One thing Medicare/Medicaid doesn't pay for is a hearing aid. Put military grade earplugs in your ears so you can hear virtually nothing, and then see if
A) you can get a job
B) you can hold a normal phone conversation to look for a job, or
C) get a drivers license
Hearing loss is not, in and of itself, a reason for someone to be on Medicaid. But it is often an additional affliction--particularly for veterans and people over 50--that would keep them from working. In Kentucky the governor doesn't want people to see or hear properly, or to have presentable and disease-free teeth, but like all other Republicans he wants these freeloaders to work while there is a boot on their necks holding them down.
31
Until we prioritize education for ALL, we will not see poverty diminish much. As a southern social worker and resident, I've seen why so many people can't get ahead. In my town, growing up, Blacks were gerrymandered outside the town limits. There was no school for them beyond 8th grade unless they rode a school bus more than 15 miles to the next town. Meanwhile, their working parents needed the eldest at home to care for the youngest, so they gave up education.
Nowadays, many children in southern schools and inner city schools, regardless of race, live in poor neighborhoods and go to barely adequate schools that are inadequately funded.
So, if we really want to end the most dire poverty, we must put education first.
12
We fetishize individualism in this country -- one of our unhealthier "American values," by the way -- and yet rig the system so that any individual who isn't wealthy is completely at its mercy. But our capitalist system doesn't do mercy.
15
THE SHIFT IN POWER TO THE REPUBLICANS HAS DEMONSTRATED FROM THE TOP ON DOWN A IDEOLOGY DEFICIENT IN AMERICAN VALUES, INCLUDING COMPASSION,
DECENCY, AND NOT DOING WHAT IS IN THE BEST INTEREST OF
ALL AMERICANS, FOR EXAMPLE THE TAX CUTS, THE QUEST FOR POWER AND MONEY CORUPTS THE MORAL FIBER THAT PREVAILS IN CONGRESS AND EXECUTIVE OFFICIALS. PLEASE
VOTE THEM OUT IN NOVEMBER, THE CASE FOR CHANGE HAS BEEN MADE. THANK YOU MR KRUGMAN FOR CALLING ATTENTION TO THIS GRAVE SOCIAL ISSUE.
13
As money flows upwards, the wealthy get ever more powerful, and take ever more resources.
Eventually there will be a violent correction. I don't understand why the 0.1% can't see this, and lobby for redistribution while they still can.
15
$111 Billion. That's the foregone revenue THIS YEAR because of the Bush & Trump Tower Tax cuts. And does not account for the corporate tax cuts, or the impact on state revenues.
That would buy a lot of Highways, Housing and Food Stamps.
With that kind of money, the Malefactors of Great Wealth (aka "The .01%") continue to lock up more and more of our economy, and can buy Congress and the Supreme Court to make it all legal out of the pocket change.
Vote Democratic November 6th.
Let's see if we still have a functioning democracy.
16
Not to be picayune Herr Professor, but the European countries to which you refer are not so much „welfare“ states as they are societies based on concepts of social solidarity. Referring to them as welfare states is like spraying oil on the conservatives’ libertarian fire.
12
This says that "Most" non-disabled adults receiving aid work. What percent is "most"? It cam be 51%, leaving 49% of non-disabled adults receiving aid who are taking advantage of the system--which means taking advantage of all those who do work.
"Most of those [able-bodied] who don’t [work] have good reasons for not working..." What percent is this "most"?
I ask because despite assurances by experts to the contrary, i hear complains all the time by my friends' maids, gardeners, etc. they they work, but so many people their neighborhoods do not and just cheat the government. When they are going off to work these other guys are just sitting around. One friend's gardener complais about his own son!
1
The conservative base has an undying belief that poor people are lazy. The poor would rather collect government benefits than work, or more accurately collect and work under the table. Conservative politicians can always cherry pick a n example in a nation of 350 million.
The real truth is that the wealthy are scared silly about losing their advantages and wealth. The lottery of life winners do not want to share with anyone that will not make them more. One of the best investments is politicians. A small amount of campaign contributions (legalized bribery) yields a huge return in lowered taxes, etc.
12
I would say the Republican elites hate government helping anyone, unless they are wealthy enough to not need any help.
10
In my town hanging in the reception area of a middle school is a poster alerting people to report homeless children, children whose families live in cars, etc. Yet in this snowbird destination, there is so much of the housing stock that sits empty six months a year. I put this paragraph in the local paper with the additional sentence that maybe that car that is parked in front of your empty house is home to a family. Needless to say, there were some defensive replies.
9
Clearly, there is a thing called wealth insanity. Generally speaking, the more wealth a human being has, the more greedy and selfish they are. Of course, there are rare exceptions, which clouds the harsh reality that better then ninety five percent are so. If you told a wealthy person that they could wipe out poverty for all mankind but they would have to live forever an upper middle class existence, none of them would take that bargain. It's complex, but it certainly involves egocentricity. Human beings can be very kind, but ultimately, are selfish louts. We must first recognize that this quality exists in all of us, and then legislate, through socialization, against it. Free healthcare, free education, a free middle class lifestyle for everyone. In the U.S. people mistakenly believe it is harshness of economics that makes our economy hum. It's not, it's real estate, the land we live on, (natural resources), and the immigrants that come here.
6
It's the youth of this nation who will destroy this mean spirited war on poor people. Many of them are struggling with the results themselves. Student loan debt, low wages, and a corporate mind set that has made downsizing an ongoing process in good times and bad, have helped our youth avoid the mindset of "I got mine so the hell with you."
The midterm elections will show the voting power of those who have been trampled by the new "Gilded Age."
9
I also wonder what motivates conservatives who want to cut poverty programs. Ideology, really? Spite maybe? I think it's long-term self interest. If a family is going through a tough time and gets help, they may be able to keep a stable home and educate their children. Then guess who those children are going to vote for? If not, maybe those kids will die young, or commit a felony. Then they'll never vote again. Not sure what each individual's motivation is, but it often seems like a full-out effort to keep poor people from voting by any means necessary.
7
It's all very sad, of course, the war on the impoverished. But far more important to the nation right now is the decline of the middle class (e.p. the working class sector of it), which began the day Ronald Reagan said, "It's morning in American," and began his war on unions and war on taxes for the rich, a runaway train that was greased along by center-right Democrats, who have been, amazingly, left holding the bag for the whole affair.
8
Obviously the conservatives don't "hate the idea of government helping anyone" or they would not have voted for helping the poor suffering top 1% who benefited most from the tax cuts
11
It's the donors, stupid
9
Hey. officer Paul Krupke. It's a West Side Story thing.
The GOP has decided:
The poor are deprived on account of them being depraved.
No evidence necessary..faith-based.
11
I love it when Republicans want to cut government services and benefits for the poor, but when it comes time for them to receive the same benefits they are first in line with their hands out. Ever heard of a Republican turning down social security or Medicare ?
15
War on poverty over? Another war lost.
2
There's a class of people in this country who understand very well that when (and if) you can keep a significant percentage of the population poor, dumb and sick - it will benefit their class. Every person that struggles to get through each day is someone who likely is not as aware or concerned about important issues, whether they be taxes, health care, education or the environment.
Call me crazy.....but I happen to believe that it's in each country's economic and security interests for its citizens to be healthy and educated - and once that baseline has been provided you have a productive member of society. That's why so many western democracies provide health care and subsidized education - it makes sense economically for the prosperity of the nation.
But the previously mentioned class has no interest in sharing the prosperity. Keep them poor, dumb and sick.
14
@Jermaster Because keeping them poor, dumb, and sick, means that it's one less voter to vote against their party. Keeping them dumb, they won't question their parties warped ideals. Those ideals lead those uneducated people to continually vote against their own interests time, and time again. All because the GOP has them believing that anyone not part of their small government, i.e. less taxes means more money in their pockets, is against them, (because only liberals want to spend public money on education). They just forget to tell them oh, and about those high tech jobs, that is GOING to drive our economy, don't worry about it, you won't need it, because we've incentivized corporations via tax breaks to move their business to a more labor friendly countries, and they gave your tax dollars to corporations, in the form of more tax breaks.
9
The true test of the humaneness of a group, or society, or nation is how it cares for its poorest members.
One may argue for other tests, for other sectors of the population or other attributes (liberty, equality, health, justice, etc.). But in the last analysis we are judged by how well we, the public and the elites, respond to the basic subsistence needs of the impoverished, the destitute, the indigent, and the disadvantaged. How well we accept this fundamental moral responsibility distinguishes societies, exalts them in world regard or lowers them in world regard. This depends of course on one’s ultimate values.
If a nation’s elites value the accumulation of wealth per se, or economic power, or military brilliance, then the humaneness of the system will be belittled. But in a democracy, particularly, a great nation should never try to escape its obligation to its impoverished masses.
9
My 84 year old mother, who spent her whole life, taking care of her family, and serving in the military during the Korean War, can't get dental, vision, or for that matter her military pension. Why, because she "makes to much", the maximum you can make is 12,600 a year, after the premiums for medicare are deducted from her Social Security, she bring in just over $890.00, she gets a poultry $200.00 pension from Fred Meyer where she worked until she was 75. All told she makes $200.00 a year too much to receive her military pension, that she earned being in a combat zone.
This is the face of poverty, a senior citizen that if not for my help, she would be homeless. Since she can't afford the added premiums, as well as the out of pocket expenses, so the dental work, and getting her eyes fixed probably isn't going to happen. My father has been gone for over 20 years, he too was a WWII veteran that couldn't get what he had coming either. He died in poverty.
If the GOP truly thinks that poverty has been eradicated, they really do need to get out more. And those in the GOP, that think that they will never need any of the social safety net we pay for, then they need to think again.
The easy way to fix this issue, is to have an "opt out" box. For those who want to opt out, check the box. The down side is, when you need healthcare, or disability, or unemployment or food stamps, you would be denied, if you don't pay into the system, you don't reap the benefits of it.
9
"And if they get their way, society will stop helping tens of millions of Americans who desperately need that help."
The only way to prevent the above is to NOT vote for those who would "stop helping".
Elections, at every level, have consequences...
9
The most plausible reason for the emphasis on getting the maximum number of workers is economic, not any ideology of cruelty. The more people who must take non-specialized jobs, the lower the wages and the higher the profits. This is actually a strategy for the short term gain of employers, not for long-term economic benefit of the country. Failure of wages to rise with productivity means failure of demand to grow, and it may mean less reason to invest in machinery and less increase of productivity. Blame the overall ideology which maintains that striving to maximize private profit - especially short-term profit - is the key to overall growth. If not strictly controlled, it always leads to increasing inequality.
Those who advocate these policies justify them with laissez-faire economic ideology, which is in direct opposition to the Christian morality which most of them ostensibly advocate when not engaged in business or politics.
4
It takes some chutzpah for an economist who send more than any economist the US middle class to the poor to accuse.
Paul Krugman , in 1997
“...this comment would generate letters along the lines of, "Well, if you lose your comfortable position as an American professor you can always find another job--as long as you are 12 years old and willing to work for 40 cents an hour." Such moral outrage is common among the opponents of globalization--of the transfer of technology and capital from high-wage to low-wage countries "
Why was that morally outrageous ? Outsourcing, he stated, would lift 3rd world countries out of poverty.
Alas, those laid of in the US were sent from manufacturing jobs to Walmart greeters. In his view, they would become coders. That a) did not happen and b) as IBM coders found out, their jobs were shipped overseas.
What happened to US companies ?
GM is selling more cars in China then in the US. IBM has more employees in India than in the US. Both keep labor costs low by hiring in low wage countries. In theory, that lowers prices on the goods they ship back to the United States but GM mostly pockets the profits on the Buick Envision and the Cadillac CT6 hybrid made in China , shipped to the US.
The 14 million outsourced jobs are almost double the 7.5 million unemployed Americans. If all those jobs returned, it would be enough to also hire the 5.7 million who are working part-time but would prefer full-time positions.
5
@Woof Let's keep in mind, when the outsourcing craze started, it was right after NAFTA was negotiated. Since NAFTA was negotiated by a republican president, corporate america had it's say. Corporations have always griped about the high cost of labor, but it was corporations that created that standard of living post WWII.
A plutocracy works by outsourcing labor, or insourcing labor. The things you can outsource, like, call centers, help desks, etc, they have done. The next step is to insource cheap labor that's where the H-1B visa comes into play. You noticed that the GOP never touched the H-1B visa program, the main player in bringing in high tech employees from India, and displacing american workers, is Infosys, Infosys Limited (formerly Infosys Technologies Limited) is an Indian multinational corporation that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services. It has its headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India.
This trend isn't going to end anytime soon. If the government cared about working class, they would tax companies that move their businesses to labor friendly countries, since that puts downward pressure on wages. A plutocracy is a government by big business for big business.
2
If one accepts the basic premise that the many republicans just don't care about other people, especially other people who are not rich, it goes a long way to explain their hostility toward social security, medicare and medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, public education and job training, and their fondness for generous tax cuts for the rich coupled with extravagant defense spending and fruitless wars (fought largely by the sons and daughters of the poor and middle class) while everything else in the public realm, including infrastructure, urban renewal and environmental protection, is starved for funding. The republicans seem to want to remake american society in the mold of other nations in which the rich live apart and control everything for their own benefit and everyone else should be grateful and obedient or else. In fact, it seems that those forces have democracy on the run across the globe.
7
Just give it about a decade or so. Automation is going to eliminate a whole host of jobs. If you think the GOP is warring on the poor now, what happens then will be tantamount to genocide.
2
I genuinely worry about this, actually. Not in any *immediate* context, but the more time goes by, the more jobs automation replaces, the more we're going to see rich folk start thinking in terms of "surplus people," and what to do about them. Right now, Malthusian economics is still a fringe view (at least officially), only a few loony tech tycoons and the occasional movie director takes them seriously. But by the end of the century, I'm afraid that class war will have turned completely literal. Poor people won't have to fight for their civil and human rights, they'll have to fight for their lives.
5
While so many articles and discussions focus primarily on trade and why former American allies around the world are starting to look elsewhere, it doesn't really talk about the bigger picture. Since the days of Ronald Reagan and the "corporatization" of America ensued, Trump and those that surround him were just the confirmation that when citizens elect a government in which the majority of its members come from a a world of a "dog eat dog, winner take all" mentality, when it comes to how they perceive the countries in Europe, Scandanavia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others the majority of whom at least try to be "egalitarian" in nature with their societies, Trump, his cronies and Republicans in general, in reality, "hate" everything these countries represent.
When Paul Krugman talks about the G.O.P's war on the poor, it is not only the poor, but everyone that does not think or behave like them. Other countries are looking away not only because of trade issues, but, in the voters choices of whom is to run the country in America, to others it is becoming clear that this is what America really is and it is reflected in its politicians.
6
There are so many obstacles to employment, even for the middle-class, that politicians don't take into account when they punish the poor for not getting or keeping jobs. Work schedules that are changeable, week to week, even day to day; expected overtime in busy seasons; staff meetings and training outside normal work hours; conflicts with childcare and school schedules; transportation problems, especially for poor who don't own cars or have reliable cars; unreliable childcare; no personal leave time to take care of sick children and urgent personal business. To overcome these obstacles, middle-class families have many resources that the poor don't have. Politicians, mostly male, take their own work support system for granted.
2
@abigail49 Amazon is number 11 on the list of companies with the largest number of employees on food stamps, Walmart is #1, what does that tell you.
3
I would amend the claim that "they hate the idea of government helping anyone" to add a very important exception: that government help is required for any large moneyed interest, corporation or person that has provided substantial money or other favors.
4
It is time for (a) term limits, (b)requiring legislators to join in with the rest of the country for medical insurance, (c) for them to end their own pension system in favor of their contributions to a 401(k) plan and to prohibit themselves from lobbying any governmental entity for 5 years after they leave government service.
Maybe then, they may get a better idea of how people really live in this country. Unfortunately, most legislators would need to be independently wealthy... or citizens who are motivated to do what is best for all Americans.
6
'The government can't do anything right'. That's the GOP selling point and when elected to office they make sure it becomes true. With one exception: the military. The military has an important role protecting the business assets of the American 1% abroad, so it is well funded and it turns out with government as with most things you get what you pay for.
6
On a trip to DC last weekend for my girlfriend's birthday we visited some of the monuments on the national mall, including the FDR memorial, which we were both very impressed with.
It's laid out in sections that represent each of his terms in office.
In the first term section one of his quotes engraved into the wall is the following:
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little".
It's my conclusion that after witnessing the many failures of 'supply side' economics over the last 35 years to 'raise all boats', that the belief of the GOP is the exact opposite of the sentiment expressed in that quote.
8
@Mikeweb And Roosevelt was rich, he was born into money, as was his wife. Yet she went to the front lines in WWII to talk to each and every soldier in a hospital. These were people that truly believed in the saying, "To those who have been given much, much is expected".
5
Reading some of the comments it seems that some think that the war on the poor started recently. In some parts of the country it has been going on for almost two hundred years. In many areas of the south politicians for many years have run against the weak -- the poor, dark-skinned, immigrants, the "other" that is different. There is a mean streak in some people that makes them like to run down and denigrate those that are different, poor, not smart and successful, etc., just like there is a feeling that we should be benevolent to "good people" -- that is the well-to-do, white, rich and famous, etc. Of course all this is often talked about in code.
Isn't it strange that giving aid to the poor makes them weak and dependent; but giving tax breaks, subsidies, and/or cushy contracts to businesses, corporations, and the wealthy doesn't make them weak or dependent.
Actually, if we don't care about the poor in a charitable sense, we should be concerned for our own selfish economic interest. I don't think that it is healthy for the economy if a large segment of the population is sunk in dire poverty and is unproductive. The larger that segment gets, the more it will have a negative impact on the country.
7
The number of homeless will only increase.
"According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there were roughly 554,000 homeless people living somewhere in the United States on a given night last year. A total of 193,000 of those people were "unsheltered," meaning that they were living on the streets and had no access to emergency shelters, transitional housing, or Safe Havens. Despite a booming stock market and strong economic growth, a large swathe of America is still struggling to make ends meet."
4
I remain amazed at how many rank-and-file Republicans think that Social Security and Medicare are not government programs, and that it's Democrats, rather than Republicans, that want to shrink the rolls by cutting people off.
While I don't recommend cutting our military budget to nothing, I look at everything we could do with that money--universal public university, universal pre-k daycare, universal healthcare, major infrastructure rebuilding and improvements--and I can do nothing more than shake my head.
And sometimes shout.
6
Many “core” republicans appear as ideological zealots who fundamentally “feel” they should not share whatever they “have” with others, regardless of need. These fundamentalist ideologues inhabit every social and financial level of our country.
Many of them criticize “takers” when often in fact they are takers, themselves.
They keep a grip on everything they hold, material and social, refusing to understand that wealth and income inherently comes haphazardly, just luck or the outcome of a draw or of economic status of parents and ancestors, maybe hard work.
But, no changing those in the core, the US living in social conditions such as we read about in the Old Testament or we see in todays’ India, as long as they live in the highest caste. Everyone else can be beggars subject to being kicked and outcast.
After all, the core quotes “The poor you will always have with you.”
Why try to change that?
Why?, for those of you who carry a bible, or the Torah, check out John 12:8 and Deuteronomy 15:7-11.
6
Whatever else it is, the GOP's war on the poor serves the psychological needs of the ultra-rich at whose whim they rule. "Might-makes-right" always carries with it a contempt of those less fortunate, less well-placed, less manipulative and less amoral than the ubermenschen, who fancy themselves as far more equal than the rest of us. Their war on the poor is a war
chant, an exercise in mendacity and shortsightedness in the cause of self-exaltation.
5
I know devout Catholics who are anti-union, anti-Affordable Care Act, anti-choice, anti-Aid-in-Dying, who would never dream of donating to a food bank.....and yet they piously embrace an holier-than-thou demeanor when they meet an un-baptized Unitarian, a pro-choice former union member: me. Trying to explain the disconnect to them has proved fruitless.
4
The uber rich despise those who are "other."They think the country should be their own fiefdom inhabited by serfs, and the rest of the uber rich are complicit. It took a thousand years to abolish the divine right of kings, including several standard wars, civil wars and bloody revolutions. Looks to me that we need to re-invent the wheel - again.
5
Spiritual materialism, the belief that the rich are good and deserve their wealth and the poor are bad and do not deserve anything is incorrect. It's not all one way or the other. There are good, bad and somewhere in between in all groups.
Also, mobsters and criminals who have amassed fortunes are not good people and do not deserve their wealth.
I like the Swedish idea of Lagom; not to much and not too little in all things so no one goes without basic necessities so the country flourishes.
3
If asking people to work for free stuff paid for by other people's money is war, then yep, deal me in and tell me where to enlist.
2
If all of the tax benefits, loop holes and incentives that are given to businesses were added up, I think we would figure out pretty fast where the "welfare benefits" really go.
Trust me, it is not to the poor. It is to all of the industries that have the bucks to lobby the Congress for more and more. And to lobby all of the States in the same way.
There are takers in every economic strata, but most of them are in the high income bracket, not in poverty stricken income areas.
Take Tom Price and Scott Pruitt, for example, just for two..
It would take more than the 1500 characters I am allowed in the opinion column to name the rest of them. Although I must list Trump and his family as the biggest takers from the Government coffers.
6
Everything that Dr. Krugman says is correct. I'd add to it by pointing out that there is a documented tendency for rich people to think more badly of the poor (and indeed of all of the nonrich) than others do, including the middle class. An examination of the historical record shows that in extraordinarily unequal societies (such as ancient regime France), a great many of the rich not only despised the poor, but convinced themselves that treating the poor badly was a good idea, for which they gave a variety of rationalizations. It would certainly seem to be a case, then or now, of people believing what they need to believe so that they can live selfishly and still think themselves to be good, while believing that it's perfectly ok to privilege their needs over those of others (see, for example, the sorts of arguments made in the British Parliament against encouraging education for the poor. Members understood perfectly well that more education would make poor people less willing to be dependent farm workers or domestics, something that many of them saw as a calamity).
4
I don't think it is just the GOP elites who think that way. They hated the New Deal and "the man in the WH" ever since the New Deal was introduced. They love the rich and the super rich. The recent tax bills shows that.
Now that the tax bill has created a huge deficit and debt hole they need to fill it. What better way than cutting programs for those in the lower rung of the economic ladder - not just the working nor non-working poor? Once that is done it will be time to have another tax cut for the rich.
One more thing, I don't buy this is the Trump's GOP and not the traditional GOP argument. Think about the 43% by Romney - a never-Trumper except when he thought he is going to become the Trump Sec. of State - and willing to eat frog legs (or is it crow legs) for it. And think about Romney's "self deport" idea. Trump was merely executing the same idea with words of overt rather than covert bigotry.
3
It is true that the 'elites' ideology guides them to oppose all government help for the poor as such aid means that the government can do something well. It's true except when it comes to themselves. Washington is flooded by lobbyists seeking special favors for the well off and corporations. When it comes to themselves the ideological right wingers can't get the government to do enough for them and when it comes to their special causes they look to the government to intrude on the rights and liberties of people everywhere. Just look at them go after a woman's right to choose. So, let's just say that there is no real principle behind the right's attack on the poor. There is just malice, meanness, racism, and venality.
2
The principles of justice so elegantly articulated by Rawls in the early seventies remain as a blueprint for a fair society in my mind. Any distribution of income and wealth has to PRIORITIZE the needs of the least fortunate. That is the job of governing powers when they are optimizing the welfare (read: pursuit of happiness. The EXACT opposite of this idea is what the GOP stands for. In some sense INVERTING the GOP policies would do the job of doing the right thing. It is like hiring a stock analyst who always predicts the market wrong and making a fortune shorting whatever he says to buy and vice versa.
2
The poor don’t vote, mostly, and since they earn so little, they do not benefit from tax cuts nor smaller government, if anything they benefit from the opposite. So helping the poor would be helping adversaries for the G.O.P. Republicans support government that makes war and administers the laws favorably to their personal interests and to popular interests amongst their loyal constituents. They think that government should follow the wishes of their core constituencies rather than be constrained by legal principles which often protect the rights of those who their constituents want to constrain. The poor just do not matter to Republicans in Congress with a few exceptions.
2
Good article. I always thought that to get Republicans to understand the issues fully, you need to switch the narrative to cash flow. A community with x cash flow spends all of X but it doesn’t go far and doesn’t generate the incomes to start local businesses. But in areas where they make x, but have aid of x; the residents now have 2x to spend which might be enough to start more small business that will be profitable and a source of increasing wages. All governmental $ gets spent into the communities. that fact never seems to be discussed.
1
The principles of justice so elegantly articulated by Rawls in the early seventies remains a blueprint for a fair society in my mind. Making sure that any distribution of income and wealth is PRIORITIZED by the governing powers when optimizing the welfare (read: satisfy pursue of happiness) is the EXACT opposite of what the GOP stands for. In some sense INVERTING the GOP policies would do the job of doing the right thing. It is as easy as that. It is like hiring a stock analyst who always predicts the market wrong and make a fortune shorting whatever he says buy and vice versa.
1
We know who the real takers are; they are the Republicans who work their usual 3 day week followed by their usual 2 week frequent vacations.
Republicans are against big government except when it applies to corporations, special interests and the rich.
Republican voters are duped over and over again and vote against their own best interests and everyone else.We need to require elected republicans in congress to work a full work week or have their medical, pensions and wages reduced accordingly.
3
Kinda hilarious (scary?) these types of decisions in this country are being made by 85 year old dudes who can't stay awake in meetings or take non-existent glasses off their face in congressional hearings.
1
Today, White House spokesperson Raj Shah reiterated that the "War on Poverty" is over and will soon be replaced with a "War on the Poor." Key strategies in the "War on the Poor" will include the following:
1. Increasing premature death rates for the poor by withholding medical care, eliminating Medicaid and imposing extremely high deductibles and very low lifetime caps on Medicare spending.
2. Closing public schools focused on college preparation and replacing them with training centers focused on industrial skills for which there is little demand.
3. Converting Social Security into brokerage accounts whose managers will be free to loot the accounts to their heart's content.
4. Eliminating all supplemental nutrition programs aimed at mothers and children as social science has shown that extreme malnutrition, when not fatal, can be a great motivator for getting the indigent to seek jobs.
5. Eliminating laws against child labor, employee safety regulations, compensation programs for workers injured on the job as well as unemployment compensation.
6. Bringing back "Debtors Prisons" but with the modern twist that children will be imprisoned at the same time as their parents but in a separate facility.
7. Increasing prostitution, drug dealing, and petty theft to meet higher HUD rent requirements.
8. Pitting poor whites against poor people of color to ensure there's never a strong enough coalition to overturn these changes.
5
A good friend of mine retired and moved from Mill Valley to a town in northern Italy. He returned a few times for visits and said that the contrast between the two cultures is huge and very sad. We have become a toxic, mean, selfish and superficial society. It is my view that only such people could countenance even the possibility of a Trump: the most toxic, mean, selfish and superficial head of state imaginable.
6
I have no doubts that this is about deeply ingrained racism that is also deeply part of the Republican culture. There is also a Sociopath streak in Republican philosophy. Sadism and antipathy toward poor people lie in the mentality of the GOP. The GOP is full of people whose mantra is "I got mine, Jack, now bug off!".
4
Your preaching to the choir here in the NY Times besides this has been written about over and over again and the situation only gets worse.
I am in Santa Cruz CA just over the hill from silicon valley where there more money sliding around than any where else in the world yet the homeless elderly wander the streets. I see them in the mornings pushing their carts and luggage with all their possessions all the while trying to put on a brave face.
Does anyone care?
This is depressing and sad and I am disgusted with what has happened here and also fearful what the future may hold.
3
...camels fit through the eye of the GoP needle with room to spare; the poor no
...the Good Samaritan succors the wealthy but ignores the suffering poor, sick, injured
...'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' has been truncated: 'do unto others' ...and you don't want to be on the receiving end
...Republicans believe their president is a role model, their bejeweled gods and saints dress in designer robes...
1
We have replaced the widely held view of prior generations "there but for the grace of god, go I" to "kick-em when they're down" or with something pernicious to the effect of, "this may not be politically correct to say" and then launch into some form of vitriol against the poor. It's unbelievable to me that we can celebrate lowering the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans and in the same breath, the need to cut funds for the neediest amongst us.
2
@Fred If you support raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for the "neediest," you're saying that people who have worked harder than you should have their money confiscated at government riflepoint to pay for things you deem necessary, so that you can feel better about yourself (and maybe get some votes in the future). That's not noble, that's tyranny.
3
@Jon W. The gigantic fallacy in your reasoning is that the wealthy have worked harder than those with less money. That's one of those comforting myths that the haves keep repeating to themselves to marginalize the poor.
With Republicans, it's always about giving the most to those who need it the least. At least they're consistent, but it doesn't make for a very healthy or productive society.
3
How many of the poor are illegal immigrants?
4
@chris Why? So you can justify being mean to all of the rest of them?
3
The GOP: party of Trumpian treason, pro-death, pro-tyranny..and the real "takers"--the 1%, corporatocracy, military industrial complex, chemical/agribusiness, prison industrial complex, K-street & all its overpaid & overbought congressional sycophants, congressional perks for life (the real "welfare queens"), etc etc
1
It's at least partly the secularized residue of the Calvinism in our American civic religion.
2
War on poverty has been effective. It ought to be stepped up with more spending, so that poverty per se could be eliminated.
Work requirement to receive benefits may not necessarily be bad but that should not be used to cut benefits.
Poverty often is the result of very low wages. EITC ought to be much more liberal. Many occasional workers don't even know that such a thing exists. A poor lady who works for us, once or twice a month, didn't know she could claim it.
SNAP should be strengthened, not weakened as the Republicans have been doing.
Taxes on rich ought to be raised, instead the recent tax-cut worth $1,5 trillion benefited mostly the rich, but lower income taxpayers got a few dollars thereby making it a little more popular, which is just a gimmick.
If the Congress flips in November, Democrats should pass at least one higher rate of 50% on over say, $15 million in taxable income after all deductions; at that level, incomes from all sources ought to be treated alike. This would affect less than 0.05% of households, but would bring in more than the $1.5 trillion, I think.
4
The war on poverty has just begun anew! The republican tax "reform" turned out to be a deficit busting tax cut skewed toward corporate interests and the wealthy. Someone will have to pay for it and the poor in this country are poorly represented in Washington. So they can expect to get the bill. The myth that republicans are smart with money is busted.
2
"...And what motivates these [conservative political] elites is ideology. Their political identities, not to mention their careers, are wrapped up in the notion that more government is always bad..." [op cit]
So, why don't these elites simply quit politicking; that is, stop talking so much? Surely, that alone would help shrink the size of government. It seems to me that all the voters get from government is "just more and more talk," anyway!
So maybe these elites should stop talking, and decide to do something else. It's worth a try, and it might even save money.
