The comment that impressed me most is in the midst of a post in which he, like so many others, takes Obama to task for belittling people of faith, gun owners and people who have strong views on illegal immigration and other cultural issues. Of course, as he usually does, Taranto articulates this much better than everyone else. I won't add more to it except to note, as I did in the following post, that Obama is out of touch and way outside the mainstream of American thought. Each of us should fear a candidate who has so little respect for so many (I believe the majority) of Americans.
Obama said in Indiana, "They don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody's going to help them." He went on to explain that they should vote for him because if elected, unlike all previous presidents of either party, he will improve their material well-being.
Obama's promise rests on a false premise: that it is within the power of the president to restore the Rust Belt's luster. Every incumbent president in living memory has sought at least one additional term, and the Keystone State has for decades been a key electoral battleground, both large and closely contested. If presidents had the power to make Pennsylvania's declining towns wealthy, don't you think one of them would have done so by now?
In truth, the decline of industries is simply a fact of life, like old age, sickness and death. Yet just as new generations supersede the old, a free economy produces innovation that gives rise to new industries. And while some places have declined, the nationwide economy has grown impressively for most of the past quarter-century.
11 comments:
It's not the politicians that can't come to grip. It's the older people that depended on those jobs, and don't have the wherewithal to learn the necessary new skills needed in the new markets.
Much less would they probably be hired even if they had the skills due to younger, more talented people working for less money.
That is happening in central WI right now.
Capper, you are right. Small town Wisconsin is hurting in many places.
I have relatives in the very boat you describe. I have an uncle that was a manager at a small central Wisconsin plant. It closed. He certainly could not replace that job. Instead, he worked as a handy man for years.
We do not disagree that there are issues in the central city and in small rural towns. It is the solution to that problem on which we disagree.
We can dump a bunch of money into the government, have government churn through half of it, and have a few dollars left to dump into some meaningless program in those communities. The problems of those communities will not be solved, but we will feel better. In the process, however, the economy of the whole state will decline farther, and those communities' problems will worsen because there will be no good jobs for the young or seniors.
Alternatively, we can lessen the government's burdens on the economy. If history is any guide, the overall standard of the economy will be better. Those communities will reap part of the benefit through jobs (after all, they have an available and cheap labor pool). With those jobs, those towns will do better. Perhaps the prospects of people like my uncle will improve. They probably won't get jobs in the new industries - they are too old, and too unskilled for the current economy. But there will be more handy man jobs, and more jobs working behind the merchant's counter. Local programs will have more money because of more charitable giving and, yes, more local tax dollars.
In the process, the economy will change. Perhaps some of those towns will die. People will move to bigger communities with better jobs. Or perhaps the market will find a good use for those communities and they will be reborn.
We can't know, and that is the dirty secret of the whole thing.
A bunch of politicians will tell us that they know, but they don't. Why? Because they really are no smarter than you and me. They can't predict what direction the economy will go in the future. They don't have solutions for those small towns.
But even worse, they know (or at least the smart ones know) that they don't know. They can't solve the problems of small town Wisconsin, in the same way that the physician can't cure the disease she can't diagnose. But they will throw some money around, regardless of the harm it causes to the overall economy, and hopefully, just maybe, the economy will improve despite their efforts. If it does, they will take the credit. If it doesn't, they will blame someone or something else.
If it doesn't, they will blame someone or something else.
I almost got distracted by that line. I bet who that made me think of.
Anyway, at the risk of sounding like one of the conspiracy nuts, I think that more often than not, the politicians do know, or at least have a good sense, of what is going on. They just don't want to come perfectly clean and straight-forwardly with it, because it wouldn't be a popular sale to the public in general.
No one likes bad news, and people do have an unfortunate habit of wanting to take it out on the messenger.
Absolutely correct. That does not sound like a conspiracy nut, that is just the reality of politics.
Have you ever heard a politician say, sorry, life is tough, them's the breaks? Of course not. Even a heartless conservative would never say that because he or she would lose the next election in a heartbeat. Liberals would pounce on him or her for not caring. They would call him a nutcase.
So, they make up stuff.
Why don't politicians "come clean"? Because, as much as we say we would like them to, we don't want it. Realists never get elected. Instead, too many people want to believe the illusion that government can do stuff doe people.
