully slow job growth was followed by a recession that shed nine million jobs.” Oh, that’s right.

Union workers and everyone’s wages and benefits

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image: christopherstreet

Read more about The Republican Strategy 

Corporate Aristocracy: teaching the Serfs their place in American society

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Here we have another story about ‘greedy’ labor unions and the American workers they represent:

After posting record revenue of $60.1 billion and boosting CEO pay by 60 percent, Caterpillar demands concessions from workers

Workers at an Illinois plant for the mega manufacturer Caterpillar have been on strike for a month after rejecting a concession-heavy contract proposed by the company. Yesterday, workers overwhelmingly rejected a second Caterpillar offer, by a vote of 504-116.  

According to union officials, the contract “provided no raises, eliminated the defined benefits pension program, weakened seniority rights and required machinists to pay higher contributions for health care.” All of this, at a time when the company is making record profits. In fact, Fortune Magazine recently said the company is “crushing it” when it comes to profitability.

At the same time that it is refusing to give its workers a fair raise, the company saw fit to increase its CEOs pay by 60 percent: 

The annual compensation of Caterpillar Inc.’s chairman and chief executive rose 60 percent in 2011, as the company posted a record revenue of $60.1 billion. Douglas Oberhelman earned $16.9 million in 2011, a figure that includes salary, bonuses, stock and option awards and retirement plan contributions.

[...] The typical American worker would have to work 244 years in order to earn what the average CEO makes in just one year. Over the last 30 years, CEO pay has increased 127 times faster than worker pay.

– Think Progress

How dare ‘workers’ ask for living wages and benefits from a company to which they’ve contributed their labor and production? Remember it’s definitely not greed when corporate CEOs pocket all the profits for themselves — and so what if workers contributed towards that success — that’s just the way America works!

More From the Inequality Speech That Was Too Hot for TED