2
In a recent article, the NYT mentioned that a family they were depicting had been off food stamps for a period for ädministrative reasons." This also happened to me--twice in a row, my reapplication for SNAP was rejected erroneously. My social worker said that this was happening routinely to many of her clients. We went twice to the office. The first time the "system was down" and no clients were being seen that day. The second, I was treated rudely and meanly (including a threat to call the police on this old lady) , but my benefits were finally restored.
I was given food stamps for the two months I had been off them, but I was out over $400 in cash for these two months--half my savings. I did not need extra food stamps-- I could have bought lobster and steak.
This is happening a lot, my fellow Americans. It is meant to discourage people from applying, and to reduce or postpone work for caseworkers.
5
If the political elite is so hostile to what they perceive as "takers," let's eliminate inheritance. Outlaw family trust funds. Who is more undeserving than the descendants of the rich?
I know, I know -- ridiculous. Too extreme. Uh huh.
Still, it seems only fair.
If the lower classes do not deserve a safety net, why should the children of the wealthy be able to fall back on family money?
Yes, we all know that would never happen. Consistency is not the long suit of the self-righteous "conservative" wing.
4
Baron Trumps grandchildren have a greater right to the proceeds of Fred Trumps efforts that you or I or any of the other 220,000,000 people in this country.
@From Where I Sit
If you believe that, you should read what Andrew Carnegie had to say about inheritance taxes. In today's dollars he could buy and sell Trump and his heirs, but he believed the wealthy should either administer their wealth for the public good while they were still alive, or else be punished for hoarding it and trying to pass it down to family members who didn't earn any of it themselves.
More and more non affluent young Americans are not getting properly prepared for the economy of the future. Some of us know that the education the average American (non-affluent) gets is deficient even when compared to the education young citizens of third world nations receive.
In the near future, many middle class and working class jobs are going to disappear. What will be left will be either jobs that required scientific and technical knowledge or poorly paid jobs with no benefits. Traditionally, our poorer young Americans have not done well in STEM skills and this is and will continue to be disaster in the making.
Lets party on!
2
I like to say that the reason Trump and the Koch brothers hate Europe is that they hate Europe's freedoms. Freedom from health care only for the wealthy, freedom from arbitrary firing, freedom to travel on public transportation, freedom from gerrymandering and powerful executives (parliamentary democracy), and so on. It's a little bit of a conceit, I get that, but still, it's hard to understand the hatred except as a fundamentalist rage against decency. The Italian constitution begins with these words: "Italy is a democratic Republic founded on labour. Sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised by the people in the forms and within the limits of the Constitution." Founded on labour, not property. Interesting.
4
The answer seems obvious to me--the war on the poor is about money and power. It's the reverse Robin Hood--take from the poor to give to the rich. Recent changes under this administration are making it easier to hoodwink the poor and desperate, charge them injurious rates and fees, and trap people in a cycle of debt. Companies can then leach money from individuals for years--it doesn't matter that it isn't paid off, it's a constant income stream.
And the more people are poor and less educated, the more they are consumed by day to day survival and the less time, energy, and knowledge they have to fight or even participate in the system. So the elite, the big corporations can do what they want without any meaningful resistance to their agenda.
1
Republicans just want to go back to the 50s, the 1850s. They believe in a Dickinsonian/ Scrooge economy. An economy only for the moneyed elite, where business/corporations are all powerful and unregulated.
4
Part me thinks, in addition to Krugman's conclusion that ideology against big government is the right's main cause against helping the poor, I also think pride is another major reason. If we allow big government to help the poor, they would be admitting "socialist" European countries are correct and they take care of the poor better than us. And as we all know from watching Trump and his fellow band of right-wingers, humility isn't in their playbook.
3
It's kind of remarkable how much of American Exceptionalism these days consists of trying to reimagine your society's worst problems as some sort of point of pride. A health system more expensive than any in the West that still covers fewer people than any of them? An epidemic of gun violence? Well, it LOOKS like a serious social problem, but what it REALLY is is freedom!
1
All you have to do is look at the lavish Evangelical churches that litter the landscape of the Confederacy to realize how greedy and selfish the good Christians of the GOP are. If Jesus ever showed up one of their Churches, all they’d do is call ICE.
5
American Tories have never believed in notion that all men are created equal, or that they have a right to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness. (That French idea.) Rather, they've always believed in King and Country, i.e. rule by aristrocat class. This is the modern Republican Party. Push them down but they always come back, ever since 1776. The American Revolution is never won, once and for all!
2
A funny thing that doesn't make it into the history books is the way that, for centuries, the Americas served as a dumping ground for Europe's second tier elites. Noblemen who weren't the firstborn and so wouldn't inherit; noble families that had wasted away the family fortune; businessmen who found their path upwards blocked because they weren't of noble blood. Going to America was a way to find your fortune in a less static society. And sure, a lot of those elites learned that the system at home was arbitrary and unfair and tried to build something better when they got to America. But there were also a lot of elites who resented the Old World system because it wasn't fair to *them,* because it hadn't put *them* at the top of society. For these guys, America was a chance to recreate the same system but this time do it right, so that *they* would be the ones giving orders.
Maybe instead of focusing on the poor, we define the maximum wage, and provide communism for the rich. Instead of allowing the wealthy to keep making millions and billions every year we as society say you've made it to X amount of dollars in income, here's your black card enjoy all the best of everything in the country, but you don't get to own everything, you get to share it with the other black card holders (none of us poor riff-raff to bother you). But the government is going to keep all the rest of the cash, hand over your company to your successor, and provide opportunity to the rest of society.
1
"Many blue-collar whites still think that the poor are lazy and prefer to live off welfare."
The irony, of course, is that blue-collar whites comprise a majority of impoverished and welfare-receiving Americans.
5
"And what motivates these elites is ideology. Their political identities, not to mention their careers, are wrapped up in the notion that more government is always bad. So they oppose programs that help the poor partly out of a general hostility toward “takers,” but also because they hate the idea of government helping anyone."
Yep. This is what too many liberals don't grok. It's not about money. At that level of income, money ceased having any meaning a long time ago. And heck, with all the money rich people sink into lobbying to have the system twisted in their favor? They'd probably be left with just as much money if they payed taxes in an untwisted system. It's about status and about ideology. It's about maximizing and exercising their power over the peons. It's about showing everybody that you're not bound by the rules of mere mortals.
3
Just as we no longer refer to those assaulted, as victims, to not be so complicit in their stigmatization, so too: Those attacked in this concerted class war offensive, initiated by the wealthiest pillars of this society, cannot and should not be described as 'the Poor'. They will be the survivors, when those now attacking lose badly. I will be a part of that. I am not poor.
1
"Most nondisabled adults receiving aid work."
And where is the call to compensate workers with an adequate wage that would support the "decent living" FDR was calling for 80 years ago? Over half of working Americans don't earn enough to live on, while their Walmart-like masters become multi-billionaires. It is immoral to take an adult's full-time labor and pay that adult less than a living wage, and it ought to be illegal.
Kucinich exhorted us to "Wake up, America!" many years ago. I wonder if we ever will.
7
Health and education are requisite to self-sufficiency. The GOP will not fund either of those either. Theirs is a both/and deep-seated loathing of 'others.'
4
And most of those who need help are children and single mothers. But we already know how this administration feels about women and children.
3
I don't agree that "what motivates these elites is ideology". I think they are motivated by greed. They are like Abraham Vereide, the preacher that decided it was more profitable and comfortable to "minister" to the wealthy than to help the poor. It is simply a rationalization for accepting greed as something "good".
2
Until the author calls upon unions and NGOs to direct their funds directly to the needy instead of promoting their favorite issues, this is just another hypocritical call for income redistribution deriving from a small segment of America that is already providing the bulk of our tax-derived revenues.
3
We oppose these things because it's not the proper function of government to provide these things. Go donate your own time and money to the causes you find important.
1
The GOP have very successfully peddled the trope of the 'welfare queen', the disability cheat, and the free-riding senior citizen and this is the result. Are there cheats out there? Sure. But they are so few in number, it doesn't warrant punishing the vast majority of those legitimately in need. But as Kris Kobach's baseless voter fraud investigation or Rick Scott's drug testing scam show us, the GOP is more than happy to waste taxpayer resources chasing rainbows. They are shameless.
6
Here at home, Trump's self-interest and the Ryan-GOP agenda, so harmful to the poor, are "Russianizing" the American people:
"Russian life [is marked by] the all-pervasive cynicism that no institution is to be trusted, because no institution is bigger than the avarice of the person in charge."--Michael Idov, "Russia: Life After Trust," New York Magazine (January 23-February 5, 2017), p. 22.
Trump's avarice is beyond reasonable doubt. The plutocratic Trump administration and the pro-plutocratic Ryan-GOP agenda are effectively demoralizing the larger American public and fostering an increasingly cynical view of politics, politicians and America's role in the world.
A demoralized people will view Trump's foreign policy--whatever that may be--with cynical skepticism. A further weakening of public trust in Trump's "leadership" will invite foreign enemies to test American power and resolve.
Americas military and diplomatic resources are and will be increasingly challenged abroad. President Trump's loss of international and domestic credibility tempts foreign adversaries to test any perceived American weaknesses.
If Vladimir Putin by his electoral interference had hoped to weaken America's international prestige and leadership, he has already succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Is there much doubt that Putin and others will seize the moment, test America's resolve and attempt to further diminish our nation's international reputation?
3
Sorry, Paul, but I must disagree with your conclusion that "...what motivates these elites is ideology."
You can look no further than dilettante billionaire NFL owners who REQUIRE government subsidy before they will locate a team somewhere.
This is NOT the notion that more government is always bad. This is simply greed.
5
Some war. When people have jobs, their earnings are multiplied throughout the community plus we develop a good work ethic. I shined shoes at the Woodmere Country Club in the late 60's and made about 400 a month during the summer at what many would consider a very menial job. Trump is providing jobs. What did the last 8 years of Democratic rule provide, live with 2% growth, an opioid crisis, and handouts (like the 500 dollar a month no work stipend) that demean the people they pretend to help.
1
@Jay Phelan - Trump's administration inherited an ongoing economic recovery, yet you, Paul Ryan (I got one of his emails) and Trump claim that the sun started shining only after it shone on "the biggest inauguration crowd ever".
If Trump is "providing jobs" than so was Obama. Simple as that. As for handouts, ask the rich and the corporations - they got a great big handout, which is creating deficits, which the non-wealthy will be paying for.
Inflation right now is ahead of wage increases. Someone's started a trade war. He's pushing to force utilities to buy expensive coal power, raising people's electric bills. His EPA has been loosening pollution rules, which will increase healthcare costs - while the GOP Congress and the President further weaken our healthcare system.
5
So what's the hold-up? Send Governor Paul LePage not to an ordinary jail, but to the hardest prison in his state. Into the general population, and not into solitary confinement or the hospital wing. Let him enjoy the company of his constituents, some of whom are probably victims of the governor's cruel myopia.
I believe any health problems he encountered during his stay would be fully covered; he wouldn't have to lay out a dime for health care, food, or housing. And he could earn about what he deserves to earn even outside of prison, working in the laundry, kitchen, or whatever employment is available in his new surroundings. I'm not from Maine, but I'd be happy to visit him in a couple of months to see how he's faring. I think that's more than he does for his own state's populous.
4
To be more accurate, please add to the phrase so it reads like this:
"The GOP's war on the poor and middle class."
Ah, the middle class, I remember it well. That's before I began paying $9,600 per year for health insurance on the individual market, a 38 percent jump over 2017.
If I want to see my general practitioner, that's ~$120 in cash, nothing covered by that insurance. Prescriptions? Tests? No coverage. Oh, I get a "free" physical once per year involving 15 minutes with a doctor and a blood screen.
It's just an insanely expensive policy against a major operation that would bankrupt me.
This isn't "woe is me," I take care of myself as I rocket past 60. This is the reality for those of us who've worked all their lives and find themselves unable to talk to a physician about routine matters.
The Democrats should ensure they talk about health care access and costs, starting now. The so-called Republicans only care about the twisted thinking of their campaign donors.
6
And then there's the evangelical Gospel of Prosperity. Maybe, that's the bate and switch that's being done on the (poor white dilusional) GOPers, if you give to the already rich, then you'll be rich too. It's hard to believe that these folks really believe that no health care, poor schools, broken roads, low salaries, no job security is good for them. They refuse to see that they're being duped by the GOP-super elite.
5
@rainbow What, exactly, is "bate"?
In all seriousness, the way I understand it is this. Once upon a time the GOP understood that wealth and well-being derive from two sources: capital and labor. In the olden days, Republicans would propose and vote for such things as raising the minimum wage, recognizing that the country does not do well unless working men and women do well, too. In fact, giving the poor Medicaid largely pays for itself over a lifetime in terms of the increased taxes a Medicaid recipient will pay. The modern GOP, however, is completely beholden to corporations and extremist ideology which says only capital matters, invests only in corporate tax breaks and write-offs, leaving labor not only to fend for itself, but to fend for itself without union representation (thanks to GOP justices on the Supreme Court). So the modern GOP will not raise the minimum wage because Walmart would have to pay more in wages, decreasing its profits, and Walmart and Yum! Brand would squeal like stuck pigs. Investments in labor, while significantly beneficial to the economy as a whole only appear over the long-term, but GOP policy is driven only by the next corporate quarterly earnings. Understood this way it is easy to see not only why the GOP engages in "war on the poor," it is also hostile to regulation that keeps us safe and healthy, cleans the water, and cools the air.
4
If you want to be really depressed, search for some of old Abe Lincoln's quotes about capital and labor, how the former only exists because of the latter, and how the latter is far more important.
There are a lot of historical figures about whom people wonder if they'd be Democrats or Republicans if they came back to life today. Abe Lincoln is one of the few about whom I have no such doubts. He'd be disgusted at how thoroughly the party he founded turned into everything he loathed.
2
Someone's gotta pay for those big tax cuts for rich people. Might as well be people who can't fight back.
1
The Republicans are going after the poor because they have already gone after the retired, middle-class, and military/veterans via increased copays, lost or reduced job benefits, and forcing many to work way past the retirement age. That leaves the poor and the rich (the beloved and sacrosanct heroes of the Republicans and Conservatives,
Somehow I’m not sure that having all three branches of our government run by people who are pathologically addicted to greed and selfishness will lead anywhere good.
It’s important to understand that these people are betraying the country and their self-serving policies are every bit as treasonous as the actions of our current “businessman” leader.
Their unchecked greed is destroying America.
8
"It’s important to understand that these people are betraying the country and their self-serving policies are every bit as treasonous as the actions of our current “businessman” leader. "
Indeed. But it's also important to understand that one of those things led naturally to the other.
One point I read on another blog a long time ago that really stuck with me is that if you believe in a world that's every man for himself, if you reject the notion of community and your obligations to it, if, basically, you adopt Maggie Thatcher's claim that "there is no such thing as society," then you're also saying that there is no such thing as country.
These are people who have spent the last fifty years fantasizing about "going Galt." Their economic bible is a fantasy about a world where rich people cause the collapse of the entire nation because they're not being appreciated enough. It may be terrible economics, it may not be what would happen in real life if rich people pulled out of society, but it's still incredibly revealing that when they fantasize about a just world, what they fantasize about is crashing an entire country for their own gratification.
The leap from that to "treason" is really more of a very small step.
2
Take away healthcare and food stamps, provide inadequate education and inadequate living conditions that encourage sickness and maybe, just maybe if we're lucky, all these poor folks will die young and save us a bunch of money. I've always thought that this is the underlying belief that motivates the GOP.
3
I may be preaching to the converted, but decades ago Erich Fromm's excellent book The Sane Society covered all this ground. He maintained that a guaranteed income would not make people lazy but give them the support they need to find themselves and make a real contribution to society in one way or another, rather than cowering in fear of starvation or homelessness. He was right. This is "liberal" but it is also Christian, and Jewish, and humanist. Those on the Right who think giving all financial security would hurt the economy or their precious privileges would find on the contrary that this would remove a huge number of costly social and economic problems. It would be good, totally, for everyone.
11
Yes Paul your are right. It is about ideology, economic ideology centered on the thought axis of Von Hayek, Von Mises and Ayn Rand, and held with religious intensity. It is a variant, from the right, of the elevation of "free markets" as the dominant determinant of public policy.
Under Clinton, it culminated in the "Committee to Save the World": Summers, Greenspan and Rubin.
Karl Polanyi, who in his magisterial 1944 book, "The Great Transformation," the same year Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" was published, was one of the few writers about economics who grasped the intensity with which the first market society was consciously constructed in Great Britain from about 1780-1848. Done with near religious fanaticism, he said, of the new authors of what has become known as "classical economics."
Readers who want some real insights into where economics is and ought to be today ought to pick up Yanis Varoufakis' "Talking to my daughter about the economy: How capitalism works - and how it fails," just translated into English in 2016.
It had back jacket endorsements from Naomi Klein and...Martin Wolf of the Financial Times. But not Paul Krugman, whom to my best knowledge, has never recognized the existence of Yanis Varouvakis' serious work, now out in five or six books. That's because centrist economists have a little of that fanaticism they hate on the right - themselves.
This book will, someday, rank with Keynes' "The Economic Consequences of the Peace."
"At the state level, many Republican governors are still refusing to expand Medicaid even though it would cost them little"
I always love the idea that Federal funds are magically created, rather than coming from the pockets of the working taxpayers. One would think, however, that a professional economist would not fall victim to such magical thinking.
Mr. Krugman, please note that to the workers and business owners of the country it matters little which pocket the government picks.
2
@mikecody Oh, but federal funds are magically created. It's called fiat money. And it's the same thing when the Department of Defense wants billions more every year.
Govt has to spend the money into existence first before taking some back via taxes. It's time to understand how money in our system works.
1
@Frank - Then, if that is so, why does the government use increased spending as an reason for tax increases, and the more liberal decry tax cuts as something that will harm the social welfare programs?
Am reading these comments.
To those who feel social programs should be cut.
Are you out of your minds?
Have you ever been to places with no security nets?
They are dangerous, kidnapping is an industry, mugging is the norm. Dirty aggressive people follow/ harass you in the street, wait for restaurant patrons hoping/grabbing for « doggy bags » and your frighten children are witness to this.
You think police can keep order? There are not enough jails/money to keep the great number of desperate people out of sight, smell and sound.
We are not all born equal. Tall, beautiful, healthy, intelligent, ugly, short, low IQ are not choices.
Do the words French Revolution ring a bell?
Pitch forks?
Unless you are ok with solutions that will certainly close heaven’s gates to you no matter how much you go to church and « Praise the Lord » this is the way things are; unfair and very messy.
I don’t bother appealing to your better angels as to why all humans should be allowed a minimum of dignity I am telling you it is dangerous to put a large number of people is a state of desperation. I have seen it.
And if you think for one smug second should you have been born into abject poverty and ignorance you would have figure it out? Maybe, chances are not, and its not the issue.
I understand all the ideals of hard work and discipline. Its more complicated than that.
Am not asking any of you to have a heart, just a brain.
12
"Many blue-collar whites still think that the poor are lazy and prefer to live off welfare. "
They think this for one of two reasons:
1. They are helping support their worthless, drug-addicted relatives who are using the welfare system to stay high all the time.
2. They personally know many people who are working for cash, and collecting benefits at the same time.
If you want to know what is going on at the bottom of society, those just above the bottom are the ones to ask.
3
Democrats have a strong story to tell.
To tell to this country’s 90 percent.
It has been the Democrats in Congress and in the Presidency and the at state governments who have legislated to help the 90 percent.
Old age assistance with Medicare and Social Security payments. Medical and food assistance for the underserved. Cash payments when they lose their job. Voting rights bills that help the 90 percent push those in charge to provide basic help when they need basic help.
Republicans tend to show a meanness that some see as strength.
Democrats show sympathy and empathy that some see as weakness.
In truth, it is meanness and empathy that we see respectively in republicans and democrats.
There is a bottom line. Forget ideology. Vote Democrat.
All of us, the 90 percent, the point one percent and the 9.9 percent will be better off. That's all of us.
6
In Arkansas, we have imposed work requirement on Medicaid. Every month recipients have to go to an on line site to enter the details of their work or work seeking hours. If these folks could use on line sites, they'd probably have jobs that would let them afford medical care. You also have to understand the requirements that look pretty complicated to me, and I've got a Ph.D. Looks like we'll cut 7000 the first month, more to follow. Big success for the Christians who run our state.
9
We are currently a second world country rapidly turning into a third world one. In another 20 years or less, you'll either have servants or are a servant. Nothing in between. Just like Brazil!
We will soon become the world's richest third world country.
6
The actual reason republicans want to end all programs that help the poor is so they can take more money for themselves and their patrons. They need to end social programs not just for the poor, but for the middle class such as Medicare and Social Security, so they can give that money to the wealthy.
Republican politicians are fleecing the country on behalf of their real constituents...their donors. More money is needed to provide welfare for the rich. The only place left to get that money is social programs that benefit mostly the middle class. But to sell that theft, republican politicians emphasize the programs that benefit the poor, and further emphasize the poor of color. It doesn't matter if the poor are mostly white...the point is to sell the attitude that the poor are undeserving.
And when programs work as intended, whether health care or education or nutrition...the only question republican politicians ask is whether the programs help them or their donors. If the answer is no, then republicans want to end those programs.
There is a simple solution here:
VOTE OUT ALL REPUBLICANS
8
There is a religious reason. The evangelical base has been infected with "prosperity gospel", the belief that God favors the wealthy and is punishing the poor. For the wealthy to "interfere" by helping the poor is interfering with God's will; he is punishing the poor for a reason.
Therefore, from this twisted view of Christianity, it is actually immoral to make the lives of the poor any better than God has ordained.
5
To turn on the poor is the dirtiest thing one can think or do. I am not a very religious man but to help the poor is for me THE Christian Leitmotiv.
Politicians denying medical aid, financial help or even food for the poor should be sent to the moon. Every educated knows that the poor have problems to get along in a fast moving society, so it is necessary that the State as well as private institutions and individuals stretch out their helping hands. This a moral obligation of first rank.
Sorry, if I am hard to be understood by Republican knall heads.
4
Hey, what’s the problem? The administration has declared the war on poverty over, so let the punishments for those who don’t toe the line begin! Another sign of our ‘Christian-values-nation’ at work for the people.
2
Poor people don't vote or participate in political activism in sufficient numbers to warrant attention -- let alone financial support -- from Republicans. It's that simple. And depressing.
3
The US must stand strong to its enemies who are out to get us and to destroy our way of life, to enslave our women and to erase our men. For that, we must make sacrifices, such as having the third-generation drug queens to actually once in their lifetimes go to work.
1
The whole argument should be inverted. It's the top 1 % who are the takers. They, not the people currently on federal assistance, who are abusing the system by warping federal tax policy for their own benefit.
11
@John Frazer - If you are making a salary greater than $430K, which puts you in the top 1%, you are probably working pretty hard.
The biggest groups in the top 1% by profession? Doctors, 15%, lawyers 13%.
1
"More government is always bad". Do these people have any idea that virtually everything that makes their iphone work is a result of research by a government agency or federally funded research. I guess these people don't use roads, sewers, water, public education and on and on. This country, from WW2 to the 1980s, was built on a free market/government partnership. It worked incredibly well. Not so much for the current winner take all system. Read Hacker and Pierson.
6
I'm reading a book called "A Square Meal", about America's policy approach to food/nutrition during the great depression. Herbert Hoover repeatedly refused to distribute food to the poor, citing his (non depression) childhood among independent folk in Iowa before the 20th century. As president, Hoover threw lavish parties at the White House to 'project confidence and prosperity' while wheat rotted in the fields and ranchers dumped dead livestock in rivers due to agricultural policy prices. There were millions who could have used the meat, grain, milk, eggs that were thrown away season after season, but Hoover's belief was that starving Americans would be weakened in character if they had free food. Sound familiar? Now we call those 'takers', those depression survivors 'The Greatest Generation', because of the life-breaking privation they went through for no real reason. Years of idiot ideology from the top down, while those in breadlines were called 'takers'. Now, Paul Ryan and his ilk sleep soundly and in wealth while they carry on that ideology.
7
Yes, ideology drives some of what the wealthy think about the poor and nearly poor.
The other reason is simply self-interest. Money. The millions they have is never enough. They can't stand the idea of the IRS taking something from them they view as rightfully theirs. They never take into account the advantages they had: inheritance, wealthy parents sending them to private schools, easy entrance into family business, etc.
Libertarianism is probably the end game for their political views. Libertarianism: anarchy for everyone except those rich enough to live behind a walled, locked gated community.
Is this the nation the majority of Americans want? I don't believe it.
14
Much of it is just political calculation. Democracy as it's now practiced is a game of winning with mathematics. Party leaders go with a mixture of positions that will get them a 51 percent solution: i.e., 51 percent or more of the vote. And many people do believe that social programs give their hard-earned money to the unworthy. (Bumper sticker I saw recently: "YOU are not ENTITLED to what I have EARNED.")
As for the rest of it, wealthy and influential private-sector backers of the GOP are simply following a rule they've always observed: Pay unto others as little as possible.
7
The US is distinctive among rich countries in having extremely negative views of the unemployed and welfare recipients--that, as the article says, they're lazy and it's their fault. The distinction between deserving and undeserving poor is much more rooted here than in other countries. Political scientists have shown that this is tied in with race, that when people think of lazy takers, they think of racial minorities, whatever the true facts. It seems that elites are able to take advantage of these views for their own purposes.
7
Call me a cynic, but I don't believe Republican politicians care at all about spending on the poor. They do, however, love to be in power. And what keeps them in power is vast amounts of money from the very rich. Some very rich people really DO hate spending money on the poor. Not because they care one way or the other about the poor. They don't. But because it means they have to share a tiny bit of their vast wealth by paying taxes.
8
ChrisF.--I want to pay a million dollars, in taxes. Or, more, if possible.
1
I think the blue collar whites have convinced themselves that the U.S. military gets its money from bake sales instead of the American taxpayer.
12
socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor is the norm.
8
No one likes to think their hard earned tax dollars which could be used for enriching the lives of THEIR children, is going to help those who have made godawful personnel decisions as well as others in their lives. It's just human nature. If you try to take someone's hard earned money, they should rightly ask 'Why do you want my money". What would the Govt. response be? Perhaps it would be: "Because we are the Beggars-by-Proxy for the poor. They don't want to beg you, or write a letter to you telling you how they failed, so now we need to come collect from you
the money they need to feed their illegitimate children. Oh and by the way, we have the guns and will send you to jail if you don't hand it over". Yeah nice. No wonder why at least half of the country and already one of the 2 parties is against Govt. largesse.
4
I don't believe that begrudging others help is human nature. It may suit some, but it certainly doesn't suit me and nor does it suit a lot of people I know. I would much rather my tax dollars go to help people and clean up the environment than enrich our very own US oligarchs. I fear that the big money in politics today, coming from the Kochs and the Mercers for instance, is abetting the cause of poverty. I think they may envy the freedom to be predators that the Russian oligarchs enjoy, and wish to emulate them by turning the less fortunate into serfs.
7
No big deal--Your hard earned dollars are making the already filthy rich even richer, while millions of working poor go homeless.
1
You allude to a central paradox of our society. Freedom entails the right to make mistakes (see gawdawful). We also believe that it is wrong to let people and their children, bystanders and customers suffer extreme hardship from their mistakes. Thus we have "too big to fail, efforts to prevent suicide, and programs to help children not get sick from lack of food. Balance means fairness, social contract, and the possibility of tipping the system to favor one group (richer, white) over another (poorer, colored). Participation by an informed electorate is all. @No big deal
1
We will end up with perhaps a score of progressive states, such as California, where the people are treated humanely and where social services are robust. And another score of states which actively penalize anyone that is not rich and white. What will happen then? We will see a great divide becoming worse and worse in which either the voters in the 20 bad sttes turn out their selfish leaders or see their states sink to the level of a Bangladesh.
3
Jean Calvin has captured and occupied the Protestant brains in the USA, aided by misanthropic Ayn Rand. Neither of these figures understood the word empathy.
5
I admit to knowing next to nothing about economic theory, or how to calculate the poverty rate. But I do understand arithmetic. It is very hard to eliminate poverty, regardless of one's attitude toward the poor, when hundreds of thousands of people who are not only poor, but uneducated, and unskilled, are allowed to enter the country, legally or illegally, each year.
We must change the criteria used to judge which potential immigrants will be admitted. Unfortunately, Republicans won't like this either, since their main criterion for admission is the cheap labor immigrants represent.
6
@JMC It isn't an immigrant issue, and you need to do more then arithmetic. It's nice you admit you don't know anything, but then you go on as if you do.
https://www.cato.org/blog/why-unemployment-lower-when-immigration-higher
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.nr0.htm/Labor-Force-Characterist...
Why do you assume immigrants are unskilled? Do you even have a clue how many illegal immigrants start their own business? How they are combined with poverty statistics?
1
If you listen to the US business owners who regularly employ immigrants, they will tell you over and over again that these immigrants work harder and longer than a majority of our citizens.
3
@Ambroisine - True, but if immigrants were not available, they'd have to hire some of our citizens instead. They'd get less work for more money, but if you need people, you have to take what you can get.
I'm just back from a 'mission' trip to eastern Kentucky. I'm quite certain that every member of that dysfunctional, government-dependent society would tell you that the problem with the country is the black and brown people.
7
Don't forget! Even if the poor worked full-time 52 weeks per year they would still be poor at $7.25 per hour, or $15,000 per year.
13
Sherry Jones--The working poor, who have no home, to speak of, can't pay their bills, need food stamps, and often can't get decent Medicaid, especially if they live in Texas, or some other awful place. But they are working, sometimes more than 1 job.
Dr. Krugman: These types of articles are some of your best. You shall be remembered for theses.
Please keep up the good work.
The United States should be able to have no hungry people anywhere yet we hear constantly of high poverty rates and hungry children.
That is an abomination and a horrid truth that must be corrected. Look at our military spending; it is more than the next eight countries military spending combined. A country, a civilization, will always be remembered in history as to how it treated its least able and poorest citizens.
8
The ideology of which Dr. K. speaks -- that "more government is always bad," is a symptom itself of a deeper ideology of pure selfishness. If it were possible to pay for more government in such a way that Republicans could be made to feel that someone else than themselves was paying for it, they'd embrace it. Nobody loves a freebie like a Republican but freebies for other people gives them the horrors.
5
It's more than that. It long ago went past pure greed and selfishness into late-Soviet-Marxist-style ideological madness.
The liberal blog Balloon Juice is run by a guy from West Virginia. As he pointed out last year, his neck of the woods is full of people who willingly pay a couple thousand dollars a year to auto shops to repair or replace parts of their car, just so they don't have to pay a couple hundred in taxes to fix the roads. Whether it's racial (they see taxes as going to Other People, even in as white a state as West Virginia) or just a case of having drunk the kool aid provided by Fox, these people are merrily ruining themselves just for the pleasure of their ideological purity.
1
And is especially ironic given that the states whose citizens complain the most about "big government" are also the most reliant on Federal largesse.
1
Eager to reduce assistance to the poor.....
