It's a doozy, in The New Yorker no less, here, August 15, 2022:
Friday, March 8, 2024
You should read The Untold History of the Biden Family about Joe's so-called middle class dad
Friday, November 10, 2023
The poor dears: Survey of millionaires says a third feel only middle class
Same as it ever was.
From the story:
Even among millionaires, only 8% would characterize themselves as wealthy these days.
Roughly 60% of investors with $1 million or more of investable assets said they are more likely upper middle class, according to a recent Ameriprise Financial survey of more than 3,000 adults.
To that point, 31% consider themselves decidedly middle class.
Monday, October 3, 2022
Thursday, August 11, 2022
Phony Democrat SALT Caucus is out there today boasting it is going to vote for the Manchin bill anyway, which doesn't undo the Trump tax increases on the wealthy they promised to get rid of
a group of House Democrats say they will still vote for the party’s spending package without SALT reform . . . members of the SALT Caucus ... have vowed to oppose a bill without SALT relief
From their website:
SUOZZI, GOTTHEIMER, YOUNG, GARBARINO ANNOUNCE NEW BIPARTISAN SALT CAUCUS TO FIGHT FOR TAX RELIEF FOR MIDDLE CLASS FAMILIES
Today, April 15, 2021, Tom Suozzi (NY-3), U.S. Representatives Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5), Young Kim (CA-39), and Andrew Garbarino (NY-2) announced the formation of the new bipartisan SALT Caucus to advocate for new tax relief from Congress.
“Our effort to restore the SALT deduction is gaining momentum. Together, Democrats and Republicans alike, we will advocate for the restoration of the SALT deduction and highlight the middle class families who have been unfairly hurt by the cap,” said Rep. Tom Suozzi, SALT Caucus Co-Chair. “The cap on the SALT deduction has been a body blow to New York and middle-class families throughout the country. At the end of the day, we must fix this injustice.”
“We’re formally launching a new bipartisan group — the SALT Caucus — because, for all our Members, and for the tens of thousands of middle class families we represent, it is high time that Congress reinstates the State and Local Tax deduction, so we can get more dollars back in to the pockets of so many struggling families — especially as we recover from this pandemic,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, SALT Caucus Co-Chair. “This bipartisan group we’re founding today, with members from coast to coast and across the political spectrum, are all banding together to reinstate the State and Local Tax deduction, to find a way to get this done in Congress, and to actually get tax relief for the hard working middle class families we represent.”
“Hardworking Californians in the 39th District and across my home state have been burdened enough by high state and local taxes. It is estimated that in the 2022 tax year, California’s 39th District will pay on average more than $640 million due to the SALT cap,” said Rep. Young Kim, SALT Caucus Co-Chair. “I am proud to fight for lower taxes for my constituents as Co-Chair of the SALT Caucus and am looking forward to working together to ensure California workers and families can keep more of their hard-earned money.”
“The SALT cap penalizes working class Long Islanders. From firefighters to police officers, to teachers, to nurses, and small business owners, I hear from people every day about what a crushing blow the SALT cap has delivered them. I’m proud to be a Co-Chair of the bipartisan SALT Caucus to fully restore the deduction once and for all,” said Rep. Andrew Garbarino, SALT Caucus Co-Chair.
“A critical component of our overall economic recovery must be the repeal of the state and local tax deduction cap that was imposed by the 2017 tax law,” said Rep. Mikie Sherrill, SALT Caucus Vice Chair. “There is a misconception that the SALT deduction doesn’t help middle class families. But in high cost of living areas like my district, SALT does in fact make a critical difference in helping make ends meet for our middle class residents like teachers and law enforcement officers, who depend on this deduction to afford the high cost of living in our area. To be clear, the 2017 tax bill specifically targeted states and communities like mine that have prioritized key investments in our public schools, living wages for workers, environmental protections, the list goes on. I’m proud to be launching this bipartisan caucus to ensure we deliver a win on this issue for families in New Jersey and across the country.”
