Income Inequality

Pretty good article from the Economist's DIA blog. I suspect many of the articles I cite with approval from this blog are from this author. Here's the part I like:

I think the rich are getting much, much richer, while regular people (in the developed world, which is what we're talking about here) are at best treading water. I think that wealth brings power, and the fact that the rich are getting much, much richer relative to everyone else means that the rich also exert increasing influence over the economy, government and society. I think income mobility and equality of opportunity have declined in America over the past 40 years, to the point where America is now more segregated by class divisions than many European countries. I think a major reason for these shifts has been the increasing dominance, since the Reagan era, of an ideology that is indifferent to or actively celebrates inequality of income. I think this ideology is bad: bad for the economy, bad for society, bad for art and culture, bad for the moral character of those who subscribe to it.

The Force

Look out South Carolina Republicans - it may be only $50k, but it's the little things that eventually allowed the Emperor to turn Annakin to the Dark Side.

Quote of the Day

From Kevin Drum:

In any kind of serious proposal, you'd expect the author to at least make a few nods in the direction of bipartisanship. They might be fake, but at least they'd be there. But not Ryan. His proposal is a 100% tea party wet dream: Do away with one of the Democratic Party's signature achievements of the 20th century. Slash spending on social programs for the poor. Use the reduced spending to make room for tax cuts on corporations and the rich. Put a hard cap on federal outlays that's almost absurdly low. Give the Pentagon everything it wants. And stitch it all together with supply-side voodoo economics and budget projections so laughable they're almost designed to be insulting.

Paul Ryan's Budget

Always nice to find someone who wants to point out the inconsistencies (or lies) included in Ryan's budget. Here's the Economist's DIA blog using the L word, in a piece titled, Ryan the fibberoo. The article concerns Ryan's statement on page 35 of his budget which discusses various criticisms of Barack Obama’s energy policy.

He has over-regulated, held up permits for drilling and thrown subsidies at renewable energy. I could quibble with the over-regulation part (surely offshore drilling was under-regulated before the Gulf spill, in practice if not in theory), but otherwise, there’s little to disagree with there. It was the next line that threw me: “The results are plain to see: gas prices have more than doubled since the president took office.”

The author of the piece calls Mr. Ryan out on his obvious mendacity. He points out,

The idea that holding up permits or adding to oil firms’ costs through other forms of regulation somehow led to the doubling of gas prices is just ridiculous. Those two things may have had a minuscule effect on the margins, but the main factors behind the oil price’s rise, as Mr Ryan well knows, are the improved performance of the world economy, which has led to increased demand, and growing instability in the Middle East, which has prompted fears about supply.

So, as he says,

In other words, Mr Ryan is lying. The recent rise in gas prices is not, in any meaningful sense, the result of the president’s energy policies. The Republicans are no more capable of lowering the oil price by fiat than the president is. That is one truth it would not have done Mr Ryan any harm to admit.

Quote of the Day

From Kevin Drum:

So explain to me: what's courageous about a Republican congressman proposing spending cuts for the poor, entitlement cuts only in the far future, tax cuts for the rich today, and hands off the Pentagon forever? Nothing I can think of.

Dishonest

From Paul Krugman:

Except briefly during the Korean War, the United States has never achieved unemployment as low as Ryan and co. are claiming. The Fed believes that the lowest unemployment rate compatible with price stability is between 5 and 6 percent — that is, twice what Ryan is claiming he will achieve.

The Deficit's such a BIG problem,...

That we need to increase it over the next 10 years before we can start bringing it down by eliminating Medicare. And this is called a Serious and Courageous plan? UPDATE: From Matthew Yglesias: "All the various cuts that take place before the Great Medicare Phaseout don’t compensate for the tax cuts that Ryan proposes, so relative to current law debt goes up. Then further out in the future if we implement the Medicare elimination plan, debt starts to decline."

Folx - it's not Medicare reform, it's eliminating Medicare entirely

(If you don't believe me, just look how plainly it's stated in the first line of this piece from the Economist's DIA blog: "PAUL RYAN'S plan to replace Medicare with a system of vouchers for seniors to buy health care on the private market." Hey, if that's what you're for, then this is the program for you. But, as usual, the conservatives are trying to pretty up (and hide) what they're really after. Josh Marshall sets it out pretty clearly (while also getting on the Dems for falling for the trick)

What the Republicans are proposing are not cuts. Some level of cuts and/or cost containment in Medicare are necessary because medical inflation is growing so quickly. But these aren't cuts. They're using a temporary budget crisis and the need to slow the rate of Medicare costs over long run simply to abolish the program. That's a bait and switch. It's the medical side equivalent of the "private accounts" bamboozle that President Bush used in 2005 to try to phase out Social Security.