Perhaps some 'real estate developer' somewhere has snapped up all the sleeping spaces under overpasses and bridges with the intent of renting them to the poor - after selling them cardboard.
But will he provide cages for the children?
Now I wonder who that 'real estate developer' might be?
4
Well, I disagree about the degree to which it's racial animus driving the war on the poor. Sure, there's one or two Ayn Rand devotees or bizarre religious types who think that government aid to anyone is just plain wrong, but in large part whites see these programs as having a brown face and for people in different places. Paraphrasing Menken, they suspect that that somewhere, somehow a black guy is getting away with something in these programs. Or an immigrant is getting away with something.
Well then, they ought to stop relying on their suspicions and examine the facts.
1
Excoriating Republicans can be fun and worthwhile, but you might ask what the Dems have tried to do for the poor, sick, and disabled other than expand Medicaid. What was Obama's bold program to help the poor improve their lives? What was Biden's program? We know that years later the poor are still trying to recover from the Clintons idea of welfare reform. The approach of the corporate wing of the Dem party has been benign neglect - much better to focus on financial and tech interests.
1
@David Lewis AH yes, the 'both sides are the same' nonsense. The Dem have been busy fighting the R from taking make away. You are correct about TANF, but lets not forget it was almost all republicans the voted for it. And Dems in general weren't happy about it either
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/104-1996/h331
Too many Americans buy into the" American Character" the individual, accountable only for himself(yes, it's him) and his family, pulling himself up by his bootstraps and overcoming adversity to provide for his family. In this narrative, which assumes long gone principles like equal opportunity for all, anyone who fails is a loser, and if they accept "handouts" of any kind, even for a short period, a sponger who will become dependent on an 'entitlement'.Add to that the folklore that this individual is likely to be a minority and you have the complete recipe supporting the dogma Krugman describes. It is a sad fact that such beliefs remain deeply embedded in the culture and increasingly lead to Americans supporting ideas that go against their own self-interest. The irony is that those against "entitlements" are increasingly guilty of assuming entitlement to a "good paying job" and respect for being "Real Americans"(that means White) while not holding themselves accountable for having the skills and priorities necessary for achieving the standard of living they believe they are "entitled" to. As the World is undergoing technologically driven fundamental change, too many Americans are lacking in the metacognition necessary to realize that attitudes must change, life cannot be about nostalgia and fun, education and skill building matter more than ever and MAGA is based on applying yesterday's winning strategy to tomorrow's issues, the equivalent of trying to push water uphill.
8
This article could be a preface for the paradox of social conservatives being opposed to abortion. What would be the socieo-economic status of such never-born. By definition they are unwanted by the mother, probably the father, but also by the very conservative republicans who are described in this article that have the political clout to increase their misery .
Perhaps this is a sub-conscious way of alleviating one's low income existence, by increasing the distance between those who are truly impoverished. Forcing one from this lowest strata to have her child, to go through the pain of deprivation may be a way of being elevated the merely poor by increasing their suffering of the indigent.
The platform to get elected Governor is hurt the poor, really make the indigent suffer, and get more of both classes by preventing abortion. We need to work on a new sociology of such bizarre relationships and identities, so we will better understand what we are up against.
10
Paul: what about poverty and helplessness in democratic areas? Right here in NYC, a bastion for the Democratic Party we have areas rich in poverty and children suffering. Take the East New York section of Brooklyn for example. For over 45 years this area has been the homicide and crime capital of the USA. The schools are disgusting and several generations of minorities have graduated functionally illiterate. Where have all the politicians been? Where is the outrage? What about the children in single family homes who have very little to eat. And dare I mention the filth? Blocks upon blocks are covered in garbage and one is unable to walk the sidewalks never mind even seeing it. Do our children have a chance to make it out of the hood? The press has not help us in the area either by not reporting on all of this. Just a few short miles from Manhattan lies a third world country neighborhood that time has forgot. Do you remember the Palm Sunday massacre here? Do you remember the abnormal number of homicides here? Do you remember Police Officer Michael Dowd and his band of corrupt cops that led to the biggest police scandal in the USA? I resent you always blaming the republicans when just a short subway ride from where you write Paul is a great example of Democrats that are worse than the republicans you write about.
4
@Mickey as far as I know, Democrats are the only party that even tries to address all the problems you have in NYC. The problem is, because Republicans are now the anti-tax and anti-government party since Reagan it's been impossible to address them.
3
@Sherry Jones What mythical republicans are throwing money wrenches into the Democrat policies of NYC?! Where?
1
Of course, the biggest takers, as the recent GOP tax bill proved once again, are the wealthiest among us. GOPers believe god rewards the rich and punishes the poor, so as they see it, they are doing god's work. Convenient. And 40% of the country swallows this, including so-called evangelicals cuz guns, god, gays, and abortion.
11
Simply phrased, the GOP want the poor in this country to DIE. Once all the poor people die out, then there will be no more poverty. Problem solved.
The GOP attitude toward the poor was best expressed in 2011 by Herman Cain, who thundered, "If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself!" (Pretty brazen coming from a guy who laid off THOUSANDS of workers when he closed 200 Godfather's Pizza locations.)
Why would the GOP demand work requirements for food stamps and medical assistance? Because they believe all poor people are LAZY. Why would the GOP demand urine tests for food stamp eligibility? Because they believe all poor people are CRIMINALS smoking the devil weed or injecting heroin. Such non-conforming behavior must be punished and stamped out--hence our thriving private prison industry.
Pretty big talk coming from members of Congress, who work only 180 days a year and who swill Johnny Walker Blue like it was Gatorade.
Our Bible-thumping, "family values" Congress critters might do well actually to READ the Bible, especially this passage: “Then they too will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or without clothes, or sick, or in prison, and not help you?’ Then the King will answer, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.’" (Matthew 25:44-45)
Oh, that's right, I forgot. Jesus was a Commie, so right-thinking Americans don't REALLY follow his teachings.
19
The self-fulfilling prophesy of GOP ideology:
Hasten the deaths of poor people until there are no poor people, thus "solving" the poverty issue.
3
@Leland Seese But then who will fight in their wars? They want poor people. The worse off they are, the more likely they are to shout 'MURICA as they march their children to die for foreign assets.
Remember, we are still at war. A war they started with demonstrable lies.
1
Beating up on the weakest is always the easiest thing to do. The largest number of citizens below the poverty line are children. Giving tax cuts to corporate America is as easy as stealing from a child.
11
I see it only slightly different. “The poor” function symbolically like “the Jews” in Germany in the 1930s, although with less vitriol. A major political dynamic for the right wing (and some extreme left-wingers) is to identify “victims” responsible for the troubles of those who are not (and “should not be,” to the reactionary mind) victims, but good citizens. In 1930s Germany it could be seen as scapegoating—symbolically, victimage. It’s done all the time in the world of politics. Eliminate the symbolic source of one’s troubles and one’s troubles will presumably go away. Symbolic sources (such as “the Jews” in Germany) can be invented.
In America we don’t scapegoat so much as brand. “The poor” are apparently “bad product” to the right wing and deserve what they get in “the marketplace” we call America. In its extreme form it can become Social Darwinism—the vulgarized Darwinian attitude that only the fittest survive and those who survive are “the best” (Darwin said nothing of the kind)—again, the political use of symbols in politics, something of which we all need to become more aware.
Let’s see. The common, durable, feisty wild turkey or the lazy, duplicitous, scavenging American eagle. Ben Franklin was onto something, I think. People should have listened.
5
Paul think you missed a bit of information; there is a traitor in the Oval office. That is the fire that needs extinguishing. The conservative attack on rational thought will still be there after we get rid of Trump and the rest of his traitors. Then we can deal with the conservative problem, but first things first.
3
After watching what Republicans have done over the past several years I have slowly come to the conclusion that Republican policy makers actually enjoy seeing people who are poor suffer and die. This is the only logical conclusion to draw from the fact, for example, that they want to eliminate access to abortion and affordable birth control and health care, while doing nothing to prevent people from getting sick or helping protect women from unintended pregnancies. They are nihilistic and sadistic.
5
It's hard to care about poverty when a nation has chosen to elevate money to the position of a major god.
7
Has Mr. Krugman ever driven through a "poor" neighborhood and notice the vast number of satellite dishes on the roofs of houses? I guess they "have" to pay over $100 a month to take their minds off their misery. And we have to indirectly pay for that.
1
Amazingly insightful. However, in my work I go into a lot of people's homes and take note of their TV connections. Having a dish on the roof means that someone, at some point, got satellite service, usually because it was a cheaper package than landline cable tv, or else the cable was turned off for some reason. It does not mean they are currently paying for the service. In fact, unless you can talk to the residents, seeing a dish on the roof gives you zero information on what they spend their money on.
4
@Holly Golighty
So you get a satellite dish but no one else can have one unless you deem them worthy? Or, of course, you don't mind them having one, just as long as YOU don't have to pay for it....indirectly....is that it? Do you sit at home in front of your TV and fume because someone in a poor neighborhood gets to watch TV? Are you upset they eat supper, too...especially anything other than bread and water?
I simply don't understand this mentality of begrudging others a decent existence. Why do you feel that way? Is it because it's going to cost you a few extra dollars a month to spare them from being on the street? Is it because you work hard and you think others can do the same no matter what? Is that it? You believe everyone can be just like you?
Why can't you just be grateful for what you do and how you live your life...and then smile the next time you see a satellite in a poor neighborhood. Maybe a child is watching Sesame Street while her mother is out working two jobs to make ends meet.
2
This article takes the Republicans at their words, that they really believe the party line about cheaters on welfare. There’s little reason to think that’s true, at least for the leadership. This is the demonstrated party of high-income tax cuts, and it’s funded accordingly. The main objection to helping the poor is that it’s money, pure and simple. The rest is just coverup. Jane Mayer’s Dark Money is painstakingly documented.
We should all learn something from Gorsuch. He doesn’t hide his contempt for fellow justices who really care about legalities. Only fools believe that stuff is anything more than excuses.
2
Very well stated and summarized, but I can do you one better. A mean spirit mentality is now pervasive in America. Perhaps, it was always there, a subset of the human condition, but because the ability to disseminate information and misinformation to large audiences with a blink of an eye, this ‘mean-spiritedness’ is now embedded in the social fabric.
I remember when the Republican Party had some forward thinking progressives within; such Senator Edward Brooke of Massachusetts and Nelson Rockefeller, and then came Goldwater. After Goldwater, the party became the party of the rich, the ‘wantabe’ rich and disenchanted whites who saw minorities attaining a minute sliver of the ‘American Pie that they (middle class and poor whites) thought that they were entitled to. After all, there is only so much pie to go around, 5% of the pie split among 95% of the diners can only go so far.
10
Republicanism can no longer be considered "conservative." The party and its ideology now represents a form of far-right extremism that gleefully revels in mean-spirited punishment of the "other" and the poor.
6
Read Dickens. The old “undeserving” poor idea continues.
5
This is NOT a war on the poor, it's a war on anyone who isn't in the 1%. The way journalists frame a problem dramatically influences public perception. Too many people don't identify with the poor. They've worked too hard to be lumped into that bucket and they actually think Trump has their best interest in mind when he cuts programs for the poor. Please change the narrative: Trump's actions are pure self interest, enriching him and his grifter-cronies, turning our country into a banana republic. A war on the poor is unfortunately, not relevant to middle class america, who don't read your paper but do vote, and is very different than an enrichment scheme for the 1%.
4
I think we are missing one ingredient here, the powerful influence of the Evangelical Christians on our government policies towards the poor; You would think the influence would be positive. It is not.
Evangelicals believe in the power of prayer and see poverty (though uncomfortable for the poor) as being treatable by said prayer. They see liberal governments as being the humanistic or secular competition for Christ's message rather than a possible expression of Christian values; you know? Like Charity and Compassion?
The Evangelicals provide the "moral" backbone of the Republican wing and by all appearances they have given all of America a bad case of scoliosis.
9
Secular Humanism teaches us that it is immoral to wait for a god to act for us and that ultimately the responsibility for the kind world in which we live rests with us. Politically, the defiance of both religious and secular authority has led to democracy, human rights and the protection of the environment.
Bottom line is the rabid stronghold capitalism has on what is "theirs"; no sharing. When will we release this grip on the notion that it is the only and best way?
The philosophy is mean, stingy and antithetical to the concept of democracy.
4
The people who have the real problem are the near poor. I am on Medicare and when I broke my wrist and fingers on the other hand and was in casts I stayed with my son but had to bring in an Aide a few times a week to bathe me. I could afford paying for this as long as it was limited. A person on Medicaid would have been given an Aide free of charge. A friend who is near poor but has healthcare that she has to pay for would have received no help and could not afford to pay for an Aide. .
3
Calling all Democrats and Independents: Time to vote in November to put the brakes on this embarrassing and saddening time in our history.
4
Trump is merely the face of a process that has been going on at least since the time of Ronald Reagan. We so bought into the anti-tax, anti-government, anti help the poor, anti public school propaganda that was aided and abetted by a captured press, that we have steadily been crumbling from within. For decades our, leaders, whose religion was extreme profit-driven unfettered capitalism, told us that the supposed free market would solve everything, and a great many of us believed it because it was the lazy way out in the short-term. We have been allowing the eating away of our own skeleton, and now Donald Trump is merely the grinning head that sits top a burning man of straw.
6
Please vote in November. We need term limits for all politicians and judges.
4
A British journalist I met years ago clarified the Republican Party for me. He said you could boil down their entire philosophy to just two words: Cheap Labor.
5
Paul Krugman conveniently leaves out one of Bill Clinton's "signature achievements" by signing the Welfare to Work bill which effectively turned welfare over to the states and made it much more racially biased program. President Obama did nothing to ameliorate the problem and in fact poverty expanded greatly and yes, we had the 2008 stock market crash and crisis where Obama let the banks get away with breaking the economy and leaving so many poorer and he did almost nothing for the rest of the citizens.
2
@lzolatrov In my world President Obama was elected President in Nov. 2008 and inaugurated in Jan 2009, months after the events you blame on him. By Economic definition the Great Recession ended in Dec. 2007. President Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed in February 2009. It's effects were already being shown in economic statistics by March 2009 and continued slowly but steadily for his remaining 8 years in office. For example continuous Job Growth for the remainder of his 2 terms in office.
2
Republican policies - Reaganomics, deregulation, letting banks play in the stock market, overleveraging, and credit default swaps led to the crash of 2008.
As usual a Democratic president had to clean up the mess. It was more important to save our financial system than to punish the banks. Obama also had to work with a Republican Congress who was not about to let him punish their buddies in banking. Obama did what he could.
Republicans are great at breaking things; they are not too good at repairing them.
@lzolatrov Bush was the President in 2008 and Bush bailed out the banks that crashed the economy on yours and my dime. I'm not an Obama apologist by any stretch, murdering civilians with robots is beyond the pale, but 2008 and the wasted billions on those that Capitalism's own logic states must fail was not on him.
We demand a lot from the Undeserving Poor. Why do we demand so little from the Undeserving Rich?
Young people who receive the maximum gift tax free gift from each parent and grandparent from birth -- $14,000 -- are starting off at the age of 21 with $14,000 worth of stocks and bonds from 6 people over 21 years -- $1,764,000 worth of securities which easily could now be worth over $5,000,000.
What did these Undeserving Rich do to earn $5,000,000+ in capital that pays them over $100,000 in dividends each year? NOTHING. They were born lucky. Moreover, they did NOTHING to serve our country or humanity.
Let's require the Undeserving Rich to serve our country BEFORE they get control of the wealth given to them by their parents, grandparents, trusts, and estates.
Let's require young people who will be receiving $1,000,000 or more upon reaching age 21 to do work serving our country. Let them go in the military or do social service work for 2 years.
3
"but also because they hate the idea of government helping anyone."
This statement is probably not true. J. K. Galbraith traced the evolution of capitalism into the Corporate State where corporations, as "job-creators" and engines of economic growth are the sole beneficiaries of government assistance. It is the backbone of The Washington Consensus or lately, The Neoliberal Manifesto that corporations and government work together. A person, unable to produce, is on their own.
Yes, we have one party that despises the poor, but what about the other party?
Most Social Security recipients are living a more or less precarious existence. What has the Democratic Party done to help them? Twice during Obama's presidency, he offered cuts to Social Security during budget negotiations, joined once by Pelosi.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/288157-pelosi-open-to-obama-proposal-o...
Obama signed legislation cutting the food stamp budget during the worst years of the great recession.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obama-signs-food-stamp-cut
ACA7s public plan would have benefited working poor families receive affordable health care, but Obama dropped it at the first sign of insurance industry protest.
We have one party that despises the poor and one party that is ambivalent to the poor. There is good reason why Krugman didn't include any demonstration of concern for the poor by the Democrats - there aren't any, nothing major, anyway.
3
@Ed Watters You have Social Security and Medicare precisely because the Democratic Party exists. You don't really think Republicans would have initiated those programs, do you?
Those programs were started because there was a Democratic majority in Congress, each time.
Franklin Roosevelt was a Democratic president, and so was Lyndon Johnson. A Republican president would have vetoed both programs in a New York minute.
So stop bashing Democrats. Start asking Republicans just what their problem is with being decent human beings.
@Juanita "You have Social Security and Medicare precisely because the Democratic Party exists."
Obviously, you are unaware of how far to the right the Democratic party has moved since Bill Clinton's presidency. The fact that two Dems recommended cuts to SS should've been an eye-opener for you, but instead, you hold your eyes tightly shut.
The fact that Obama signed cuts to food stamps and Bill Clinton signed legislation that pretty much ended our already meager (by European standards) welfare program - all of these are lost on you.
The GOP has, for the last 40 years, refused to help working Americans. It has refused to allocate funding to improve roads, to upgrade airports, to allow more basic scientific research to be done, to allow America to remain, as they put it, a great country. The only Americans the United States is great for are the very rich, those who can buy and sell any politician they want.
The Democrats have not yet come up with a way to counter what the GOP says even though the GOP lies quite frequently and flagrantly to the public. I live in an area that by definition should have at least 10 or more welfare queens. I haven't seen one. This same area has plenty of rich people and I don't see any of them extending a helping hand to Americans like myself who can't find jobs and are ready, willing, quite skilled, and able to work. I've seen more generosity from the birds than I have from the richest country on the planet.
The truth is that Americans prefer to punish people who need help. It's easier to blame unemployed Americans rather than to look at why they are unemployed. Age, gender, experience in the field, a lack of unions to represent workers, the freedom companies have to fire for any reason, and in some industries, the ability to hire foreigners when skilled Americans cannot be "found". What is really being punished is the inevitable: growing older. It's time to hold our politicians accountable for who they dance with, especially when it's not us.
6
@hen3ry "The truth is that Americans prefer to punish people who need help."
The media and the politicians like to vilify those who need help. When you look at the polls however, it's clear that Americans have quite a bit of empathy for the needy.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/26/few-americans-support-cu...
https://www.epi.org/blog/poll-shows-strong-support-increasing-social/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/poll-record-number-americans-s...
The public is to the left of the politicians on many issues, and this issue is no exception. The politicians, meanwhile, continue to reflect the views of the wealthy and their corporations.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article...
1
@Ed Watters, we keep on electing people who don't want to continue programs that help, who want to cut programs or who want to put people who can't work to work, who can't find jobs no matter how hard they try out of programs, etc. If Americans care why are they electing people like Paul Ryan and Rand Paul, and yes, Donald Trump into office. They've made their contempt for the less fortunate among us quite clear.
The war for wealth has worked. Tax cuts for the rich have succeeded in making them richer than ever. So let's declare victory for the wealthy, end the war for wealth, and repeal tax cuts for the rich that we no longer need.
That is the Republican "logic." Let's apply it to them. They most certainly will understand and approve.
10
The Democrats prefer to enslave the poor by keeping them dependent on entitlements, with no incentives for dignity and work. Democrats won't even agree to job training or job search requirements, much less work requirements. Buying votes, by definition.
Meanwhile, liberals skew statistics on the "poor" by not including entitlements; when entitlements are included the poverty rate is extremely low in this country. The starvation rate is zero. The "hungry children' story is skewed by "food insecurity" statistics, which loosely estimates that at least once per year, some families are maybe struggling to pay rent and also buy food. Once a year? but the sob story ads imply they are always, every day hungry, blatant misuse of statistics to persuade and confuse.
Only in America do the "poor" have air conditioning, smartphones, and always have food. Manhattan has over 200 soup kitchens last I checked. Seriously.
It is never enough, because the Democrats merely wish to keep the relative poor voting for Dems.
1
@Joe yohka When having an honest and sincere discussion about these important issues, we should not use the words, "Democrats," or "liberals." I believe Paul Krugman makes a mistake by focusing onf "Republicans" and the "G.O.P." and by focusing on political division instead of the realities of poverty. The truth is, there are those who are poor, who can in no way work. Additionally we do not consider debt in many of these statistics. We also need to define poverty, and I believe it would be interesting to see how poverty factors into our increasing suicide rates.
1
@Joe yohkaYou really need to get your head out of fox. It's bad for your brain.
If you are a loyal American, you should be demanding Trump's tax returns..
3
@Joe yohka
70% of food stamp recipients are already working. Why do you hate the poor? You have obviously never experienced the bad fortune that can put you into that position. Count yourself lucky and wish abundance for all.
2
Always amazing how the WELFARE QUEENS OF WASHINGTON AND THE REPUBS...the biggest "takers" personally and the biggest takers (Big Agriculture, Oil and Gas, etc.) corporately are the ones calling little poor, old, children and disabled people "takers."
Call me by your name, indeed!
Now that we are so clearly in the USSR,we can fully adopt feudalism or maybe just go back to slavery...MAKING AMERICA GREAT AGAIN aren't we?
5
It is simpler, actually. Republicans are either ignorant or evil.
9
Yet the poor vote republican. #sad.
6
Most of us don't.
1
Making Russia Great Again, by starving Americans. Making Russia Great Again, by denying healthcare to sick Americans. Making Russia Great Again, by refusing to help Americans attend College. Making Russia Great Again, by refusing to retrain workers. Making Russia Great Again, by keeping America divided by race and gender. All of the preceding brought to you by the GOP and their homespun, Reality TV Creature. Fed up ????? VOTE in November. Seriously.
11
Republicans would like to return to slavery.
Making the poor as desperate as possible is the path they have taken to get there.
10
repulsives are not known to be generous people unless it's the 1% then they are all over it. Likely, those lawmakers are giving themselves great salaries, benefits, retirement, healthcare, and other perks that we don't know about. They are the takers. They are like the nouveau riche who feel that since they got to where they are no one else should be allowed. Greed. Mostly about greed and the unwillingness to share, anything. Vote them out folks. Our lives depend on it.
9
Life is hopeless for so many and the Rich strut around like Peacocks. Trump, an enemy of the poor, is treated like Royalty wherever he goes. It is so disgusting and corrupt. It is not just Republicans. But they are the winners for cruelty and torture of the poor.
7
Republican stupidity is unlimited and based on a lie...as they have no idea what this social aid is all about; hence, denying assistance for those left behind by a deeply unequal capitalistic system always favoring capital, in hands of the rich and powerful corporate world, neglectful of the least among us (as they can't contribute to politicians coffers). Given that congress' members are all well-to-do, there is a huge social distance that makes it impossible for them to impart justice, let alone compassion, as they have never walked in the shoes of the poor. May I suggest that all republican representatives spend a couple on months in a poor neighborhood, with the same paltry income, and see if they like it; I bet you they would change their minds and provide what is due to the disadvantaged once they feel hunger...though not poor's despair, as they know that soon enough they shall return to a comfortable living 'a la Trump'. And the issue of denying health care for the needy out of spite is unforgivable...while our hypocritical 'reps' take theirs for granted. Something smells rotten here.
5
The war on poverty IS over. The Poor Lost, the Rich won. No millionaire left behind, no child helped to thrive. The only child deserving help is an unborn child. After that, not our problem.
Thanks, GOP.
9
The degree of hypocrisy of this article is truly overwhelming. The war on the poor has been waged by the Democrat party for DECADES. NAFTA, anyone? - the Bill Klington's child.
1
We disagree Paul. It IS mainly about race. Once you start denigrating blacks, that poison will seep in and spread in other ways. Soon enough you get a double whammy: blacks are subhuman (see Murray), and anyway all whites must be better off than them so cuts to poor whites are permitted since they’re still better and better off than blacks. Of course Murray has also recently postulated that poor whites ain’t too bright either, but still they’re better than blacks.
3
You can sum up the New Testament in 6 words: to seek and serve the meek ..
The Cruel cold CINO aka Christians In Name Only flunk the Kindness Test. No Shame Gene. No Empathy Gene.
6
Oh please, it's not a WAR against the poor.
All of us are too busy working and paying taxes to spend time trying to make life tougher on the poor......
If you're poor, it's not the fault of the readership or anyone else here so don't try to position it as such.
The system is designed so that anyone can make it big with some brains and hard work. I've seen it happen hundreds of times.
Now wipe those tears and and get out there!
2
Some other examples of the war on the poor for you then:
-Systematic attacks on unions by conservative lobby groups to prevent folks from negotiating from a position of strength.
- Disregard for ensuring access to basic health care in the richest most advanced country on earth.
- Never-ending attacks on funding to provide a quality public education in favor of subsidizing the private school educations of rich kids.
- The favoring of corporate profits over clean air, clean water, safe working conditions and anything else that might force a corporation to take responsibility.
- Forced arbitration when borderline negligence and profit-oriented corner cutting results in workplace injury.
- Deregulation of the loan industry to benefit predatory loan providers.
- Laws that favor slum lords doing zero upkeep of their properties while raising the rent every year like clockwork.
- Blocking low cost generic medication approvals.
- Gerrymandering
I can literally keep going all day.
1
The great American myth isn't that anyone can make it here financially. The great myth is that if you don't make it you are a loser, a slacker, a drag on real Americans. Nothing terrifies "real Americans" as appearing to be poor does. Our holiest obligation is "hard work".
2
You are quite right, they truly do hate the poor. Poor people are an affront to their world view. Poor people put lie to their beliefs. The poor shouldn't exist.
4
After Trump, the only democracy that will exist is our Russian controlled electoral college. We are already disenfranchised, that is why a treasonous traitor is still in office.
3
There is another factor in the war against the poor. The Calvinist bias in American conservative circles sees the poor as immoral. If they were moral, they would be favored by God and they wouldn't be poor. Part of their immorality is "laziness" but that is the top of the iceberg. Ask an alt-Right zealot and they will tell you that the poor are drunkards and drug addicts, that they procreate indiscriminately, that they "cheat" in receiving benefits, that they "have no ambition."
If this sounds racist, it is. From the perspective of the alt-Right racial minorites and the poor are equally deficient. They are "leaches" on society, and besides, it is sinful to support their inherent "immorality."
That this foul set of attitudes is espoused especially by evangelical Christians is abhorrent, and definitely in contradiction to the teachings of Jesus. These Pharisee hypocrites are the true immoral sinners.
7
The simple reason is: To free up more money for the republicans to steal!
3
When you get right down to it, they have no compassion because they have no conscience. By that customary definition we would call them sociopaths. Are we allowed to say that?
4
Let's not forget that today's Republican Party is built upon the old Civil War South where slavery and the exploitation of human suffering was a badge of honor instead of a badge of Shame.
5
The sad part is how effective the GOP's war on the poor has been. There are hardly any poor people left in New Hampshire, thanks to the eeeevil GOP. The good news for the poor is that they are thriving and multiplying in populous, progressive California. In the next 20 years, if the Democrats hold power, the poor folks in California will outnumber the remainder of the population. The free market monsters who defeated poverty in Switzerland and Singapore will fall to the will of the people! Venezuela and Somalia, we will follow the trail you blazed! Poverty forever! Wealth and comfort never!1!!!
And where are the "christians" in this debate? Did not Jesus instruct followers to sell all their stuff, give to the poor, camel thru eye of needle, meek inherit Earth? His essential message in being contradicted.
2
republicans -- they won't pay wages to lower skilled workers that lift them out of poverty, and they won't support aid programs for people too sick or weak to work.
republicans are the party of hate and destruction.
4
The less fortunate are a target-rich environment for the wannabee Calvinists driving this stuff (really, it's rich folks and wannabee rich folks and their lackeys who just don't want to pay any taxes). The less fortunate have no constituency, they don't contribute to campaigns, they don't have pull, they can't do favors. Am I saying the anti-poor pols and their pals are greedy and corrupt? Nah, how could I ever say that?
The argument isn't really over welfare in this country. It's over who gets it. And why should the poor get it? They aren't job creators!!
2
The language I'd like to use would never be published. The Republicans won't help the poor, even if it helps the economy of their state, even though the money they would spend has already been given away to the bloated military and to those who don't need the help.
And now we have a traitor as their chief executive. It fits.
4
Friedman and Krugman have it right!
Trump has a vision of a New World Order.
If you are a One Percenter you will be fine.
If are a Fox Friend you will suffer no discomfort.
There is one choice in November which is Democrat across the board!
4
Donald Trump is the president most Republicans have been waiting for. He is the personification of St. Ronald’s “greed is good.”
3
You forgot to mention the massive infusion of Koch money into the sabotaging.
5
Democracy in Chains by Nancy Mac Lean shows how James Buchanan started and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALCE) and libertarian billionaires are executing the execution of "We the people". I've just started reading this book.
3
There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men. --Proverbs 30:14
3
"these [GOP political] elites oppose programs that help the poor partly out of a general hostility toward 'takers,' but also because they hate the idea of government helping anyone."
Dr. Krugman, you got that wrong. They are fine with government helping big corporations and the super wealthy.
In my state, Wisconsin, our elitist GOP governor will spend $4.5 billion in taxpayer money to allow Foxconn, a foreign corporation, to built an assembly plant in our state, pollute our waters, push people out of their homes and make billions of dollars by creating LCD screens that will probably be obsolete in a decade.
Meanwhile, he has slashed billions in support for our schools, natural resources and even basic road maintenance.
So you see, the right-wing elites are perfectly willing to spend public money to help someone.
They just don't want to spend money on anyone that actually needs the help.
9
Democrats could easily be winning this battle if they would ditch their neoliberalism and stop fighting tooth and nail to keep some benefits for the poor. Instead they should fight tooth and nail to EXPAND government aid and reverse the trend of economic inequality. This would be a wider umbrella that impacts most Americans. Most Americans consider themselves "Middle class"--even though many of those same people are the working poor. It is not a wonder there is an ambivalence towards only helping the poor, when most working Americans struggle mightily. The problem is Democrats still have the neoliberal agenda, and the media--including the Times--does little to combat it.
1
It's not true that supposedly anti-government "conservatives" don't want the government to help anyone. They routinely vote to give considerable help to the wealthy.
They give massive subsidies to Big Ag. They pay for Big Pharma R&D and don't require anything in return. They subsidize massive nuclear power companies at the expense of smaller-scale renewable power. They vote for massive boondoggle weapons that even the Pentagon doesn't want and that lavish wealth on the executives and wealthy stockholders of weapons manufacturers. They pass laws that prohibit price negotiations for government purchase of pharmaceuticals.