“The cap on the state and local tax deduction hurts middle class California families,” said Rep. Katie Porter, SALT Caucus Vice Chair. “During the coronavirus pandemic, our state and local governments have led public health efforts on testing and vaccines—a potent reminder of the important work they do. Restoring the state and local tax deduction, which has been in our tax code since its inception, gives taxpayers and communities the ability to invest in their priorities and levels the playing field across states for federal taxation.”
“Counties are on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting nearly 1,000 hospitals, more than 1,900 public health authorities and other services essential to residents’ safety and well-being. The human and financial impacts of addressing this health and economic emergency are staggering,” said National Association of Counties Executive Director Matthew Chase. “We applaud the formation of this bipartisan caucus committed to repealing the state and local tax deduction cap, which would reinstate our local control of our tax systems and strengthen the ability of our counties and local communities to deliver essential public services, such as emergency response, public health and infrastructure.”
The SALT Caucus leadership consists of:
Co-Chair Tom Suozzi (NY-3)
Co-Chair Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5)
Co-Chair Andrew Garbarino (NY-2)
Co-Chair Young Kim (CA-39)
Bill Pascrell, Jr. (NJ-9), SALT Caucus Vice Chair
Katie Porter (CA-45), SALT Caucus Vice Chair
Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11), SALT Caucus Vice Chair
Jamie Raskin (MD-08), SALT Caucus Vice Chair
Chris Smith (NJ-04), SALT Caucus Vice Chair
Lauren Underwood (IL-14), SALT Caucus Vice Chair
The other founding members of the SALT Caucus include: Reps. Danny Davis, Nicole Malliotakis, Julia Brownley, Judy Chu, Lee Zeldin, Michelle Steel, Mike Levin, Jimmy Panetta, Jimmy Gomez, Brian Higgins, Jerry Nadler, Tom Malinowski, Jeff Van Drew, Alan Lowenthal, Anna Eshoo, Andy Kim, Ted Lieu, Brad Schneider, John Larson, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Mike Garcia, and Gregory Meeks.
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Bloomberg economic model forecasts 25% tariffs between democratic and autocratic countries would roll back globalization to 1990s levels and leave the world 3.5% poorer
More.
The story never mentions how those newly introduced extra billion plus workers reduced economic outcomes for the already established middle classes around the world, especially in America where the full time job of the 1990s became a thing of the past.
If I'm repeating myself, I don't care.
Friday, March 11, 2022
LOL, according to this stupid definition by a university pinhead, there are only 23.8 million middle class workers
Tuesday, January 25, 2022
Housing affordability turned down again in 2020 as housing prices climbed ever higher and incomes fell
The rich have taken away the keys.
Tuesday, September 28, 2021
If this keeps up America will be just like Cuba
The average age of a car on U.S. roads rose to 12.1 years in 2021, according to IHS Markit. The average age had been 11.9 years in 2020. In 2002, the average age was 9.6 years. ... Car shopping site iSeeCars publishes a list of the longest-lasting cars on the road. Recently, it found that 16% of the Toyota Land Cruisers on the road have at least 200,000 miles on them. Meanwhile, at least 2.5% of several other models — from car makers including Toyota, Honda and General Motors — also have at least 200,000 miles on their odometers.
The story never mentions that a declining middle class finds it increasingly difficult to afford newer vehicles.
More.
Monday, July 5, 2021
Joel Kotkin has come around, now calls it what it is: Global fascism
In 2018, Kotkin was still tip-toeing around the obvious, but not anymore:
Mussolini’s notion of fascism has become increasingly dominant in much of the world . . .
Mussolini, a one-time radical socialist, viewed himself as a “revolutionary” transforming society by turning the state into “the moving centre of economic life”. In Italy and, to a greater extent, Germany, fascism also brought with it, at least initially, an expanded highly populist welfare state much as we see today.