If that wasn't the case, government would be a lot smaller, and our discussions would be a lot different.
That fits for only part of the politicians. The other part keep promising to cut or freeze taxes, but they know that it will blow up in the people's faces. Sometimes, it may take a generation. But usually it's a lot sooner.
As a point of interest, did you notice this?
Capper, why? Why will it blow up in "the people's" faces? Who are "the people?" Are you concerned about the people who are paying the taxes, or the people living off of those taxes?
In my mind, this is the single biggest issue facing Wisconsin. Until we answer those questions, all of the issues we mentioed above are meaningless.
I would not be so concerned about taxes if I knew that (a) everyone was goimng to pay taxes; (b) people who are not paying taxes would not be dictating the way we spend tax dollars; (c) recipients of tax dollars (government employees) wee not getting a better deal than people who whoi earn their money outside of government; and (d) my taxes would only grow at a rate slightly less than the growth in my ability to pay taxes.
But, you won't do that, will you?
But you want to keep increasing taxes because I am not paying "my fair share." At what point have I paid "my fair share?"
By "blowing up in people's faces" I mean the politicians that defer payment of the bills until they are gone (or so they hope). They run up a deficit like nobody's business and let the next official, or the next generation of officials left to clean up the mess they left behind, and to pay the exponentially higher bills while the original irresponsible politicians have retired or moved on to their next position.
For examples: On the federal level, who the hell is going to pay for Iraq?
On the state level, we are still paying for massive deficits run up by Tommy Thompson.
Now on the county level, we will be stuck with much higher bills than wouldn't be necessary if Walker wasn't too busy running for governor, again.
I wouldn't mind seeing everyone, and I mean everyone, to pay their fair share of taxes. As we discussed in an earlier post of yours, tax forms are way over complicated and there are too many "well if this, then that" type of things. That means companies and other entities that are considered to be tax-exempt.
I'd rather see a straight tax, but on a progressive scale, and do away with all the other loopholes and exemptions.
I'm not sure what you mean by what you mean with the government employees line. Don't they pay the same taxes that everyone else does? What deals are they getting?
Capper I agree with you. To a point. Buyt it is at the point that we disagree that defines the political philosophies from whih we come.
I agree that Tommy Thompson and George Bush spent way too much.
But, to the extent you suggest Jim Doyle has been better, you are light years away from being right. He has spent far more, and tried to tax far more, than Thompson ever dreamed. And, when the Republicans in the legislatures tried to restrain him, he played shell games, and the legislature shamefully went along.
As for Bush, it is not Iraq. It is the massive domestic spending increases for which we will have to one day pay the piper. And, there is a difference between spending for a war and spending for entitlements. At some point, a war ends, either on its own or based on political decisions. The cost subsides. But entitlement programs never die, they just keep growing.
On Walker, you are wrong. True, he is trying to starve county government. But, it is an out-of-control beast that prior administrations let run wild. It may be painful for a relatively small number of people. But, for most people, the benefit outweighs the pain. But it has to be done.
Your post has too many points that should be covered, and I do not have time to cover them all right now - the type of straight tax that makes sense, how (or whether) we should tax companies and so forth.
I will, hoiwever, answer your final question. Sure government employess are taxed under the same rules as everyone else. But they are paid on a whole different basis. It is the part of their tremendous income that is untaxable that is a problem. Government employess receive benefits of up to 50% of their salaries, and those benefits are untaxable. Real world employees generally receive benefits that are closer to 20% of their wages. Not only are government employess in many cases over-compensated but, due to lavish benefits, they essentially get more tax-free compensation.
Croc-
I am not a big Doyle fan. Yes, I did vote for him in the last election, but only because I found him to be the lesser of two evils.
With Walker, the ones he is hurting are the ones that can least afford it, and are the most vulnerable.
With government employees, they might have some perks better than average, like health insurance, etc., but they give that up in pay. Furthermore, it is the benefit that unions can supply, just like in many private industries. It is just a question of who gets the profits, the workers or the CEOs.
Capman,
You missed the shareholders. When it comes to government, I want the money to stay with the shareholders and not go to the workers or the CEOs.
And, I think for most govenment employess the premise that they are paid less just no longer holds true.
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