And on and on. They're not anti-government - they're just anti everyone who's not rich.
4
It's not even primarily about racism, and helping "those people", Paul. Its about not ever taking one step down the path that might show that taxing the profits of corporations in order to help the country and people that they use might have any value. Let's not kid ourselves about where the Republicans true agenda originates.
4
As usual, when speaking of economic theory and conservatism, my favorite JK Galbraith quote offers the final word:
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
10
It goes back to Ayn Rand's moral philosophy, called "ethical egoism." The idea is that its moral to act in your own self-interest, without any obligation to help others. So you don't want to pay taxes, as that hurts you. Add some racism and faux Christianity to the mix and you've got Republicans.
Real Christians reject ethical egoism; Christianity has an altruistic morality at its core, meaning it's about helping others in need.
CBO estimated that in 2026 we'll have 35 million without health insurance vs. 28 million under the Obama baseline, about a 7 million or 25% increase in the uninsured. Recall Republicans actually passed a healthcare bill in the House that would have increased the uninsured by 23 million.
CBO estimated that Trump's tax cuts and spending will add $4.3 trillion to the 10-year debt trajectory ($34,000 per family on average), nearly a 50% increase vs. the Obama baseline. That's a stimulus program nearly 5x the size of Obama's Recovery Act; however, the bottom 60% are only expected to get 17% of the benefit of Trump's tax cuts. So the middle class gets the debt (and the future taxes and spending cuts that go with it) but little benefit.
Yet Trump has 90% approval among Republicans. Trump's "Make America White Again" is the real reason for that support.
11
Jeff Bezos became one of the richest people in the world by turning his warehouse employees into temp day-labor. The Walton family is worth more than much of the rest of US combined (even excluding people with debt). Walmart's famous Trump-tax-cut bonus gave the full $1000 to employees who had worked for 20 years and still earned less than $11/hr.
The "war on poverty" is dwarfed by the war on working people, particularly the middle classes and below.
We have busted that part of the social contract whereby the working people share in increased wealth and productivity.
15
Republicans want people to work 20 hours a week to "earn" their healthcare and food stamps.
I want to know where these 20 hour a week jobs are going to come from.
If we are looking at the retail and fast food sectors, where there are a lot of part-time jobs (because you don't have to pay part-timers benefits), there are not a lot of jobs that will guarantee 20 hours a week.
In retail and fast food, your hours are determined by several factors. How busy your store is. Seasonal trends. Daily trends. How many other employees there are. How much your manager likes you. If you are able and willing to take on extra shifts at a moment's notice.
During the recession, I was laid off. I took a part-time retail job just to have some money coming in. I was supposed to be scheduled for 12-20 hours a week. Except during the holiday season, I was never, ever, scheduled for 20 hours a week.
I averaged 15 hours a week. Some weeks I'd get 18 hours. Some weeks I'd get 6. I'd try to pick up extra shifts, but the full-time employees got first dibs on those, and there would often be nothing left.
My employer offered partial part-time benefits if you averaged 20 hours/week for the year. Every time I averaged 18.5 hours, my schedule would be cut for the next several weeks, until my average was back down to 15 hours/week.
Forcing people to work 20 hours a week for employers that may not have 20 hours a week to give everyone is setting people up to lose their benefits.
21
Thank you.
I wish there were more people who understood we are looking at a failed version of capitalism. Unlike the Republicans I don't think the failed version is the only option. Its a shame given the progress in automation, computers, and management that we can't (its really won't) arrange to give employees steady full time work. Or if it is part time, then the part time work needs to have a predictable schedule so other part time work can be found.
But as you have experienced it is about not paying benefits and not having a predictable schedule. This is done to keep you poorer, under their control, and too busy struggling so they hope you won't do what you have done and think about it.
4
There are numerous Americans on the Right who sincerely believe that we are in a zero sum game. If you provide assistance to anyone, then you are taking their money. they do not understand that giving assistance also helps stimulate the economy because the poor and unhealthy do buy goods and services with the aid money. further, since 40% of births are covered by Medicaid, we have a good portion of our country's children starting life in poverty. We need to ensure that they receive help in order to grow healthy, receive pre K schooling as well as attend a decent school in order to live a productive life off of Welfare. Bank of America announced a 33% profit yesterday due to an enormous gift in the new tax law. If we can reward corporations with our largesse, surely we can spend a few support our citizens having hard times.
8
Which is ironic given that their defense of capitalism is always that it's a win-win that's good for *everyone,* and that businessmen, by being greedy, end up behaving in a way that leaves *everyone* better off, including their employees and customers.
2
Krugman trots the standard line that people on Medicaid work or are unable to do so, and therefore we can't have work requirements because...people would be unable to meet them. Sorry, but no. If 10% of people on Medicaid could work but are not doing so, then, that 10% should be forced to make a choice. A little paperwork to set the proper incentives is a small price to pay.
1
@DRS The bureaucracy involved in finding and verifying the employment of that (completely invented) 10% would likely dwarf the productivity and tax revenue of their actual work.
We saw this in Florida with drug tests for recipients of assistance programs: harassing people for no gain at great cost to the taxpayer.
Meanwhile, this same party robs those same taxpayers to comfort the comfortable.
9
@DRS Do you have any numbers to back up that 10 percent figure? I mean, I'm sure it's a hypothetical - but what if it's a hypothetical with no basis in reality?
2
Republican policies may impact Whites more than Blacks and Hispanics, but the perception is very different. Go into the streets and countryside and speak to people about welfare. The majority believe the Republican propaganda about welfare mothers (always Black in their minds) using food stamps to buy liquor or drugs or receiving food stamps while lavishly dressed and driving a luxury car. Republicans do nothing to dissuade these individuals. Perception is reality. Perception keeps them in office. At the end it is all about race. Very recent polls show that core conservatives now increasingly support Putin! Why? Because they will support anything to keep their racially empowered President, or others like him, in office.
8
And the paradox is the ignorance of the poor that are "Republicans" and vote Republican. The definition of idiocy is not to be rich and be a Republican; that does not necessarily mean to be Democrat.
This phenomenon has been noted for some authors that write about societies: the poor vote against their own interest: I have seen it by poor members of minorities being "Republicans."
3
Greed and selfishness are the hallmarks of this administration. Inequality is high, wages haven't budged in decades, housing and medical costs are up, yet it's time to enforce more hardship on the poor? Disgusting and cruel. Cut the military budget! Rescind the tax cuts for rich! Stop with the McScrooge economic philosophy of Ayn Rand!!
4
@kj I could not agree more.
1
Every time a social program is cut, a GOP congressman earns his wings.
9
I think another reason why the GOP has waged war on the poor is because it's a political winner. A large segment of GOP voters--those who live just above the poverty line--resent the poor. These voters see the poor as shiftless, lazy, parasites. I work with a young African American man who believes that Democrats coddle the underprivileged and waste money on people who don't deserve government services like Medicaid and food stamps--because they don't want to work.
4
Thanks for keeping an eye on what harm the GOP inflicts on the weakest and the poorest in our society. It’s much easier to gut our skimpy welfare system when eyes and ears and attention are fixated on our ignorant, incompetent and intellectually impoverished president.
4
Oh, let's be serious. The hatred of the welfare programs comes down to cash and power.
The wealthy "libertarian" Republicans hate having to give away a nickel. Having to give it to the poor really rankles them. They feel no obligation to help those who need it. It really only makes them angry.
This is the GOP hoping to return to the time not just before Franklin Roosevelt, but before Teddy. They long for the days of unlimited corporate power. They long for monopolies. They long for neutered labor. They long for government dedicated to their wellbeing.
Teddy Roosevelt and Ike were aberrations. The modern Republican Party is the party of the Koch brothers, the KKK, and a lot of angry, single issue voters.
Hatred is their currency. It's what they trade in.
16
From the very beginning of this country founded, it could be argued by religious fanatics of one sort or another, poverty has been seen as a sign of moral turpitude.
Nothing really new.
1
It's terrible to fall into this trap because it makes me possibly as bad as the conservative Republicans, but if those tens of millions don't get out and vote those Republicans out of office at every level then I have a hard time feeling sorry for them.
The sad thing is this effects children who have no ability to fight back which only makes the whole thing more disgusting.
2
"Yet adults in their prime working years are more likely to be employed in leading European nations than in the United States"
Not in the private sector (non-government employees). Not in younger aged cohorts.
What a misleading cherry-picked data point.
Shame on you.
2
@Pono
See - https://data.oecd.org/emp/labour-force-participation-rate.htm. Honestly a lot of variability.
1
@Pono
Source?
1
Creating "scapegoats" is a well known strategy for demagogues. It continues to work. It always ends badly for all.
3
James Buchanan revealed just how bitter the medicine would be. People who failed to foresee and save money for their future needs, Buchanan wrote in 2005, “are to be treated as subordinate members of the species, akin to . . . animals who are dependent.”15
MacLean, Nancy. Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America (p. 212). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
James Buchanan was one of Charles Koch's mentors, and Koch's influence on today's Republican party is almost absolute.
2
If James Buchanan, the US President before Abraham Lincoln, wrote those statements in 2005, we need to notify the CDC because we may have found a record breaker for the oldest person alive. I am pretty sure you meant Patrick Buchanan.
Democrats believe the purpose of government is to help people. Republicans believe it is to punish them.
4
Thanks, Prof. Krugman.
1
GOP says to gullible voters—fight big govt to preserve our freedoms.
This is what's undermining democracy itself, so big business can avoid taxes and sensible regulations. It threatens ACA, SS, Medicare. “First they come for the poor, then they come for….”
Good for Krugman to at last cite other nations better protections for the poor and for the middle/working classes, for families-- thus less political polarization.
They don’t turn their elections over to corporate mega donors for funding. Cause/effect.
What should be included here by PK is this:
Washington Post, “An explosive U.N. report shows America's safety net was failing before Trump’s Election.” June 6. Jeff Stein.
And, CNN June 22--- UN REPORT-- US POOR WORSE OFF.
“Americans born into poverty are more likely than ever to stay that way says international poverty expert Phillip Alston. The U.S, a rich nation and "land of opportunity," is fast becoming a champion of inequality,"
Alston was interviews on Democracy Now.
Trump and Nikki Haley slammed the report. The US is withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council.
Alston: We see “ massive tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy….with strategies maximizing inequality and plunging millions of working people, and those unable to work, into penury.”
“46 million Americans depend on food banks, which is 30% above 2007 levels..... "the US spends less on its children than other democracies."
The media must keep reporting the contrasts.
2
Nothing new there. There are many Americans who enjoy helping others, especially those in need; in fact, I would say almost everyone I know. But of course, since there are 320 million of us, that leaves room for many Americans whose main force driver seems to be hate. Didn't we just today read that scientists have created a new drug, PrEP that, if widely taken would soon eliminate AIDS; yet our leadership is just sitting by while a drug company has raised the price of this drug way beyond the reach of those who need it. When the polio vaccine was invented our government launched a huge campaign to distribute it to all - with the blessing of essentially all Americans. Why not similarly for PrEP ? Because many Americans hate homosexuals and prolific sexual practices and want to see such practitioners punished. Unfortunately, since we can't read people's minds, we can't put a percentage on the uses of the word "many", above. But even if the number of haters is small compared to the number of lovers, they appear currently to be in the political ascendancy.
1
I asked a conservative "Christian" as he referred to himself if we should have a year of Jubilee. He was silent.
I then mentioned that many members of his church were probably receiving social security. He was silent.
I asked him where Trump would be without our bizarre bankruptcy laws and ZIRP!
He responded with an ad-hominem. He reinvented my past and claimed that liberals come from rich families. I corrected him and said no, Trump did.
Without completely accepting it we often converse with folks that have a cathexis with the inane.
5
Nice theory, Professor Krugman, but you're giving the right far too much credit for having a basic humanity. The right wants to cut off support for the poor because they want them dead. Not exactly holocaust dead, but malignant neglect dead. Technology and outsourcing have reduced their labour value to about zero. (And besides if we really need unskilled labour, there's always the slaves in private prisons.) The poor occupy potentially valuable urban real estate. Outside the cities, they tend small, inefficient businesses and farms. These could be consolidated and run more efficiently by large corporations. So let's cut off all aid to these people. Their life expectancy is already dropping and that can be accelerated by removing food stamps, access to medical services and reducing food, medicine and housing regulations. They have no future, so why invest in their education? And once voter suppression has disenfranchised them. nobody need worry about their votes. And so on. Of course, you will never hear the goal of mass extermination discussed out loud. But it is discussed at the country club and over dinner once the servants have been dismissed. Politicians can support the idea passively or actively. And who knows, in a country to be made less and less habitable by climate change, many more people will come to see it as a reasonable solution.
1
This. It's not about greed. Never was. It's about hate. Those guys would part with 90% of their income if they thought it would kill enough poor people.
1
Horrible situation. I have a cousin and a sister-in-law who I consider welfare/benefit cheats. Both are white. The cousin doesn't need to be. One lives in a blue state, the other is redder than red. The sister in law has a brood of kids and grand kids who are grifters. Most of the cousins friends are. I think it is safe to say, it can happen to any one of us, unless we are filthy rich. Then we would just buy our way out of it. The animus towards the poor receiving benefits really doesn't make much sense. It is mostly the inability of those who hate them so much to realize "there but for the grace of god go I".
2
In GOP land a person's value is based solely on how they can be exploited to further enrich the 1%, thus in their eyes the poor are valueless "worthless eaters" to use a phrase from a group they have so much in common with.
1
What a cruel, cynical joke. The Republicans believe that a CEO can't make too much and everyone else can't make too little, and take millions in campaign donations from corporations who view their employees merely as commodities to be hired part time with uneven hours that make it difficult to acquire other part time jobs to fill the gap. Part time work also leaves workers with no benefits - no health insurance, retirement, or paid vacation. Then, when people as a result need public assistance, the Republicans brand them as lazy and unworthy of even basic health care. The party is morally bankrupt and merely a conduit for massive tax cuts for their biggest contributors, nothing more.
4
I actually think that the Republican denomination or war on the poor is really a diversion. That is Republicans demonize the poor to get the Middle Class to blame the poor for Republican policies that redistribute wealth and power, the poor have no money or power, from the middle class to the extremely wealty.
3
Where are those conservative Christians now? This is a major part of their hypocritical behavior. I am not a religious scholar but if Christians wish to follow the teachings of Jesus then nothing would fulfill this desire than helping the poor. This was a major focus of Jesus's teachings and other religious figures such as the Buddha and Mohammed. So all the conservative "christians" who vote for GOP candidates are in direct opposition to real Christian philosophy. The poor, many who work but do not earn enough to live, are now seen as "takers" by an insensitive and unenlightened group of white voters. Christians you are not.
3
@Ron Well written.
1
Of course this hypocrisy does not extend to the 'takers' comprising the corporate welfare state that simply dwarfs the numbers invested in social programs.
The G.O.P has one and only one agenda - fatten the wallets of the already obscenely rich until literally nothing is left. On that fine morning they will all get up, look around and wonder why there isn't more.
2
GOP's war on the poor is unadulterated and evil self-harm but only if we think they ever once felt a twinge of patriotism as Americans and a speck of moral decency as humans.
The final results aren't in but it's not looking good.
If British satirist Sacha Baron Cohen can so easily con top GOP rightists to publicly endorse a fake proposal called "Kinderguardian" to train and arm 5 yr old kids as a response to school shootings, how can anyone still think there's any need to attribute what they do to rational thought or policy?
A NYTimes comment yesterday on an earlier iteration of today's column said in effect: we all know there are people who'll never be employable or have a place in the brave new tech world and we all know who these people are.
As Tonto said to the Masked Man, "What do you mean we, kemo sabe?"
That pretty much sums up the Trumpian and now GOP worldview: WE (White & Employed?) vs. THEM (Takers Hate Earning Money?). Apparently that's all they need to justify pushing desperate Americans -- mostly children, seniors and people with disabilities -- underwater. $5 in food stamps adds $10 in economic gain.
No need to reconcile petty acts of inhumanity with facts like how Food Stamps lift millions out of poverty, provide a crucial market for farm surpluses, and is a proven economic stimulus that's direct, targeted and immediate.
Time to accept that the Republicans are the living dead among us. Only one way to stop them. This November.
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The United States as it currently exists is a wicked evil country with an embedded culture of hate towards the poor.
That's obviously not everybody. But it's enough that GOP politicians get elected by vowing to inflict misery, hunger, disability and even death on the poor. Including their children.
To everybody who thinks Ronald Reagan was a great president I've got 2 words for you: "Welfare queen." Reagan started this campaign to destroy not poverty - but the poor themselves.
Shame.
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AND there's this. Many Republican elites are bullies. They target the weakest, most vulnerable constituents -- the elderly, the disabled, children -- and pull the last, fraying shreds of the safety net out from under them.
Small-government talk is a convenient excuse for cruelty more than it is an ideology. Republicans are good with big government when it comes to institutions that project strength, like the military.
1
I would say that it is even worse than that: it is bigotry against the poor *per se*. The only thing conservatives genuinely care about is preserving traditional hierarchy and keeping society's traditional inferiors down. Tax-and-transfer violates the "principle" that people with more money should always be privileged over those with less, and that's why they are against it. Racial and gender hierarchies matter to them too, but not as much as the money hierarchy. Cruelty to the poor is, to them, *an end in itself*, because it affirms their passionately held belief that poor people are subhuman and warms the cockles of their despicable souls.
1
Republicans have long believed that coddling the poor undermines their incentives to help themselves. You an disagree or agree with that. But when you are oblivious to the argument, you live in your own little world.
It's not a question of being oblivious to the argument. It's a question of knowingly it's not true.
I challenge anyone who says we coddle the poor to name a sum that would not be overgenerous. And to live on that sum for just a month.
The poor, they say, are discouraged from working by giving them too much money. The rich, oddly, are discouraged by giving them too little.
1
It is a moral issue with them. Helping the poor is seen as wrong because the general feeling is the poor are poor because they are morally deficient. This has a long history. In the Bible there is a Blind man that Jesus gave sight. Jesus' disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him" (see John 9 1-12). In other words, his disciples (in accordance to the general belief of that time -- and this time) felt that the man was blind because of his moral deficiency. Jesus of course refuted the idea, but the belief lives on never-the-less.
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....why reporters like Mr Krugman fail to provide an objective view is beyond me - bias clouds his thinking. He falls woefully short of his obligation to his readers.
The number of people living in poverty during the Obama Administration INCREASED.
In 2016, just over 40.6 million Americans were still living below the poverty line, an increase of 787,000 people compared with 2008.
In 2014 the number of Americans living in poverty reached a record level of 46.7 million. It's not Republicans or Democrats - it's income inequality.
Tell the truth Mr Krugman - tell the whole story.
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@JMS Gee, let me think. What happened just before Obama took office? Oh, yes, now I remember. The biggest recession since the Great Depression started with an almost-collapse of our entire financial system. This debacle was brought to us by Reaganomics, deregulation, letting banks dabble in the stock market, overleveraging, and credit default swaps, on the watch of the previous president, who was of course, Republican. People lost jobs, their 401Ks turned into 201Ks, etc. Don't you think that just might have caused an increase in poverty, huh?
Yes, partly it is inequality, but mostly it is Republican policy, which oddly enough always seems to increase inequality.
You know what they say: the rich work harder when you give them more money; the poor work harder when you give them less.
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Relying upon the church and charity and relatives is far more dehumanizing than relying upon benefits granted by the federal government. Mama's Family on TV humorously showed that many times.
The welfare model of directly giving the Poor cash for living expenses ended more than 20 years ago.
SSI directly gives cash to people who are born disabled, like the blind, deaf, and dumb, but that's not welfare. Most people collecting SSI work, mainly in sheltered workshops that are exempt from paying minimum wage.
More than two thirds of the recipients of SNAP and medicaid are working. Enabling working people to eat and to receive health care benefits our society as a whole. No one should starve to death in the USA. SNAP stops that from happening.
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Poor black people I hold dear to my heart as God's martyrs in America. First victimized as slaves, after winning freedom as the Republicans fought to end slavery, the Blacks were then further victimized by endless prejudice, most notably in the Southern States inhabited by many Democrats. After countless injustices, the Northern Democrats under Kennedy's and Johnson affirmed their rights with the Civil Rights act. The Blacks were protected by law, but victimized by society. Then Nixon began the Southern strategy to win support in the South for Republicans. It was an appeal to win Southern Democrats over to Republicans. Many Southern Blacks migrated to the northern states where they became a voting block for Democrats in the North, propelled by the Democrat Civil Rights movement. Time passed on until Republican Speaker Gingrich from Georgia, a hot pocket of prejudice began the "Republican Revolution" that served to inflame moods between Republicans and Democrats. To this day, relations between the parties have been poisoned by an aggressive Republican party that represents mostly wealthy business that does not want to hire Blacks out of prejudice and beliefs in myths or fear of lawsuits. After recent decades, we find a deep conflict between Republicans and Democrats vying for millions of votes to win power. The Republicans are appealing to prejudice and hatred to win votes now. That means the poor are targets of Republicans because they mostly vote for Democrats.
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The tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, corporate America and small businesses; and the increase in defense spending has led to the policy position of cutting the safety net. There is not enough revenue to fund all these programs. Since Ronald Reagan we have lost our social values. The religious right criticizes as abortion and gay marriage but is mute on taking care of the poor. The GOP has used the cultural issues to distract the people from its economic policies. It is a mean spirited party and Trump is a prime example of its nastiness. Once again the lower middle class votes against its economic interests for the Coney Island barker.
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Why aren't Governors LePage and Bevin sitting in jail cells for contempt of court?
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Professor Krugman clearly knows a thing or two about our economic history. One interpretation is that our government is employing simple solutions to complex problems (never a good idea) the results of which most, but far from all Americans find abhorrent: To reserve more money for the wealthy, our leaders stack the economic deck in a way that creates more poverty, then they strip away services until the poor, who are mostly of color, die. What more would one expect from an administration that sponsors kidnapping as a substitute for a cogent and fair solution to immigration and border control issues? Trump probably could not even spell the name "Darwin" but he is promoting a social Darwinism that favors whites.
This is not the America I revere.
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It helps to understand that today's Republican Party is all about hating, hurting and punishing American citizens and very little else, not even it's ostensible long-standing devotion to national security (thank you, Mr. Manchuria).
The GOP is all about punishment and nothing about vision for a happier, healthier society. In fact, public happiness is a direct threat to the viability of the GOP political base. Fulfilled people do not support the quaint idea of social construction and development.
Name the constituency: the poor; the marginalized; the chronically ill; healthy folks with pre-existing conditions; ethnic, racial and religious minorities; Democrats; public sector employees; union members; social workers; teachers; Barack Obama; everybody but the obscenely well-heeled. Punish them. Punish them all!
The Republican Party's only tool of persuasion is to gin-up partisan spite, 24/7. President Trump is the Party's emperor, but trailing in-tow right behind him is a cavalcade of angry clowns led by our own home-grown princes of Wales: Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.
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Sorry, above, paragraph 2, I meant to type "Unfulfilled people..."
The War on the Poor is really an ongoing assault by the Republicans dating back many decades but aside from the cold blooded Republicans, current Democrat leadership is weak.
Gone are the days of Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedy brothers. Now we are adrift without strong helmsmen.
You have to have strong men to protect the poor and the weak.
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And women. Part of this issue, a very large part, I'm afraid, is that the train has been conducted by men almost exclusively.
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My father, an old Mainer born and raised, had a saying: "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." The youngest of 8 children, dirt poor, he and most of his siblings were the exceptions to this "rule." He always worked 2 jobs for as long as I can remember: his government job and lobstering. He voted a straight Democrat ticket and was one of the most generous men I have known, often stopping along the waterfront to give the "poor bums" a few dollars. Dad empathized with the poor, from whence he came, and never blamed them for their poverty, even though he fought his way up and out of it, which is the difference between my father and our Governor Paul Le Page: Le Page, too, rose from poverty but he has denied thousands of impoverished Maine citizen the help they desperately need. Like so many of his Republican party, he lacks the ability to empathize or worse - chooses to distance himself from their suffering instead of using the power of his position to aid those he was elected to serve. Shame shame, Governor Le Page and the Republican Party.
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>
Again, the GOP motto is: the poor have too much money and the rich not enough.
I just don't understand the surprise or news here. There is nothing new to this war. It has been going on everyday ever since the first conservative organism opened its first eye and said what mine is mine and what yours is up for grabs.
"These gradually furnished the great proprietors with something for which they could exchange the whole surplus produce of their lands, and which they could consume themselves without sharing it either with tenants or retainers. All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons."
Adam Smith
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Nikki Haley's denials to the contrary, Philip Alston, the U.N. special raporteur on poverty and human rights, found: "The United States is one of the world’s richest and most powerful and technologically innovative countries; but neither its wealth nor its power nor its technology is being harnessed to address the situation in which 40 million people continue to live in poverty." His report is a devastating indictment of inequality in our country, and government failures to address it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/15/extreme-poverty-america-un...
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Those self-righteous Republicans have always preferred to spout the expression “God helps those, who help themselves” as a substitute for any meaningful programs to help the poor and disadvantaged. Now under Trump, they’ve gone one better and are helping the rich to “help themselves”— to America’s tax dollars that is.
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This attitude toward the poor was always in force in some manner. Remember the Victorians' beliefs, that the poor were improvident and wasted their money on drink and gambling, and therefore were the cause of their own plights. They went so far as to toss the poor into debtors' prisons.
I wonder if the Republicans have overlooked this excellent way to dispose of people living in poverty.
Or, maybe mass incarcerations have already served that purpose.
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The Republican Agenda for their super-rich masters:
America reduced to a 3rd world country. A nation of sweatshops where compliant workers live in ignorance, fear, illness and poverty, while the 1% bleed us and invest tax-free overseas.
You don’t share this dream?
That's what the 350m guns are for: CIVIL WAR.
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There's one more thought process common among Republicans with respect to the poor. "Law and order" Republicans are willing to let some innocent people suffer in order to catch the few potential welfare cheaters. Democrats on the other hand are willling to let a few welfare cheaters get away with it in order to provide care to many who need it. That doubly irritates the law and order types.
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It is not just the GOP that hates the poor. Dems, as a party, hates them too. Between the two parties we have a two pronged attack on the poor that has been most effective in making the poor have shorter lives, trap them in areas where they are out of sight and leaves them with a level of education that will ensure they will not be able to work their way up the economic ladder. And how like Krugman to cherry pick a statistic to support his hypothesis and suggest, that people get out into the real world and see how much better the poor have it and how we are winning the Poverty war.
I grew up in public housing, food stamps, and all when the war on poverty was new. It did improve my life until Nixon then the improvements leveled off, which was OK. Reagan started the war on the poor, Clinton doubled down and the attacks have gotten progressively worse. Sure Obama tossed out a crumb and many are thankful to have some access to health care.
But the opportunities I had to get a hand up are gone. Stable housing is hard to find, food stamps do not buy a months worth of bad-for-you food. Schools are structurally unsafe. Teachers do not have the needed tools. Then there are societal expectations that the poor are must be lazy, fat, unmotivated and dumb. That is the opposite of the message to my generation.
Paul take your own advice, get out and see really poor people. They are not doing better and they know why.
it is truly sad. that in this day and age. that poverty still is alive and well. trump and his cronies could not care less about the homeless and less fortunate. about the drug addicted population struggling to get help. the old and feeble. the sick and dying. these are what make up the poverty generation in america. in their eyes if you don't see it . then it doesn't exist. you don't have to go very far to see. that poverty is alive and well in america.
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Too bad you don't at least list all the possible benefits of basic income some time. Sone of us do live in the circumstances beyond economists theories, yours included Mr. Krugman. We hear too often the echoes of the plantation, and these days the owners are, as always, using the same old derisive cliches on how undeserving the "losers" of macro economics are. Now more than ever we have equal dis-opportunity. And some prefer a non-stigma method of distributing our basic services. It takes dollars to have liberty.
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GOP's war on the poor is unadulterated evil but only if we think they ever once felt a twinge of patriotism as Americans and a speck of moral decency as humans.
The final results aren't in but it's not looking good.
If British satirist Sacha Baron Cohen can so easily con top GOP rightists to publicly endorse a fake proposal called "Kinderguardian" to train and arm 5 yr old kids as a response to school shootings, how can anyone still attribute what GOP does to rational thought or policy?
A NYTimes comment yesterday said in effect: we all know there are people who'll never be employable or have a place in the brave new tech world and we all know who these people are.
As a famous Western TV character once said: "What do you mean we, kemo sabe?"
That pretty much sums up the Trumpian and now GOP worldview: WE (White & Entitled?) vs. THEM (Takers Harbor Evil Menace?). We v. Them is all they need to justify pushing desperate Americans -- mostly children, seniors and people with disabilities -- underwater.
No need to reconcile petty acts of inhumanity with facts like how Food Stamps lift millions out of poverty, ($5 in food stamps add $10 to economic growth), provide a crucial market for farm surpluses, and is a proven economic stimulus that's direct, targeted and immediate.
Everyday there's new proof that Republicans are the living dead among us. A wooden stake through the heart is futile when there's no heart.
They can only be stopped with ballots.
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Indeed, Le Page is not going to let something like democracy get in the way of his "conservative" beliefs.
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When you take everything away from people, then they will have nothing left to lose. In historical turns, this is the recipe for violent revolution.
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OK, we get it.
Republicans are bad. No, really, we get it. We agree with you. Trump was the most unpopular Presidential candidate in history. So, how much is it really going to help, to repeat even *more* reasons to dislike Trump and the Republicans?
Democrats have dug themselves a really deep hole. They have lost state governments, the house, the senate, and the presidency - despite how horrible their opponents are.
Swing voters are going to remember the percentage of time Democrats have spent hating on Trump, screaming about the anti-gun issue, and pro-choice, pro-immigrant, over and over. Then, compare that to how much they talk about jobs, trade, and higher wages, and how much less beholden to donors *they* are (just kidding). What logical conclusions should swing voters make, about how much Democrats are willing and able to make our government less corrupt, and make our nation's economy work for everyone?
Democrats will not do anything disapproved of by their banker donors. Which means no new New Deal.
Democrats have spent months on wedge issues of immigration, anti-gun, and anti-abortion - all of which energize opponents more than supporters - and zero time repudiating neoliberalism - which would energize supporters *and* the disillusioned swing voters, and unite voters on broadly popular issues.
OK, keep going on this path. But if your blue wave turns deep red in November, and you continue on this course after that - you must *want* to lose.
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The defeated middle class, poor and working poor have no control over the millionaires who write tax codes that favor the millionaires and hand the rest of us the bill. But Republican budget hawks blind their minions by going on about that surfer who bought a lobster roll with "your hard earned tax dollars". Someone is contributing more to your congressman's reelection campaign than you. I'm pretty sure it's not that surfer dude buying SNAP funded lobster rolls
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Congressmen and women are being paid far too much money and doing far too little work. Why do they need almost $200,000 dollars a year, including daily stipends? Why do they get stipends? Shouldn't they have to pay for food and clothing with money from their salaries, like the rest of us peasants do? Why do they receive such lucrative healthcare when the rest of us don't? And why do they have so many days off and so few work days - going to visit your constituents shouldn't count as WORK!
