Fair is Fair

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Liberals and conservatives have enough conflict without inventing more. It's hard to compromise. What makes it harder is when either side mischaracterizes the position of the other and makes fun of the extreme characterization as if it were what was really at issue.

Every country with the means does something to define its borders and regulate who comes in and out and who stays. U.S. immigration laws have procedures for people wishing to become citizens, and we prioritize based on who we'd like to see come in.

Conservatives see anchor babies as a circumvention of our immigration laws. By an application of the 14th amendment that wasn't an issue when it was passed, non-citizens who could not themselves become citizens can force the U.S. to accept their children as citizens by giving birth here. Then, because their children are entitled to rights as citizens, the parents get to raise the children here, citizens or not. After 18 years, the child is grown, but it doesn't seem right to deport the parents who have built a life here. Thus, the child is the "anchor" for the family.

Sensible conservatives (yes, they do exist, though maybe not in Congress) are not afraid that these children will grow into terror babies. Maybe some of the tinfoil hat crowd is, but as far as I can see, sensible conservatives don't like 1) seeing this back door access to life in the U.S. exploited 2)by people who could not get in the front door. They view this back door as letting in unskilled workers who have come from poor areas and are probably bringing communicable health problems with them.

Is our immigration system a good system? Not really. Is it due for an overhaul? Most definitely. This is something on which we can all agree.

Work from that starting point by at least acknowledging their real concerns. Data would be great. How many are coming in this way? What % is this of total undocumented residents? Where do these parents settle? Do they get jobs? Pay taxes? Carry diseases? This is what conservatives (like my parents) want to know. Some conservatives are incurably racist, but some are just going by stereotypes and are willing to be educated. We owe it to them and to ourselves to address their concerns and break the stereotype.

My point is, if you want to work something out that conservative voters can support, don't ridicule them for being afraid of babies. Conservatives will assume--and not unreasonably--that you'd rather ridicule them than discuss actual issues, and that you're trying to change the subject because you like the open back door. Like the term "death panels," the term "terror babies" shows you're really not here to debate the merits, you're here to stir up emotions (and insult the voters).

The Rich Get Richer

The time period of the economic meltdown and its ongoing aftermath have the potential to move even more money upstream to the wealthiest Americans than happened in the previous decade. As part of the Bush tax bills, high-income earners have the limited opportunity this year and next to roll their traditional IRAs into Roth IRAs. This move is for long-term wealthy who do not anticipate needing the money for a long time, if ever.

--In a traditional IRA, you deposit money before tax, the money grows without tax, but you pay tax on the entire balance as you withdraw it in retirement. The assumption is that your tax bracket will be lower after retirement, so you will pay less overall. After age 70, you must start withdrawing an amount based on a formula determined by your age and your total balance.

--In a Roth IRA, you deposit after-tax money and never pay tax again. There is no minimum withdrawal ever. Until this year, contribution to a Roth IRA was limited by income. The modified adjusted growth income (MAGI) limits for 2009 were $105,000 - $120,000 for those filing single and $166,000-$176,000 for those filing married.

Contributions to IRAs are limited, but other nonqualified accounts can be rolled into IRAs and then into Roth IRAs, which can increase the total substantially.

If you elect to convert, you pay tax on the balance at the time of conversion (over a 2-yr period), no tax on further growth, and no tax on withdrawal. Thus, you want to convert when the market looks bad (say, June 30). Once you convert, that money is essentially taken out of the taxable stream. No one will ever pay tax on its earnings.

The government has known for years that this conversion window would be a boon to revenue--all those rich people paying taxes on retirement balances at the same time. But by doing this, it is also frontloading tax revenue--taking some revenue now instead of more over time later.

The big factor determining whether a person ought to convert is how soon he will need the money. Obviously it doesn't make sense for someone to pay a big tiered tax bill now if he had been planning to start withdrawals soon at a lower rate. But if he has many years of earnings ahead--and doesn't want to be forced to take withdrawals at age 70--converting makes a lot of sense.

