Left In Lowell

McCain Forgets

10 Responses to “McCain Forgets”

1. Josh Says:
   April 18th, 2008 at 7:28 pm

   Those people don’t exist… don’t ya know that the New Deal and the Great Society eradicated poverty and racism… oh wait, billions of dollars in new taxes and spending did nothing!

   Yea… they should definately stick with the povery pimps.

2. Mr. Lynne Says:
   April 19th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

   Funny… I though trickle-down economics and Bush’s ‘a tax cut for every problem’ policy was supposed to eliminate poverty.

   But on second thought, your right of course:

   Racism wasn’t helped at all by the Great Society’s
   -1964 Civil Rights Act of (targeting job discrimination and segregation)
   -1965 Voting Rights Act (targeting poll taxes and other forms of voter discrimination)
   -1965 Immigration and Nationality Services Act (argeting quotas on the national-origins of immigrants)
   -1968 Civil Rights Act (targeting housing discrimination)

   Yep… all of those didn’t address racism at all

   And that new deal thing… yeah… who needs their bank money insured? Why did the south need electricity? What was the point in providing public works jobs? Why didn’t we just let old people continue to eat cat food? Why would labor need a Fair Labor Standards Act? And why don’t people understand that we can trust the stock market without a Securities and Exchange Commission. The Great Depression was fine the way it was.

   /Snark

3. waittilnextyr Says:
   April 19th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

   The following data from the Economic Policy Institute in August 2007 debunks McCain’s claim that the economy has been good under Bush, and this was issued before the more widely recognized downturn of the past 6 months.

   “While both poverty and income have improved over the last few years, it is disappointing that despite low unemployment and strong productivity growth, these measures of living standards have yet to recover to their levels of the previous business cycle peak in 2000. In that year poverty was 11.3%, compared to 12.3% in 2006, an increase in the poverty rolls of 4.9 million persons, including 1.2 million children; median household income in 2006 was $48,201, about $1,000 dollars (-2.0 %) below its 2000 level (in 2006 dollars). In other words, economic growth over the last six years has totally bypassed the typical middle-class household.

   One negative trend persists: The share of Americans without health insurance coverage once again increased, from 15.3% in 2005 to 15.8% last year. There were 47.0 million uninsured Americans in 2006, up 2.2 million since its 44.8 million level in 2005. Since 2000, the share of the population without health coverage has increased 2.1 percentage points, an increase of 8.6 million uninsured Americans.”

4. Michael in Pawtucketville Says:
   April 20th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

   > And that new deal thing… yeah… who needs their bank money insured?

   Your bank money isn’t insured. Certain kinds of bank money is insured up to a point but if the bank loses it, you only get money back. And a dollar is worth what? A dollar. Not that useful when it’s falling like a rock.

   The problem with Bush’s tenure is that the economy may have expanded but the rewards were very unevenly distributed. But I don’t know if there’s a lot that you can do about that. Information technology, which has been growing exponentially for 30 years, provides those that understand how to use it, with the tools to get far ahead of everyone else. We live in a global economy where it’s easy to move capital around the world. Those capital concentrations exert a lot of political influence. And I have to think that’s where Obama is getting all of the money that he has to outspend Clinton three to one. Those zillionaires in San Francisco didn’t just put up money for bitter tea and crackers.

5. joe Says:
   April 20th, 2008 at 2:12 pm

   Some people just can’t read about African Americans without the word “pimp” coming to mind.

6. Mr. Lynn Says:
   April 20th, 2008 at 3:38 pm

   “Your bank money isn’t insured. Certain kinds of bank money is insured up to a point but if the bank loses it, you only get money back. And a dollar is worth what? A dollar. Not that useful when it’s falling like a rock.”

   Very useful to the alternative before the act was passed of your money disappearing all together.

   As to the distorted nature of individual income growth, it’s not just Bush.

7. Michael in Pawtucketville Says:
   April 20th, 2008 at 4:57 pm

   > Very useful to the alternative before the act was passed of your money disappearing
   > all together.

   No, not really. It depends on your definition of money. At the moment, gold, silver and oil are the anti-money. And the leaders of the G7 nations are going nuts with hedge funds buying commodities because they feel that the G7 nations will have to inflate like mad to avoid a debt deflation. So what you do when cash is trash is to put it into real money. Not currencies.

   > As to the distorted nature of individual income growth, it’s not just Bush.

   I take it that most of the high-growth rates are due to the Clinton Administration.

   > Some people just can’t read about African Americans without the word “pimp” coming to mind.

   Nothing like race-baiting to show how bigoted a person is. We of color call that an adhominem fallacy.

8. Mr. Lynne Says:
   April 21st, 2008 at 7:50 am

   “No, not really.”

   If yesterday your bank account was showing $1,000 and you had no transactions since, I want to know in what universe is it better to find your balance today at $0 than $1,000.

   “I take it that most of the high-growth rates are due to the Clinton Administration.”
   Read the post.

   From the post:

   Bartels shows in his book that this difference is not a statistical artifact or a fluke. It is not the result of Democrats coming to power during better economic times, or of Republicans reining in the unsustainable excesses of Democratic administrations they replace. (It turns out that the same pattern prevails even when a Republican president is succeeded by another Republican.) These numbers are real and they are the outcome of partisan differences in policy. So if you are one of those who have bought the story that income distribution is the result of pure market forces and technological changes, with politics playing no role–think again.

   And another Q&A post from the horse’s mouth:

   Aren’t all presidents different? Yes, but the parties’ distinctive ideological priorities shape their policy choices with remarkable consistency. Every Republican president in the past 60 years has presided over increasing income inequality, including Dwight Eisenhower in the midst of the “Great Compression” of the post-war decades. And every Democratic president except one (Jimmy Carter) has presided over decreasing or stable inequality. Bill Clinton managed to stem the trend of accelerating inequality, producing significant real income growth for middle-class and poor families, in marked contrast to Republicans Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush.

9. Michael in Pawtucketville Says:
   April 21st, 2008 at 8:10 pm

   > If yesterday your bank account was showing $1,000 and you had no transactions
   > since, I want to know in what universe is it better to find your balance today
   > at $0 than $1,000.

   Just keep an ounce of gold in your pocket. Or half an ounce of platinum. Dollars are currencies. Precious metals are money.

   I was talking about high growth rates. Not income inequality. I went through the growth rates of presidents back to the late 40s and the growth rates during the D’s tenure wasn’t very good except for Clinton.

10. Mr. Lynne Says:
    April 21st, 2008 at 9:00 pm

    “I was talking about high growth rates. Not income inequality.”

    Personal income growth rate is relative. For most people it was better under Democratic administrations, even if overall growth rate was not as good. That’s what the data in the chart are showing. So if overall growth is a more desirable thing than middle class or underclass growth, then yeah, Clinton is the exception.

    “Just keep an ounce of gold in your pocket. Or half an ounce of platinum. Dollars are currencies. Precious metals are money.”

    I never said nor demonstrated that I didn’t understand the distinction. The fact is, however, that most (an under-statement) people’s life savings are in currencies. Most in dollars in fact. If you want to avoid a depression or a bank run, its the dollars you have to be concerned with, not the gold.

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