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We adults need to explain this to the 22 million children who depend on school lunches. Poverty is not over, when kids are hungry. Shameful GOP doing this on the way to the Senate dining room.
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And what motivates these elites is ideology. <snip> they hate the idea of government helping anyone.
Not exactly...
They are HAPPY to accept help for themselves. And I'm not just talking about tax cuts.
Bankruptcy is fine for the plutocrats like Trump and those that buy-and-burn a business like Toys R Us, but not for students. They have opposed every law proposed to benefit consumers, but expect government bailouts when they blow up their banks. Write a bad check and you'll owe hundreds in restitution with the threat of criminal prosecution if you don't accept their "offer", but defraud millions of their pensions by draining the funds from their employer after a hostile takeover and, well, and nothing. Take government-funded research and use it to help your business, but woe be the legislator that tries to allow pharmacists to tell you that it's cheaper to buy a prescription yourself than via the copay of your health plan. And a thousand other examples...
No, Paul, the elites LOVE the idea of government helping people. As long as it is them.
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Dear State of Maine,
Since Governor LePage refuses to do his job, stop providing him with health insurance and stop paying his salary.
He's in office to do what YOU tell him to do.
Sincerely,
CSA
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This is primarily about ideology tied to our peculiar form of capitalism. The belief that the jobs are there and employers are willing to hire these lazy hammock dwellers, so challenged by their innate inability to pull themselves out of their torpor by their own bootstraps.
You simply have to deny that our "system" of capitalism works to perfection in order to acknowledge that poverty no longer exists. And the GOP isn't having any of that.
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Well there will always be a few crumbs that still get to the poorest that the mighty-rich could pocket. Never mind the fact that the better we all do the better the rich do, money will seek more money.
Dr Krugman, I think your search for causes relies too heavily on principles. Few people act on principles, no matter what they say. Would the GOP still war on the poor if the lawmakers thought it also hurt the GOP? Be shocked at how easily people will hurt others for the slightest advantage to themselves.
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Maybe Comrade trump will employ all these poor
Americans to make the beds and clean the toilets
in his hotels. They could mow the lawns of his
golf courses.
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@jahnayNo, Trump prefers to hire illegal immigrants.
He's a hypocrite, of course.
Mr. Krugman: Towards the end you write: "So what is the war on the poor about? As I see it, you need to make a distinction between what motivates the G.O.P. base and what motivates conservative politicians." Excellent point, and one too often overlooked. The GOP base is not the GOP leadership. (And the current GOP leaders are not all conservative politicians in any traditional sense of conservatism.) The GOP base is my neighbor, my dentist, my grocery store cashier. The GOP base is as honest and ethical as anyone else and it is not the problem.
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Then why does your neighbor, dentist etc keep voting for this 'leadership'? If they are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
And you should stop apologizing for them!
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It's genocide at the stroke of a pen.
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If you remember Mitt Romney's "47%" comment, you are familiar by the GOP program for genocide by malign neglect, with 150 million fellow Americans as the victim classes: the poor, the elderly, people of color, LGBTQ people, Muslims, and whomever else are deemed "life unworthy of life." This dwarfs Hitler's very expensive Final Solution (6-7 million victims, including my family remaining in Europe in 1939) and Stalin's various efforts (30+ million).
Now with Trump's treason, it's obvious. The GOP puts party above the Constitution and the American people. It's time to flip them the bird, for a change.
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Dr Krugman, you're leaving something big out of the equation: incentives matter, as you often say.
Corporations create incentives for politicians -- contributions to campaigns. Republicans were for a while only slightly friendlier to corporations than Democrats, and over time the incentives (contributions) slowly shifted towards Republicans and Republicans shifted increasingly quickly to follow them. The result is utter corruption, and corrupt politicians who will not make the laws fair because they'd be ignoring their incentives if they did.
We can't blame corrupt people for ignoring their incentives. We have to find ways to reduce the corporate incentives and increase some other incentives -- preferably not by threatening to literally cut off people's heads, maybe just RICO investigations that destroy political careers and a publicly subsidized prison stay.
Please write about that!
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My 94 yer old aunt worked her entire life, including 3 years on "The Manhattan Project". Toward the end of her life, she became very sick, was bedridden and needed in house care. After all her savings were gone (which didn't take long as health care is so expensive), she began to receive Medicaid.
According to the G.O.P. and such "deep thinkers" as Bevin and LePage, as she couldn't work, she shouldn't receive help.
What should we have done? Put her out on the street?
Welcome to the U.S.A 2018..." a Kinder and gentler nation".
I've never been a believer in Jingoism, however I'm incredibly ashamed to call myself an American!
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I beliueve Will Rogers was right when he wrote:
“The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.”
Given the above and the fact the money spend on the poor is good for the economy since almost all of it is spent, the only reason left for the GOP's war on the poor is cruelty.
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We need something like FDR's 1939 WPA (Workers Progress Administration) today. We can't rely on a capricious, prejudiced labor market to help the poor.
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Let's remember the "Makers and Takers" Mitt Romney mantra put forth and adopted by the Republicans. It was a cold blooded diversion and deception away from the reality that "Makers" are laborers that make the stuff that produces profits while the wealthy are the "Takers" that profit from our labors. Republicans are propaganda warriors marginalizing the weak Democrats with hostile psychology.
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This is the sort of political practice that foments massive social unrest. Caveat emptor.
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"...they oppose programs that help the poor partly out of a general hostility toward “takers,” but also because they hate the idea of government helping anyone."
Not exactly. They don't hate the idea of government helping them through subsidies to the oil and gas industry, trillion dollar tax cuts, maintaining our bloated military so we can keep their commerce flowing, "carried interest" and other lucrative tax loopholes, the push for charter schools, the refusal to take serious action in the face of global warming, and so many other ways.
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With apologies to Charles Dickens, who accurately portrays the governing philosophy of the GOP: "Are there no prisons? Are there no minimum wage jobs without heath insurance? The poor should go there or die to decrease the surplus population."
He didn't mention treason in A Christmas Carol but he sure understood what GOP politicians want.
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This is something that has stumped me for a long time; why some people are so set against welfare for the poor.
In the UK, this was reflected in the well known Tory Party exhortation for the unemployed to "get on their bike" and search for work. As far as they were concerned, most people on welfare didn't deserve it and were scamming public funds. They were lazy and simply needed to put in some effort to find work. The government must be cruel in order to be kind to such people.
I see a similar disdain in the US for any 'hand outs' to the poor from the GOP.
Maybe if the politicians saw with their own eyes what their poorer constituents go through instead of assuming that they are lazy, they would see that such funds alleviate a lot of suffering. I'm sure that many people would prefer to work if they could, if only for personal pride for not relying on others (such as the government).
Otherwise, having a 'smaller' government is more like a cop-out of responsibilities towards the less well off. An excuse to wash their hands of them.
1
But it IS all about the money, Dr. Krugman. All about the insuperable abyss that has opened between the 1% and everyone else. Regardless of race or ethnicity. A paltry $150K household income doesn't go far enough with kids to educate, clothe and house in anno 2018. This paper does its part to pander to the uberrich by advertising shamelessly such products as $1500/pair shoes and touting vacation destinations that are clearly out of reach for non-wealthy. Maybe now we will have a revolution, if these economically threatened species could but put down their electronic toys long enough to make common cause with their fellows...
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As a young Goldwater Republican when I came to Washington in 1966 to work on air pollution control in the Public Health Service I soon learned that Republican policies were against not just the poor but against all living and breathing Americans. I summarized and documented my findings at
https://www.legalreader.com/republican-racketeers-violent-policies/
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I tend to think it’s even more insidious than you suggest, Mr. Krugman. A big part of the Republicans war on poor people is political. A lot of the social programs that serve the poor are the brainchildren of and are run by Democrats. A goal of Republicans is to make Democrats look bad and they found they can do that by sabotaging or just de-funding social programs.
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And it’s not just social programs. Healthcare and education also face the same politically motivated attacks. Here in Texas our State Legislature has been under-funding public schools for years. This has driven local property taxes up, which they happily blame on local (often Democrat) government. Meanwhile, schools are failing and they gleefully blame that on local (again often Democrat) school boards.
.
The sad part is how many people here seem happy to drink the Koolaid.
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America is fast becoming a shrinking pond. The fish are beginning to jump and its not because there is plenty of food around.
Vote for a bigger pond this November.
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Britain, and the EU have social safety nets. In Europe, the fact of social structures to aid people when they need it form the weft of individual belief about survival and human bonds. They are woven into the fabric of society. Europeans understand people develop life-threatening illnesses. They are part of life. The idea that neither family nor society will look after one of its members – yes, this does presuppose membership – in her hour of need is so preposterous to Europeans that they simply cannot get their minds around it. Private enterprise cannot and is not permitted to profit by denying care to those who are suffering.
From the time I recovered from one major illness in the early 2000s, I’d believed I’d soon be back on the career train: job, income, home & health insurance. Then in 2009, there I was again, a middle-aged breast cancer patient whose Ivy league education, professional standing, résumé counted for zero in the economic wreckage. Watching the Obama administration shovel bailouts at Wall Street was awe inspiring - like watching a world-ending meteor on its final approach to Earth.
This isn't about Obama. It's about a relatively recent development in American class warfare. Anyone who works for a living is reviled, and then blamed when things go badly. Those were MY tax dollars I'd paid over 35 years of employment being thrown at those rich men. They're fine. I wasn't. I became a healthcare refugee. Here, even the sick & unemployed aren't left on the street.
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Let's give credit where credit is due. Trump's war on minorities and the poor is only possible because of the attitude of the liberal establishment that barely tolerates either the poor or minorities and, even then, only so long as its privilege remains intact
@Frank I think it depends more on those who have forgotten the old saying about the poor - "There but for the grace of God go I", and those who have forgotten the old saying about minorities -"Walk a mile in my shoes".
People who have forgotten that old wisdom are not usually liberals.
Paul Krugman makes very clear points. What is not being said in this conversation is that the American Farmers are still driving their $60,000 pick-up truck, still have the second home in the warmer climate, still sending their kids to the best colleges and universities, and no one seems to notice that immigrant labor is doing all the dirty work. This is all being supported by Agricultural hand-outs, without which the American Farmers would be standing in line with the American Poor. Maybe American Farmers ought to be held to the same standard as the struggling American Poor.
3
I thought everybody knew that poverty remains a huge problem. The current poverty rate is around 15%, just where it was 30 years ago. The source of this information is the US Census Bureau, with which Mr. Krugman apparently disagrees. Who knows what source Mr. Krugman uses. It's probably a survey of the folks living in his neighborhood. Anybody who thinks we're winning the war on poverty needs to think again.
1
Regardless of every other consideration on whether certain people might be more or less "deserving" of social welfare, in a country in which the top 1% control the vast majority of the income and wealth of the nation, there is a case for basic human decency to support the less lucky ones in society.
It is fair to expect that the billionaires (and millionaires) give more back to society, at the very least to ensure that the poor have access to the same opportunities in life that were granted to them.
Welfare should be seen as a way to level the field and ensure equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of wealth and background. The child of a single mother growing up in a crime-infested slum should have the same opportunity to get to Harvard as the child of a hedge fund manager.
We waste an enormous human capital by allowing millions of intelligent, talented children to grow up in degraded environments, with crumbling schools, no social fabric, high crime and parents so desperately poor they can't even feed themselves, let alone dream that their children might make it to an Ivy League school.
If Republicans are so vehemently against "welfare moochers", let's force them at least to channel welfare towards poor children, who deserve equal opportunity and can not be considered "moochers" by any twisted stretch of the mind.
1
We need a more equitable tax structure that roles back the tax breaks given by the Republicans and passed by one vote. We need alternatives to incarceration for drug crimes, and to plan to reduce the number of prisons in the United States. That will save a lot of tax dollars. We need an actual immigration policy that ways for American workers who live in Mexico, for instance, to get seasonal work permits. We do not need ICE. That will save us millions. We apparently no longer need much military presence, because Mr. Trump appears to have made us a vassal of Russia, so let them pay for the military. We need to increase social security. My mother's annual payment is $12,000. There are literally millions of elderly widows living on those annual benefits who can no longer work. It's disgusting that the robber barons like Trump get to waste millions of public dollars, and as far we know, game the tax system and pay less than most Americans. Essentially, if you're not rich, don't expect anything but a kick in the teeth from Republicans.
1
Another, more fundamental reason why the GOP makes war on the poor is that they see poor people as bad people, and rich people as good. The poor are that way, because they are bad to begin with, but the rich are rich, because they are virtuous. So, helping the poor would be a bad thing. "Rich man in his castle, poor man at his gate. God made them high and low and orders their estate." This is the thinking of the GOP.
As Ecce Homo points out, the Republican war on the poor comes from a fervent belief that poverty is caused by poor choices on the part of those poor, that it is an inherent disposition, that the poor deserve their poverty--and, by contrast, the rich deserve their riches as these are the result of good choice made by inherently "better" people.
But, as I've written before, it's necessary to understand the Calvinist underpinnings of this viewpoint in order to combat it.
Calvinism, you may recall, is that delightful offshoot of the Protestant Reformation that so may of our original settlers and institution builders subscribed to. It posits that God shows who is in his favor, who is worthy of heaven (a member of the Elect) by letting those worthy ones accumulate wealth and resources here on Earth. So it follows that the poor are by definition unworthy, as they are obviously not in God's favor, and further, they are undeserving of any charity or help, as they would still be unworthy in God's eyes, and giving them help would only be taking away "deserved" resources from those rich ones who are worthy.
While the Koch/Adelson/DeVos/Pens/Trump axis may have forgotten these religious underpinnings, you see it in their actions and mindset, in their Social Darwinism and "if you're so smart, why aren't you rich" attitude, in their attempt to find moral justifications for their limitless greed.
And, of course, one can extend this unworthiness to any other "not us" group.
3
Conservatives live in a rigid ideology that imprisons them in their tiny cocoons. Every man for himself. Never mind the truth or reason. Raising the level of the lowest helps us all is a truth they ignore.
And, then we have Fox News that helps perpetuate the failure of conservatives to evolve beyond the 1920's. While we are all aghast at Trump's performance in Helsinki and the appearance of his subordinating himself openly to Putin, some conservatives think he did OK, e.g. Rand Paul.
Then Fox News comes to Trump's rescue. Tucker Carlson says that Mexico has had a greater effect on our elections by planting millions of brown people (takers) into our electorate. Red meat for conservatives. It ain't true but when has that mattered to the Murdoch's.
So the myths prevail. And the GOP will probably let Trump skate again.
3
Corporate welfare is the REAL Drain of our coffers. As a social worker for more than 40 years I can testify to the insurmountable obstacles placed by the Republican party in front of poor people trying to better their lives. Republicans live in a bubble inhabited by the rich and angry. They take their anger out on those least able to defend themselves
2
I think some of this might arise from the Protestant Calvinism upon which this country was founded. (The Puritans didn't come here to escape religious intolerance, they came to institutionalize it.)
God doesn't wait to reward the righteous with heavenly bliss after they die, he rewards them on this earthly life. Who is rich and who is poor is for God to decide and to intervene in His plan is the worst kind of sinner; it is immoral to help the poor escape poverty. As a philosophy, it has always worked out well for the rich, so they do what they can to keep it around, in one form or another.
I simplify, but the thread runs through our history.
5
"King" Regan started the war on reasonable and compassionate benefits for US citizens, then Bush1 and Bush2 pushed that farther and farther down the road, and now we have Trump, who has ordained himself to be here to finish the job.
I cannot come up with even one single policy, benefit, or law, that has come from a Republican Presidency that has had a widespread positive impact on US citizens.
Every policy, benefit, or law, from a Democratic Presidency, put in place to help US citizens, has been systematically targeted by Republicans for destruction.
Trump's agenda: concentrate as much money and power in as few people as possible, himself included, and then dump the country, and leave it's citizens holding the very large bag of debt.
That's HOW he's going to finish the job.
1
No, the GOP is not against helping anyone. They are against helping anyone who needs help. When it comes to those who do not need help, like large corporations, well. . . . .
1
The Republicans are just plain wrong. There is some Protestant mentality at work, too, that the poor are undeserving moral failures while the rich are de facto blessed by God, which is why they are rich. So it's okay to punish the poor: they deserve it because of their morality. The Republicans also assume that jobs are available and accessible. I wonder how many jobs exist in Maine where the paper and lumber industries have collapsed. And it is assumed these folks can easily go on line and apply! How elitist to assume everyone has easy access to the internet.
At sixty-five years of age, I'm old enough to remember the good old days when Republican philosophy was to just ignore the poor, not punish them.
2
During the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s WPA and other efforts to help poor Americans was well justified and with many other measures helped to bring us out of the Depression. He was a great President.
However many ways that Lyndon Johnson failed this country in regard to VietNam, he did genuinely want to help the poor when he launched his War on Poverty. He was not well-advised and instead of an end to poverty he continued a cycle of poverty that exists 50 years later. Generations of famiies on welfare, high school drop-outs, babies born to teenagers not able to take care of them so grandma does the caretaking, siblings with multiple fathers with few of those fathers taking care of them.
This is wrong. And it will not stop with any kind of socialism promoted by progressives.
Personal responsibility and less demands for entitlements from our government by abled bodied people who should be able to take care of themselves is a must. More help for the homeless mentally ill (bring back mental hospitals), more assistance for the drug/alcohol addicted and attention to our vets are necessary.
We have a very low employment rate. If you’re healthy, get to work.
@OliviaTell that to people 50-plus years of age who were laid off because they were "too expensive" as employees.
They cost the company more in terms of benefits and health insurance than the younger employees, so they were cut.
I'm sure they would be thrilled to hear your lecture on "personal responsibility and less demands for entitlement".
In reply to MEM...spot on. I am so glad Paul Krugman has kept his eye on the ball about what is really going, but I thought he needed a sentence or two more to underline the craven self-interest of politicians who see corporations as people, and people as "takers". Your comment completed the article.
1
The Republicans have been hostile to the well being of the American people since the turn of the 20th century, when they began purging progressive thinkers from their ranks in preference for those who slavishly support the peoples exploitation for personal gain and wealth and, in many cases the opposing improving the people welfare by appandonig ant restraints on corporate greed. Trump and the current GOP are the culmination of a century long effort to convince those people that what is bad for them is good and prudent. Mr. Trump's treason in Moscow, as did his abuse of office to shore up his failing Scot country club, is more about using his office to inctrease his personal wealth than making America first.
1
The real question is why after fifty years of the war on poverty are there more casualties than ever?
1
@TD Reaganomics, trickle-down, the great recession, deregulation, the war on unions, tax cuts for the wealthy and multinational corporations, outsourcing, 2 unfunded wars, end of the Fairness Doctrine, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, Citizen's United Supreme Court decision --
basically all the Republican policies of the last 50 years -
that's why.
@Juanita Repubicans haven't been in charge continuously for fifty years, so it is doubtful that is the reason. More than likely it is the breakdown of the family, lack of respect for the importance of getting an education, out of wedlock births, and a general acceptance generation after generation that being on public assistance should be a way of life.
Per Michael Lewis, via Ryan Gosling, they seem to blame "immigrants and poor people, and ... even teachers!"
But that refers to the financial sector deflecting criticism from itself. Ideologies about poverty and entitlements are important, and only the most cynical would use them as a smokescreen.
1
Dr. Krugman, you’re forgetting the Right’s First Commandment: “Government is the problem.” Consider, for just a moment, what that *really* means.
It’s certainly race-based, for starters, but just for starters. Republicans work bankers’ hours; they’re a 9-5 bunch. They despise the working classes, particularly the white workers, whom they need desperately as soldiers in their culture wars against “Those Others.”
The lords of commerce and industry swallowed hard when labor won collective bargaining contacts, especially the auto makers and steel workers. They paid them handsome wages for three generations, but unbeknownst to these undereducated sweat troops—those who thought the good times would last forever (and which uniformly forbid non-whites from entering the brotherhood)— big business was already undermining their futures. Automation appeared at the factories one day, and it meant the death knell of labor.
While this was going on—three dozen years ago—coinciding with the first of two landslide elections for Ronald Reagan, affirmative action and other programs designed to level the unfair playing field was poured into the resentment pot.
Republicans had it both ways: stiffing whites and non-whites and stigmatizing the growing white poor with the same calumnies it forever used against black Americans.
With lower taxes now safely in the vaults of the rich—or hidden offshore—the Right have demonized the poor—all of them—as undeserving.
Making America Great Again. Not.
2
Reagan started our Libertarian Dystopia, where regard for self is paramount, and the ability and will to help others is considered a weakness. We have now reached that movement's final and absurd conclusion, and it has ruined our country.
Is it too complicated, for people like Rand Paul and George Will and Ted Cruz and the Trumps and the Kushner's and Paul Ryan, that human beings are simultaneously individuals with rights as well as members of society with responsibilities? Is that too complicated? It is if you're a bully. It is if you're a low-empathy lawyer or businessman. It is if you're any of the people I named above.
2
Paul's quote:" because they hate the idea of government helping anyone."
This is silly false. Government has allowed EpiPen to have a 40 year patent. Government has allowed us to spend 18% of GDP per capita vs 11% on average for the rest of the developed world. Government has allowed the 1% to destroy the organized labor movement in the US. There are hundreds of examples of rent seeking allowances & tax subsidies that accrue to the 1% over the middle class. Sugar, dairy & ad subsidies. Regulation rollback to penalize labor & our health over the 1%.
We have a government of the 1%, by the 1% & for the 1%. AKA governing by the minority. In the US we only hate government that helps the poor & middle class. The rich, not so much.
1
Many of my close, conservative friends, believe that being poor or homeless should be a crime. "We've got the prison space," they remark. "Why not use it?"
It would certainly clean up the streets, at least temporarily. Then you'd be one paycheck (or medical bill) away from prison - not just becoming homeless.
Think debtor's prison.
2
Dear Mr. Krugman,
I wish you had gone one step further to answer the question —Why do the Republicans have this ideology that they don’t want government to help anyone? Is it that the elites want to go back to a completely laissez-faire government so they can keep as much of the nation’s resources for themselves? I am not an economist, but I would love to know why.
7
Poverty means low income, right?
Isn't there a correlation between income and mental ability?
Is this discussion about people with agile minds, who are aware of social and economic conditions and are resourceful versus those without those attributes?
If a citizen is thriving, generating a favorable income, isn't it more likely that person is, or is considered, smart?
If a person is not smart and doesn't understand how to take advantage of his or her talents or of the opportunities that do exist, isn't it likely he or she will have a limited income?
Isn't poverty evidence of lack of ability, mostly?
Without regard to political or ideological persuasion, wouldn't a person of intellect tend not to identify with or empathize with persons of limited awareness of social and economic issues?
Isn't it true that higher earners spend less time than low income people watching television, gossiping or otherwise wasting time?
Would it not be expected that those with brainpower might hold at least some contempt for the mentally slow?
If astute people tend to gather in a political party and that party naturally reflects their disdain for people lacking productive thinking skills, can that be translated into 'the party hates poverty'?
1
@PayingAttention
Have you just explained why that "astute party" is the party that consistently ignores or denies inconvenient facts and, as recent polls have shown, whose adherents have an increasingly negative view of education?
Or have you explained something else?
A consistent characteristic of those who choose to look down others, from the kind of small, white, rural town class-consciousness I grew up with. to the larger, national scene with its divisions along race and class lines, is that some evidently have a much greater need than others to feel superior, a characteristic that says more about them and their ailing egos than about those they feel superior to.
One of our political parties is led by a man who just felt the need to say again that he is a very stable genius. I take him is the apotheosis of that needy type.
One irony, of course, is that astute party makes political hay by knocking educated professionals.
There are many others...
3
@PayingAttention, do you belong to Mensa or something? Your elitist perceptions voiced without the slightest hint of irony must mean that you're actually a very unpleasant judgy rich person...
2
@PayingAttention
Yes, it can, because there is a huge difference between preferring not to associate with those who are ones social, economic, or intellectual 'inferiors' and actively working to make their lives harder. Do you let a baby starve because it doesn't yet know how to acquire its own sustenance? No, we recognize that we have a moral obligation to provide support for those who, for whatever reason, are incapable of supporting themselves. Yes, there have to be limits, but the limits shouldn't be set so low that misery is compounded.
1
Not only has the GOP waged war on the poor, but many of their actions and policies since Reaganomics has created more economic distress for more working people. A prime example is the union busting of the 1980s which has lowered wages and benefits and shrunk the middle class.
15
Despite calling poor people "takers" we know who the "takers" actually are: the ones with all the money.
These takers propagate the myth that people like Trump "earned every penny" when it is demonstrably not true. These takers find whys to extract money from people and the government, and due to their power and influence. What they mean by "takers" is, "wait there is a crumb to small even for a mouse, that's mine too! If they have the crumb that is that much less I have."
And to distract people from their taking they level the projected charge at those who aren't as fortunate and blame them for not being wealthy. It doesn't stop there, just live and let live poor. No, the self-righteous takers feel an obligation not just to blame others, but to punish them as well where not being wealthy is offense where the punishment is to make you even poorer.
To be clear there are many hard working people who became wealthy, earned every penny, treated others with respect. Many even are able to impart their values on to their children who never knew anything but wealth and privilege. But just as not all poor are honorable, not all wealthy are honest and deserving of respect as they take what they can leaving a wounded society that they care about in their wake.
18
Contempt for the poor and contempt for government are among the GOP's central beliefs. Because Republicans insist that government programs cannot make poor citizens' lives better, they become especially enraged whenever they see evidence of a government program actually succeeding in assisting the poor, because it flies in the face of both their hatred for poor people and their ideology. It is no exaggeration to call the GOP's ideology Social Darwinism.
13
@Chris Rasmussen True enough. Social Darwinism also appears to be the only form of Darwinism the GOPers are willing to espouse.
1
The work requirements put forth by the GOP exempt certain people who can't work, for reasons including taking care of children at home.
If the rest of Krugman's op-ed piece is premised on that, then it has diminished credibility.
4
It's mathematically sure that the best way to improve the lot of most people is to help the poor: if you lift up the foundation of a house the rest of it moves up with it. So I conclude that Republicans don't want to improve everyone's life, only their own. Of course this is based on the idea that if everyone improves their own lives, everyone's life improves, but the fallacy is that improving your own life often comes at the expense of others. But what makes us special as humans is that we help each other.
8
Right now, keep your eyes on the prize is more important than we shall overcome. The best means by which to defeat Trump/the GOP, separate wings of an race and power, legislative-and-executive party is to put out real programs. The GOP is split functionally, legislature and executive, not by ideology. Nor does the GOP have plans or successful templates for education, housing, or healthcare, pillars of a "modern, moral, wealthy" society.
5 facts: no Trump decision achieved the broad, universal benefits and impact for US working families as Obama's removal of financial limits and inclusion of pre-conditions in health benefits. Certainly, not the tax cut.
Trump is practicing a selective justice.
Democrats would do well to support Justice Democrats Pramila Jayapal, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez; London Breed, Keisha Lance Buttoms, Lovely Warren, Annise Parker and others who are not extreme but mainstream—as were 1000s at more than 800 rallies. They are the middle! What others ridicule as “free,” they see as shared.
People in Scotland, chanting, as Trump played golf on his course: “No Trump! No KKK! No Racist USA!” “No Trump! No KKK! No Racist USA!”
A part of Trump's NATO agenda was to drive US arm sales, coming off a globe-leading, record 2017 that booked $76 billion in sales. The Arms Export Control Act governs sales and subsidies, and many sales are subsidized by US taxpayers to 95%.
Every American can find pain in Trump's greed and stupidity.
8
The Trump administration response to poverty in the U.S. must be in response to the Statement on Visit to the USA by Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in the U.S. U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s response: “It is patently ridiculous for the United Nations to examine poverty in America, it is a "misleading and politically motivated" document about "the wealthiest and freest country in the world.” What country is Nikki Haley referring to, Sweden? The official U.S. poverty rate is 12.7 percent, based on the U.S. Census Bureau's 2016 estimates. That year, an estimated 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty. Poverty rates are persistently higher in rural and the inner city. The number of Americans living in "near-poverty," is around 100 million, equating to about a third of the U.S. population. There are millions of Americans without healthcare, dental or eye care. U.S. infant and maternal mortality rates (2013) were the highest in the developed world. U.S. ranks 36th in the world in access to safe water and sanitation. (Flint, Michigan is an outrageous example.) U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. U.S. has the highest youth poverty rate of advanced countries. U.S. has historically and is politically alone among advanced countries in rejecting that economic and social rights are Human Rights.
12
How do we get this info to the poor? They do not read Times. If they know the facts and that they are in a peril, may be persuaded to vote the GOP out. I’m doing exactly that everyday, O-o-O, to educate and motivate them to vote. Usually they feel the cuts way after they can do anything to react and act. Any other ideas to help them?
6
@Sam
Yes. I would make a campaign contribution reform that would ban political advertisement on TV. The reason is that people who vote GOP don't read, make election decision based on ad. And this is also the reason why money works.
5
@Sam
Generally, lower-income people are more liberal and less likely to vote. (http://www.demos.org/publication/why-voting-gap-matters )
The trick isn’t to convince current GOP voters to swing blue — most probably never will, though that’s just a hunch — but to boost turnout among low-income people. That means curbing barriers to voting: getting rid of voter ID laws, fighting registration purges, making election day a national holiday, etc.
2
@Sam
The GOP has managed to bundle a number of issues for their non-reading base. God, guns, race, welfare, abortion, immigration. Mention one of these, and it’s a dog whistle invoking the whole bundle.
Then, the Dem’s fall right into the trap...invariably focusing on one of the issues.
Now, some will say that every one of these issues are central to the Dem’s platform. I don’t know. Maybe a total focus on issues not on the GOP list (e.g., jobs, education), in the short-term, will get the country moving in a direction which will provide some sea room for the other issues in the moderate-term. Maybe.
1
I could almost approve of scaling back many of our social safety net programs if the GOP tax bill hadn't given away a trillion dollars to those who don't need it. Meanwhile I personally know about a half dozen ardent Trump supporters who are getting slammed by this tax bill because they own multiple homes and are now limited to a real estate tax deduction of only $10,000.
5
@Jim Tagley
Don't you just LOVE it when the "ardent Trump supporters" get hoisted on their own petard?
1
This is but one of the many Republican policy positions that run counter to most voters' wishes. Some of the others being gun safety legislation, health care, immigration policy, etc. Yet they keep getting elected, despite their unpopularity! The only thing that explains this is voter apathy - not showing up on election day.
We, as voters, are abdicating our responsibility to our country, and ourselves. We have to change our mindset about voting. Turnout should be 90+% every time! We cannot take this privilege for granted any more. Otherwise - well - we get what we're living through right now.