Mussolini’s idea of a an economy controlled from above, with generous benefits but dominated by large business interests, is gradually supplanting the old liberal capitalist model. ...
fascism — in its corporate sense — relies on concentrated economic power to achieve its essential and ideological goals. ...
China, in many aspects the model fascist state of our times, follows Il Duce’s model of cementing the corporate elite into the power structure. ...
But in the battle between the two emergent fascist systems, China possesses powerful advantages. Communist Party cadres at least offer more than a moralising agenda; they can point to the country’s massive reduction of extreme poverty and a huge growth in monthly wages, up almost five-fold since 2006. At a time when the middle class is shrinking in the West, China’s middle class increased enormously from 1980 to 2000, although its growth appears to have slowed in recent years.
Like Mussolini, who linked his regime to that of Ancient Rome, China’s rulers look to Han supremacy and the glories of China’s Imperial past. “The very purpose of the [Chinese Communist] Party in leading the people in revolution and development,” Xi Jinping told party cadres a decade ago, “is to make the people prosperous, the country strong, and [to] rejuvenate the Chinese nation.”
Kotkin recognizes at least that American right-wing libertarianism is part of the problem, not part of the solution:
the consolidation of oligarchic power is supported by massive lobbying operations and dispersals of cash, including to some Right-wing libertarians, who doggedly justify censorship and oligopoly on private property grounds.
Regrettably, however, Kotkin still does not connect this failure of the old liberal order in the West with the failure of the old moral order which gave it birth and on which it depended. This is because Kotkin still sees things in primarily materialistic terms.
Kotkin is oddly politically correct when he denounces possible recourse to nativism, which blinds him to the nativism which is at the heart of Chinese state capitalism and gives it much of its appeal and strength. He calls for "a re-awakening of the spirit of resistance to authority" in the West, not realizing that it was Protestantism which made that even possible in the first place.
The problem of the West is spiritual, and Catholicism will never be able to rise to the occasion of refounding it as long as globo-homo defines Rome. The whole idea is inimical to the notion of founding a nation "for our posterity".
Monday, November 2, 2020
Green New Deal in the hands of Democrats is a dagger aimed at the heart of the middle class
Joel Kotkin here in The New York Post:
If these Democrats win both houses of Congress as well as the White House, things could get far worse for the already beleaguered middle class, which has been rocked by the pandemic, with an estimated 100,000 small firms going out of business. Particularly hard-hit by the recent urban unrest are inner city and minority businesses. ...
If the Democrats win on Election Day, the future for the middle class could be bleak. As a lifelong Democrat, this is not easy to write, but most of the party’s initiatives — such as the Green New Deal — are directly harmful to those in the middle and working classes, who’d be forced to face increased housing and energy prices and fewer upwardly mobile jobs in industries like manufacturing.
Sunday, September 27, 2020
Things to remember from the week that was, Sep 19-26, 2020, and none of it is about COVID-19
Democrat Senator Chucky Schumer tweeted on Feb 22, 2016: Attn GOP: Senate has confirmed 17 #SCOTUS justices in presidential election years. #DoYourJob.
But now that they're about to do just that, he's saying Ruth Bader Ginsburg "must be turning over in her grave up in heaven". RBG is actually on ice right now, until her burial this week at Arlington. The Senate Minority Leader, like a lot of Democrats, has problems with spatial, temporal, dimensional and proportional imagination, not to mention the American idiom.
Democrat Senator Harry Reid tweeted on Nov 21, 2013: Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to consider filibuster reform. It had to be done.
In 2013, Reid was then asked if he was worried the GOP could change the filibuster on #SCOTUS, too. His response: "Let 'em do it".
So Mitch McConnell did, sooner than Reid was imagining.