Adding to the incentive to convert, the rich currently enjoy low tax rates--rates that will rise. It may be better to pay a lump sum tax at known rates now than incremental tax in some unknown future at a rate that might be higher even after retirement.

Add to that:

--The rich have the opportunity to add to their wealth now by acquisition of assets--real estate and business--at depressed prices.

--The millions of unemployed and underemployed are draining their own wealth. And all that money withdrawn from qualified retirement savings before retirement generates penalty income to the government.

--The longer the recovery is dragged out, the more people will be sucked under--and their assets delivered up to the wealthy.

And it's clear we still have a long way to go to stop the gravy train for the rich, let alone reverse it.

P2 Meme: Math

Republicans are bad at math:

They claim that the Stimulus Bill did not provide economic benefit when it did

They claim that Social Security is going broke when it is not

They favor unpaid tax cuts while claiming to want to reduce the deficit

They oppose measures that actually would reduce the deficit (see previous post)

They oppose unemployment benefits based on cost when unemployment benefits generate more economic benefit than cost

They wrote a budget with no numbers in it

They claim that 1000 attendance at RO10 is more than 2100 at NN10

(add your own here)

It's one thing for Republicans to try to rewrite history, but math is not subjective. The Republican tendency to make up a new story when the facts don't suit them is disastrous when applied to math and economics, as we saw when the economy crashed.

Democrats are willing and able to work with what the numbers really are, and that is the only way to rebuild the nation's economy. Despite well-organized and well-financed conservative opposition, the Democrats have improved the economy, especially for the middle class.

DO THE MATH

Vote Democratic in November to continue the progress or don't vote and watch the country go back to fantasy economics thanks to conservatives who can't--or won't--do the math.

Know the Facts: Health Care Costs

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that adding these provisions to our national health care program would save the following amounts

· Medicare drug price negotiation ($300 billion)

· Public Option ($25-$110 billion)

· Drug reimportation ($19 billion)

· Shorter pathway to generic biologics ($71 billion)

To the White House re Shirley Sherrod

1. Print this out, cut it out, tape it to your bathroom mirror, and read it to yourself every morning:

Fool me once, shame on you

Fool me twice, shame on me

2. It took the collective hive mind a few hours to sort out that the Sherrod video was edited to create a false impression. You could have waited. Better yet, you could have initiated the process. When you insist that your small team of experts do everything alone, you cut yourself off from resources like the hive mind that want to help you get to the truth. Even if you are smarter than anybody on the planet, you're not smarter than everybody.

3. The next time Brietbart attacks, it's not likely to have his name on it, but he will take credit eventually because the guy has an ego the size of Montana. Use that knowledge. Use his history against the right wing media. Be prepared for the next time because there will be a next time.

The Economics of Exploitation

Posted to Daily Beast in response to commenters lamenting the rapid advances China is making while we seem stuck in political muck:

China is advancing rapidly because it is exploiting its workers or allowing others to. A few get rich, but most have as much chance of advancing from worker to magnate as they do of winning the lottery. It is no coincidence that the marketing hook is the same for both: maybe it will be me.

The US also accomplished great feats via exploiting labor and continues to exploit labor today. It's a poor argument to say that being exploited here is still better than the life they left behind.

It's a better argument to say that the 1800s and early 1900s were raw and uncivilized times for much of the U.S. But we're no longer uncivilized, and we have a choice. Are we willing to throw the most powerless among us under the bus to elevate our own standard of living?

If so, we have competition. Plenty of countries around the world are willing to exploit their citizens, and the corporations of the world are in the position to pick and choose which country is willing to sacrifice the most.

But if we can see beyond the short term, we can see that the only sustainable way to hold on to some quality of life--for ourselves and our children and grandchildren--is not to compete in the gutter but to lift the rest of the world up.