9
@Steve
No, what has caused this problem is Religion convincing their followers (and let me state emphatically that I am a person of faith) that voting in line with the teachings of their faith overrides all else. We are headed toward becoming a theocracy no better than those of the middle east.
As a society, we all need to be constantly reminded that one’s fortunes are often simply an accident of birth. I was born into a white, Polish, middle class family. And that gave me a tremendous head start in life. This is not true for everyone. Especially these days, for a person born into poverty, it is a grinding job to climb out of it. Why have we, as a nation, not agreed upon an equitable quality of life that guarantees safe housing, a decent education, a livable salary, basic medical insurance? Somehow the Republican Party has led us to believe that this life should be denied to so many of us. We need a leader who will remind us that this is a worthwhile cause to fight for. As you so rightly conclude, that person will not be found in the Republican Party.
11
Let us not forget, Mr. Krugman, that the government is us. I do not disagree with this article, but I think that we should remember that these programs represent forcible redistribution of people's money.
2
@MHW The same could be said about wars that never should have been started, huge tax breaks, farm subsidies etc....
22
"Let us not forget" the conditions of poverty and its impact on society! What about the "forcible redistribution" for DOD?
1
If billionaires were not hogging all the money in the first place there would be fewer poor people. Why is it ok to forcibly redistribute the wealth of this nation (via the exact same tax code you are complaining about) to people who who never worked for it...but not to those that do work?
1
It's ironic to me that the same people who like to say that we are a "Christian" nation don't think it necessary or appropriate for the government to play a role in helping the poor, which Jesus charged his followers to do. They think helping the poor should fall to the church or community. Well, perhaps, ideally. But the bigness of our cities -- where poverty is often concentrated -- and the vastness of our rural areas -- where poverty is widespread, but diffuse -- make church and community overwhelmed by the logistics. The vastness of poverty -- the scale, the scope, the density -- make church and community inadequate to the task. The vagaries of a capitalist economy -- where one day you're up, the next you're down -- leave the church and community ill-equipped to respond when and where it's needed. And our modern culture -- with every adult in the household working full time -- spread members of the church and community too thin to handle the immensity of the job at hand. Only government has the scale, the reach, the infrastructure, and the agility to respond to poverty in modern times. It seems like Christians would want some of their tax dollars to go toward this outreach. I know I do. I give to my local community food bank and the Red Cross, but I simply don't have the time or money to minister to the poor in the way and to the scale that's required.
28
The problem with leaving it in the hands of church and community is that church and community have no obligation to help the poor, and are free to decide on a whim which poor people to help and which not to (not surprisingly this is where race tends to rear its head), OR, to use the assistance they give as a way to control the people they help - "don't want to starve to death? I can help with that. But you'd better join this church! And you'd better vote the right way! And I'd better see you at all the events!" Etc.
This is why the liberal reforms of the twentieth century were catastrophic for so many of America's petty tyrants - employers, machine politicians, churches, organized crime, and just your garden-variety abusive husbands/fathers. It started taking the things that they'd previously been able to dangle over the less fortunate in order to control their behavior, and making them available to everybody for free.
2
It's really very clear now - the GOP's target environment, its long-dreamed utopia, is a feudal state. Dispute that if you can, because every single point of the GOP agenda shouts it. Let's call it a pseudo-theocratic, authoritarian/oligarchic kleptocracy. P-TAK for short.
One nation, under God...
23
Funny about the war on poverty. The primary programs were Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps. These granted access to healthcare and food. They are measurably successful. Medicare is popular, and Medicaid is a lifeline. Foodstamps (now renamed) has reduced malnutrition. What we did not do was have a program for job creation - still don't. Instead of a war on poverty, perhaps we should have called it a war on the ill effects of poverty. Regardless, it did what it was designed to do.
32
Kentuckians denied vision and dental coverage? I don't have it despie Medicare and private insurance, but I get to help fund such coverage for others through taxes....
1
So rather than support policies (like stronger unions) that would help you, you want to take these essential services away from those who have it? This race to the bottom mentality plays into the hands of those who are creating a neo-feudal society.
@David Pohndorf
Is the fact, if it is a fact, that you lack vision and dental coverage reason enough to deny it to others? Would it not make more sense to make those benefits more broadly available and less costly because everyone is included in the risk pool? Seems kind of obvious to me.
1
@David Pohndorf, the problem is affordability. Those poor folks could never afford a dentist and thus we see rotting teeth and dental disease. You on the other hand are very likely to be able to pay out of pocket for this service. Let's try to have some perspective.
Fine. Require all recipients of government aid to work. But also attach to this a mandate that government find each and every recipient of government aid a job with a sustainable income. The job could be in the private sector or the public. If the government job finding agency can't find the person such a job, the person keeps their benefits. Maybe in this way some people would get meaningful employment that they would have been unable to find on their own. The ugly truth, which the Republicans don't want people to see, is that no-one -- NOONE -- can find most recipients of public assistance a job with a sustainable income -- and that most of these people HATE being in that position and would be immensely grateful to be able to have a job with a sustainable income.
51
Most conservatives are only against the government helping people. They have no objection to government t helping business. That's why the tax bill takes back the cuts to people but keep business tax cuts permanent.
67
@tom Not exactly, Tom. It seems to me that most conservatives are against the government helping poor people. They are okay with it helping rich people - being deserving and all.
1
In the years following Reagan's "trickle down" economics, the prosperity of the middle class in this country has deteriorated along with the climate and the political power of human citizens as opposed to corporate citizens. No one contests this. Like climate change it has been predicted from the beginning. Of course as corporations become ever more powerful politically, they will become ever more wealthy. Wealth buys more power and power generates more wealth. In the industrial age there were many advantages that were enjoyed by all citizens from the harnessing of new technology, however in the information age, corporate power has shifted into a more predatory and ominous character. While the colonial activities of 19th century companies were catastrophic to natives of foreign countries that were cursed by their possession of raw materials that advanced countries desired, now these companies are empowered to mine their own fellow citizens for the wealth that they need to make their numbers. The opium that stole the souls of the Chinese in the 19th Century is now on the streets of the US. The GOP is not really at war with the poor. It is at war with the Constitution and with the people of the United States. It is conducting a slow-motion coup to stack the Supreme Court in an effort to further disenfranchise, disempower and impoverish America's middle class.
40
Reminds me of the first visit by the tea party republicans to our small town trying to organize the local populace. They gave their usual spiel about big government, local control, lower taxes etc. etc. etc. Our red state government at the state, county and local levels are quite frugal. Most programs are bare bones and little fat. At the opening of the question and answer period, someone asked for a show of hands as to how many benefited from federal government programs like the farm bill, social security, medicare, medicaid, aid to rural telephone and electric cooperatives. Over 90% raised their hands. The following heated discussion as to which programs to cut to make smaller government was always about the other person's program, not the one they used. That was the first and last visit of the tea party to our rural community. The blue collar whites (and red states in general) that think the poor are takers not makers fail to understand that they, too, benefit from federal programs and are takers as well. Alas, they will keep believing the opposite and voting for pie in the sky Republicans that promise lower taxes and less government regardless of shooting themselves in the foot.
88
Democracy is the way to reclaim the notion of the common good and bring the rich elite to heel.
Less fortunate people simply have to get organised, get registered and then exercise their birth right by voting for a party that represents their interests.
Of course the Democrats STILL need to refresh their leadership and formulate a coherent winning message after the 2016 debacle.
16
It's more complicated.
1. In a democracy, the power of your vote to influence legislation into a direction that would benefit you, depends on many things, and one of those things is access to accurate information. The GOP has been flooding its base with fake news, fake problems and fake solutions for almost two decades now (in part thanks to Fox News - or should we call it FN?). That completely confused the minds of conservatives voters in this country, who ARE now voting, but actively voting for the only party that destroys what they want, all while ignoring the lies.
A democracy is only as strong as its journalistic freedom is ... and FN journalist clearly cannot freely exercise their job, because of a combination of imposed ideology and ignorance.
2. Both the campaign platform and effective legislation and policies of Democrats clearly correspond to what would benefit the vast majority of ordinary citizens - as poll after poll shows. But here too, information is key.
With a 24/7 media focusing on people rather than policies or how legislative progress is concretely made, in a democracy (= through inevitable compromise), part of those who would vote for this platform, do not or stay home merely because they're looking for young and inspirational individuals to "message" it, or imagine that a good politician only talks about ideals and refrains from proposing workable compromises.
Conclusion: we're not out of the woods yet ...
16
@Ana Luisa
- was "FN" meant to be a reference to French politics? If so, I approve heartily.
@Ana Luisa
There is a difference between high quality journalism and propaganda.
The consolidation of ownership of media companies within large corporate structures controlled by partisan interests has created an immense propaganda machine serving right-wing and rich-elite interests.
It is time to use anti-trust laws to dismantle media conglomerates and impose formal legally-defined professional standards on journalists working within media operations so they cannot be bullied by editorial censorship and control.
Pure greed is certainly part of the equation here: blue-collar workers tend to console themselves (for having low wages and/or jobs that slowly destroy them/their self-esteem/ability to invest in personal growth and happiness on the work floor) with the idea that life IS tough and as a consequence should be for everyone, rather than having to use part of their own money to allow others to live in what they imagine is a less destructible way ... and GOP elites know this, so they use this desire for revenge in order to fire up the base and get elected, all while supporting huge tax cuts for their own wealthiest donors. So for some, this kind of rhetoric/policies is merely a matter of trying to advance their own careers.
But there's more than that. This also touches upon a fundamental, philosophical difference between the right and the left.
For the left, "America" refers to a place where who you are is determined by the opportunities you get in life, whereas "individualism" refers to the fundamental right for EACH newborn individual to get ALL the best opportunities that life/America has to offer - including when your parents can't provide them to you. THAT's how you make "America" great(er).
For the right, "America" refers to a place where the results of what you achieve, should go to your kids, and they alone - a "narrow" vision of what binds us together, contrary to the broader leftist vision (connecting all citizens).
And this is a philosophical and political choice.
18
The Republicans confuse the ownership of the country with the ownership of property. The regard democracy as a means for the havenots taken their stuff. They don't feel any obligation to share what was built on a foundation of stolen lives and labor.
34
@Eben spinoza
Yes, but not all of them do so because of a lack of a moral compass. Some of them really believe that this is the only and best way to govern, mainly because they're afraid that as soon as we will use the government to start providing opportunities to ANY citizen, then "the best" will be quickly overrun be the "plebs", those who now have money but still no high moral values, and that, they fear, will undermine the entire country.
This kind of political philosophy has historical roots: it has been the way of thinking of Europe's aristocrats ever since the idea of replacing an absolute monarchism (where ideally the "aristoi", the best, govern) with a democracy was on the verge of becoming a reality.
The same fear is driving the (few integer ones still present among the) conservative elites in this country.
So here, you keep your wealth INSIDE your family rather than partially to the government, not only out of greed, but also out of "patriotism".
And THAT's the debate that we need to have to do, IF we want to go high when they go low.
WHAT is this all about, in the end? And what is necessary to meet that fear and make sure that if you give each and every citizen a maximum of opportunities, by law (including HC, SS etc.), the result isn't "populism", where ignorance gets to the very top and de facto starts destroying the country?
Today, that question is more relevant than ever ... . And yes, even 17th century philosopher Spinoza has asked it ... ;-)
Right wing ideologues and their camp followers in the economics profession have invented insidious myths that are simply not true. There is no serious evidence that welfare programs of any kind deter people from seeking decently paid jobs, if they are able to work. Just as there is no evidence that decent legal minimum wages increases unemployment, or that higher taxes reduces investment and enterprise. As the the US becomes increasingly unequal the right have to find a justification (although privately they don't think it needs one) for growing wealth disparity, and are reduced to blaming welfare claimants instead of seeing them as a symptom of unfairness and inequality.
25
Rita Jensen (late founder of women's e news) pointed out that this was already happening under Clinton. It was LBJ's programs that helped her, and Clinton's cutbacks that would have taken aid away from her. For decades, the US gov't has been gradually eliminating programs that would have put our country on the road to prosperity. As for the war on the poor, I can also say that both parties have also been actively making war on the working and lower middle class; whatever we have left, they want to take away. Soon a lot of us will be joining the ranks of the poor, and I know many who have already. My town, for example, and San Francisco, have become polarized feudal cities where you have the filthy rich, the dirt poor, and anyone in between is crushed, and had better flee before they lose everything. Sadly, this is not just a GOP problem; both parties have been actively participating in an ongoing redistribution of the country's wealth and resources to the rich.
23
Paul Krugman has written a thoughtful argument for extremely high inheritance taxes. If government permits transfers of wealth from one generation to the next it facilitates the recipients, aka "takers", in living without working. My Calvinist Republican upbringing says having the God-given physical and mental capacity to work and not doing so is a violation of the Almighty's expectations. A non-working poor person and a non-working rich person in many respects are the same. Indeed one can make the argument those who come from a background of abundance have far less justification than those whose limitations may emerge from their fundamental condition. Far from cutting inheritance taxes they should be greatly increased. I might argue human nature would lead those who inherit wealth to not feel as much pressure to work and produce. Government can act to assure no matter the hand dealt them by the accident of birth they can be assisted by removing the burdens and temptations of inherited wealth. Do not let them stray down the path of dependent takers but assure they confront the need to work like anyone else. Had young Donald Trump learned the virtues of hard work and honest exchange instead of serial predation protected by a phalanx of lawyers he might today serve our society as an exemplary role model instead of as icon of self-centered gluttony and a person of weak moral character. Republicans failed him but we can and must do better for future generations of Americans.
34
My family had to pay high inheritance taxes, over $150,000, for the three of us to inherit the princely sum of about $200,000 each and $10,000 a year in dividends, which doesn't even pay my property taxes. I have no driveway or central air, and live in a busy mixed minority neighborhood. My school taxes alone are $9000 a year. I have no children. So basically my high taxes are subsidizing rich people. After taxes, I have $30,000 to live on, which is shrinking. It's not poverty, but this is the NYC metro area. I've just spent more than my entire income to fix up my house because I have to leave, and probably won't get a good price for it. Inheritance and estate taxes don't apply to the very rich - I wish they did - who find loopholes. Those tax fall on us.
7
Thanks for saying sloth is sloth regardless of income. I know many who would say it is hard work sitting on a fortune and even more strenuous to spend it.
I have never subscribed to Calvinist dogma but you apply it appropriately in this case. Researchers are suggesting that children are happier, more confident, and healthier when they are given age appropriate work. They benefit from holding "jobs" like babysitting, lawn care, and the like. These days it seems to bruise a parent's status to have your kid working.
People need to feel as if they are contributing to society and have value. Work is a way to confirm your value. To be clear work is producing something tangible or intangible, and then being rewarded for your efforts.
5
Sounds more like state inheritance tax and capital gains taxes. Capital gains would also have been paid by the deceased had they sold these stocks so it is not an inheritance tax.
I'm sorry to say, but having traveled widely, I observe this manifests in the USA like it does absolutely nowhere else in the world.
There is also what to me appears to be a general, cynical, meanness about many supposedly ordinary folks from the USA. Also something I don't see (as much) elsewhere.
And it's very sad.
100
The GOP's policies are adopted from the John Birch Society. Currently there are nearly 200-Bircher's holding elected office in Congress. Every member of Congress from Alabama, save one Democrat, vote with the Bircher's the majority of the time. No amount of shaming will ever change this organization or their representatives. Notice I said "their" representatives, because these Bircher's are in Congress for one purpose only: to advance the Bircher agenda.
Until American stop voting for Republicans our nation will continue to be subjected to their policies which oppose any and all forms of social safety nets, regulation, or government controls. They want a minimal federal government for defense. They want no public institutions of any kind including schools. They want every aspect of governmental operations privatized.
Therefore, it is short sighted to isolate just one of the Bircher's targets, i.e., the poor. They are targeting every single aspect of our government and intend to eliminate it. They have had a very good start with Trump who is giving them everything they ask for.
97
I've been voting Democrat since the 1980s, after I made the fatal mistake of voting for Reagan once. I find that my liberal/progressive community has basically been making war on me and my neighborhood, and taxing me excessively. I'm not any better off under the Democrats, and ironically, would be much better off living in a "Red" state. Sadly, both parties are no more than a set of teeth eating working and lower middle class people alive.
I've traveled in many Third World and poverty stricken nations. They are in places like India, Africa, and some areas of the Middle East. There is one, glaring, in your face consistency in all of these struggling areas with mind boggling poverty -- they do not have free, quality public education. If you want to go to school, it will cost you something. In some parts of Africa and even India that have instituted public schooling, the cost of the required uniforms mandated is enough to prevent truly poverty stricken families from educating their children, and especially, their girls. The countries with access to the best, free quality schools through high school and even college and graduate levels, enjoy the highest standards of living on earth for all their citizens, and engage in much less aggressive militarism than others.
2
The "War on the Poor", Tax Cuts, consumer taxes disguised as "Tariffs" to offset the revenue lost through tax cuts, attempts at reducing the Safety net for "We The People", are all a slight of hand by the Republicans to generate a false sense of prosperity by reducing the Government Budget to create the illusion that the economy is growing at a faster pace. As the G.D.P. growth is artificially increased through bookkeeping, Government spending decreases, but the amount of economic value remains increasing at a snails pace thus giving the illusion of extraordinary growth. That, I believe is the Republican strategy to deceive the public for decades.
13
Perhaps Prof. Krugman could contrast American and Swedish social programs and labour market policies since Americans by and large are unaware of how brutal their country has become relative to other wealthy democracies.
63
@Doug Broome I showed my students Michael Moore's "Where to Invade Next?" and they couldn't believe that some European nations have free college, healthy school lunches, paid maternity leave, multiple weeks of paid vacations, and prisoners who are treated humanely, amongst other things. Our government "of the people, for the people" is failing thanks largely to the GOP.
1
Don't forget Canada! If I had a time machine, I'd go back in time, hang Jefferson, Washington and Hamilton, and stick with the UK. The US could have been a good country like Canada. And oh, am I sorry that my great grandparents left Sweden!
1
The poor people, the takers, the surplus people, the extra ones, the ones we do not need, should have the decency to go off somewhere and die.
On the other hand, most of our economic activity is consumption. Without consumption, investment makes no sense (except in wartime). So since the takers are customers, they are needed. Without their consumption, the economy shrinks; if growth is the solution to our problems, shrinkage is the creation of problems.
13
@sdavidc9
And this is one of the reasons why the US economy is not growing faster, our consumption is down.
But the rich do not make their money off of consumption, they make their money from investments, stocks, etc. which don't always depend upon what is happening in the country.
While wages are stagnant and the economy growing slowly, even during the Obama years, the rich were gaining on everyone else. They were not making their money off of consumption because that was also slow during that time.
The rich don't need us to buy, they just need our money. Which they can get by keeping wages as low as possible and tax cuts.
Since the 80s' the wealth of the country has been going up to the rich as it is drained from the rest of us. I keep hearing that the rich pay 73% of the taxes, the problem is that they take 93% of the wealth.
When all taxes are added up, the rich and corporations pay less in taxes than the poor and middle class. And that was before the new tax cut which lowered their tax payment further.
16
@sdavidc9
You called this one correctly. The ruling classes are trying to kill off as many of us as possible. Their preferred method has always been to convince the masses to turn on one another out of misguided fear that they are losing their slender toehold on sustenance. While we squabble and fight among ourselves over the scraps they toss to us, they can continue to vacuum up the wealth produced by all us arguing peons. Hopefully enough violence will ensue, and the most "undeserving" of life will be finished off, to make room for more profits that rise to the top only.
What is the endgame here? If the super-rich have their way and want to hoard it all, what is their aim? It did not work very well for the super rich in Europe in the 18th century. Why do they think it would be in any way different?
44
@Hugues
I guess they think they have bought off the government enough to protect them when the let them eat bread population decide to rebel.
Every society which has gone down this road has had a backlash against the greed, usually destroying the country.
Rome, france, and others fell because the rich thought they could get away with taking all the money.
1
@Hugues Because this year's fools always think they are smarter than last year's fools, though if you stand them side by side you couldn't tell the difference.
1
What is not often mentioned is that the cost to the public purse of persons who abuse social benefit programs is tiny compared to the cost to the public purse of tax fraud by high-income earners, which is euphemistically referred to as "tax evasion". Nor is it mentioned that certain social benefits are heavily used and perhaps even abused by high-income earners, such as public security (police services) and public infrastructure (highways, airports, state universities, etc.), to name a few. In the interest of fairness, therefore, if certain social benefits for the poor are to be cut, one should also consider cutting police and fire-prevention services as well as street lighting in high-income neighbourhoods.
54
The founding fathers were tax evaders.
Trump mentions political elites on the right. But there are also political elites on the left.
And let's face it. It is both parties that have abandoned the poor. Hillary Clinton started Bill Clinton's first term with a health care plan that looked similar to universal health care. But by the time she was running for president, she had abandoned universal health care. Obamacare left many people out, many people who die because they don't get cancer screenings.
And yes, it is about ideology. The poor vote against their own self-interest. And corporations often veto the policies that legislatures actually enact. A $275 per employee tax to help Seattle's homeless was rescinded under pressure from Amazon, which has made Bezos the richest man in the world.
What a democracy needs to function is well-informed voters. And that is where democracy is failing.
The NY Times is the most respected newspaper in the US. But its front page has such a partisan tone that many in middle America regard it as fake news.
We have to have a dialog in which we discuss opinions with which we disagree.
It is all too easy to end an argument by saying Trump is a bigot.
It would be better to focus on determining what good ideas Trump had (there are a few), and finding a way to accomplish them while safeguarding public institutions.
Democrats have a huge blind spot. They believe in everlasting growth. Yet we live on a finite planet.
We need a one-child policy, a slowing of immigration.
7
@Jake Wagner
With an aging population, we need immigration to help the elderly.
And no, democrats don't believe in everlasting growth, that is a republican meme.
1
Both parties have abandoned the poor to differing degrees. But only one has abandoned democracy.
The Times’ tone is not partisan. It is rightful indignation to the high crimes and misdemeanors of this corrupt administration.
2
@Jake Wagner So what have Republicans done for healthcare????????
They bashed Hillary Clinton's original healthcare plan and said she had no business, as First Lady "interfering" in government. And have hated her ever since for even trying.
Republicans have shot down any proposed healthcare plan, even their own Heritage plan, because it got named for a Democratic president who tried to compromise with them to get some kind of healthcare plan for Americans.
The only thing we need to do is to go vote in November, and vote out of office all the Russia-loving Republicans who are trying to be Putin's Americanski elite.
1
There has always been and always will be people without the wherewithal to organize an intelligent life with some sort of general plan. We all have people in our families who just “dont get it”. Have no clue how to position themselves to lead a good enough life and not be burdens to the rest of us. What are we going to do? Let them starve, freeze or boil to death? Anyone who has travelled has witnessed the chaos and danger that comes in a society with loads of desperate people roaming about. How would you like to send your children to school with body guards, live behind barbed wired twelve feet high walls guarded by an easy to bribe poorly paid employee with a AK-47?
Life is not perfect, paying income tax to keep myself unafraid is perhaps as good as it gets.
I don’t understand why the chronically poor, most probably overwhelmed and depressed people are not taken on in a serious systematic nationwide plan of medical care, need be antidepressants etc. Sick and depressed people don’t contribute well to society. They just don’t.
Ideology is useless, concrete result oriented programs is the only way to perhaps get better results than what we have now. I agree people should just pick themselves up and figure it out....but they don’t and some are just not equipped to deal with life.
And I really like my life in my multi-million dollar house with no security guard and mostly unlocked doors.
6
@Louise Mathieu
Great comment. I have traveled to South America and seen what you described. The poor side of town has shacks on the hillside with no street, or lights or facilities. When it rains there are mudslides and people lose their homes and their lives. On the wealthy side of town there are beautiful houses, but you only get a glimpse of them through the front iron gates. The yards are surrounded by high concrete block walls with broken glass embedded in the top. I was very glad to get back home to the USA.
I worry that we are sliding toward that kind of situation here, because the middle class is shrinking. The middle class is the bulwark against extremism and violence.
When it goes, no one will be safe.
Why is it described as "harsh' to require people to work? It is somehow not harsh to tax people who work, but it is harsh to ask people getting government benefits to work? I came to the article wanting to listen with an open mind but Mr. Krugman totally lost me with that description. People expect free stuff without working and that makes no sense at all.
4
@Tom in Illinois
Not everyone can work, so work requirements stop them from receiving help.
I am sure you don't know, but US economic policy is to make sure that a % of people are kept unemployed. That is conservative economic theory, but it has been practiced by everyone for decades.
You can look it up, the % used to be 5%, but they have let it go to 4% because of so many who gave up looking for jobs.
It is used to keep wages low, so that people are kept in poverty. But because there has to be people who are kept unemployed, what do you do with them? Just let them starve?
The whole business model has been to downsize, to hire the fewest amount of people possible to keep profits at maximum. And to keep wages low.
Most of the people do work, 4% unemployment is considered full employment in the US. So you want to hurt the 4% who will never find a job, because there just isn't one to find.
2
I've seen people who were dying of cancer who were forced to go to work. That's barbaric. And I live in a community which has been gentrified by useless, overbreeding stay-at-home moms, whose only contribution to society is a huge carbon footprint, overpopulation and high taxation. I'm getting ready to leave. Just wish I could emigrate out of this third world country of haves eating have-nots alive. This isn't capitalism, it's feudalism.
2
Under our present leadership in both the executive and legislative branches, the "they's" are ALREADY getting their way, Professor Krugman. And the way I see it, the number of poor will increase. We are facing a paradigm in which the middle-class is slowly but surely disappearing. Let us list but a few things that are happening under Trump's disgraceful presidency: The ACA is weakening on a daily basis. At this rate, health insurance will become unaffordable and with less protections. Next is the fact that although more individuals are finding jobs, wage increases for the most part are stagnant. Also, with our trade and tariff wars, manufacturers are between a rock and a hard stone. Prices will go up; people will not be able to pay. Businesses will struggle, people will be laid off.
What defies logic is the very citizen who refuses to help the less fortunate will themselves be affected by their own cruelty and ideologies. But Trump and his Congress are so skilled in the art of deceit that as of now these everyday folks are blind to the trajectory of policies that are designed for the affluent only, not and never for the public they are supposed to serve.
7
In the forty years of the war of poverty, we have spent more than $15 TRILLION and the poverty rate is exactly the same as it was in 1965. Will someone please explain why? Apparently, Krugman is too busy blaming Republicans for a failure of the Democratic Party policies.
4
@Beetle
Because it hasn't been democratic party policies that have been guiding us, certainly not liberal policies.
The war on poverty has been fought to keep people poor. Which is why the wealth has been going from the majority of people to the minority on top. Tax policy and efforts to keep people from getting any help have kept poverty where it is.
Only about 1/3 of people in poverty get any help. The great majority of people in poverty work. But wages for them have been stagnant since the 80s' as the cost of living has gone up, while wages for the rich have increased from 40 times what a worker made in the 80s' to 400 times what a worker makes in the 2018.
Those policies to help the rich and take the wealth from the poorest have made sure poverty still remains.
It is conservative policy that is in effect, wages need to be kept low so businesses make the most profit and keeping a certain # of people unemployed is how they manipulate wages to keep them low.
That and trickle down which republicans have kept in force to make sure the wealth goes to the top.
1
The US wants to go its own way, and refuses to imitate or learn from more successful nations like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland or Canada. Canada's strict financial regulations made it one of the few countries not affected by the 2008 financial meltdown. Regulations, anyone? Our current regime is breaking the few regulations that Obama's administration put in place. We're doomed.
4
@Beetle The question is where would the poverty rate be without these trillions? My bet would be even more unequal that things are now. Think Nigeria.
republicans really have no idea what they think, they only have ideology. They're all for the free market - its only response to everything. But they are quick to put a work requirement on benefits even though the free market isn't providing jobs. If it was, there wouldn't be so much poverty (except for the non-job related factors but those, as the professor points out, aren't addressed by a work requirement). So what are we supposed to believe? More important, this total lack of intellectual honesty (forget for a moment morality and compassion) paralyzes a policy process.
The laughable part is that theirs is a big-government solution. Bigger police forces, bigger justice systems, bigger prisons, but those are welcome expenditures. Paving roads, fixing bridges, and renovating housing are not.
27
There is just as much poverty, or more (and probably a lot more homeless people) in "blue" states like my native NJ, NY and California, so obviously liberal social programs aren't working here. The cost of living is astronomical. Frankly I think we only have one party, the party of the rich, and all the infighting is just a stage show put on for the benefit of the divide-and-conquer rich.
4
"republicans really have no idea what they think"
Sidenote, but this really can't be stressed enough.
I had a Republican acquaintance in college who personified this. Agreed that "we need a stimulus just not THAT [the Obama] stimulus." Was asked what she wanted instead. Proceeded to outline the entire Obama stimulus. Took an exhaustive internet quiz to see which of the Republican candidates' policies were closest to her own views. Got McCain and was disappointed because "McCain isn't a real conservative." Had some arguments with her liberal boyfriend (son of two doctors) about health care policy. Told me later that "I don't know anything about health care but I'm trying to learn so that I can argue back at him" (translation: I have no idea what I'm talking about, I know only that the conservative side must be wrong).
It really is a completely tribal mindset. They have no opinions of their own. They think what the Fox Noise machine tells them to think.
This is lifted straight from my democratic Senator's email newsletter today:
Last Monday, President Trump nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court of the United States. As your Senator, it is my job to make sure we have the correct candidate for the position. Mr. Kavanaugh has a strong record of honoring the Constitution and upholding the rule of law, and I look forward to further conducting a thorough assessment of his overall abilities on the bench.
On Tuesday, I had an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business to discuss the nomination
Need there be any question why the GOP claims the opposite of what is the obvious truth?
I'd appreciate everyone slamming a senator as bad as Pence, and letting him know his career will be curtailed should he continue to betray the poor people of not just Indiana but the nation.
Thanks!
20
I forgot to mention, it's Todd Young
1
Paul Ryan is the poster child for "Do what I say, not what I do." This is the same man who benefitted from Social Security survivor benefits in his youth after his father died. Then, he went on to get a state-sponsored, subsidized college education.
What is wrong with this man? He is nothing but a hollowed-out shell of a person, devoid of empathy and utterly beholden to the 0.01% Donor Class.
Time will tell in the next few days who the true patriots are in Congress, given the egregious developments in Helsinki. I do not expect Ryan to be part of the Patriot Class. Jus' sayin'...
17
Why is it cruel to want to keep the money one earns, but compassionate for the government to take it away?
1
Depends on how you earned it. Jeff Bezos and the Walton family earn it by exploiting people and paying them such low wages, that their employees are forced on to public assistance. So you and I pay high taxes to subsidize billionaires and pay their employees. Why is it wrong for the rich to pay their fair share? After a huge chunk of my pay is deducted, and more is taken for property taxes, I have less than half, or $30,000, to live on. My money is taken away to subsidize the rich.