The cannibal Reza Aslan was so hungry for human BBQ he called for the whole fucking thing to be burned down if the GOP replaced RBG, who died at home and "lied in state" according to NBC News. That's one way of putting it. Democrats threatened riots if they didn't get their way, like that was something new.
Like the George Floyd protests which were mostly peaceful, except for the $1-$2 billion in damages caused so far, most of the fires out west recently have been wild except for at least four major ones caused by 13 people arrested for arson.
Ann Coulter tweeted that Amy Coney Barrett would be a "disastrous pick" for the Supreme Court because Barrett has stated that her Catholicism would require her to recuse herself on e.g. immigration and death penalty cases. Yes, what are we paying you for? Not to recuse yourself but actually to issue opinions. Plus it would set a terrible precedent for an appointee to add to the prohibition on religious tests such a prohibition of religion itself from the public square, as if religion has no legitimate contribution to make to our public life.
This must come as quite a shock to the Catholic integralists of the "right" who seek an explicit Catholic hegemony over the Americas, because Amy is not their man, so to speak. It's probably more disappointing to such Catholics than to the millions of US Protestants who still don't have one justice on the court, completely dominated by Catholics and Jews as it is, even though Protestants still constitute the largest, though splintered, Christian group in America.
Ann Coulter also said Trump would lose if he picked Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy of RBG. I say, only if they let her talk in public. The woman's a bot. And a Karenbot to boot. I don't think she's going drinking with Brett Kavanaugh.
The New York Times is playing fast and loose with its own so-called 1619 Project, stealth-editing-out its claims that the "true founding" of America was in 1619, not 1776, after taking sustained in-coming from critics about it.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is in re-election trouble according to the polling. The guy flaps his gums about many things and so gets caught flipping and flopping quite a bit, which apparently is wearing thin down there.
Democrats like David Axelrod are basing many of their arguments for and against everything these days on what has the "popular vote" and what doesn't, saying things which don't have the popular vote create a tyranny of the minority.
In a republic like America the popular vote has always been subsidiary in order to prevent the tyranny of the majority. Representation in a republic means that you can have a voice to persuade, not a guarantee that you can get your way and impose. But rather than argue the principle head on, of course, they'd rather assert the claim that the majority wants this, the majority hates that, is what counts, as if all the republican institutions and the republican framework itself have no legitimacy any longer, almost as if they don't even exist. This is the ideological habit of mind in action: Denial of reality.
The reality is Trump won in 2016. His position in the Senate strengthened in 2018 and the impeachment trial failed in 2020, which means the voters have already expressed their assent to the president's prerogative to make judicial appointments and to Republicans' Senate role in approving or disapproving of those appointments.
The filibuster issue, however, is a fraught matter.
Some are saying about the issue of filling the current Supreme Court vacancy that the Court's legitimacy is on the line. Many of us already thought the Court lost its legitimacy in 1973 in Roe v Wade. We thought that again in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas. We thought that again in 2012 in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. We thought that again in 2013 in United States v Windsor. We thought that again in 2015 in Obergefell v Hodges. We don't think that in 2020 per se, but I mean, look at the thing. It's a mess. Liberals are only upset because for the first time in decades their ability to impose their undemocratic will on the American people is in jeopardy.
Meanwhile it's good to remember in the first place that RBG was appointed to the Supreme Court by a president who received just 43% of the popular vote. Talk about a tyranny of the minority, eh David Assholerod?
Speaking of minorities, RBG had just one black clerk in all those years from 1993-2020. A Jew practicing tokenism? I'm shocked. She was also a eugenicist, like the Nazis: "at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of."
Oh really?
In 2014 RBG told Reuters she wasn't going to retire because she didn't trust Obama to appoint a true liberal like herself to replace her, but she thought rather that he would appoint a compromise candidate. RBG must have reckoned in 2014 that Hillary would win in 2016, allowing her to retire safely knowing HRC would appoint another true liberal. Says a lot about RBG, but also about Obama, who by the end of 2009 had already alienated the far left. Yet by 2016 the far left supported Bernie, not Hillary.