Imagine what a world with an international minimum wage would look like. Reduced poverty, reduced health issues, and billions of customers for corporate goods and services. Studies have shown that nations with a plutonomy (few wealthy, many poor, no middle class) sacrifice total national wealth compared to nations with a broad middle class.

Obviously those in power pursue plutonomy anyway because some people would rather be super-rich even at the expense of the nation. They either don't realize they will only be able to enjoy their wealth behind guarded walls, or they don't care.

By the way, unions are not the enemy. Unions are what allow people to band together and resist exploitation. Allowing workers to combine their labor into an entity with economic leverage is the only way I can see that the world can break out of our current downward spiral of exploitation.

The most important economic challenge we face today is to create a model of sustainable worldwide economic balance and to sell that model to the worldwide public.

Sustainable models like that exist, but there has been no campaign to make the public aware of them, let alone move toward them. Who would finance such a campaign? Those with the money don't want things to change.

Or do they? There is a lot of money going to feed and educate the poor, make micro loans, and generally promote long-term economic improvement. Can some of this money go toward a worldwide education campaign so that we can all be pulling in the same direction?

Labor is not the only thing that can be exploited. Ignorance can also be exploited, and right now, it's being exploited very successfully.

Blacklisting the Middle Class

I admit it. Sometimes I'm slow to see the obvious.

I've mentioned here a few times that the purpose of some Republican talking points is preemptive strike: to defuse the power of accusations that they expect from the left. They expect these accusations because they know they are already engaging in the behavior they will be accused of.

For example, accuse liberals of undermining family values knowing you are having an affair. Compare Obama to Hitler to hide your own similarities. Mislabel end-of-life counseling as "death panels" to dilute the power of that term when it's correctly used to describe de facto operations of insurance companies.

I knew constant cries of "socialism" were preemptive strikes, but I could never figure out what they were trying to undermine. What were they worried about? I mean, who in their right mind looks at Stalin's reign and wants to emulate it?

It finally clicked when someone on Twitter was talking about redistribution of wealth, specifically how Reaganomics has sent wealth upstream from the middle class to the top 2% for about 30 years. I suspect that most Russians didn't consider the subtler points of political theory when they overthrew royal rule. They simply wanted a more equitable distribution of capital.

No wonder Republicans are worried.

I don't think that a revolution is the best way to redistribute wealth back to the middle classes. I don't think it's even in the top ten.

But isn't it interesting that Republicans seem to think so?

This is the bigger picture that I missed until now: not just favoring the rich, but relabeling a healthy middle class as socialism. Rushing toward plutocracy despite the fact that plutocracy has been shown to reduce quality of life for even the elite class.

No wonder they are afraid we may act irrationally--they already are.

And certainly it casts the tea parties in a new light. Certainly some of these people are just racist, and some are protecting their wealth. But some have legitimate unfocused anger about economic conditions. "Their America" that they want back is the one with a healthy middle class.

These people have been lured in by tea party rhetoric and an easy target for their anger: the government. They now believe that taxes are responsible for 30 years of slouching toward plutocracy.

Taxation is one of the more powerful and less violent tools to redistribute capital. Yet ignorant citizens have been programmed to protest even taxes that help them. (They are useful idiots, a term for political pawns coined by Hitler and recently resurrected by Republicans in Congress in another preemptive strike.)

Republicans have been effective with their "reeducation campaign" redefining pluralism as socialism and all tax and regulation, the tools of economic balance, as bad. But there are gaps. After the market crash, even free marketers have wondered if maybe regulation can have a positive impact.

Democrats made a start at winning the hearts of voters in 2008, but the biggest reason they won is because none of them was George Bush. Plenty of poor and middle class voters still believe that conservative politics is their best way to wealth, and it's not.

Before we can get any real change, we have to get more people behind the idea that a healthy middle class is good for everyone, and that the tools of wealth redistribution--regulation, taxation, and so on--are tools for nationwide good, not just social good, but economic good as well.