2
Rich people aren't rich because they earned it. They're rich because they're the ones who decide how much of the money earned by the company as a whole goes to themselves as opposed to everybody else.
3
@Registered Repub
Whatever ye do to the least of them, ye do to me.
Many people are hurt by cruel policies, by businesses paying the lowest wage they can get away with, by tax cuts that take money from the rest and give it to the rich.
When the rich have a lower tax burden than the poor, than the rich are not paying a fair share.
With overall taxes, the poor pay more in % of income than the rich do. Most taxes are geared to make the poor and middle class pay and let the rich off.
1
To clarify, Dr. Krugman: Republicans hate the idea of the government helping anyone--unless it aids the wealthy and privileged. Tax cuts, anyone?
65
If it were only tax cuts but there also for the rich
- tax loopholes
- special deductions
- depreciation on things that are appreciating
- subsidies (mostly farmers)
- gov't accepting overseas tax havens
- nefarious "charities" used to offload cash tax-free and hire relatives (see trump charities)
The tax playing field is hardly level....
1
"And what motivates these elites is ideology. Their political identities, not to mention their careers, are wrapped up in the notion that more government is always bad.
While this is certainly true, it still begs the question: why do Republicans regard government as always bad? It's not because big government interferes in some aspirational freedoms that Americans are entitled to enjoy without government interference. It's closer to the notion that corporate oligarchs have successfully "purchased" the Republican party, as well as much of the Democratic party as well. The "government is bad" mantra is code for "the government is out of the way" and is open for business with every monied interest with a short term business objective that requires government to subsidize them, often at the expense of the poor. The long term social consequences have been discarded...completely. Remember Enron? Were Cheney and Bush held accountable? No, because they were using the government for it's now revised purpose.
It's not ideology. it's business and racism; the marginalization through de jure discrimination in housing by states and federal governments, since the end of WW II. The oligarchs may not be overtly racist but racist rhetoric keeps those yahoos voting for Republicans who then allow their corporate sponsors to crush them economically. It's about money and quarterly profits, whatever it takes. Morals, ethics, love of country are not even remote considerations.
8
The Republicans have steadily dismantled the size and resources of our government under the stated goal of shrinking Government as for years they proclaimed the need for "Small Government". But what was their real goal? Obviously a monopoly Republican government of exclusive power they now have that just doesn't care about their people except to buy their votes with the payoffs called Tax Cuts. The poor will suffer more.
2
Unlike their rich tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, compassion and human decency apparently does not trickle up to Republican lawmakers.
3
You cannot be champions for the war on poverty if you are fanatics to socialism for corporations.
What that means is that you (the tax payer) is subsidizing massively corporations to pay their workers minimum wages (and in some cases below that), with little to no benefits so that they can lock in the socialized profits at the top.
In a way, when republican Governors continue to slash all social benefits, then it forces people to be enslaved. They have to take any job that most likely will pay a minimum wage or below (even if they are invalid) to survive, feed their families and the like.
There are simple fixes (which I have commented on previously multiple times and will do so again)
It all starts with a truly progressive tax system (where if you make more, then you pay more - not less) that contributes back to society. Then you implement a living wage ($22hr min) that raises tens of millions ABOVE the poverty line. Then you enact a Single Payer health care plan that reduces the costs to hundreds of millions for health care. Then you expand Social Security benefits, while eliminating the FICA cap. That lifts the elderly out of poverty.
It is just a matter of priorities for some, and greed for others.
44
@FunkyIrishman
Hear hear! That is precisely what we do, subsidize the rich and penalize the poor.
1
You cannot be champions for the war on poverty if you are fanatics to socialism for corporations.
What that means is that you (the tax payer) is subsidizing massively corporations to pay their workers minimum wages (and in some cases below that), with little to no benefits so that they can lock in the socialized profits at the top.
In a way, when republican Governors continue to slash all social benefits, then it forces people to be enslaved. They have to take any job that most likely will pay a minimum wage or below (even if they are invalid) to survive, feed their families and the like.
There are simple fixes (which I have commented on previously multiple times and will do so again) It all starts with a truly progressive tax system (where if you make more, then you pay more - not less) that contributes back to society. Then you implement a living wage ($22hr min) that raises tens of millions ABOVE the poverty line. Then you enact a Single Payer health care plan that reduces the costs to hundreds of millions for health care. Then you expand Social Security benefits, while eliminating the FICA cap. That lifts the elderly out of poverty.
It is just a matter of priorities for some, and greed for others.
2
For some unexplained reason the Republican Party is no longer American. The question is why? Is this the result of Donald Trump and has his treasonous thought and influence been permeating the entire party? Maybe, but it looks more likely that Trump is but the result of insidious activity over the past dozen or so years. Indeed in time the whole story will emerge and a great party may totally disappear.
9
The policy aims of the GOP are: 1) Cut taxes on the wealthy and well-to-do 2) Keep wages low 3) Massively deregulate.
The methods to achieve these aims are: 1) Finance the campaigns of politicians who are corporate lackeys 2) Provide high-paying jobs to politicians and their family members after they retire 3) Saturate the airwaves with propaganda, nonsense and side issues through the media and think tanks they control 4) Pack the courts with corporate lapdogs.
The result is a hereditary oligarchy that is cut off from regular Americans. Access to the American Dream is becoming nearly impossible for the poor and lower middle class; and just staying in the middle class is increasingly hard, re: student debt.
Unless we drastically reverse course, we will soon be ruled by a few "noble" families. Already, in 2016 half of all political contributions came from 158 families. And they REALLY don't like the poor.
22
When any adequate accounting is made, the folks who are the actual, reality-based "takers" and "breakers" constitute the over-class power elites, whose ideologies of infinite growth, sociopathic hostility to the less fortunate, rule by money over technical expertise, etc. are always on full display and easily deconstructed once one has the knowledge. That undeniable mega-fact in no way implies that ALL of those with huge amounts of wealth and influence are complicit in these anti-futurist attitudes and behaviors. Exactly the opposite. But, in general, the war on the poor is waged by the rich (with middle-class stooges as operatives), and these obviousities are utterly non-partisan, having nothing to do with underlying beliefs, values, etc. of any observant recorder. They just are as they are, regardless. Contrary to all of the usual suspects, there is an objective reality that transcends each and every subjectivity that has ever existed. That elephant that the nine blind men tried to interpret was REAL, and only ALL personal subjective perspectives are enfolded within and disclosed by the totality of the objectively real. All of those subjectivities are subject to the non-anthropocentric realities that operate without regard for politics or personal beliefs.
1
You cannot be champions for the war on poverty if you are fanatics to socialism for corporations.
What that means is that you (the tax payer) is subsidizing massively corporations to pay their workers minimum wages (and in some cases below that), with little to no benefits so that they can lock in the socialized profits at the top.
In a way, when republican Governors continue to slash all social benefits, then it forces people to be enslaved. They have to take any job that most likely will pay a minimum wage or below (even if they are invalid) to survive, feed their families and the like.
There are simple fixes (which I have commented on previously multiple times and will do so again) It all starts with a truly progressive tax system (where if you make more, then you pay more - not less) that contributes back to society. Then you implement a living wage ($22hr min) that raises tens of millions ABOVE the poverty line. Then you enact a Single Payer health care plan that reduces the costs to hundreds of millions for health care. Then you expand Social Security benefits, while eliminating the FICA cap. That lifts the elderly out of poverty.
It is just a matter of priorities for some, and greed for others.
3
We the People
of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
1
Harking back to the age of Puritanism is bizarre in this day and age. A major theme of the Bible has to do with giving succor to the poor and the infirm. I can't see what today's right wing politicians get out of causing suffering to a relatively large swath of the population. When Hayek and Mies argued over their new economics, I remember reading that Mies wanted to see a system that had certain benefits for the poor. Hayek won.
I really think that today's right wingers think it's OK to just let inferior persons silently disappear from our world as they are truly undeserving because of weak morals.
2
Since Reagan buddied up to the Evangelical leader Billy Graham, duping him to get the evangelical votes, Republicans have followed the lead by duping religious people, already trained to follow the leader, to vote for them with themes of anti-abortion and life while they fail to adhere to the benevolent teachings of Jesus to care for the poor. Religious people overwhelmingly believe in God as a creator of all, but the Republicans act as though they believe in Darwin's theory of evolution proclaiming the "Survival of the fittest".
The Preamble of our Constitution requires that the government assure the Welfare of the people. The Republicans seem adept at destroying social programs that assure the welfare of the people and additionally save lives. Are the Republicans the party of death?
Now we are faced with a super-monopoly Republican government, unconstitutional in itself, that may actually succeed in impoverishing, sickening, and killing many Americans by eviscerating the safety net.
We must vote them out, if not for ourselves or our countrymen, but to return to a balance of power within the meaning of our founders.
2
I disagree with you, Dr. K.
Ideology is too high-level a thought process for these folks. And notice the many other commenters pointing out how Republicans love government activism on their behalf. So it's not ideology.
Those who push pain on the poor are doing it because it makes them feel good. They love having power. As kids, they were the ones who squashed bugs for fun and shot sparrows and squirrels because it made them feel like gods.
Call them what they are: sociopaths.
They are not that many, but they are driving the agenda. A big part of how they got their influence is the inordinate amount of attention they receive for free from the media. They are the shiny show attracting the cameras. Admit it, NY Times, how often are such mean policy pushers headlined as "strong", as in "strong on..."?
Their fellow travelers (the comfortable go-alongs who may well rationalize hurtful policies on some more abstract theory about limiting government) are terrified of the crazies. But in the devil's bargain they make, they get their tax cuts. And what could be more fulfilling than that?
The whole lot of them are less worth understanding than just fighting. They are a basket of deplorables, to use a 2016 term. We need to make it disrespectable to associate with them.
I'd like to finish on a hopeful note, that maybe one day intellect could triumph over Id, and Republicans could advocate policy with enlightened decency toward society. Alas, I can't find that finish though.
3
Under these grave, deeply shocking and humiliating circumstances, the extreme urgency of this message elicits only love, for knowing it is out there, now, shining bright and incontestable.
To be more accurate the conservative politicians "hate the idea of government helping anyone" but the rich people , private enterprises and the 1% through the infamous "pork barrel policy".
21
I don't think that Republicans "... hate the idea of helping anyone." They love to help corporations and, as Mitt Romney reminded us awhile ago, corporations are people.
34
The single unifying ideology of the Republicans since 1978 (Prop. 13 in California) has been opposition to taxes. If taxes are the oppressive scourge of society (and of rich people in particular), then obviously programs for the poor have to be cut, and so do education, public safety, roads and bridges, and (wait for it) Social Security and Medicare. It's really not that complicated or hard to explain, even when white people are involved, as in Maine: what can be cut will be cut in order to provide lower taxes. The dilemma is that not even hard-core trumpsters want cuts in Social Security and Medicare, nor do people in the states really want the education cuts they've been getting. That leaves cutting the poor, the group with the least resistance.
This strategy has been successful for 40 years in putting Democrats on the defensive--who runs for office on a platform of "higher taxes"? In deep blue California, the Reps just recalled a Dem state senator who provided a key vote for a gas tax increase. Until the Democrats can change the discussion on taxes, the poor and the public sector will suffer.
6
The Republicans & their elite wealthy supporters want no one to be helped. That's pretty obvious.
But the question is, what's the end game here?
Do they believe that like magic, all people will be wealthier if they are just "unshackled" (as Rush Limbaugh used to say) from "big gov't"?
Or do they really think that letting the society become ultra unequal, on par w/Latin American nations, is simply the natural order of things & better for everyone than having an interventionist gov't?
I'm inclined to think they have the former belief for PUBLIC consumption, but the latter is what they ACTUALLY believe (and want).
But I think the election of Trump, though completely misguided, is serious evidence that the great majority of moderately conservative Americans are still hoping a big dose of supply-side economics will turn things around, & that we aren't heading for Latin-American style inequality.
At some point they'll have to realize this isn't true, but can you imagine them voting for Democrats & more of European-style system under ANY circumstances? I think widespread unrest & even chaos is more likely than that.
But even if our politics changed toward creating more of a social safety net & protection for workers, I can still imagine politicians trying to keep the very poor out of that system.
Because I think we Americans define ourselves by our work & our earnings, & we just can't respect people who aren't able to sustain themselves. It must always be THEIR own fault.
4
Less than a block from my house are a number of homeless people. This is a middle class neighborhood and on the corner they stand begging in traffic and sleeping in alleys. They must be the prisoners in the war on poverty. There used to be one or two. Now there are many, mostly men, but there is the occasional woman. One died in an alleyway a couple of years ago. Another one was murdered by another homeless person over a possession. Really, this was considered a nice place to live. Now I and my neighbors avert our eyes and stay away. Trump and the republicans are declaring victory and leaving, but I still have to live here.
2
Mr. Krugman says that the GOP political elites "hate the idea of government helping anyone." The evidence would show that is not so. They do everything they can to makes sure the government helps those who in turn give the elites money -- through donations, other support, or employment post-government. That is not ideology, although it might be packaged as such. It is self-serving corruption.
11
I find it interesting, being an outsider, that the old anti-state argument still seems to fly even when it is against the majority's interest and at odds with the very foundation of a country. The USA are a democracy. That means the state is not some colonial slave owner wanting to squeeze all they can get out of the population, it means the state is all of you. "State" is not something that smothers and displaces society, it is the way society works and turns its ideas about itself into a reality. So any kind of system that supports the less fortunate using, in effect, resources and work of those able to contribute them is just society helping its poorest and sickest members. Surely that is a worthy and civilized goal to pursue. The only people who should be against this are those who have much to lose should everybody be asked to contribute a fair share and those who are absolutely sure that they will never depend on such a system because there is literally nothing they cannot buy and pay for themselves. Guess who they are, guess how many and which papers and TV stations are owned by them and guess what they think of those too poor to afford a comfortable living and health care. Do you really want to join in crying "starve the beast" and die of poverty or poorly treated sicknesses to make them richer? Things by the way, that can be easily cured or alleviated if everyone adds a little money to pay for a social system? It's a con, and people keep falling for it.
5
The "logic" Krugman lays out in his first three paragraphs is the mirror image of that used for years with the War on Drugs.
Variation 1: Drug use is up! We are losing the War on Drugs! We must increase spending and resources for law enforcement and overseas interdiction efforts!
Variation 2: Drug use is down! We are winning the War on Drugs! We must increase spending and resources for law enforcement and overseas interdiction efforts!
It's not that they don't live in the real world. It's that they only have one goal in mind, and no matter what the evidence is, it justifies whatever they wanted to do in the first place.
3
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
That about sums it up.
24
The MAKERS are the ones laboring on the factory floor and growing, harvesting and preparing our food. The TAKERS are the ones who had money to begin with and who reap an increasingly large profit off the labor of the makers. Post WWII the MAKERS had strong unions to help them negotiate fair wages and working conditions. Those WORKING CLASS MAKERS were able to own a modest home and look forward to a decent pension when they retired. Since the presidency of St. Ronnie the TAKERS have focused on moving production to non-union areas. As a result our MAKERS have become the WORKING POOR barely able to scrape by.
23
Paul points out that the GOP elite hate to spend money on the poor. In fact, they hate to spend money on any social need - roads, education, research, child & elder care, the environment, etc. The basis for this niggardliness is the image of the self-made man whose position in society is indicative of their godliness. And these remarkable individuals had no need for society or its organization to arrive where they are, although they do find hobnobbing with other similarly stationed individuals helps cement their control of their status, and verifies their self approval.
It’s all part of the inequality of society. As it happens, a functional democracy is not intended to support this stratification, which is why the GOP cheerfully supports Trump’s destruction of its institutions. Including of course those related to the general welfare, including folks who aren’t among the 1/4%.
Support of Trump is not a new or different goal, but he is moving things along more rapidly, another blessing for the already so blessed..
6
@John Brews ✅✅ But these same folks who don't want to spend $$$ on the needy and cut social programs, gladly take their own Social Security and Medicare. They are impossible hypocrites.
We need to emphasize our fundamentals. One is that the Constitution — that conservatives wrap themselves in — created our government. It has a Preamble setting forth its purposes. One of those purposes is promoting the - wait for it — general welfare. When our elected representatives act to provide for the needy or sick, that is the action of our government doing its job. Between expert gerrymandering and the Electoral College, the minority has found an opening and they are driving a truck through it. The welfare of the rich is trumping general welfare, and borrowing from our grandchildren to do so. But maybe for the last time.
10
As each day passes the GOP pays less heed to the needs of the poor and middle class. We have a President whose perception of the truth changes depending on how his veracity is questioned. He knew nothing about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels until Giuliani stated that he did. Then, he suddenly remembered the payment. His supporters aren't particularly interested in whether the man is truthful or not. What truly bothers me the costs and loss of life associated with our Mideast military actions, I recently came across an article published by the Watson Institute, Int'l and Public Affairs, Brown University titled, "Costs of War." The article states, "The United States federal government has spent or obligated 4.8 trillion dollars on the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. This figure includes: direct Congressional war appropriations; war-related increases to the Pentagon base budget; veterans care and disability; increases in the homeland security budget; interest payments on direct war borrowing; foreign assistance spending; and estimated future obligations for veterans’ care." I was astounded by the accumulated and projected costs. This money could be used for the health education and welfare of needy citizens: for infrastructure, medical and scientific R&D, to fund NASA's exploration of our solar system. We have no plan to extricate our forces from the war in Afghanistan. Even more disappointing is the open ended support Trump has pledged. And, to what end?
18
Sometimes wealthy people claim that the rich are hated by the jealous poor, but obviously, it's the other way around. Paying taxes is fine if the money goes to military might, but there's a resentment about one's hard-earned (or inherited, or stock-generated) money being handed out to strangers who are homeless or sick or hungry. It always strikes me as peculiar that so many people who piously call themselves Christians don't realize how far their Republican conservative "values" are from the New Testament.
19
I used to share this point of view until I went to work in inner city public schools a decade ago, working with the most profoundly poor among us. What you realize on the ground is that no one, not Republican nor Democrat, truly cares about helping poor people. A lot of rhetoric and data about poverty is flung about by media and elected officials, but at the end of the day any real help comes from nonprofits, religious organizations and a few local corporations with a civic conscience. Both political parties serve the wealthiest Americans, neither plays any role whatsoever in improving the daily lives of this country's poor at this moment in time.
30
@Peter Murray
To your poiunt. We had eight years of Barack Obama, a black man who was a community activist on the South Side of Chicago. A very black area that is basically a case study in the effectiveness of our welfare policies. Yes I know about obstructionist Republican majority Congress. But over those eight years did things get any better?
No.
Was that community's automatic Democratic vote totally taken for granted?
Yes.
"Do these people ever get out into the real world?"
Yeah I am sure Paul Krugman, Princeton prof, is hobnobbing in poor neighborhoods. Give me a break.
I live in a city that is very mixed in close quarters. Its firmly convinced me that welfare needs to be drastically slashed and tied to work requirements. It helps nobody - all it does is destroy the human spirit. Just like FDR said it would.
2
It always helps your case to note that a person whom you wish to criticize is a college professor. The cheap shot is a sure winner. But what do you really know about Krugman and his background? Very little, I would imagine. At the same time, he lives in New York, perhaps the most diverse city in the nation. You parrot the conservative pieties about public assistance and the people who depend on it, which only indicates that you are not listening to Krugman. You pay no attention to the copious data that he regularly cites in support of what he asserts about the plight of the working poor. Nearly everyone is working these days, but just working hard is not always enough to live like a human being here in the richest country on earth. Be grateful that whatever work you do takes care of your needs and lay off those who, no matter how hard they work, cannot make what they need.
2
@Dave Direct cash payments to the Poor -- welfare -- ended decades ago.
2
@Dave ah yes, the human spirit. Nothing like working three minimum wage, part time jobs, none with benefits, to enhance one's "spirit".
1
"What about the traditional answer that it’s really about race? Social programs have often been seen as helping Those People, not white Americans. And that’s still surely part of what’s going on."
Mr. Krugman,
It is disheartening that the above explanation you provided merited such little mention. Racism has played an enormous if not primary role in providing social programs since I can remember in my lifetime of over 60 years. The example of white majority Maine and a few other states are anomalies.
Please don't diminish racism as merely a "part of what's going on." Historically it has been and is still code for Republicans to cut social programs for people of color. The stigma of welfare recipients as Black and Hispanic has not changed in decades.
5
It's not just programs that help the poor, it is all Government the Republicans are disinterested in. The EPA, Centers for Disease Control, eve the "Sacred" VA have been variously targeted for cuts and "reforms" that will result in less services. ell off the Public lands and National Monuments for pennies on the dollar for Mining and Ranching, their donor class has the resources to outbid anyone else, if the fix is not already in.
As for the EPA and the Clean Water Act, something to consider is we ALL live downstream of someone else. See Flint, Michigan for our future.
The American Public is merely a resource to be exploited until it is used up, just like any other natural "resource" according to the GOP Donor Class ideology.
22
I recently passed thru Everett where the US has the worst traffic in the country and I astonished to see hundreds of men older than myself or just looking more worn out than myself all over the downtown area. A grocery store I stopped in wouldn't give me the pass code for their bathrooms, they went and opened the door for me. When I protested they said they "weren't allowed". I replied that I didn't want their code, I was not stopping in Everett again!
I looked for work for ten years after the republicans ruined my business supplying live marine snails (the one that received a memory from another snail recently) and purple sea urchins to biomedical researchers. I even got a certificate for GIS to go along with my biology degree but I was told I was "too old" when I got an interview, which was rare.
I'm now making jewelry and I continue to do mapping but after Trump was elected there was no point in bothering anymore. The jewelry is taking a long time but I'm developing my own designs of marine organisms and charismatic fauna. Exclusivity is the theme as well. They'll be limited then I'll change designs. I need better tools too but since I was helped by a local recently my life has very much improved and I have a chance.
Those poor derelicts I see living in rest stops, being wheeled to the bathrooms by their family, and eking out their lives on the streets - I worry about them. Society has pulled a great switch on them and they're basically told to move along, move along.
12
@lightscientist66, Society has pulled a switch on all of us except those who are rich via an inheritance or by being born into the right family. As you well know, losing a job after the age of 50 is death sentence when it comes to finding another decent job unless you get very, very lucky.
Things changed in the 1980s when Saint Ronnie was in office. It became fashionable not to spend money on roads, on airports, on public places, on 99% of Americans. We learned about a new species of American called welfare queens. Notice how it was women who were demonized, not the men. And then we learned that it was morning in America. For most of us it's been a cycle of constant mourning in America.
Lose a job, run through your unemployment benefits, run through your savings, lose your home, become hopelessly poor, lose your health. That's the cycle in America today. You can stave it off for awhile but as long as businesses are not held accountable for their part in breaking the social contract things will never change for the better. It's inevitable that we get experience and get older. What should not be inevitable is being told that we're useless when we can still work. If that is the case, that being over 50 is the new old when it comes to being employable, the retirement age ought to be lowered so fewer of us have to go through our savings before we're eligible for social security.
8
The government should not help the poor because the poor, by definition, are undeserving of help. This idea has been around for a long time.
The great English historian, R.H. Tawney, in his magisterial work, “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" (1926), tells us that by the mid 1600’s, most English Puritans saw in poverty "not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion ... but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will.”
This ideal of individual morality, derived from Calvin, has been with us ever since. But it has surfaced with renewed zeal in our time, with men like the Koch bothers, Robert Mercer, Art Pope and Sheldon Adelson determined to spend whatever it takes to replace democracy as we know it—a leveling force—with a fascistic, plutocratic model of government.
For these billionaires, however, religion is not the motivator. Rather, it's how they see themselves, their self image, that drives their lust for power, their need to dominate. They are the "makers," deserving, while the rest of us are "takers," undeserving and cadging off their efforts. Identity politics isn’t just for Democrats anymore.
For a penetrating interpretation, see George Monbiot’s short but defining piece in The Guardian: http://tinyurl.com/p5dg6b5
9
@Ron Cohen
Identity politics have always been a republican thing since Nixon. They have been using dog whistles for white americans that 'others' are stealing from them.
It is why when people think of the poor, people of color are seen, not whites.
1
The day laborers on the local corner banded together and shocked me when they demanded $20/hour for day labor. They appeared to enforce it among themselves.
Maybe we need more collective action among workers. Of course, that doesn't really address the non-working poor (those who can't through health or disability), but it could help those who work at low-wage jobs.
6
@Ned Roberts
If they get strong enough, just like the unions before them, they will be destroyed.
Organizing is seen as an evil, akin to communism.
2
Real facts about the GOP's political philosophy:
Repeating what hen3ry said: Handouts to billionaires and corporations (and white, armed Western ranchers) are okay. The problem is not takers as such.
Repeating what at least one commenter has said: The poor don't deserve help; if they did, they wouldn't be poor.
Krugman's conclusion needs at least those two amendments. A third amendment is that it is okay to spend lots of money on the police and military, as long as the surviving middle class pays for it.
11
I think it is about the money. Some of their donors simply want to cut their taxes by not paying for programs that help the poor; some want to make money off the poor (payday lenders); and some make money by keeping them poor (our low-wage employers). My research shows that half of family poverty in the U.S. is caused by wage suppression in our concentrated low-wage labor markets (https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/jRAXtIMQiXH6aRdjgmdw/full).
15
@Dave Lyon To the Harvard MBA's and their business plans "employees" are not human beings. They are overhead, an amorphous "it" that must always be reduced.
1
To put it very simply, ever since Reagan's days, trickle down economics has been exactly the opposite - trickle up.
29
Krugman writes:
"Their political identities, not to mention their careers, are wrapped up in the notion that more government is always bad. "
Actually, they are probably wrapped up in the truism that "more government always cost more money."
With public employee pension costs- funded and unfunded- responsible for a growing percentage of state expenditures, state officials are forced to look for cost-cutting measures wherever they can find them. Work requirements for public assistance are one such attempt at cutting costs.
4
@JB: Anything other than taxing rich people.
30
@JB So is education. Yet the sanctimonious GOP insists that if people want to earn a wage that allows them to support themselves without public assistance, they should get an education, which will lead to a better job. You don't need a college degree to see the problem here.
2
@JB This is as lame an excuse for the "war on the poor" as I've seen. We've got a wealth gap that is poised to end life in America as we've known it. Cutting costs? Read anything by David kay Johnston.
3
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
284
@david That was a quote from 50 years ago. Now we’re on a search on how to keep America for Americans and the country our forefathers envisioned.
Poor and lower class Americans are Americans.
Galbraith was not addressing immigration but the opposition of conservatives to programs to help the less well to do.
The question of immigration is entirely a separate discussion.
Conservatives oppose programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid , TANF SNAP because these programs reduce the wealth of the rich.
Of course when the banks were bailed out and Wall Street sleazes who helped cause the financial crisis were paid exorbitant bonuses with tax payer money, that was different.
"...they oppose programs that help the poor partly out of a general hostility toward “takers,” but also because they hate the idea of government helping anyone." No, there you are wrong Paul. The GOP loves the idea of helping out huge corporations and the extremely rich with multiple tax breaks on the theory, constantly proven to be wrong, that such breaks will encourage corporations to create jobs in America, bring money back to America, and invest in America. They have the further mistaken idea that the rich are job creators as if it's incumbent upon a Bill Gates or a Michael Bloomberg to hire more people than they need. Then there's the racism and prejudice that the GOP constantly whips up when they insist, despite evidence to the contrary, that all poor people, all unemployed people, all handicapped people, all sick people, in fact most of us, are abusing the system. The GOP abuses the system far more than any other party or person.
It's time for the Democrats to stop letting the GOP get away with the lies they repeat about unemployment, Medicare and Medicaid, the value of tax breaks for the country, and how unfair it is to expect the rich to pay their fair share. Every tax break is another cut in a social program that helps people, a loss of funds for research, less spent on the infrastructure, less for education. And every outsourced job is one less job for an unemployed, skilled American. Schumer and Pelosi should be shouting this from the rooftops.
26
@hen3ry
They haven't and won't. It's the price of feeding from the same trough as one's opponents, and the true meaning of triangulation. Democrats need to choose who they represent, us or the oligarchy. The days of doing both are over.
---
https://www.rimaregas.com/2017/09/04/triangulation-when-neoliberalism-is...
13
Rima Regas, I know they won't. But I feel compelled to say that this is what the Democrats ought to be doing. They can't keep on serving two masters. Someone has to be offended and it shouldn't be the average American who can't fight back.
7
@hen3ry
I wrote, quite often, that Hillary's loss was a voter revolt. I still get comments to the effect that pointing out what seemed obvious is denigration. But the 2016 election was our generation's last hope at climbing back into some semblance of middle class. American voters have been passive-aggressive when left with no choice.
Incrememtalism remained on the table in spite of the warning signs. Here we are now.
Silent Revolt
https://www.rimaregas.com/2016/11/27/silent-class-revolt-most-democrats-...
Okay...I am at a loss. I have lived in Africa for 5 years, and I recently came back from a trip to Portland Oregon. The poor in the US are far wealthier, and have far more support than the poor in African countries. However, there is no denying that the poor I walked around, stepped over, and ignored are living a truly wretched life. So are the policy proclamations of the rabid right-wing always self-interested?--probably. But as my mother always said, a broken clock tells the right time twice a day. In other words, would some of the poor not be better off with a correctly structured nudge towards work? I think so. The challenge lies in identifying who these people who could benefit from such a nudge might be.
7
@PJM
Part of Krugman's point, with examples, is that Republicans do NOT favor "a correctly structured nudge towards work" for the minority of the poor able to work at all. Most of the poor are either children or elderly. Millions of those who are not are physically disabled, mentally ill, needed caretakers of other family members, or with other problems that would keep them from working. Republican plans, as Krugman points out, are designed to deny help to those who cannot work.
21
@PJM, How many of those poor you walked around or stepped over were gainfully employed before the GW Bush recessions #1 (2001) and #2 (2008)? That would be an interesting statistic to see. I bet Krugman probably knows it.
13
@PJM,
Comparing "the poor" in the US with "the poor" in other countries is a disservice to both.
"Poor" is a relative quality, as is "rich." Furthermore, what the "poor" don't have or, indeed, what the "poor" have must be judged in terms based on the reality they live in.
I've spent most of my long life living in a "not so poor -- but in no way rich" country and I've worked in a bunch of places that were much worse off (e.g. in the World Bank's calculations) than my home country.
See each country as what it really is; then put some work into understanding what "poor", "haves", "have-nots" or "have-naughts" and those terms antonyms all mean in concrete detail.
Then propose what might "be good for the poor."
3
Having millions of people on the brink of starvation and eviction is a great recruiting tool for crime. One career criminal has the social cost of several idle people.
To say the current political discourse lacks nuance is an understatement, but transfer payments are not the same as other public spending. A well-designed system of transfer payments made universally available (not restricted to "citizens") could actually reduce the need for other more questionably effective public spending.