And they say the Republicans are cracking up. The Democrats haven't finished cracking up.
We learned this last week that in April the USPS and HHS were prepared to distribute 650 million face masks to Americans but that never happened because the Trump administration didn't want to cause a panic. Like we hadn't panicked already.
Senator Chuck Grassley used Twitter to identify the numbers on a tagged pidgin he found dead on his farm. Thank you, Chuck.
Video of RBG warning against court-packing emerged, but you probably won't see that.
As recently as July Ann Coulter was hashtagging #DefeatMcConnell in support of his Democrat challenger in Kentucky. In September she was appealing to McConnell to talk up someone other than Amy Coney Barrett to Trump.
Well make up your mind, lady.
In a September Quinnipiac poll McConnell has a comfortable 12 point lead and appears headed to another term in the Senate representing the Bluegrass State. They should change that to Badass State, in honor of Cocaine Mitch.
McConnell did join Republicans in voting 96-3 to confirm RBG in 1993.
Sad!
In Minneapolis a charter amendment to defund the police failed to get on the ballot. Crime is up dramatically in the wake of the riots . . . because police are afraid they'll be prosecuted for doing their jobs. Maybe next year the reality will sink in: George Floyd wasn't "killed by the police". He was killed by an overdose of illegal drugs he took.
In Seattle the Seattle Times is lying about why 126 businesses have closed downtown. The paper says it's due to COVID when it's really due to the rioters. Looted businesses are boarded up everywhere as law and order has broken down and riff raff own the streets. Who would shop there now?
"Fiery but mostly peaceful protests" has been trending but will be replaced soon by "no evidence of meaningful fraud" in the fall elections. Analysis that's a little bit pregnant from the Mother of Idiots, the media.
After ~17 weeks of $600 federal unemployment checks, a Trump executive order has resulted in follow-up checks for $300 for six weeks. Democrats filibustered a Republican relief bill for the unemployed in the Senate which would have made that superfluous. Another opportunity to make Trump appear small, squandered.
The stock market in the 20 years since the August 2000 peak has underperformed the previous 20 years by almost 68%, so No, this is not a bull market.
Joe Biden said 200 million have died from COVID so far, which makes it a good thing hundreds of millions of Americans in 57 states have Obamacare now. In 1991 he said that he'd probably be dead by 2020. Just pointing out that there's still time . . .
Not to be outdone, Kamala Harris on Friday night said 2Pac is the best rapper alive. This is the second time she's pandered on 2Pac, who was shot and killed in 1996.
Glenn Beck wants 1 billion Americans. We want fewer Glenn Becks.
The Chicoms, who have over 1 billion Chinese, are imposing Xi Jinping thought on private businesses and sending warplanes to buzz Taiwan.
We learned Hunter Biden got $3.5 million from a Putin stooge, but it's still "Trump-Russia!" 24/7.
Robert Curry pointed out that John Locke 'had made what philosophers call a “category mistake.” Property is alienable; unalienable rights are not property'. So among the unalienable rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are not to be thought of as property of which you can be deprived.
We were reminded that in late August Hillary urged Biden not to accept the election result under any circumstances. Well, if Trump wins and stays in the White House, Trump won't be wrong, but Hillary already is.
An article attempting to tout the benefits of the 2017 tax bill for the middle class contained this unfortunate line: "The average tax liability of millionaires was reduced by roughly $54,000 between 2017 and 2018", which way overtops the 2018 median wage of $32,838.05, meaning your average millionaire saved a minimum of $21,000 more than half the country's workers make in a year.
If we're going to have a limitation on SCOTUS power by limiting the terms of Supreme Court justices, it had better include limitations on House and Senate power, too, by limiting their terms of office. This hamstringing of the judiciary is in the service of the present Legislative Tyranny, where representatives and senators keep seats warm forever. It is a devious end run aimed really at the executive, which appoints the judiciary, to further weaken it.