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This is not just a war on the poor. It is a war on children and the middle class: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/health/medicaid-basic-facts.html . From that essay:
■ Nearly one in five Americans, 74 million people, are on Medicaid.
■ Federal law guarantees Medicaid coverage to pregnant women, children, elderly and disabled people under certain income levels.
■ It covers more than a third of the nation’s children and pays for half of all births.
■ It also covers almost two-thirds of nursing home residents, including many who are middle class and spent of all their savings on care before becoming eligible.
■ States also have the option of covering other groups, like children and pregnant women whose household incomes are higher than the federal thresholds, or young adults up to age 26 who were once in foster care.
■ The Affordable Care Act allowed a new optional group: any adults with income up to 138 percent of the poverty level, which would be $16,643 for an individual this year. Thirty-one states now offer Medicaid to this group.
What a bunch of humanitarians we have in the Republican leadership and their fan base.
I am not religious, but my reaction verges on biblical: ""Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." The problem with much of the Republican leadership: they know exactly what they are doing.
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@JSK: I don't think you realize how terrifying it is that 20% (!!!) of the nation is on Medicaid, which is WELFARE (not health insurance). That is unsustainable! until that is addressed, you cannot be surprised that the other 80% of terrified of this is lifetime, drowning burden.
BTW: of those 50% of all births on Medicaid (!!!)....half of those or 25% of the total, are to ILLEGAL ALIENS! which reflects the enormity of the problem of illegal immigration and why all illegals MUST be deported.
Dude, you are just making our arguments FOR US.
And that is why the GOP doesn't hold Trump accountable. De-funding programs that help the poor and seniors and students and the infrastructure pays for tax cuts don't ya know.
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I have worked for over 40 years for an agency that administers benefits based on need. I have worked in NYC and upstate. The vast majority of poor recipients are white. I stand behind them in supermarket lines as well or when they pick up their prescriptions.
The difference between the rich who have broken labor unions and lowered the standard of living of millions, and the deplorables is this: race.
The rich are punishing the rest of us for the success of the New Deal and the greatest middle class growth the world ever saw after WWII. Widespread prosperity came from tying work to shared wealth. It worked, except the rich always fret about "their" money. They are at last going after Social Security and Medicare, but the path is through casting welfare as a minority privilege whites who are steadily doing worse have to pay for. It started with Nixon's silent majorities and passed through Reagan's Cadillac welfare queen. Coded but clear.
So we are divided by design. The government cast as the source of all evil, and those who are rich and oppose government intrusion into their libertarian paradise have made their financial corruption of politics but another reason to distrust and hate it. But race was the critical means to get whites losing good pay, benefits and pensions to pair dark skins with failed government. And now those voters will undo the last vestiges of the New Deal that solved so much poverty and once supported the greatest middle class the world has ever known.
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@Tom The vast recepients of benefits are white upstate because upstate the majority of people are white. The percentage of whites who get benefits to the perventage of blacks and hispanics in the rest of NY and the rest of this country shows that a greater percentage of blacks and hispanics receive benefits.
@Tom
Excellent comment. Race, America's original sin, the gift that keeps on giving...to the rich.
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As I have said many times previously, the GOP has to cut every bit of spending that they can get away with. Their tax cut was desgned to cause massive debt, that has to be paid for. And that is to make government smaller
The poor are the easiest target to begin with is the poor,they have the least resources to use to fight back with. But there is more coming, that is why they have labled SS and Medicare entitlements. Other public projects are sure to come. Transportation, parks, libraries, and more. Republicans hate public works, not enough profits.
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@David Underwood: but we ALREADY had massive debt under Obama, who more than doubled the national debt.
It's important to point out what works when discussing poverty, and one globally-proven template breaks the cycle: the simple but effective Familia Bolsa program, first organized in Brasil. Familia Bolsa moved millions into the middle class, earning enough to buy a car, pay rent, and eat. Its success comes through its focus on children's education, since education breaks the poverty cycle.
Cash payments are issued to families whose children are meeting their educational goals, along with attending supplemental services for healthcare. The program places a high esteem on children's educational performance and removes a lot of the roadblocks and temptations that limited study time or stunted performance.
The families accommodate the new priority, education, internalize it, and break the generational cycle, so that ending poverty contributes to prosperity!
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@Walter Rhett
This type of philosophy is anathema to the Anglo-Saxon culture or, if you will, a particular view, informed by protestant sects, that the poor must earn their way back from somewhere and that aid cannot be given unconditionally. This is inculcated at birth. The redder the state, the deeper the inculcation, no matter how poor the inculcated are.
Alongside that, there are other things certain people are taught from birth, creating a culture of hostility and competition among compatriots in our nation. Man against woman, white against Black and brown, rich against poor, etc.
This culture we have ourselves convinced is right is what keeps us away from progress, by politicians who very deftly and cynically use these tactics to achieve power.
How many billions does a billionaire need to extract from the rest of us? How many tax cuts do corporations need in order to thrive? How much profit is enough?
It used to be that corporate executives saw their enterprises equally as a part of the community as the people they worked with. All that changed in the year of my birth, with a book that Milton Friedman wrote. It has become the Koch Brothers' and other oligarchs' bible to taking over America.
===
From Milton Friedman to Ronald Dworkin: Economics for Hedgehogs
https://www.rimaregas.com/2015/09/25/from-milton-friedman-to-ronald-dwor...
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@Walter Rhett Walter, Another comment from Alabama above you mentions that the GOP platform basically adopted the John Birch Society agenda and the common good is not in their agenda. John Birchers are character-disordered, selfish, racist, extreme right-wing, and very, very determined. They do not want an educated citizenry. Know thy enemy.
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Over the past 35 years the Republican party has increasingly represented an extreme faction of the far right. That faction wants there to be as little government as possible. They have a variety of motives -- tiny government cannot impose environmental laws, cannot support worker or consumer rights, cannot spend money and cannot do much of anything. The tiny government faction are often involved in the energy business, they pollute, they treat workers and consumers unfairly and generally want to stop any possibility of police actions. For them, government represents an unwelcome challenge to their hegemony.
Also, the tiny government folks want to keep their tax bills to nil or as low as possible. To the extent that government spends money on education, infrastructure, medical care, research or other pursuits, the tiny government folks -- who are often very wealthy and/or represent the interests of large corporations -- realize that they would have to help pay the costs. So, ditch government spending, they say, it will save us a fortune.
Professor Krugman is correct in pointing out that there is open hostility towards the poor. First, it helps the monied elites to blame someone (i.e. it is the poor who are fault). Second, the monied elites have a long history of exploiting the very poor to their own ends -- maintaining control of the economy with a steady supply of inexpensive labor.
This has been going on since slavery and continues to today.
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Paul continues to flog the canard that Republican governors refuse to expand Medicaid despite it costing them little given the feds’ commitment to pay for most of the expansion; and, therefore, that it must be that they’re meanies at heart, or racists, or otherwise icky. The truth is that 26 states originally refused to expand Medicaid under Obama because they considered it likely that a Republican Congress eventually would block-grant Medicaid funding to the states, effectively putting a cap on what the feds would spend; and that this would leave states holding the bag with their voters when the states would be forced to cut benefits and even cap enrollment for want of funding.
Some laughed at this. I mean, whoever could imagine an undivided Republican Congress with a Republican president, which would be required to block-grant Medicaid. Ahem.
Last year and this we saw serious efforts, which may yet succeed, to do just that: block-grant Medicaid to the states. If this happens, the overwhelmingly blue states that accepted the expansion are going to get hosed at the polls by their constituencies when they will need to be told the bad news. Republican governors and legislatures would be affected too, but by a fraction of the impact.
Yet today it’s all about portraying the opponent as icky. There was once a time when Democrats sought to convince by better arguments – you remember, that was back in the day, when Democrats were competitive and their voices actually mattered.
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So Democrats are going to be in trouble because they might have to take away benefits / assistance from the poor at some point in the future, whereas the Republicans are the good guys because they never gave the needy any help to begin with. Got it.
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mlwarren54:
Those who suffer electorally from backtracking on an entitlement are those in power most locally on the ground when it happens. Doesn't matter that they may have had nothing to do with the backtracking.
@Richard Luettgen
I think the logic is quite clear, ML, I don’t see why you don’t understand.
1. I pass a law saying mlwarren54 should receive one million dollars a year for life.
2. My opponents pass a law saying mlwarren54 should be waterboarded every day for life.
3. Then, if I am re-elected over my opponent, aren’t I responsible for mlwarren54 being waterboarded every day for life?
See “Iain McGilchrist, “The Master and His Emissary” if you don’t undersatnd this logic. There’s an RSA Animate video that presents the logic quite succinctly.
If you watch it, you won’t need to read any more of Richard’s posts, because they’re all variations on one theme (though not Goldberg variations)
I believe the reason for their war on the poor is that keeping people poor makes them desperate to work for minimal (or minimum) wages. If healthcare is tied to work, then for people to get healthcare, they will need a job and in so doing generate a profit for the 1% "haves." If you don't make a profit for someone else, you don't get healthcare.
Recall that the donor class rules the Republican party, and "it is hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." (Upton Sinclair)
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@Ralph Bouquet Right, Trump and the Repugnicans say rich corporations are the "job creators."
They don't seem to realize that workers are the profit creators.
America always has despised labor and idolized rich plantation owners, like the Founding Fathers and the Southern slave holders.
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@Ralph Bouquet
The donor class rules BOTH political parties, not just the Republicans. This is why it is like pulling teeth to get Democrats to go out on a limb and actually support Medicare for all. This could easily have been done in 2009. But Democrats punted.
Democrats that are concerned for the welfare of the poor should be asking themselves one question: Why did Obama and the Democratic party punt on single-payer health care when they had the political wind at their backs in 2009. If they hadn't, we wouldn't be having this discussion today.
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The GOP won't say so out loud, but their core belief is that poor people deserve poverty because they are lesser people than the rich.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan made the unrestrained pursuit of wealth a good thing - remember "greed is good"? From 1978 to 2014, CEOs' inflation-adjusted compensation rose by 997 percent, compared to 11 percent for their employees.
To justify their support for such obscene wealth, Republicans have convinced themselves that wealth is hard-earned and well deserved. The rich are rich because they made good choices, and they made good choices because they are better, more responsible people.
The necessary moral converse of this proposition is that poverty is also earned and deserved: the poor are poor because they make bad choices. Being born to yesterday's poor was not the cause of the poverty of today's poor, nor was ineligibility for health care, nor was being educated in the worst-funded schools, nor was lead-tainted paint or lead-poisoned water, nor was being zoned into environmentally hazardous neighborhoods, nor was racial discrimination - nothing that government could fix had any role in the creation of poverty. Poverty comes solely from a lack of individual responsibility or morality.
If the rich deserve their wealth and the poor deserve their poverty, it is not the role of government to mitigate either great wealth or great poverty. That is what the GOP war on the poor is all about.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
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I don’t usually upvote people who advertise their blogs here, but this was a good comment.
What I see happening is that the rich are driver purely by greed and noblesse oblige is thrown out the window. Someone at Ars Technica referred to this essay https://medium.com/s/futurehuman/survival-of-the-richest-9ef6cddd0cc1 which harkens to the movie “Elysium”.
That the wealthiest among us have lost so much of their humanity that they don’t know how to inspire loyalty in their guards is very scary. The rich don’t see any value in schools, because only their kids need education, in infrastructure, because they can fly over or around anything broken, in healthcare, because only they deserve healthcare, in people, because there are billions outside of the US to exploit.
Will we see another French Revolution in these modern times or is it already too late?
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@Ecce Homo,
You missed a detail:
In 1956 "they" (guess who) decided to put the Divine Name on US money, in direct contradiction of the commandment against using the Divine Name for frivolous, selfish, vain purposes.
Is Trump-Putin a surprise?
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@Ecce Homo
"The GOP won't say so out loud..."
Translation: I'm gonna slay more strawmen than socialists starve children.
The GOP, in modern times, always waged war on the poor in one form or another. Going back, just to the 1980s, Reagan found himself a new mythical villain to wage war against: the Welfare Queen. A few more villains were added along the way, to drive a wedge between groups of Americans. After Reagan, Clinton added the TANF work requirements and they proved to be a disaster that lives on to this very day. Americans have been indoctrinated in the idea that poor means lazy and if poor is already at work, then there is something else wrong if he cannot sustain himself. The notion that the game might be rigged never gets a mention.
Fast forward to the Great Recession and the recovery we've had since. Millions were out of work, kept from disaster by extending long term unemployment benefits. The GOP, almost as soon as it too control of the House, through Paul Ryan, tried desperately to kill off long-term UI. They finally got Democrats to triangulate away UI in December 2013 in exchange for a budget, way too early for millions of workers in their mid-to late 40's and older. While the economy was improving, it still bypasses many of those who lost out on careers because of the recession. Many are still out there, waiting for jobs they'll never again be given because Americans don't like losers and they don't like older workers and don't want to pay them.a fair wage
It's really America's war on itself.
---
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2Jr
https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2Jrhttps://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2Jr
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I hope that if we are able to pull back from this oligarchy we are now under, we look back to the days of FDR and then retrace our steps through all of the machinations and shenanigans this nation's rich people dreamed up to undo the New Deal. On the other side of that, I hope that those of us on the left will finally learn that some sayings are 100% true. Power corrupts absolutely is 100% true.
Money in politics is what got us here. Removing money from politics is what will keep our children and their children's generations from staying in the sunken place we are now in.
Democrats need to learn to work with their voters. Better take the $27 average donation Bernie Sanders got from his supporters all throughout his campaign, than to be in the debt of corporate masters.
Democrats had better learn that catering to its voters, in the end, is what will keep them in power. Not some fake nonsense duty to "e pluribus unum" and bipartisanship with a party that has no interest in the common good.
We need better leadership than we have. E pluribus unum doesn't mean being bipartisan with a party full of traitors. It's time for Democrats to go on the offensive, call Trump and the GOP traitors. Demand states go to paper ballots and just wait for November.
https://www.rimaregas.com/2018/05/24/what-e-pluribus-unum-doesnt-mean-on...
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Today, Donald Trump took off his mask and showed the world just how meek he can be when kompromat is dangled above him. The spectacle of Trump and Putin's press conference is the stuff history books will warn future generations about.
A couple of hours after the conference, various GOP leaders began to distance themselves from Trump by affirming their view that Russia isn't our friend. Nancy Pelosi tweeted her commentary. Chuck Schumer gave a speech and then took questions. Neither Democrat was willing to finally call Trump by his rightful name: traitor. Schumer said he was leaving it to others to describe Trump.
Schumer is the leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate. It's his job to lead. That includes saying what needs to be said.
He failed again today. At what point can the left unite on the obvious?
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@Rima Regas
The left will unite when they (we) see that chasing rainbows isn't going to get our candidates elected. Sometimes the moderate is more pragmatic than the desired progressive; we all have to be in it to win it. Use our strength to attack the traitor, not the person who likes Bernie Sanders. We have to learn to love us all.
It is important to remember that most recipients of social benefit programs are the disadvantaged- women, children, minorities, and the disabled. Those who threaten the programs, the wealthy of both political parties, are those who cannot imagine themselves or their children ever falling into those categories.
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Republicans are not always opposed to government programs that distribute funds and benefits to some of their constituents. They uniformly support corporate welfare. Tax cuts for businesses and wealthy individuals. Government contracts for the military and to privatize veterans healthcare, prisons, education, and any other government function. Republicans resent spending money for poor people that could be given to rich people instead!
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@MEM
I'm against corporate welfare, but tax cuts - which means keeping more of the money a person or company EARNS - is not welfare. I don't share your view that the government owns the money, apparently.
1
@Dave,
It says "Federal Reserve Note United States of America" right on the dollar bills,which have the signature of the Secretary of the Treasury on them.
@MEM .. support for the poor is spent locally. Stays in the USA. Gifts to the rich are invested in CHINA and taxes are never collected
2
Wavering Republicans need to look at what's happening to the kids at the southern border, and ask themselves if their mistreatment was an aberration by the people in charge, or whether it came naturally to people whose default position is to keep the downtrodden of our own country downtrodden.
28
"Wavering Republicans?" They all voted for tax cuts, healthcare cuts, etc. Don't see much wavering.
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Ralph, if you're talking about elected officials, I agree. But I wasn't. I was referring to the electorate as a whole - I have to believe that plenty of them are wavering.
7
@mancuroc,
Judging by my conversations with men who are "out" in voting Republican, they're abloodthirsty, and cruel bunch (the only ex-Republicans I've spoken to have all been women, and they made the switch a decade or more ago).
Maybe in areas where peer pressure makes people vote for Republicans it isn't true, but the only evidence I see for "plenty of wavering" is that it's a big country, so m there must be some out there, but I wouldn't hold my breath, as I don't think after showing how they govern for so long many more will shake out.
Their elected representatives do represent the cruelty of their voters, and trying to convince them not to be cruel is time wasted that could be spent on getting anti-Republicans to the polls.
So many low paying jobs only accept applications online. Others, even to work in a pizza joint, require resumes. How is someone who either does not have access to, or the knowledge of, computers accomplish this. I know, it happened to me.
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You very probably can get free help with a resume and equipment on which to compose it/communicate with potential employers at your public library.
1
@Liz C - If you live someplace where there is a computer-equipped public library open at times when you are able to get there. Libraries have been closed or their hours cut way down in many places.
@Holly Shane Libraries have computers.
The war on poor people is largely being waged by the obscenely rich people in charge of this country, not just those nasty old bad Republicans functioning as "bad cop" to the centrist Democrats' posturing "good cop." It takes two to tango, although the Trump Cult is so bad it makes those centrists hankering to "trim" our social programs look downright progressive in comparison.
We don't have Medicare for All (yet) not only because of Paul Ryan and the Randians, but because even "liberal" donors don't want to be taxed for it.
The very definition of American poverty is flawed. Under the "official" standard, about 12.5% of us are "poor" - a family of four with an income of below $24,000, to be exact. But the accurate metric, the S
37
@Karen Garcia
oops, I thought this truncated comment had just disappeared like magic, so I must have pressed "submit" before I wuz done. Sorry about that! I've since posted a more coherent (I hope) entry.
4
@Karen Garcia - Medicare for all would be a lot less expensie then what we pay now for private insurance.
6
I think you pressed the submit button too early. But I like what you have said so far.
1
The spectacle of afflicting the afflicted, in order to pass out the Trump Tower Tax Cut to make the comfortable yet more comfortable is a stomach-turning abandonment that counters virtually everything this country has worked towards over the past 7-8 decades.
But it's who the GOP'ers are.
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@R. Law Republicans are waging war on the poor because they see them as the losers who deserve what they get. In a capitalistic society we all compete and some do well and others fail. The Republican winners want to keep what they have won and expand on it. The easiest way to do it is to eliminate all government aid that goes to the poor, the "losers," and use those tax dollars instead to benefit them, the "winners." This is justified by what Rush Limbaugh once said: "who said life was fair?"
Of course this philosophy is virulently anti-Christian even though many Republicans like to think of their party as the party of family values. And do you think that the winners have any trouble stepping over the homeless sleeping on the streets of America? They don't even see them. They have learned to look through them. They had better hope that Karma doesn't catch up with them someday.
2
@R. Law
Republicans misrepresent the decline of poverty. They falsely claim that the measure of success is to eliminate it.
The honest measure of success: we can decrease poverty, but not likely eliminate it.
When we have a major crash, we invest to repair and rebuild, like after a major hurricane. It’s the same after a crash in the economy.
A crash in the economy causes tax revenues to crash, which explodes debt. The fastest way to get back to normal growth and normal debt-to-GPD ratio is to invest in recovery of the economy as fast as possible. Economists have shown that failing to do that causes losses and huge opportunity costs – jobs, houses, savings, families, communities, careers and educations lost.
The 1929 crash caused huge losses. FDR successfully rebuilt (even with conservative opposition, e.g. 1937). The New Deal saved a population that was then ready to fight WWII (that they did not start) on two fronts. The needed investments, insurance and regulation brought two generations of stability, growth in the economy, and a growing middle class and black middle class.
Poverty wasn’t eliminated. It was declining. Reaganomics and Reagan’s trickle-down and excess deregulation destroyed all that. Persistent poverty is the work of the Republicans.
Since 1980 and Reaganomics, the middle class has stagnated. The growth in income and wealth has gone to the top… so now they need more tax cuts?
2
The "official" way the US defines poverty paints a falsely rosy picture. According to current standards, only individuals earning less than about $11,000 are deemed poor, while a household of four must fall below $24,000 to qualify for the honor. Thus, "only" about 12% of the US population are that badly off.
A more accurate metric is the Supplementary Poverty Measure, which takes into account the rising costs of rent, food, clothing and utilities. In actuality, at least a third of the population, or 110 million people, can be considered poor or nearly poor. They are:
51.9 percent of children under the age of 18
40.7 percent of adults between the ages of 18-64
42.5 percent of elderly
45 percent of women and girls
33.9 percent of Whites.
60.3 percent of Blacks.
65.1 percent of Latinos.
41.1 percent of Asians.
This year also marks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's Poor People's March on Washington, which he didn't live to lead. But now we have the Poor People's Campaign, which has been staging protests (with many arrests) all over the country as well as a major rally in D.C. a few weeks ago. There has been little to no corporate media coverage of this movement of. by and for the poor.
If you wondering why that is, the operative word is "corporate."
Trump isn't the only corrupt entity looking a humanitarian crisis in the face and callously pretending it doesn't exist.
https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/demands/
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@Karen Garcia You can always count on Karen Garcia for a thoughtful, informed comment supported by data.
Also, too, did you borrow my it's time for a new New Deal comment?
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@Karen Garcia
Wouldn't you think, then, that Democrats would support efforts to boost business which is, after all, where people find workyand escape poverty?
Reagan began the dismantling of the War on Poverty. In Michigan due to Reagan's changes in the welfare to work program the program was switched from the State department of labor to the welfare department. The result - cost per placement went from $600 to $3000. As so often the Republican policies were and are penny wise and pound foolish. Though I think the actual goal is closer to anarchy than conservatism.
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Anarchy would serve the plutocracy well. Their self-contained money machine will keep them rich and ensure the future of their progeny. Meanwhile, they'll continue to buy elections to keep America in check. Shining city on the hill, anyone?
"The poor have always been rebels, but they have never been anarchists: they have more interest than anyone in there being some decent government. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly. The rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists."
- GK Chesterton
Paul Krugman has hit on another important issue. The war on poverty is over. Poverty lost.
Let's talk about work requirements. My sister was a successful interior decorator. She owned her own firm and had many employees.
When she left her business and moved to another state to be near her children and grandchildren, she looked for a job. What she found at Home Depot was a part-time job that had start times that varied from early morning to late afternoon. But despite the hours, they would never give her enough work to qualify for health and other benefits. Yet Home Depot, like many big employers have far more workers than they would need if they were all full time employees.
Why doesn't the federal government impose a penalty on employers who have many times the number of workers than the full-time equivalent hours would call for???
People aren't looking for a handout. Just a hand.
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Where will all these "extra" people work? We have 6.5 million officially unemployed people now and untold millions more that want to work but are no longer counted. The answer is to make retirement and health benefits a government provided program like most of the developed world instead praying employers will step up.
3
A hand and fulfilling work.
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@Richard
Home depot is a big financial supporter of the GOP and the Religious Right.
Personally, I dislike making such a judgment of a person or political party, but it seems accurate. Whether talking about the GOP handling of immigrants (regardless of whether legal or illegal), their refusal to support breast feeding or their response to the poor of our nation the attitude is mean, heartless.
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@Rev Wayne Dear Rev, their refusal to support breast feeding was based upon companies that sell formula. That's the problem. We no longer have a Congress that represents us. We have a Congress that represents companies who simply wish to make a profit and nothing else at any cost.
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@Rev Wayne
Conservative oppose out-of-wedlock births by parents unwilling or unable to support these children emotionally, intellectually, and financially.
The best way to alleviate many of the "poverty" problems we see is to diminish this perhaps number one cause of such impoverishment--not by adding more government programs that encourage such behavior.
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@Rev Wayne
The attempt to reduce illegal immigration and to limit legal immigration to people who can help our economy, is an attempt to allow our own poor citizens to find work and to increase wages. As supply of labor increases in this country, it drives down wages, because business does not have to compete for labor. When labor is limited, businesses do have to compete for labor in a growing economy, as we see happening today, and wages begin to rise naturally, as businesses are willing to hire more and more of our citizens and fighting to get them.
Lowering the corporate tax and reducing regulations are two other means for growing the economy. As corporations are able to better compete in the international marketplace, they grow, and hire more workers; as regulations are reduced, it makes existing businesses more profitable and reduces the red tape on start-ups, fro mom and pop businesses to larger ones. A booming economy and a limited labor supply will find our poverty levels dropping precipitously, as is already happening. There have been articles in other newspapers about workers literally coming out of the woodwork--people who had given up finding work are now back in the labor force.
1
Worse yet, Republicans refuse to raise the minimum wage, squeezing folks at the lower end of our economic ladder. Two years ago my younger sister completed a masters program in school counseling. The only job she could get paid $30K a year. She doesn't believe the minimum wage should be raised to $15 an hour because those people haven't spent the time and money to get an education equivalent to hers. If you spoke to her she would follow - in the next breath - by telling you that she believes in self-reliance. Meanwhile, Republicans doubled the lifetime exemption for the estate tax to nearly $22 million for a mother and father combined. The real problem in America is how we value jobs. A school counselor is worth $30K a year, but a worker at Burger King is only worth $15K to $20K a year. Yet, those workers at BK who work for $10 an hour or less are mission critical to BK's success. They take every order, cook every order, fill every order, represent BK to every customer and clean the place to boot. Republicans see these workers as unmotivated instead of under-valued. Meanwhile, they reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% - claiming the reduction would create jobs by increasing capital badly needed for expansion - while corporate America had $2.1 trillion stashed offshore in tax havens. Not to mention, plenty of capital here at home. This is more than just a war on poverty. This is a war on our values, on sensibility and on the middle class.
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@Aurora raising minimum wage causes businesses to raise prices. This is an issue of greed in our society. It's an American disease.
@Aurora What is commonly called "income inequality" should rightly be called "economic oppression." When someone works full time and cannot make enough money to provide for their basic necessities, that is oppression.
1
This is also called grand theft.
1
If the war on poverty is truly over that is news to me, my disabled mother & most of the citizens in the city which I live. I walk through the city & see every unhappy, misearble face hardened by the brutality of poverty: the fear of homelessness, of hunger. Most of all I know their shame, the same shame I feel sometimes: If only I try harder, not be so sick! As if anyone as powerless as me has even an ounce of control over my life. And that's the crux of poverty in America isn't it? You have zero control over your own circumstance, however hard you try. Far as I'm concerned the "war on poverty" can't be over because it hardly ever begun- LBJ abandoned the"Great Society" to go drop bombs on some terrified Vietnamese.
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@Keely
That is why Trump is trying to stimulate job growth, and he has largely done that through his immigration policies, and his trade negotiations.
His object is to make sure that every Amreican who wants to work can find a job.
1
They forget to mention all the benefits given to Corporations and the wealthy!!! Blue collar workers wake up, it is your neigbours who end bearing the consequencies of this cruelty. Where are the Christian Republican voices - - Jesus Christ stood for the poor and marginalized. Scripture says we will be judged by how we care for the poor in this life. We have enough resources in this country that will not be depleted by the relatively small amount we spend on the poor!!!
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@Ahuma Adodoadji
We are $20 trillion in debt, and counting. Please share with us your knowledge of how much we have to pay each day to service that debt--to pay interest on the money we have borrowed: interest on $20 trillion that could be funding so many more programs for the needy.
1
GOP has declared war not only on the poor, but on the sick,minorities,elderly and handicapped.
GOP is against education and healthcare for all , that would represent a tremendous social lift .
What’s the reason for this unethical standing ?
They consider themselves Christians, pro lifers,against any human aberration etc .
Why are they so mean, egotistical,stingy,unhelpful and “ unchristian “ ?
I don’t get it !
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@Inter nos
You do not "get it" because you have no understanding of what conservatives believe and want nor what personal behavior they exhibit.
Your comment,
"mean, egotistical,stingy,unhelpful and “ unchristian "
reveals a common meme among liberals, but describes not one conservative that I know or have ever met. Read the book, Think Again, recently reviewed in this paper. It is nonpolitical, but discusses how ad hominem (and many other) patterns of argument destroy any chance to communicate with the "other".
2
@Inter nos Because those mega tax cuts from Reagan through Bush 1 and 2, need to be paid for. An interesting paper was just released by ITEP, (I've attached it for your edification). It shows that 65% of the tax cuts some $111 BILLION has gone to the rich, while the people that fund government operations get nothing. All while our country becomes a third world nation, roads crumbling, schools falling down, water poisoned with lead because of old pipes. Unless you're a Koch brother, or MEGA donor to the GOP, we the people will never get anything.
Regardless of what the GOP asserts, since we pay into this system, we have every right to expect a return on our investment, the Koch brothers get a big fat return on their donations. We've also created a corporate welfare state, where tax dollars are used to bail out companies, and in return, we don't even get to share in the corporate buy back scheme that they are using to remunerate themselves.
https://itep.org/65-percent-of-federal-tax-cuts-since-2000-have-gone-to-....
Many, many years ago my father would say, "if you get sick, make sure you are either very rich or very poor." Today he would probably say: "make sure you are very rich".
He was a Republican through and through. I am betting he would be in total dismay over the current GOP ideology.
66
To the extent that GOP's war on poor people is about racism it's ironic considering black people built this country for free.
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@Sherry Jones You should tweet that comment and let it go viral.
2
@Sherry Jones
Black people didn't build this country for free. They paid and paid, literally with blood sweat and tears. We owe them plenty. The Republican attitude is not just ironic, its cruel.
They suffered before, let them suffer more now.
1
@Sherry Jones They built the South. In any event, this is 100% about racism.
A faith-based advocacy group that I work for as an Ignatian Volunteer uses a letterhead with this statement at the top of its correspondence: "The justice of a society can be measured by how the most vulunerable are faring and being treated."
The idea expressed is taken from the theology found in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures--especially the Hebrew prophets--and can be found in the writings and speeches of religious leaders such as the late Rev. Dr. Maritn Luther King and Pope Francis.
Many pious evangelical Republicans read the same Bible and pray to the same God as those engaged in advocacy for the poor, but so many of them think much differently about what should be done in helping to lift the burden of poverty. It is similar to the problem that Lincoln referenced when noting the political differences of the adversaries in his second inaugural address: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God..."
There is no moral imperative calling us to be cruel to those afflicted by poverty, and as FDR noted decades ago: "Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."
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@Robert Stewart
Great quote of FDR--thank you!
1
@Robert "The justice of a society can be measured by how the most vulunerable are faring and being treated."
It can also be measured, Robert, by how many of those who are not vulnerable are cheating the system--living off the labor of others by taking advantage of loopholes in the system that allow them to get away with it.
You may recall that Obama's first campaign promised to pay for many of his new programs with the savings they would reap from cracking down on Medicaid fraud.