Think about it. In 1929 the Congress grabbed power by stopping growth of the US House and limiting it to its then 435 members. In 1947 the Congress grabbed power by limiting the president to two terms. In 2020 Congress wants to limit the term of SCOTUS justices to 18 years.
The Congress does a lot of limiting, except of itself.
We have $27 trillion in debt for crying out loud! Congress has picked our pockets, our children's pockets, and the pockets to the third and fourth generation of them that hate the government of the United States. Debt is servitude. Debt is slavery. Debt is tyranny. And that debt is the secret of the Legislative Tyranny's success.
A tyranny of 218.
Brutus tried to warn us in 1787:
[I]n reality there will be no part of the people represented, but the rich, even in that branch of the legislature, which is called the democratic. — The well born, and highest orders in life, as they term themselves, will be ignorant of the sentiments of the midling class of citizens, strangers to their ability, wants, and difficulties, and void of sympathy, and fellow feeling. This branch of the legislature will not only be an imperfect representation, but there will be no security in so small a body, against bribery, and corruption — It will consist at first, of sixty-five, and can never exceed one for every thirty thousand inhabitants; a majority of these, that is, thirty-three, are a quorum, and a majority of which, or seventeen, may pass any law — so that twenty-five men, will have the power to give away all the property of the citizens of these states — what security therefore can there be for the people, where their liberties and property are at the disposal of so few men?
It will literally be a government in the hands of the few to oppress and plunder the many. You may conclude with a great degree of certainty, that it, like all others of a similar nature, will be managed by influence and corruption, and that the period is not far distant, when this will be the case, if it should be adopted; for even now there are some among us, whose characters stand high in the public estimation, and who have had a principal agency in framing this constitution, who do not scruple to say, that this is the only practicable mode of governing a people, who think with that degree of freedom which the Americans do — this government will have in their gift a vast number of offices of great honor and emolument. The members of the legislature are not excluded from appointments; and twenty-five of them, as the case may be, being secured, any measure may be carried.
The rulers of this country must be composed of very different materials from those of any other, of which history gives us any account, if the majority of the legislature are not, before many years, entirely at the devotion of the executive — and these states will soon be under the absolute domination of one, or a few, with the fallacious appearance of being governed by men of their own election.
The more I reflect on this subject, the more firmly am I persuaded, that the representation is merely nominal — a mere burlesque; and that no security is provided against corruption and undue influence. No free people on earth, who have elected persons to legislate for them, ever reposed that confidence in so small a number. The British house of commons consists of five hundred and fifty-eight members; the number of inhabitants in Great-Britain, is computed at eight millions — this gives one member for a little more than fourteen thousand, which exceeds double the proportion this country can ever have: and yet we require a larger representation in proportion to our numbers, than Great-Britain, because this country is much more extensive, and differs more in its productions, interests, manners, and habits. The democratic branch of the legislatures of the several states in the union consists, I believe at present, of near two thousand; and this number was not thought too large for the security of liberty by the framers of our state constitutions: some of the states may have erred in this respect, but the difference between two thousand, and sixty-five, is so very great, that it will bear no comparison.
Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Club for Growth and Freedom Works both stop funding Justin Amash, so he'll just have to tap the family Chinese tool company fortune made on the backs of America's downward-spiraling middle class
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
With the budget deficit topping $1 trillion again, Larry Kudlow promises a middle class tax cut proposal for later in the year
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Trump insists to Laura Ingraham that we don't have enough workers even though over 3 million more prime age workers aged 25-54 aren't even in the labor force 20 years on from 1999
Friday, November 22, 2019
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Wednesday, October 23, 2019
The rising share of workers not making the average wage
This history since 1990 is a picture of the middle class under pressure and actually shrinking.
The only good thing that can be said about it is that the trend is flat since 2015, not worsening.